I have always been glad that I was born in September. First of all, the cool morning temperatures and warm mid-days are incredibly inviting. Another great characteristic of September is new beginnings. I think even if I weren’t involved in school year cycles, I would still be trained to see September as a start. This summer I’ve been thinking a lot about the apostle Peter when I think about starting anew. I’ve been thinking about how Peter gets a new beginning with Jesus. He goes from being a fisherman to being a fisher of men. He goes from being the disciple that denied Jesus three times to be being bold and renewed in the Holy Spirit sharing the love of Jesus all over. I think Peter shows us that we have time and grace. That it’s okay to stumble and fall but still be bold. Especially now at Circle of Hope when we are planting congregations and thinking about our future, it’s some thing to keep in mind. I think at this time it is okay to be a little apprehensive, it is okay to be a little bit nervous, and God will work that out in us. If you have never heard the story of Peter walking on water with the help of Jesus, I encourage you to read it (Matthew 14). A lot of people remember it as Peter having too little faith and sinking. What always impresses me about that story is that Peter had the courage, even when no one else was trying, to walk out to Jesus, to defy all laws of physics and try to be closer to God. Maybe that’s some thing to aim for in the month of September.
Archive for the 'Dialogue' Category
I forget what it’s like to be the new kid. I live in a neighborhood where I am pretty familiar, in a community where I practically grew up (got connected to Circle of Hope 11yrs ago this month!), I have a family, I have an office, and have a general sense of living in my own skin.
Today I began taking two classes at Temple, and I have a new yet strangely familiar sense of being the new kid. Other students are rushing around anonymously. Most people in my class seem to understand how to go and buy the book we need or ready a syllabus or the etiquette for finding a seat in class. I don’t, really. I forgot. It’s been 10yrs since I was in college, and everything seems a little different. One of my profs (yeah, I call them “profs” now) said something to the class this morning about “eh, you all are upper classmen and know how this stuff works…”. Not really.
I’m grateful for how much effort we as a church put into considering the “other”. At the Public Meetings we try to speak in ways that the next person coming off the street can understand and connect with. We acknowledge that people even at this meeting might be from a different background than us-class, ethnicity, age, and even faith journey. The “empty chair” at our cell meetings that we keep is to make room for the next person. We worship in styles and languages not necessarily familliar to all of us…it keeps us considering the other. We want all to be welcome without implying “you’re welcome if your just like me.”
Thanks for thinking about the other and considering those who may feel like the new kid around Circle of Hope right now.
Turning 40 is around the corner for me in the coming year. I’ve never been one to lament the “big birthdays” (My 30th was a big party involving a grill, a DJ, and a giant Twister board - some of you were there!), but this one is giving me pause. It feels like I am coming around a bend in the trail, and I’ve found an awesome but unexpected rock outcropping where I can see both the path I’ve just hiked and the path extending ahead. I am a little surprised at how far I’ve already come and how much is behind me. I want to linger a bit right here.
Even with the “protective layer” of my parents’ generation, I am grasping my own mortality in a way I didn’t get it before. At the family reunion, my uncle said, “I am the oldest of the Swartzes!” and I realize I’m not so far behind. I see the ripples of the choices that my parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents made playing out, passing through the generations in a way you can only notice with the perspective of time - especially choices about their marriage partners, finances, vocations, and ways of serving God. I realize now that my own choices have the same import. My own father died young at 40, but I realize now that as young as he was, he still left a legacy of faith and love for his family. As well, I am grappling with a caregiver role for my mother, and this is a constant lesson in trusting God that she will have enough - money, health, support - over the next however many years, and believing that, novice that I am, I can actually be an instrument of God’s care in the situation.
Yet some (I hope many) chapters of my life remain unwritten. Looking at 40, I still struggle with God about who is holding the pen of my life. But a new, almost involuntary prayer has begun to emerge for me that I find myself repeating without even knowing it. It’s not very eloquent, and usually it comes out like, “OK, God, use me. Please do what you want in this situation!” This is not easy for me, and I fight it. But I’m trying to yield more and more control, and I think I am starting to glimpse a wider view than I’ve ever been able to see from my path before.
This isn’t a word to parents, only. But that is where it focuses.
For parents the word is: Parenting should not be done alone.
For all of us it is: life (and life in Christ, in particular) is hard and we need each other.
