Webster describes “lost cause” as: hopelessly unattainable, futile. That is what a lot people are labeling our youth today between the ages of 14 – 18. Working with youth we have learned there is no absolute. Just like it is unfair to hate a whole race because of an individuals decision, you can’t judge all teenagers by what even a small percentage does. The Spot After-School Drop-In-Center program (at Brotherly Love Urban Youth Services) has allowed us to see the spectrum of youth behaviors. We have relationships with very creative, caring, and academically sound youth and we also have the same relationships with those struggling because they are mimicking their hard neighborhood and influences in their homes. Joshua, 17 is a regular in our program. He is smart, mature, and a leader. Everyone gravitates to him because he treats people so good. He lives in a single parent household and is in his school’s ROTC program, which requires good grades and excellent skills. He says he enjoys coming to The Spot because he has the opportunity to lead, volunteer (in the computer lab) and has input in decisions for after-school activities and events. We are not a lost cause to God nor should we be for each other no matter the age.
Monthly Archive for February, 2008
About a year ago, Joshua asked me if I’d like to “step-up” and become the Public Meeting Coordinator. As a PM Leader who loves to organize, teach and facilitate things, this offer made sense to me, and I easily accepted. Over the past year Joshua and I have been figuring out exactly what that role means. Currently Circle of Hope does not have this role defined yet. Because of this, I often bumble around trying to figure out what is mine to facilitate, and what is not. In an effort to begin to clarify this role, I have begun to think about exactly what I do as the PM Coordinator. I co-lead a team of musicians, organize love feast music, organize Evensong, recruit musicians, meet with the PM Leaders once a month, help create and maintain the PM team covenants, I got the L&A team rolling, etc. Nothing is in writing yet, and some of these responsibilities will change too, but I like that by thinking about these things and discussing them with Joshua, I get to figure out exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.
The one thing that became confusing about this new title of PM coordinator was that I often got emails from other teams (hosting, children’s, tech.) telling me that they couldn’t be in that Sunday, or asking me where to find someones email address from their own team. “That’s not really my job” I thought, and I often redirected these people to the coordinators of their own teams. I mentioned my annoyance about this issue to a friend recently and they said “but you’re the PM Coordinator, of course they think they should check in with you.” I responded by saying “well, I don’t actually coordinate the whole PM, I coordinate the PM teams.” To which they replied, “well I’m not a musician, but I think that my team IS a PM team. I help facilitate our Public Meetings too.” True! The music teams, aren’t THE PM Teams. We have lots of teams that help facilitate our Public Meetings- thank goodness! I wonder if my title should change, and if the title of our music teams should simply be that- Music Teams.
I assume Circle started the title PM Teams to steer away from calling our music teams, worship teams. Rightfully so, the music teams aren’t the only groups worshiping either. All of our teams, and basically we as a whole body and community, create an environment for us to worship in, and I love that music is not the only part of the PM at Circle of Hope.
I want to share with you some classes coming up and to reflect a bit on why I am so passionate about it and why you should be too! I was really excited last week when Johnny Rashid brought up at our Public Meeting what the Reconciliation Team has been discussing. I am so grateful that we have a team concentrating on issues of cross-cultural understanding and healing.
As some of you already know, because you took the class last year or because you are just brilliant, music is a powerful way that we can begin to communicate and understand each other across cross-cultural dividers. When we learn and try to hear what people from other cultures are expressing in their collective artistic communal voices, it can sometimes be a bright light that illumines our understanding of the way they see the world and also their struggles and joys.
So, I want to offer a drum class this year as an extension of meditating on and actively learning something active about Black History. I know this month is specifically focusing on African-American history, but it truly should not be separated. The world –views and cultural truths and strengths of the African peoples whether still in Africa or not are connected and are in desperate need of recovery and understanding here in America by both blacks and whites and everybody. These are timeless truths and long-tested ways of communicating that should be celebrated by all peoples.
