Relevance to Resonance

I feel kind of sneaky posting anything on the blog these days because of my extended absence, hah!  But, alas, I have to share this.  It truly is an amazing blessing to be able to share space closely with brilliant minds all thinking about ways to know, love, worship, and follow God.  Sometimes, a question might lead one of these minds to expand on a topic helpfully.  I recently asked a question of Brian Walsh while eating lunch and his response turned into this post:  http://empireremixed.com/2010/11/26/orange-sky/ .  It's a great reflection.

Feel free to join in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjHvJE1XU7E.

The Question

The question is not how I or anyone else will be saved but rather,

     How

            shall

                   God

                          and his amazing grace

                                      be glorified and adored?

... thinking that rises from reading Newbigin all day.

Go Away!

but please ... for, by and through the love of God come back. come back to me and to others and demonstrate, live, and teach what you have learned.

        go away though.  seriously.

find a separated room, a closet of sorts; a lone park bench; a long open stretch of road; maybe a large stack of dishes.

Imagine if in a romantic relationship a couple only were able to express and then understand and learn about the other's love in the context of being together with the partner AND other friends and community?  God wants to be able to show her love on the level of personal separated intimacy you would expect in that relationship.

Eighth Letter

So, the next evolving church conference is called Eighth Letter.  The point being another letter (on top of the 7 in Revelation) written to the North American church.  The organizers challenged possible attendees as well as speakers to write a letter to the church in North America.  I thought for about 10 minutes, and after that felt I was pretty sure about what I wanted to say:


A letter to the North American Church: 

The Scripture scholar Ernst Kaseman is noted with saying that what is wrong in the world and in the churches is that the pious aren’t liberal and the liberals aren’t pious. The theologian Ronald Rolheiser notes that this sentiment is paralleled in the Western culture’s divorce of private and social morality. My question for the North American church is exactly that:

Are you equally satisfied with both your personal morality; the ethics of self, and your social morality; justice for all? Do you pour through Scripture with the same aching, searching desire to find truths about how to live personally as Jesus did as you do to find truths about building the Kingdom as he did? Conversely, do you judge the systems-of-power, political and commercial institutions with the same ferocity as you do the sins you find in that person you love so dearly? 

The Kingdom lies in the balance in more ways than one. It lies in our ability to balance an every-day-search to abide in God by keeping his commands, and an every-day-search for ways in which to bring about God’s loving justice for all. My prayer for you, the North American church, is that the divorce would be undone. A revolution is a community committed to both private and social morality. A revolution is a church evaluating how they live in relation to one another as often as how they live in relation to those around them.

“If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love… This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.” 

John 15 

Thank the Lord that we often find his power working in existing communities in North America that try to live in the balance. Let the ache and the desire for both unite us and not the vision for one separate us.

Live Together, Live Alive

I've been struggling.  Truth is I'm trying to figure out what to write about my trip to Rwanda.  Usually when I write a blog post it hits me hard in a way that I see mostly all of what I am going to say.  With regard to this experience I have not yet had that feeling.  I neither know where to start nor have I finished catalyzing my thoughts and reactions to what I saw and experienced.  I will say it was a fantastic, blessing-filled and thought provoking time.  As for what those thoughts are, you might need to wait just a bit longer.  However, I do have some beautiful stories of people of unimaginable strength and love to share with you.  The stories are important because these experiences are what triggers thoughts, ideas and opinions, so you will be able to process alongside me.

Kotutu

I never did get the Kinyarwanda spelling on that, but thats as best I could pick out form the scribbles in my notebook.  It is the name of one of the most inspiring co-operatives we visited (and we visited a lot).  It means, as the title of this post betrays; Live Together, Live Alive.  It began in 2007 as a number of associations of people infected by HIV/AIDS coming together to create a new co-operative where each individual member could work to contribute his and her gifts and share in the positive outcomes.   This co-operative has 176 members. They lead us on to a row of chairs and stools at the front of a large room filled with benches and about 75 people. Sitting down, we begin the familiar process of introducing our group, telling our names, our ages, and our marital status.  Already one can tell that this is a spirited group.  They have energy, they have passion and drive, sometimes they even have arguments with one another as to what the correct answer is (eg. how exactly did this all get started?).  It doesn't seem like a group of people who are living on borrowed time, or with an internal clock which constantly counts down.  Iriakim translates their fascinating and inspiring story of community support and hardwork.  He lays out how they wrote proposals to World Vision for many different income generating activities, including the keeping of bees to harvest and then sell fresh honey.