Bible teaching about this:
John in 1 John: “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers and sisters. Anyone who does not love remains in death…. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in them? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” (2:14,16-19, edited for inclusion)
Interpretation for the subject at hand:
1. Loving our new family in Christ is a sign that we are alive in Christ. There is no life outside the new community centered on Jesus. The central command to each member of this new family is to love each other in the same manner Jesus loved you.
2. John says we should apply this truth by sharing material needs. I am saying that we should apply it by sharing in the parenting of children and, what’s more, by sharing in the ongoing development we all are undergoing that was (of course) not completed by our birth parents.
3. John is talking about sharing something one has with one who needs it. Some of us are obviously gifted to attend to children and those people have built some vibrant community among Circle of Hope parents. Some of us may have less of that. But I would say the vast majority of us have enough maturity in Christ to have some basic human parental instincts activated, whether we are 18 or 48. We should care for young people as a village and we should care for the needy child in each other, too.
Marilyn Heins (common sense parenting author) says: “We need to change some of our attitudes. Right now most of us feel that it is wrong to interfere when we see bad parenting because we revere individuality and respect the rights of the family. But we have to find ways to help each other. Helping neighbors used to be the American way. We need to invent the equivalent of a barn-raising when a neighboring family is in trouble.”
I think a lot of us have the aversion Dr. Heins is talking about. We don’t go far enough to really help each other parent because we are protecting the parent’s rights and relying on their personal responsibility. For instance, when a child seems out of control to us at the PM, we are very hesitant to help the parent do their work. When a safari jeep drives up to a herd of elephants, the mother elephants circle their young. We could at least do that. Instead, we defer to the parent (even if they are out of ear shot).
An overwhelmed single parent might show up with rambunctious kids in tow, looking for something. We’d likely to be very nice to them and even empathetic. But when it came to helping them with their six year old bouncing off the walls, we’d be very cautious, like we’d be accused of child abuse if we had a relationship with the child. By the time we got over our fear, the kid would have grown up and grown up outside a Christian village. And as a result, they would have been taught individualism by the adults who protected that concept at the cost of love.
I’m throwing out more points than I am fully exploring, I know. But I hope they cause us to take a look at just how often we are willing to leave each other by the side of the road, needy and even hurting because we don’t think we have the right to be involved. Some of us are pushy, but most of us are just afraid of possibly being considered pushy. Some of us violate boundaries too much, but most of us are lounging behind boundaries to love, feeling like what is happening to our brothers and sisters is none of our business.
I think John tells us that loving our brothers and sisters, and their children IS our business. If we don’t lay down our lives for each other, we are not even alive. Parents and children living in the megalopolis need each other and they need the whole community to care about what they are doing. They have the main role to raise their children, they get to do it the way they do it, but they can’t and shouldn’t do it alone.
Lately my mind has been floating, unable to write anything lately. so I decided to make a list of what I would write about.
here is a glimpse at my heart lately:
content being single
the whole “idea” that all you need is God is a good idea if my body and spirit truly believed it
believing Jesus’ life, his message vs. Trusting
would I die for Christ, or does it just sound good? you repeat “love thy neighbor as yourself,” “forgive those who have trespassed against [you],” ect, ect. Do you live it? Do I live it?
family is beyond heredity
what does it mean to truly love God with all your heart? being holy like God is holy
why are some christians worried about insignificant pronouns like he/she/jehova referencing God?
isn’t God more mightier and glorious than our human developed language?
what is joy in Christ?
i find myself doubting my love for God and presence of God when i don’t feel joyful.
do i really grasp onto how much god loves his children?
i want to be a blank canvas brought to life by God’s love
i share all this wisdom that uncontrollably flutters from my lips…it makes me wonder why I don’t follow some of it.
what is suffering for Christ?
Is it natural? Is it something we should strive for? Is it relative?
what is my next step?
i already left school, want to start a coffee shop, lovin my job, am without corporate health insurance, school loans tapping my shoulder, boys, want to volunteer, need to rest, guilty about not pursuing some relationships
what does alcohol and other drugs look like in the eyes of Christ?
will I always have this feeling of helplessness…
wanting to cure everyone’s sign of pain, scars, weakness
maybe that’s my fault of not trusting
i need to realize i’m not Jesus.
how beautiful God is to show me his face in precious animals, children, and strangers with so many stories…through their scars, hands, eyes..
Why have I cried so much lately?
