New Class! ...and thoughts on it

An unintentional theme for me through DY is recognizing barriers and working toward reconciliation.  (Maybe you've noticed it in my blog posts :) )  That's why I was so excited when I saw this class that is being offered at the Servant Leadership School this term: Overcoming Divisions in the Body of Christ.

The course description reads, "Christ wanted the various segments of his Church to be one.  What makes this so difficult?  Why, as martin Luther King, Jr. observed, is Sunday morning at 11:00 the most segregated hour in America?  This course will explore some of those things that keep us separate: race, class, language, theology.  It will offer some ways to overcome those divisions together."

The teachers are also very interesting: one black male pastor who is also an adjunct professor at Howard University's School of Divinity; and one white male pastor who directs a ministry that helps people develop relationships across the barriers that separate the inner city and the suburbs.

Isa, my Salvadorean housemate, and I are taking the class together.  I already really appreciate our friendship and perspectives about overcoming divisions in our personal lives and in the church.  I hope that the class will help strengthen our conversations about racial healing and multiculturalism in the church.

We spent the first class reflecting on Jesus' prayer for the unity of the church in John 17.  And throughout the course we will be reading from various pieces of MLK's writings and from Henri Nouwen's Life of the Beloved.

As I was reading the King assignment, I found tears in my eyes just reading the account of what was happening during the Montgomery bus boycott.  My emotion sprung from the realness of it all.  The injustice was real, the danger was real, and the hope was real.  My tears are also for how much needs to be done still.  But mostly, I felt a compelling sense to reach for that kind of reality in my life.  It sounds trite or cheesy, but I do want to be a part of something that creates a positive change in the world now.  If need be, I want to have something worth being in the line of danger.  I don't want to shrink from things that matter.

It's true that there are no momentary decisions.  The decision that MLK, Ralph Abernathy, and Robert Graetz made to ride the first integrated bus together as two black and one white man, that decision was not made in a moment, or an hour, or even a day.  That decision was made long before the bus boycott ever began, when all of those men decided that they had principles that they intended to stick to throughout life.  And when the time came again and again to stick to those principles, no matter the outcome, they continued to do so.

I hope my mundane and ordinary decisions of today are the kind that lay the pathway for difficult decisions in the future.  And I feel encouraged to continue being/be more involved in movements for social change.  I love reading King because he's so solid, not judging or preachy to people who aren't involved, but strong and honest and faithful to his calling.  He was good at leading and inspiring because he was true to himself, his faith, and following Christ.

What is the Montgomery bus boycott of today?  I feel this realness as I'm learning about racial healing, planning for intergeneration conversations and leadership development in my church, and participating in demonstrations of peace for Darfur and Iraq.  It's good to recognize the places in my life where I feel that I am truly following Christ.  I also feel that community and simple living are life-giving in light of my faith.  Little by little, I pray that my life is coming closer under the love of God and God's call on my life.

Community Covenant

On Tuesday, April 8, the DY volunteers, our director Dawn, and some special mentors convened for a Recommitment Service to walk through the commitments that we've made as an intentional community and, obviously, recommit ourselves to that covenant.  We started writing the covenant on our retreat in October.  Although we set out the basic framework in the fall, we still had some refining and wording to do and we finished the final copy the week before the ceremony.  (For all you astute readers, that means that we finished our covenant on April 1, the day Dawn pranked us really good.  So we also wrote a fake covenant that was really offensive and sent it to her as the "real" as a prank back on her.)  Now that I've been committed and recommitted to this community thing we got going on here, it's relevant to let you know what it's all about.  Without further ado, please read our esteemed covenant below.

Discipleship Year ~ Community Covenant 2007-2008

We are a group of Christ-followers who are exploring ways to live in community as the unified Body of Christ seeking to give of ourselves, develop deep relationships, live our faith authentically, learn from one another, and glorify God by . . .

Spiritual Disciplines
Sharing time: Sunday evening (at 8:30pm unless Katy works – 9:30pm)
· Framed by our relationships with God and neighbor
· Group prayer to close our Sunday time

Fellowship (Peaceful Community)
· Thursday evening dinner, nuts ‘n bolts, fun
· Valuing our individual relationships (one-on-ones)
· Stretching ourselves in engaging in different relationships outside ourselves
· Worship
· Participating in a Church body outside of ourselves
· Occasional corporate worship

· Personal prayer for one another (i.e. picking one person each day of the week)
· Servant Leadership School
· Learn together by participating in the weekly classes
· Rest and rejuvenation
· Solitude, cultivating outside relationships, retreat, etc.

