garden fun

Look what we did today! Kurtis, Justin and I (and Leif and Hannah briefly too) hung out and cleaned up the garden a bit. Kurtis found some lovely old beans, and there were carrots EVERYWHERE! We'll bring them to our next meeting for you all to see, and to eat if you dare...

Balance=Kingdom?

Kurtis, you make me think, man...I can't help but hear your words of "compassion" over "fairness" echoing in my head.   I think about being a student for social justice and wonder if I should rather be leading you guys to being students for social compassion.  

In my head there is a constant struggle for power between rationality and emotion.  With rationality comes justice, structure, and a sense of right and wrong, while emotion brings love, hate, happiness, and anger along with all other passions.  When either side takes over, I find myself either unable to discern properly between repressing feelings which effect my decisions and seeing past the passion which I am so engulfed by at the time.  

Tonight I keep coming back to some sort of balance which I believe only the Holy Spirit can bring to my faulty sense of structure between this immovable object (rationality) and unstoppable force (emotion).  It is with this balance that we are able to successfully control our overflowing emotions while being able to somehow accept the irrational idea of giving up what could be our own gain for someone else.  In other words: Intentional Community, Kingdom Thinking, or Compassion.

What do you want to do with your life?

It's a pretty common question. We all hear it often, and I don't know who knows what they want to do or not, but it's something I think about a lot. I have this huge plan of what I want to do- but the only problem is- I don't have any details. I guess those things will fall into place as time passes, so I try not to worry about it.
I stumbled across this song while writting a paper, and it just made me smile. As students that crave Social Justice, I think this song describes what we desire. Enjoy these powerful lyrics!

"Give me your Eyes" by Brandon Heath

Looked down from a broken sky
Traced out by the city lights
My world from a mile high
Best seat in the house tonight
Touched down on the cold black top
Hold on for the sudden stop
Breath in the familiar shock
Of confusion and chaos
All those people going somewhere,
Why have I never cared?

Chorus:
Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me your love for humanity
Give me your arms for the broken hearted
Ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten
Give me your eyes so I can see
Yeah
Yeah
yeah
yeah

Step out on a busy street
See a girl and our eyes meet
Does her best to smile at me
To hide what's underneath
There's a man just to her right
Black suit and a bright red tie
Too ashamed to tell his wife
He's out of work
He's buying time
All those people going somewhere
Why have I never cared?

Chorus
Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me your love for humanity
Give me your arms for the broken hearted
Ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten
Give me your eyes so I can see
Yeah
Yeah
yeah
yeah

I've Been there a million times
A couple of million eyes
Just moving past me by
I swear I never thought that I was wrong
Well I want a second glance
So give me a second chance
To see the way you see the people all along

Chorus (x2)
Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me your love for humanity
Give me your arms for the broken hearted
Ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten
Give me your eyes so I can see
Yeah
Yeah
yeah
yeah

p.s. Sorry to go off topic so drastically, but as I said... I just stumbled across this.

the kingdom of God?

Good question, Ashley.  In fact, I'm not sure if I would know how to imagine a kingdom of God other than on earth.  I've been thinking a lot about what role God plays in this kingdom.  If it's really God's kingdom I've always thought God probably has a lot to do with it.  But as time passes I struggle to find room for a God that is anything other than human.  

We sometimes hear "God" tossed around in ways that don't have a lot to say to us and our neighbors in pain.  Words like atonement or sin and consolations like "God bless" or "everything works together for good" frustrate me when they are cast half-heartedly to strange faces in anguish as we hurriedly pass by or discretely lock our car doors.  The world is demanding a God that is just and human.

This is what captivates me about Christ.  If we believe Christ to be the revelation of the infinite and divine in completely human form, then perhaps our typical conception of God has been drastically domesticated.  