Jesus and later peter talk about “being nothing” what does that mean? what does that look like?
hm…maybe we are nothing, only in Christ we are something.
why do people hold so much importance on this shell of a body, yours, his, hers?
sometimes I think it would be beautiful to be blind
what does being set apart really mean?
shouldn’t we, as a part of the kingdom of God, hold trust in our kingdom rather than the kingdom of man?
are extremes bad?
sometimes I feel numb..
…..Lord all i want is to close my eyes and trust that each footstep is fully embracing Your Truth.
It’s funny sometimes to me when a church known for our paradigm adjustments talks a lot about buildings-and rehabs a lot of buildings. By paradigm, I mean we understand that the church is people and we are the church. Our buildings are practical, and they are used for much beyond just our Public Meetings or offices. Over the past few years, we’ve done major rehabs for 3 meeting sites, Circle Counseling, Shalom House, a basement for CT on Broad, and the mezzanine for offices and kids. Whew. As much as that is, we have several more on the near horizon.
(photo of 2233 Frankford, future home of Circle Thrift by Carina Romano)
This season is filled with many opportunities for us to rehab some buildings. We even happen to own two of them. There is a lot of opportunity to serve, to hang together, share money, and to build in some more capacity for God to work in our neighborhoods. Still, the church is not a building-or even several buildings. Like we talked about at our recent Love Feast, we are part of that dwelling that God has been building for 1,000’s of years with all kinds of peoples with Jesus as the cornerstone.
So go ahead and keep being built into the place where God lives, where God can be seen and known. It also seems good to keep practicing resurrection in our neighborhoods by making good use out of castaway structures.
Over the next couple weeks, we’ll be focusing on 2233 Frankford Ave-Circle Thrift’s new home less than 2 blocks from her current spot. Hopefully, on Labor Day we’ll have our human chain to move the CT inventory up a block. Then we’ll be getting the new setup of 2007 Frankford for the next rendition including meeting/venue space on the first floor, expanding childcare capacity, a music/arts school run by psalters, and some sort of retail storefront. We may even need to get a spot ready for our next congregation to launch in October/November in Camden! We need a lot of prayer, a lot of togetherness, a lot of help, a lot of money, and a lot of love.
So even as we are the church-God’s presence in the world in people-we can make some practical steps so God’s love can be felt and known by not only having more surface area…but how we renovate. Go get ‘em!
Have you ever experienced that period right before you wake up, where you’re dreaming but really half awake? During this time I typically come up with all sorts of revolutionary ideas and inventions. For example, the other morning I invented a machine that cleans your shoes right before you walk into the house so that your girlfriend and your mom can’t yell at you anymore for tracking in mud. A while back, I dreamed that it would be a good idea for the military to have missiles that drop food aid into villages, instead of explosives that kill everyone. This morning in my dream I gave up my apartment and went to live with the homeless person who spends most of his time in the median outside of the Wal-Mart on Columbus Blvd. We marched into Washington DC together and convinced Congress to pave the way for every city to have more affordable housing. I typically come up with all sorts of inventions and great ways to go about social action in these times, only to wake up a few minutes later and think that the ideas are actually pretty impractical (moms would never allow the shoe cleaning thing to take off, missiles are a lot more efficient when they are being used to kill people, and living on the street just isn’t realistic. I’m pretty white and I might get sunburned out there….right??).
I think my right brain overpowers my left brain when I’m asleep. Then when I wake up my left brain kicks back in, if only to tell me that my dreams aren’t realistic (or maybe my brain science is horrible and that’s not what happens at all). Either way, I don’t remember this being a problem when I was a kid. I want to be more like that again, to dream and actually think things are possible.
I have been thinking a lot lately about how much imagination it takes to follow Jesus. The Gospel doesn’t really place a lot of value on being practical. I think Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. captured how difficult this is when he said, “We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside…but one day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that a system that produces beggars needs to be repaved. We are called to be a Good Samaritan, but after you lift so many people out of the ditch you start to ask, maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be repaved.” I think it takes a lot of imagination to see how our little community is working to repave the entire road to Jericho. It’s really much too long a road. We can’t do it unless we allow Jesus keep our dreams from being devoured by our reason.
I’ve been a bear the last few weeks. I’ve felt argumentative and confrontational in a bad way. I’ve felt agitated. I’ve wanted to prove I’m right. I’ve been aloof and cold, not able to sympathize, be compassionate or show concern.
I know that a lot of the time, I’m not like this. My problem right now is that I’ve been going it alone. I’ve drifted from God and so I act and react in foolish ways. And all of this as I get up each morning to pray and talk with God. This daily act, which I want to be a spiritual discipline, has become a rather stale habit.