Simple Living
· True to budget
· Food budget; rollover money
· Personal stipend
· Conserving energy in house
· Lights; electricity; heat; recycling; biking/walking; composting
Health - Personal ideas of sustainable health; Group dynamics/needs considered as a house

· Supporting local businesses (Serving the Community; Peaceful Community)
· Shopping/working at the City Garden Co-op
· Buying from local Salvadoran venues
· Dialogue about simple and sustainable living
· Valuing interpersonal relationships
· Moderation in isolating activities (i.e. TV watching, Internet time, cell phone usage)
· Fighting cultural addictions
· Sharing our resources - Computers, clothes, instruments, books, etc.

Using Our Gifts
Recognizing, celebrating, and developing gifts by encouragement, discernment, and balancing the variety of gifts
· Personal
· Other people’s gifts at home and direct service
· Community gifts

Peaceful Community
Conflict resolution
· One on one (Matthew 18); go to the source
· Avoid gossip – any kind of negative conversation without person present
· Validate emotions
· Resolve! Don’t fester
· Not taking sides
· Cultivating trust – creating a safe place
· Being present so that our relationships are bringing peace and healing to one another

· Supporting external peace efforts
Fellowship (Spiritual Disciplines)
· Thursday evening dinner, nuts ‘n bolts, fun
· Valuing our individual relationships (one-on-ones)
· Stretching ourselves in engaging in different relationships outside ourselves

Supporting local businesses (Serving the Community; Simple Living)
· Shopping/working at the City Garden Co-op
· Buying from local Salvadoran venues

Growth & Change
· Open to dialogue – engaging in issues that come up at work, with Dawn, in the news, etc.
· Servant Leadership School
· Open to compassionate criticism & self-criticism
· Accountability – to our covenant
· Flexibility in our understanding and expectations of our community and ourselves
· Anticipation of being different at the end of the year

Serving the Community
· Participating in a local church
· Engaged in our placements
· Building relationships with neighbors
· Openness to volunteer opportunities
· Serving food, playing music, demonstrations, etc.
· Engaged and present to the Church of the Savior community
· Supporting local businesses (Simple Living; Peaceful Community)
· Shopping/working at the City Garden Co-op
· Buying from local Salvadoran venues

Respecting our individual and unique expressions of these commitments, we acknowledge that their purpose is for the strengthening of our community and ourselves. We commit to being held accountable to this covenant through self-reflection and community support. For all these things, we depend on God’s grace and guidance now and forevermore. Amen.

Shenanigans!

Sooo, we totally got pranked by Dawn, our program director, on April Fool's Day!

Since April 1 was a Tuesday, we all arrived back at the house between 1-1:30pm for our weekly seminar.  Upon walking into the house we discovered the three couches in to be standing up-ended in the living room.  "Ha ha!" we laughed and wondered who could have gotten into the house to prank us.  After ruling out Dawn through some careful wording on her part, we thought of some other people but it just didn't seem plausible.  Once the whole group was assembled, Dawn finally confessed and was very proud of herself.  She also mentioned mysteriously that there were other things we might find.  Little did we know that there was:

- vaseline on the toilet seat

- snakes (fake) is 3 beds

- cockroaches (also fake) in bedrooms and in the prayer room

- a closet full of balloons that poured out when opened

- boxers and a bra in the freezer

- 2 short-sheeted beds

- socks in a cottage cheese container in the fridge

I never would have seen it coming!

Don't worry, though.  We got her back by toilet papering her office and hiding her office chair in the shower.  Hopefully there's more to come...

Moments of Truth

Tonight was an especially good sharing time.  Every Sunday evening we spend about 90 minutes listening to one another share about where we're at holistically, but especially emotionally and spiritually.  Our conversation is "framed by our relationship to God and others" as we outlined in our community covenant.

Maybe tonight was especially sweet because there had been some relational tensions in the community earlier during the week.  In any case, everyone was very present and connected this evening.  I personally felt ready to share from a space of pain that I'm dealing with in my life.  Somehow I knew the time was ripe in myself and in the group.  It is a true testament to the strength of our community that in this particular group I can expose a heaviness I carry with me everywhere but am not usually free to release.

Aside from myself, others shared about really powerful positive and negative things in their lives.  And yet we can still laugh and connect and embrace even when we find ourselves at very different places in our personal journeys.