The people then explain how the training about HIV/AIDS provided by WV has helped them understand better how to live; the fact that the part of the national health insurance that they need to pay is covered by WV doesn't hurt either.  When we come to the topic of the building we are sitting in, they cannot contain their pride.  This building, this beautiful large meeting area was built by them for weekly meetings.   All the members contributed large amounts of money to fund its construction.  CIDA and WV provided the remaining needed funds (and some materials), but the people in the co-operatives built it with their own hands.  I have seen Rwandans work on construction - and I can imagine they were there everyday working much harder than you or I could.  Before the conversation devolves (as it so often does) into a minefield of questions like 'Why is Canada so well-off?' or cultural exchange about birth control methods and how to maintain marital fidelity, they also explain that they grow crops together for food for themselves, as well as to store and sell at lucrative times.  Furthermore, they have their own cows and goats (I believe the first of which were provided by WV), another valuable income source.

But after all this group discussion, people are asked to share their own stories; how has the co-op affected your life?  A lady who was loud-spoken, excited, funny, and thoroughly charming throughout our previous discussion is the first to pop up.  Lets call her Veridien.  She has children.  In 2004, she discovered that she was infected with AIDS.  She recalls the traumatizing effect on her and her family.  She expressed that there was great sadness in this time.  Another lady, in the telling of her story claimed she 'felt it was better to die.'  Eventually she was visited by the co-operative.  She was accepted into that tight-knit community and encouraged by counsellours and friends alike.  'Life began to change,' she said.  She received the training mentioned above, and even as her funds went to the co-op she received the benefits of food security and a supporting community for her family.  Her children, with WV support are now able to return to attending school.  Mom, with the help of the co-op, can run the house herself.  The truth is, she can do much more than that.  She is also the vice-president of the co-operative running a fruit tree orchard, which has been fundamental in creating further income generation and providing support for 100s of other people.  Veridien moves, speaks, laughs, and hugs with confidence.  She is living alive (the one in the yellow with the smile, in case you hadn't already picked her out).

Trans-Atlantic Toys

Finally the excuse I have been waiting for for why I am not blogging!  I will be gone for 17.5 days as of tomorrow and sit (almost) fully packed at this point.  Matt was very kind to lend me an awesome 85 litre bag which is full to the brim of seemingly primarily toys, notebooks, bics and soccer balls given by awesome friends and family.  Sometimes I think about how these are odd things to travel across the Atlantic with.  Sometimes I think about how the idea of spending long days of travel in order to sit with, learn from, relate to, and try to help people across the world is an odd idea.  But yet it seems like the right one, and, alas, I am anxcited - a new-to-me word coined exactly for you know what!

I would love it if you would pray for me; for openness, energy and strength.

Contributors

So.  There is this section on the side of the blog called 'contributors.'  This is a regular blogger feature when you have a blog with more than one administrator.  This harkens back to the beginning of the blog, which I dreamt up while sitting in The Pancake House, of all places, with a group of fantastic friends.  I had a big vision, as I often do, about a team blog, a communal space.  This was a place where we would all be able to post thoughts, and in fact carry on a sort of creative conversation.  Kindly, my friends said they would join and I set them all up with full administrator rights on the blog, a tiny bit of guilt, and set off for San Diego.  Initially, we all had a few posts, and I felt connected in a way that I couldn't have been otherwise.  It was pretty great.  So great I raved about it to a telecommunications brainstorming session I was invited to be part of at work.  The ability to have this kind of a private/public shared community space on the internet would be important I thought, not that it was unprecedented.

Alas, the posts began to wear thin.  I felt as though I had to wait for someone else to say something before I could weigh in again because I was trying not to dominate the conversation.  In fact, I think for a while there I learned how to think of an idea to write about and then squash the thought immediately.  Time went by, and I posted here and there, and eventually this blog became what it is now, my own individual creative outlet.

All that to say I really like having that list of contributors there.  They stand as a public reminder that what goes on here is fundamentally dependent upon so much more than me.  And in fact, all my close friends, even those who weren't listed at the time (whom i'd love to set up with the same privileges), contribute so much to my life and character.  Some of them have great blogs of their own.  I can and do learn a lot about writing, expression and creativity from these people.  Still more friends of mine have musical, artistic, athletic and intellectual creative drive and ability that I learn more from every day.

So yeah.  There are a lot of contributors here.  Many more than are listed.  And i'm thankful.