“and I was a Stranger, and you…”

These are the words of Jesus …

I was a stranger, and you invited me in … Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, Lord when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in? … And the King will answer and say to them, Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to me” – Matthew 25:35-40

In my work with World Relief Minnesota, these verses have taken on more meaning. The refugee certainly is included in the category – the stranger. When Jesus is asked what is the greatest commandment in the Law, He responds by saying love the Lord with all you being, and the second is like it “Love your neighbor as yourself”. Do see refugees as our neighbor?

In the future, I’ll be blogging about refugees and immigrants on the World Relief Minnesota website.

Fractured and Flawed

In several recent blogs, I’ve talked about being safe in the church. If you’re a follower of Jesus, then you are a part of this thing called the Church – the group of all believers throughout history and manifesting itself in a variety of ways locally over the centuries.

Yet if you don’t feel safe in the local expression of the church – which I would suggest is more about how the church has assimilated the greater culture, than it is about the failings of specific local churches – then the result is a split within the self. I am a member of the Church, yet I feel varying levels of discomfort there. I’m fractured because out of fear I avoid something I’m called to be part of. Some of my greatest wounding has happened there and yet it also has the potential to bring transformative healing.

I’ll continue this discussion in another blog. Right now I want to share part of a poem that talks to me about embracing my own flaws and experiencing the pain of aloneness that comes with that experience … and eventually coming out the other side. Coming out the other side to experience the unconditional love of God the Father and knowing that my own wounds and those I’ve inflicted are part and parcel of the creature that is loved by the Father.

The Faces at Braga by David Whyte

…. If only our faces
would allow the invisible carver’s hand
to bring the deep grain of love to the surface

If only we knew
as the carver knew, with the flaws
in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core,

we would smile too
and not need faces immobilized
by fear and the weight of things undone.

When we fight with our failing
we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself
and wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side of good.

And as we fight
our eyes are hooded with grief
and our mouths are dry with pain.

If only we could give ourselves
to the blows of the carver’s hands,
the lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers
feeding the sea
where voices meet, praising the features
of the mountain and the cloud and the sky.

Our faces would fall away
until we, growing younger toward death
everyday, would gather our flaws in celebration

to merge with them perfectly,
impossibly, wedded to our essence,
full of silence from the carver’s hands.

Becoming the Church of the Poor

When we claim our own poverty and connect our poverty with the poverty of our brothers and sisters, we become the Church of the poor, which is the Church of Jesus. Solidarity is essential for the Church of the poor. Both pain and joy must be shared. As one body we will experience deeply one another’s agonies as well as one another’s ecstasies. As Paul says: “If one part is hurt, all the parts share its pain. And if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy” (1 Corinthians 12:26).

If each of us could admit that we are fundamentally flawed, that would go a long way to making the Church the Church of the poor. The Church of the poor is a church that is safe because there isn’t the dynamic of pretense. The Church of the poor is a place where mercy and grace are readily received and passed forward. Reciprocity is possible because we truly understand we are broken and the recipient of God’s unconditional love. What could be better?

Unfortunately, so many of us in the Church are afraid of knowing the depth of the poverty of our lives. We avoid pain like the plague.

Forgiving the Church

From HenriNouwen.org - Daily Meditation for 10/27/09

When we have been wounded by the Church, our temptation is to reject it. But when we reject the Church it becomes very hard for us to keep in touch with the living Christ. When we say, “I love Jesus, but I hate the Church,” we end up losing not only the Church but Jesus too. The challenge is to forgive the Church. This challenge is especially great because the Church seldom asks us for forgiveness, at least not officially. But the Church as an often fallible human organization needs our forgiveness, while the Church as the living Christ among us continues to offer us forgiveness.

It is important to think about the Church not as “over there” but as a community of struggling, weak people of whom we are part and in whom we meet our Lord and Redeemer.

I can acknowledge that I’m a struggling, weak person, experiencing the poverty of broken relationships. How can we not forgive the church when it is made up of others that share the same fallenenss? Yet, there is a difference between forgiving and feeling that the Church is a safe place. If we don’t acknowledge our true state and then offer each other grace, the grace and mercy that God has provided, then the Church is not a true community of believers – instead it may be little more than any other human institution.

Do you experience church as a safe place?

Spirituality of Fundraising

The blog on the HenriNouwen.org website is currently discussing The Spirituality of Fundraising. In my new role as Director of a Chrisitan non-profit, I’ve been giving some thought to fundraising. Why is it so hard to ask for money? Is it because our own relationship with money is fraught with ambivalence? — we always want more and yet as a society we don’t handle it responsibily.

Money allows us to attempt to control our environment giving some sense of security. We use money to purchase those items that we hope will build our self-esteem, items that we lust after, items that promise to ensure our membership in the right group.

How to we make fundraising a spiritual act? How do we make giving a spiritual act? At a recent ECFA workshop, the presenters talked about the need to educate people regarding the biblical concept of stewarship. The concept of being a steward is counter-cultural. Our culture hammers home the message that we deserve everything we earn (if not more) as well as the principle of personal ownership. We are owners rather than caretakers of the gifts God has given.