The Reconciliation Team needs some help right now, so please if this resonates with you—get up and do something about reconciliation. Move with your body and mind to understand others and to bring healing.
Class Info:
Learn the intense and exciting polyrhythmic drum music from west africa.
Class will cover history, technique, cultural significance, and musical traditions of the djembe, dununba, sangban, kenkeni, gonkogui, and shekere.
8 week class beginning Feb. 27
7:00-9:00pm
wednesday evenings
@ 2130 N. Hancock St.
Philadelphia, PA. 19122
$15 a week
contact: jay beck
734-945-3225
jay@psalters.org
any skill level welcome
some drums provided, but bring your own if you have one.
(expanded version of this post at Jay’s myspace here.)
Click here for more info about psalters, here for more info about Circle Venture or our other mission teams such as the Reconciliation team and psalters.
Well, here we are almost a year later and we’ve come to the close of one process, and the beginning of something great for Circle. The search for the Director of Operations is at its end and within a couple of days we will be able to announce the person who will lead us into one of our next phases of development as a body. As the person who’s had the pleasure of shepherding the selection process I am even more amazed at how we partner with Jesus to do what we do, and how honoring it is to people.
We spent the last month and a half gathering the names of six great people who decided they wanted to pursue this impossible role. Very different people, all with varying degrees of experience and connection to the community, but at the same time all of them had, in their own way, a lot of passion about serving the community and finding a way to integrate their faith with their work-life.
Our interview team took on the task of handling the first round, and did it in style. The team was made up of members from both congregations, and consisted of people with a lot of experience as well as some for whom this was their first time interviewing someone. It was a great process that allowed people the chance to participate in something that they may or may not have the opportunity to in their places of work. I was impressed by the questions people asked and the seriousness with which they approached these discussions. Especially since many of them were interviewing their friends! Capping the process was a feedback mechanism which ended with four of the six being selected to go to the final round with the coordinators. Kudos to the interview team for all of their hard work and discernment.
During the interviews one of the things that was refreshing for me was the honesty with which we were able to communicate with the candidates. They reciprocated by being honest with us about their apprehensions and things that, in a different setting, they might have been inclined to come up with some grandiose way to massage an answer. This process was honest, and organic, and allowed the candidates to really grapple with what it was going to mean for them to attempt to meet the call of this role.
As we entered the final night of interviews with the Coordinators I felt a great sense of relief that the Next Thing was about to be birthed. And the night felt like it had that sense of birthing a common discernment. One of the special things was seeing candidates hug each other as they passed on their ways in and out. Watching the camaraderie of them really pulling for each other, and also their statements of support for whoever was selected, was very Jesus like and encouraging to watch.
I was honored to be a part of this time for Circle and I’m excited to see the fruits of all the work we’ve accomplished over the last year. I’m glad that we try to really follow the growing pattern that Jesus lays out for us. Fruit. Vines. Wheat. The seeds coming up out of the good soil, with plenty of water and sunlight. We should cherish the organic nature of how we discern with each other through the Holy Spirit. We can trust it, and grow in the safety of it.
Now people are afraid of the Chinese. They are outdoing the U.S. in business, bailing out our banks. And pretty soon all of the millions of newly-able consumers of South Asia will be driving around some tiny car and polluting everything to high heaven! It scares people.
But the poor Chinese! They had a record snowfall in January which meant that everyone trying to get home for the New Year festivities (around February 7) was messed up. Not least of the problems was the fact that government-controlled electricity prices created a disincentive for electricity producers to bear the cost of rising coal prices, so they just stopped producing, contributing to the cause of the power outage in Guangzhou that stranded hundreds of thousands factory workers who were trying to get back home to spend what little holiday they got. To top it all off, there is a pork shortage (60+% of Chinese protein comes from pork, and it is integral to what mom makes for New Years)! The government had to open up the pork reserve (yes, they store frozen pork in case of emergency) to keep from having another Tiananmen Square episode.
It’s always something. The Chinese are scared, too. It is not like things are working great over there. There is always something to be afraid of.