As I am typing this, music is wafting up from downstairs.  A group of us was asked to play for an event this week and they're preparing their set list.  Emily is at the piano and Clay is on the violin and a beautiful hymn is providing the backdrop for my space of warm reflection as I share this with you.

Sometimes the ideal moment is in raucous laughter.  Sometimes it is in a genuine hug after an argument.  Sometimes it is a conversation that challenges our worldviews.  Sometimes is in quiet, calm spaces of enjoying one another's company.  Sometimes, as tonight, it is sharing the rawness and realness of joy and pain while hearing and being heard.  These are the moments that I live for, we live for, in community.  These are the moments that are the definition of community.

if it's reoccurring this much, it must mean something important

I bought a book of Wendell Berry poems at the used-book store and I like to read poetry before going to sleep at night. This week I happened upon this poem and it caught my attention to re-read it several times and then look at it again the next night. Then I heard it read at Friday night dinner at Joseph's House. It's like the poem is following me around this week. So there must be something special about it, though I don't have a dissertation on quite what, but I thought I'd share it with you.

The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Meaningful Things

This past week was filled with richness in relationships, prayer, struggles at work, difficult decisions, and generally feeling very alive.  It's a little hard to decide what pieces to extract for a closer look.

Worship at 8th Day, my church, this morning was particularly good.  Every once in a while the person giving the message includes time for discussion groups and today was one of those days.  My group consisted of me and 3 white people and one Latino man, named Alfonso, who always attends but doesn't speak or understand English.  (He also makes awesome tamales for the monthly potluck.)  I was kinda timid, but I thought it was important to include Alfonso in the discussion so I started talking with him in Spanish.  It was like a wall came down.  He was very appreciative and I felt an immediate connection with him that was more than language.

When it came time for one person from each group to share with the whole, our group encouraged Alfonso to share.  I asked another Latino man, Cruz, to translate for him because I wanted to make sure his words were interpreted correctly (better than I can do).

After the service, I got to talk to Lily, who came to the US as a Rwandan refugee.  She doesn't come to 8th Day that often, so it was good to get to see her.  As we chatted I remembered that she loves to sing and I told her that I think it would be really great if she led the music one Sunday.  She seemed encouraged and actually talked with the music coordinator as he was meeting with people to organize for the coming months.

The reason that I tell these stories is not because they are revolutionary, but because they are signs of the life of the church that I have been looking for, and, frankly, have been feeling like are lacking.  8th Day does a very good job of welcoming other races and cultures, and several members have political refugees and torture survivors living in their homes while they're getting their situations sorted out.  But aside from the presence of racial and cultural diversity, the culture of worship is a white dominated style and tone.  To me it seems that it's not enough for people to just be there if their voice isn't being heard in the whole church.

So I love that Alfonso found a way to share.  And I will be delighted when Lily feels empowered enough to lead the group in song.

It's a fine line, though, between encouraging multiculturalism through empowerment and just using my white privilege to push my own trendy agenda.  But I know through prayer, attention, and discernment of my actions and motivations that I can let God do a good work in me.  The point is, I was very encouraged by how much I felt the presence of the Spirit in the worship, community, and relationships today.  I needed to see that and feel it palpably - to find the redeeming story of God in a specific area that has been frustrating me.

The Beauty of Resurrection

How beautiful is a resurrection? Easter reminds me of how often I am being resurrected in Christ. I have been resurrected from apathy to hope, from bitterness to forgiveness, from the selfishness of pride and self-righteousness to love of others. How many ways can I die? How many more ways can God create new life? More than I can even know.

It's worth noting that there are some important things that coincided with Lent/Holy Week/Easter this year:
- the 5th anniversary of the war in Iraq
- Barack Obama's speech addressing racial issues in the US
- the anniversary of Bishop Oscar Romero's last homily before he was killed for his work with the poor in El Salvador

Regardless of your perspective on these events, they all relate to a world that needs to be resurrected, and in some ways, a world that IS being resurrected.

My hope stands on the God of an empty tomb, but more importantly, the God of a new body. The God who has the power to say that death is not the final answer. Not only death at the end of life, but death in our current moments, death that occurs even while we are breathing. I'm not and we're not captive to the death of brokenness and oppression anymore. This God is not only capable of raising us from the dead, God is capable of giving, and does give, us a new life in which to live.

How beautiful is a resurrection? As beautiful as the new life that is transformed for God's standards of success. As beautiful as your story, my story, and our communal story. Let us live in the resurrection and the power it has over all forms of death.

Amen and Alleluia!