Sacred Scarred

So the series on poverty, race, and war didn't happen...

...sorry.

In the Spirit of MLK

I haven't posted recently, but this needs to be watched.  In the coming weeks, I'm going to focus on the themes of poverty, race and war.  Let's start with this...commit the 34 minutes needed to watch it...

Not So Secret Agents

We feel small and weak, but we are gathered together to signify the power of God who transforms death into life.  That is our hope, that God is doing the impossible: changing death to life inside of each of us, and that perhaps, through our community, each one of us can be agents in the world of this transformation of brokenness into wholeness, and of death into life.
~Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community

Balancing Community and Solitude

Let him who cannot be alone beware of community...
Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.
~Deitrich Bonhoeffer

Jesus, in Mark 1:29-39 demonstrates and interesting balance between community and solitude.  He is with his community (James, John, Peter, Andrew, the disciples), he ministers to his extended community (Peter's mother-in-law), he is almost forced into ministering to the community at large (the whole town), he retreats to a solitary place with God, and then he engages with his community (the disciples) and reaches out into other communities (nearby villages).

Parker Palmer writes,

But most of us in our daily lives exist neith in solitdue nor in community, but somewhere in between.  We sacrifice both forms and contest of truth. Seldom are we truly alone, and seldome are we truly in relationship to others; This is the vacuousness of mass society and mass education: our lives alternate between collective busyness and individeaul isolation, but rarely allow for an authentically solitary or experience.  In this halve-live dmiddle ground, our solitude is loneliness and our attempts at commuiny are fleeting and defeating  We are alone in the crowd, unable to touch the heart of love in ourselves or to touch others in a ways that draw out the heart.

I think we can balance community and solitude without sacrificing both.

When was the last time that you truly engaged in solitude?  Do you exist in the half-lived middle ground where solitude is loneliness?

When was the last time that you truly engaged in community?  Do you exist in the half-lived middle ground where community is fleeting/defeating?

Changing the World

Was reflecting this morning on some of the things that my cell talked about last week in regards to what they value in a community of Jesus followers...we talked about their past experiences (good and bad) and dreamed about what we want to be as a cell.  Check out their list (not everyone in my cell is even a follower of Jesus, but they know what they value)...

-  grace
-  personal connection with God
-  interaction
-  giving to others
-  the Bible in a proper context
-  room for people to work through their process
-  forgiveness of failures/faults
-  willingness to question "normal" ways of following Jesus
-  history (tradition) in a proper context
-  Jesus being open to everyone
-  excitement
-  relationships
-  acceptance

We talked about creating a place where these values were present and we talked about changing the world as a result.  We bookended our time with this prayer...

The Christopher Prayer
Father, grant that I may be a bearer of Christ Jesus, Your Son.
Allow me to warm the often cold,
impersonal scene of modern life with Your burning love.
Strengthen me by Your Holy Spirit
to carry out my mission of changing the world
or some definite part of it for the better.
Despite my lamentable failures,
bringhome to me that my advantages
are Your blessings to be shared with others.
Make me more energetic in setting right
what I find wrong with the world instead of complaing about it.
Nourish me in a practical desire to build up
rather than tear down,
to reconcile instead of polarize,
to go out on a limb rather than crave security.
Never let me forget that it is far better to light on candle
that to curse the darkness,
and to join my light, one day, with Yours.
Amen.

We meet for the 3rd time tomomorrow night - I'm excited.

Crush-inich

I would like to take a few moments to briefly and officially announce my crush on Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich.  If you have not met this beautiful couple, you should - you may crush on them as well.  Now, I'll admit, I like many of Dennis' political stances but beyond the pure politics, I think they're a cute couple.  I don't think they are necessarily following Jesus, but they're doing that better than a lot of Christians I know.  I want to be friends with them.