Lately, I seem to have talked to a lot of people who are feeling a lot of fear. I think the climate of our country since 9/11 has contributed a huge amount to our sense of being threatened by unknown forces. Maybe the U.S. is just catching up a little with what the rest of the world has been facing all along. Regardless, we’re feeling it.
There are political, economic and relational things that can be done to add to our sense of safety. But let’s be Christians about it. We should know that all those solutions are not enough. And we already know that the best we could hope for has already been given as a gift.
1 John 4:18 “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.”
Luke 12:6-7 “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
Maybe if we all sat down for 30 seconds upon reading those truths again and let God tell us whether he really means it or not, we could cause a fear-reduction in the climate. Give it a try and see if it does anything for you. Ask Him. “Do you love me or not? Are we OK?” And make sure to ask, “Am I worth something to you? Do you really mean it when it says you look after me?” When I am most afraid, it is usually helpful to get my feet replanted in Jesus before something else tries to rip the rug out from under me. It’s always something.
As I approach my second year as a Philadelphian, I’ve begun to realize that winter here is nothing like the winters back in the woods of North Central Pennsylvania that I once called home. In fact, at times it doesn’t seem like a winter at all.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s cold. The people in this city do not keep their homes warm. In the beginning, I just thought that my landlord was a penny-pinching masochist. In the rare instances that we weren’t curled up in bed, we could see our breath freeze. Then I moved to South Philly and I realized that people in this city don’t prefer being half-frozen; most just can’t afford to heat their homes well due to a combination of poor insulation and ridiculous oil prices.
Then there’s the snow. More so, the lack of it. I’m not going to claim that I know anything about global warming, or anything like that, but in the two winters I’ve experienced here, I’ve been left wondering where on earth the snow went. This is still Pennsylvania, after all. And when the snow does come, it takes all of fifteen minutes for it to become a disgusting nuisance. People don’t know how to drive in it, even the widest roads are poorly plowed, cyclists basically risk their lives daily, and every day where one has walked down the sidewalk without major injury is cause for celebration.
Those who know me probably know that I see the benefits and joys of living in this city as far outweighing the pleasures of having the sort of winter I’d prefer. To be honest, I’d endure six months a year of this crappy winter just to live here. But I can’t help miss the quiet way that blankets of snow surrounded my house and the woods surrounding it. Aesthetics aside, it felt safe and quiet, lonely but beautiful in its starkness. Sure, you can do things in the city. There is art to enjoy, there are friends to love, and there are even people in need whom I care about. But the winter is outside, and it is ugly and keeps me in.
For a long time, I saw my depression in the same way that I think about those winters back home. Isolating, alone, cold, dead… but beautiful somehow. In the times that it would come and envelop me in its icy grasp, I would let go without a fight. The place I went, though vastly inferior to summer, was safe. But summer was coming less and less. It got to a point where I was sleeping fifteen hours a day, and still waking up feeling listless and hopeless. Finding a home and an identity in being sad and alone was a pretty bad state to be in. But it’s such an easy place to be comfortable. In a society torn between self-loathing and self-worship, the former seemed (and still sometimes does seem) morally superior, even austere.
And then Jesus came and stirred everything up. That’s always the way he seems to work. Whenever I get comfortable in something, whether it’s a good or bad something, he always busts in and rattles me all around. I suppose that’s the way I change and grow, but I’m not going to lie, I still hate it. Anyway, situation after situation brought me to the conclusion that the place I was in wasn’t that great. Here I was, wallowing the winter of my depression, when it was just as disgusting as the ash-crusted gray piles of snow in the Target parking lot. But I never would have seen it if I hadn’t been thrust into a community that showed me the two things I was missing the most: love from others, and a way to love back. The only way I could enjoy those things? Force myself out into the cold of winter and experience them, even if it was uncomfortable.