Our giving reflects this. Americans on average give less than 1% of their income to charities or about $400/year. Christians give little more than this; 1.5 to 4%. How can we effectively care for the homeless, alien, widow, and prisoner without the resources of money and time?

Lush Land Dries Up, Withering Kenya’s Hopes – NYTimes.com

The poor suffer disproportionately … whether it’s a natural disaster or political instability. To be poor is to lack security. Right now millions in Africa are battling famine. What responsibility does the West have?…does the Church have is addressing this need?


Lush Land Dries Up, Withering Kenya’s Hopes – NYTimes.com

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Faith and Food (report from IATP)

The marriage of a couple of my favorite things – food and communities of faith. I’ve copied the introduction from a report recently published by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (Minneapolis located non-profit) entitled, Faith and Food: Action Strategies for Healthy Eating by David Rosmann and Heather Schoonover.

Introduction: We live in an era when food is being discussed as never before. Where was my food grown and how was it grown? How can we ensure that all people have access to healthy food? Are our daily eating practices reflective of our spiritual beliefs? How can food be a vehicle for putting those beliefs into practice?

Across the country, faith communities are putting their beliefs about food and healthy eating into action. Some are offering healthier food at church events. Others host a farmers market, connect their members with local sources of halal or kosher foods, or grow food at a church garden that they contribute to a neighborhood food shelf.

In the following pages, you will find examples of how faith organizations are building community—and healthier lives—through food. We hope these stories will inspire you to build new bridges between your faith and your food. You will find a resource list at the end to connect you with additional ideas and information.
Of course, this report is just a snapshot of what is happening in the faith community to improve access to healthy food. We invite you to share with others what your faith community is doing to improve access for all to healthy food. Visit www.iatp.org/faith and tell us your story. We hope to continue to add new, inspiring stories to the list of case studies highlighted in this report.

A missionary I met in Port-au-Prince in 1999 was in the process of returning home after a number of years in Haiti. He was working for the Mennonite Central Committee and his heritage was Mennonite – he was returning to a CSA farm outside Winnipeg with the intent of providing a place for people to find rest and a deeper relationship with food and our Provider. I don’t recall the exact words he used, but he understood the need for us humans to live more integrated lives.

I’m Inclined…summertime in Colorado Springs

This week I posted on my facebook page that I was running the Incline that morning. That’s one of the fun things I do in summertime, summertime, sum, sum, summertime, summertime in Colorado. The trail of stairs rises about 2000 feet in just over one mile – starting in Manitou Springs at 6600 ft and climbing from there. So it’s really a misnomer to say that I run; however it is a fast paced climb with an average slope of 40% and portions at 70%. Matt Carpenter, the local ultradistance running guru has actually run the incline in 18 minutes and some seconds. My best is closer to 40 minutes. Decent time, yet I’d love to really be able to say I run the trail.

Selected portions of an article in the Colorado Springs Gazette…
Long slog to legalizing Incline begins!
March 18th, 2009, 5:59 am · posted by Dave Philipps

The Manitou Incline is the toughest, most-touted and most-trespassed trail in the region, and now it is officially on its way to becoming legal, too.

…the steep jumble of 2,744 old railroad ties

The Incline was never meant to be a trail. It began, just over a century ago as tracks for a work train used to install a pipeline. Then for decades it acted as a tourist attraction whisking riders 1,900 feet up a steep mountainside.

When the tourist train was scrapped in 1990 the abandoned ties became a cult workout of a few mountain runners. Slowly word spread. Today on a nice summer day it can attract over 1,000 people, making it one of the most popular trails in the region.

It has been written up in the New York Times and Sports Illustrated.

The stairs are a regular regimen for everyone from stay-at-home moms to Olympic athletes to soldiers getting in shape to return to Iraq.

More to come

I’ve been taking a summer hiatus from blogging. I’ve been traveling, doing the things you do in summer, preparing to move to Minnesota, and have been slow minded.

I anticipate I’ll get back into move active blogging come September. When I resume blogging, I want to continue talking about conversations we have with others and ourselves and the importance of words and stories in communicating truths about life and death.

Here’s a quote that a friend posted on his facebook page today:
“…the problem of identity is always a problem, not just a problem of youth, and…the nearest anyone can come to finding himself at any given age is to find a story that somehow tells him about himself.” – Young Men and Fireby Norman Maclean

Conversations

Wow, it’s been quite a while since I last posted. I’m going to quickly get a new line of thought started tonight about conversations.

The current understanding of work-life balance is too simplistic. People find it hard to balance work with family, family with self, because it might not be a question of balance. Some other dynamic is in play, something to do with a very human attempt at happiness that does not quantify different parts of life and then set them against one another. We are collectively exhausted because of our inability to hold competing parts of ourselves together in a more integrated way. These hidden human dynamics of integration are more of a conversation (emphasis is mine), more of a synthesis and more of an almost religious and sometimes almost delirious quest for meaning than a simple attempt at daily ease and contentment. — from The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship by David Whyte

I’m intrigued by this idea of conversation and the voice we each own. I know I’m exhausted and need to look at the roots of that.