I’ve needed a re-alignment, a shift, a purging.
As part of the spiritual rhythms built into the life of Shalom House, I went on retreat a couple days ago. I spent 36 hours retreating on the eastern shore of Maryland. Walking the beach and sitting in the sand dunes, I actually felt like I purged all these bad, anxious, frustrated, agitated emotions. I feel like God has put me back together.
A few days back I opened the book Amish Grace and ever since my mind’s been reeling. The book is about the response, which was heavy on forgiveness & light on revenge, of an Amish community in Pennsylvania when a man entered their children’s school and killed 5 of them, injuring 5 more and then killing himself. Many things are striking me, but one thing in particular that I’ve grabbed onto is the righting of relationships. Amish communities build into their corporate & individual lives an expectation and a way to set things right with one another. If this can’t be done, then the Church doesn’t participate in communion.
Having acted in ways I’m not proud, I need to right some relationships and let go of some grudges. In the spirit of these Amish sisters and brothers, I’m giving it a try and feeling much less like a bear.
I’m a Christian and a feminist. Unfortunately, either of these words can be laughable to some, especially when associated with each other. I myself am learning how to feel about them at times and having a hard time figuring out how the two can be interconnected
I spent years of my life thinking feminists were damaged, confused women. Let it be known that I was uninformed, or that I believed exactly what much of the world wanted me to believe as a young, impressionable girl. It wasn’t until the past few years that I came to terms with the fact that much of my young adult life was spent as a victim and that I had a lot of anger and resentment in me because of it - towards women. Because I thought we were responsible, I was responsible, for getting hurt.
It was through some very helpful counseling and our women’s retreat that I came to terms with where my issues lay and simultaneously what I was passionate about. Daily life as a woman in America is bad enough with women being objectified in ways that have begun to seem natural; getting hollered at on the street, celebrities who are constantly physically critiqued, women still getting paid a lower working wage than men. My sense of outrage is the most rampant when I read stories about injustices towards women. Like the fact I just came across on the Amnesty International website that in the Russian Federation, one woman an hour dies at the hands of a relative, partner, or former partner. The idea that women throughout the world are treated as lesser people is something I cannot wrap my head around. What would Christ think?
This is where I need some help. I believe that Jesus loves us all equally and that means every gender, gender preference, nationality, age and ailment. But how are we called to empower the disempowered? How can we, out of love, help the “lesser of these” to be treated fairly? To be thought of fairly? How can we as a community be a catalyst for change without embracing some of the very un-Christian ideals of feminism? I think it will take a very intentional change of thought, of actively rejecting the mindset we are constantly pushed to buy into. I don’t want my desire for change to come from anger. I want it to come from Christ.
Hopefully we all take some pride in where we live. I mean our homes, where we lay our heads down for rest, where we spend time with our family, where we eat and find shelter. Our homes can be a reflection of who we are. Some of us own our homes, others rent, some may have just a room to call home. Whatever the case, keeping that space requires care. You pick things up, put things away, take things out as you come and go, because you want to maintain your home in order to live in it.
We also have a community home, in the sense of an actual space, which includes our public meeting places at Broad and Washington and East. Here is where we interact as a community on an on-going basis. Many of us have made a commitment, a covenant, to call this our community home. A place to worship, find joy, learn to love and to do this with many different kinds of people. As we do this we create a place similar to home where we come and go, bring things in and take stuff away. There is wear and tear and we do our best to maintain the space and take pride in where we are living.
Here, I think of the analogy of doing chores as a kid. Occasionally, I had to paint a room, cut the lawn, stack firewood or others big jobs during summer break. And more consistently, I had to sweep the stairs, clean my room, do the dishes, and take care of the other daily messes that occurred. My parents often had to keep on me to do these things and sometimes had to bribe me, but in the end these things had to be done. And doing them gave me a strong sense of ownership and respect for my home.
Our communal home, the spaces at Circle of Hope that we all use, should be regarded similarly. We are all God’s children. We have been blessed with a place to call home and there will be chores to do in the course of living there. What do you do that influences our home at Circle? If you show up, it’s bound to be a reflection, in some part, of who you are. We should all be thinking about it as a home and wondering how we keep it looking and feeling like that. Because we live there, we will always be cleaning up messes, fixing doors, hanging pictures, maintaining offices and equipment. So, decide what kind of “chores” you need to do this month to care for our home at Circle.