I’m no psychologist. This is my metaphor, and maybe it won’t work for anybody else. But here on the verge of Lent I can’t help but think about what this coming season means to me. I’ve been thinking for weeks about things that I should “give up” for the season. But I realize that maybe it’s not the giving up that has ever gotten me anywhere, but instead the “taking on.” New relationships, new habits, and, most importantly, a renewed relationship and connection with Jesus Christ; with these things in my life, the things that I would “give up” are slowly pushed away.
February is recognized as Black History Month in America.
The Reconciliation team at Circle of Hope is pausing to consider February as Black History month, and I’m encouraged by what we’ve been sharing. Here’s a sample of what I’ve gleaned from our discussion and some thoughts after each one.
Black History in America is American History.
Strange that the two might be considered separate or that Black History might be segregated into one month’s worth of discussion. Karen VonWinbush had us consider that black history month has a history, too, starting as a week before it was expanded to a month. I appreciate that people in our country are encouraged to pause and to take an intentional look at our nation’s past in honor of those who gave of themselves in difficult struggles and in direct confrontation with racism in America. I’m thankful that during this month there’s reminders everywhere of blacks in American history. You can find reminders of Black History in America on TV programs, in TV commercials, and in the responses to TV commercials, in the public schools and in restaurants. In our Circle of Hope you’ll hear reminders of Black History, too, on blogs (thanks Nate) and in the PM inserts. Lots of reminders, and all in an attempt to bring to light a history that is rich with both pain and perseverance.
Black History is still being made in America.
The best part about Black History in America is that it ain’t just history. The history makers aren’t just encapsulated in wax museums (Though I personally do recommend seeing The Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore, very cool). The struggle to speak truth to racism continues with the living. We are still in an era of “firsts” when it comes to Black History. First black Winter games Olympic individual gold medallist Shani Davis in 2006, first black solo flight around the world Barrington Irving in 2007, first black Billionaire Robert Johnson in 2001, first black runner for democratic presidential candidate Shirley Chisolm in 1972 (sorry Barak Obama, that “first” was already taken). And don’t forget those who get labeled as the “last”, there is still much work in our country to address the disproportionate occurrences of poverty, imprisonment, inadequate housing conditions, and inadequate education which are harsh realities of life for too many black people in America. History is still being made. Despite the myth of equal opportunity in America, racism still needs to be addressed with truth and reconciliation. And there’s still room for young history makers, for example, Peta Lindsay, the 23-year-old Philadelphia native who is the spokesperson for A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), a national Student Coalition.
Jesus Christ is leading the movement of racial reconciliation
I was beautifully reminded of this at the last reconciliation team meeting when listening to our friends of color express their frustrations to the group about living in a white-dominated American society. Our authentic relationships in Christ were being made stronger in that very moment of honestly sharing and listening. The relationship we share with Jesus is strong enough that we can begin to have that raw discussion openly. The Spirit of God is among us! What a privilege to be a part of the reconciling kingdom of God. There’s no other umbrella that can unite people whose history is so rife with hate and segregation. I am not among those who trust that the nation state of America can pull off a lasting unity by itself. I trust the strongest love of Jesus Christ to heal the wounds of racism. We need to receive and give the love of Jesus Christ together, us united with God through him. We have the examples of Christians in America who trusted enough to bring that reconciling love to light in the face of racism. Consider some of them as well. We paused as a network to remember our Christian brother Martin Luther King, Jr. on the weekend of his celebrated birthday. And how about Ruby Sales, who is the founder of the Spirit House Project in Washington DC, and is aiming for a non-violent and just world by exploring the legacy of American violence, racism and sexism. And then there’s Graylan Hagler, who serves as a pastor and as the National President of Ministers for Racial, Social, and Economic Justice. I am encouraged that our Lord is mobilizing his people to bring truth and love in the middle of our fragile world. Among believers, black history month can also be about the perseverance and healing presence of Jesus Christ in the world.
Do you know of someone or, better yet, a team of someones, whose lives are confronting racism in America and re-shaping our landscape? Remind us of who they are. Do you have a story to tell during black history month? Tell it.