Some things I'm crushing on...
-  The idea to create an US Department of Peace
-  Dennis' great ears
-  Universal Healthcare that leaves no one behind
-  Elizabeth's story as told in her british accent (you should watch this)
-  Dennis on the Colbert Report
-  The stance on environmental sustainability
-  A commitment to ending poverty worldwide
-  Elizabeth's BA in Religious Studies and Theology
-  Elizabeth's MA in International Conflict Analysis
-  This quote: “We need to understand the connection between peace and the environment. We know that life on our planet is threatened by the twin threats of global warring and global warming. They are linked, and we have to understand that as we cognize the world as being interconnected and interdependent, we know that resource wars are passe and that the focus on sustainability will create peace.”  ~Dennis Kucinich

Love Hurts

I've often heard it said that to love someone is to see them at their very worst and to love them anyway.  I knew that Jen loved me when I told her things about myself that I had never told anyone and she didn't leave.  A lot of the "we're in love" feelings disappear when things get ugly.  Infatuated couples who have only experienced good times only have half the picture (perhaps less that half).  This has been on my mind for the last few weeks as a new baby in our lives has caused stress, loss of sleep, and a renegotiation of time management, roles, and priorities.  Things get ugly from time to time.  Jen and I are real good at hurting each other with our words (especially when we are running on near empty).  I'm married to her - I know what hurts her and I (ashamedly) use it to hurt her (and vise versa).  And yet we still love each other - even in the midst of difficulty and hurt - we still love each other deeply.  I once heard it said that a great love opens us up to a great pain.  I think God gets that.

Alan Hartung on his blog "A Different Perspective" talks about the Soularize Gathering in the Bahamas last week and he writes about speaker (and author) Brennan Manning...

He said a lot of great things, and one of them I just had to write down. To make sure I remember it even more, I want to post the quote.

“How can you say you love me, if you don’t know what hurts me?”

The point was that Jesus loves us and that loves includes knowing what hurts his people. And it made me think about not only how much Jesus loves me but how much I love others. Am I so self-centered that I only think the things that hurt me hurt other people? Many things that hurt other people don’t bother me at all… and, of course, vice versa. Those I say I love, do I know what hurts them? How deep is my love?

Individuality Eclipsed

Our new cell met last night for the first time.  Four of us got together to learn about each other and about Jesus.  We did both.  It was good.

We talked a lot about our own tendencies to over-emphasize "figuring out God's will for my life", realizing that we far too often miss out on what God is doing in the present in order to figure out the future.  Perhaps (we concluded), God would rather have us be faithful to the present than stress over "his will".  And perhaps we are way too focused on ourselves.  We also talked about the role of community in determining God's call and whether or not we personally gave a community of people the authority to be the voice of Jesus in our lives. 

We left pondering this Richard B. Hays quote...thought I'd share it with you...

The community is the primary addressee of God's imperatives. If the biblical story focuses on God's design for forming a covenant people then the primary sphere of moral concern is not the character of the individual, but the corporate obedience of the church. Paul's formulation in Rom 12:1-2 encapsulates the vision: "Present your bodies [somata, plural] as a living sacrifice [thysian, singular], holy and well-pleasing to God. And do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…." The community, in its corporate life, is called to embody an alternative order that stands as a sign of God's redemptive purposes in the world. This is the concrete social manifestation of the righteousness of God. The coherence of Paul's ethical teaching comes into focus only when we understand that he is consistently formulating the ethical mandate in ecclesial [church] terms, seeking God's will not by asking first, "What should I do?" but" What should we, as God's people, do?"

Should have blogged this before now...

...but who has time between work and starting a new cell and changing diapers, etc. (obviously I haven't blogged much recently)...

Grayson Walker Hulfish was born to Jen and I on October 8, 2007.  He weighed 7 lbs, 15 oz., and was 21 inches tall.  He's a beautiful little boy (and I'd post pictures, but I don't have any available today).  Big sister Riley is really good at being a big sister!

Will be back blogging soon.  I'm often too tired to produce coherent thoughts.

Free Burma!