The Gospels reveal a radically other-focused Christ.  A Christ who is dangerously counter-cultural, sacrificing his reputation to associate with and serve the lowest in society – women, tax collectors, lepers, and foreigners.  Jesus is a human, a God, who washes dust-caked feet and calls us to “turn the other cheek,” “love our neighbor,” “give up all we have,” and treat the “least of these” as legitimately divine.  His parables inescapably describe an illogical ever-forgiveness that result in the reconciliation of a prodigal’s son and the healing of a beaten man left for dead.  This Jesus seems obsessed with a “kingdom” that apparently is a community marked by this insane Christo-logic and he is crucified by one that rejects it.

It seems like the kingdom of God then has a lot to do with the way we react to the face of our fellow humans.  If we need to love our enemy it makes it awfully hard to continue calling our enemy “enemy” – or to have enemies at all for that matter.  The plight of humanity becomes so much a part of who we are that surplus is never found until all mouths are fed.  Maybe we even need to absorb the violence of the world (social, verbal, physical) in an effort to end it. 

With this in mind, maybe today I can be less angry and more passionate; buy no more than I simply need; pass on a smile instead of returning a harsh remark; be thankful instead of grumbling; forget about fashion and recall my classmate’s name; stop thinking “charity” and start thinking “responsibility” and long for compassion instead of fairness.

This got really long… thanks for sticking it out J

recklessness

From Shane Claiborne's Irresistable Revolution...

“I came across an old prayer of a Danish Pastor named Kaj Munk, which I had torn out of a community newsletter printed by our friends. Munk was an outspoken priest and playwright who uttered these prophetic words before he was killed, with his bible next to him, by the Gestapo in January 1944 (careful, it could get you killed):

What is, therefore, our task today? Shall I answer: “Faith, hope, and love”? that sounds beautiful. But I would say - courage. No, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth. Our task today is recklessness. For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature… we lack a holy rage - the recklessness which comes from the knowledge of God and humanity. The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets, and when the lie rages across the face of the earth … a holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world. To rage against the ravaging of God’s earth, and the destruction of God’s world. To rage when little children must die of hunger, when the tables of the rich are sagging with food. To rage at the senseless killing of so many, and against the madness of militaries. To rage at the lie that calls the treat of death and the strategy of destruction peace. To rage against complacency. To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until it conforms to the norms of the Kingdom of God. And remember the signs of the Christian Church have been the Lion, the Lamb, the Dove, and the Fish … but never the chameleon.

gratitude & creation

This past weekend a bunch of us hung out at Park Street Church, learned about toxic trash, learned how water's not to be trusted, cosmetics are scary, coffee farmers aren't paid enough, the oceans are rising, everything's a scam... a whole bunch of pretty damn awful stuff.

But despite all of this, we were asked to consider what our relationship to the environment would look like if it were rooted in gratitude to God, and if we, out of love for the God who exists in all of creation, every person, animal, and tree, began to practice resurrection in the broken and forgotten places: vacant lots, dying communities, wastelands and dumps, polluted streets...

Shane Claiborne knows a lot about practicing resurrection, or what he calls "holy mischief", and about following the ancient traditions of living in community and devotion. He made very clear that heaven and hell should be irrelevant because the kingdom of God is now. If there were no heaven and hell, would you still follow Jesus? he asked. Of course we would, of course we are, (of course you learned in bib lit that hell's not biblical anyway), of course that's what social justice is all about - practicing resurrection using a reckless imagination born out of a rage at the brokenness of creation... right? Oh boy, we may have a lot to consider. But how exciting, the chance to imagine and resurrect. :)

If there's one lesson from Shane that I would wish for all ssj'ers to remember, it is this: guilt doesn't motivate, but love does. Guilt may cause people to act, to give away some clothes or some food or some time, but it's a pretty shallow and unsustainable reason to hope for a just world. It's out of love we want a just world, right? And I would add that love is passionate and passion births things like hope and optimism and a vision for the future... the kingdom of God. What on earth (I really mean on earth) would that look like?

Oh my gosh, go crazy. :)


-Ashley