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Rest and Be Aware

Published
by
Bobby Kuehl
on March 20, 2008
in Community, Dialogue and Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

I work as a project manager for a CD/DVD manufacturing company. Last week I had 116 clients with open orders. That sounds like a lot and it is. These clients keep me very busy answering the phone, replying to email, communicating with other departments and it requires a lot multi-tasking. My mind is racing all day going from one thing to the next trying to stay on top of the work. I realized after a cell meeting a couple of weeks ago that my mind never stops racing. I leave work, but never allow my brain to slow down and think about things that are happening now. I’m constantly thinking about what’s next. What’s for dinner? What am I doing tonight? Should I watch a movie or read or clean the apartment or play video games? What am I doing tomorrow? This weekend? I’ve trained myself to make quick decisions and move on to the next thing as efficiently as possible.

At the end of that cell meeting we were praying together and saying out loud a word or phrase as a request for ourselves or others. Someone said the word “rest” and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Rod described a similar experience he had in his cell during one of the recent Public Meetings. Rest. I imagined myself alone in a room. No computer, no TV, no work or any distractions. Just me and my thoughts. Resting in the moment. The idea of dwelling in my thoughts and recognizing the moment makes so much sense, why don’t I do that? It’s really unfair to those around me. A lot times people are talking or sharing things with me and instead of listening to what they’re saying I’m preparing my next statement or thinking about the other things I have to do that day. This false sense of urgency causes me to miss things that I might normally take in if I could just slow down. Not only does that make me unaware of what the people around me are going through, but it makes me unaware of myself and of God and of where I am with God. This seems like really basic stuff and the fact that I’m just now getting it frustrates me and makes me want to master it. Quickly. Right now! Then I have to remember to slow down again.

During that same PM Rod mentioned the importance of being aware of who God is in our lives. It’s so easy to overlook this! I’ve been doing it for a long time and have never really figured out how to make that a constant awareness. Combining rest and awareness has finally made this a little clearer for me. I’ve been keeping 2 Corinthians 10:5 in mind. “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” I learned this verse in high school for an apologetics class, but I don’t think it only applies to defending the faith. I like the idea of taking a short break after every thought and considering where it came from and how I should react to it before actually doing so. That’s a discipline I want to have. So, far I’ve found that this practice grants me patience, which is of great benefit both at work and at home. I’m really looking forward to the other things I’ll learn about myself and others and how God relates to all of us through more of this rest and awareness.

It’s Always Something

Published
by
Rod White
on February 12, 2008
in Dialogue, Peace and Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

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.

winter

Published
by
Amanda Clossen
on February 6, 2008
in Community, Dialogue and Uncategorized
. 3 Comments

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.

Christian Love and Justice

Published
by
Andrew Brown
on December 11, 2007
in Action, Peace and Uncategorized
. 3 Comments

Over the past few months I have engrossed myself with the writings of Flannery O’Connor, a southern, female, Catholic author during the 1950’s. Her work frequently visits themes of Christian love and justice. These stories engage what has frequently been considered the absurdity of Jesus’ explicit command in the Sermon on the Mount:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:43-44, NIV).

The debate surrounding this command reaches as far back, believe it or not, as Aristotle’s account of friendship in books viii and ix of the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle argues that the virtuous person must love good, wise, and virtuous people and must hate those who are evil. If one shows love, mercy, and compassion to one’s enemies then they will harm you and your friends. To allow such harm to come to good, wise, and virtuous people is unjust. Therefore, love extends only to good and virtuous people while violence and retribution is the proper response to evil. Justice requires these dispositions.

Historically, Christianity has responded to Aristotle’s monumental claim in two ways. One line of thought, lead primarily by Thomas Aquinas, seeks to make Jesus’ scandalous claim less scandalous. The latter view, championed by Soren Kierkegaard , argues that the absurdity of Jesus’ command must be embraced. For Kierkegaard, pure love disregards the ‘object of love’, concerning itself only with the intention of the lover. This means that true love looks beyond individual distinctiveness within particular objects of love. In other words, love does not recognize the good or evil in any person as a precondition to love; it loves all equally and unconditionally.

So what says Flannery O’Connor? In her short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find (warning: spoiler), a traveling family wrecks their car in a ditch on their way to Florida. When a group of individuals approach to ‘lend a hand’ they recognize one as a wanted criminal. This criminal, The Misfit, systematically kills everyone in the family except the grandmother. Precisely at this moment, the grandmother looks at the Misfit’s “twisted” face and thinks she recognizes him, “Why you’re one of my own children!” She reaches out a hand to touch him and the Misfit springs back “as if a snake had bitten him” and shoots the grandmother “three times in the chest.”

O’Connor offers a representation of Christian love in the Kierkegaardian fashion. The grandmother extends her love to the Misfit in hopes that he might also recognize the good blood that flows through his veins. He responds by murdering her. This extension of love results in the grandmother’s death, her sacrifice if you will. Kierkegaard argues that this is exactly what true love requires; it is, after all, the way of the cross. How, though, with this view shall we speak of justice at all? How can we protect our own lives and the lives of our loved ones if we embrace this form of sacrificial love? Should this be a concern for the body of Christ? Shall we embrace this absurdity, which the world calls foolishness, and love our enemies to our own detriment? Is there some truth in the cry from justice in the world, that we must defend what we love (freedom, equality, our children, etc.) from evil? In a Post-Holocaust world, is this kind of love possible?

I have no answers to these questions, and I suspect that Christians will continue to debate them for years and years to come. Yet I do continue to stand in awe of the immensity and pervasiveness of Jesus’ controversial claim. No longer may we love only what is good and beautiful, but, as God’s children, each one of us is called to respond to Jesus’ words: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

all around me

Published
by
Trevor Day
on December 6, 2007
in Community, Dialogue and Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

One of the things I like when I get together with people from my cell is getting to know a little more about their past and who they are as people. At our weekly cell meeting we always have great “ice-breaker” questions. This past week someone suggested, “What is the most beautiful place you have seen?” This question really resonated with me. I think it was a combination of how I had been feeling in recent weeks, along with how people responded to the question. Recently, I have been having a tough time seeing beyond the present. I have felt surrounded by a deep fog that keeps getting more and more dense. The fog is representative of all the responsibilities in my life (making sure the computer network at work doesn’t crash, ensuring the people who work for me are getting their jobs done, raking the leaves at my house, fixing the leak in my garage, stopping my sink from dripping, getting draft budgets done, paying the bills at home and Circle, emailing all the people I need to email, mediating fights within my family, etc.) and the little time I feel I have to get everything done.

In some ways this question was really asking me, “Are you too busy to see God in creation?” I was really glad to have this gathering just to be able to take a pause and reflect where I have I seen God’s creation. In some ways I really want to tell you about my answer to the question but I won’t (I will tell you that it involved the Himalayan plateau, turquoise, and brilliant blue lakes. If you want to know more just look me up and ask). The thing that really got to me about the evening was that, after listening to several people talk about rural or remote places of nature, one person said that some of the most beautiful places he had seen were in the city. He spent time talking a little about how cities often have great architecture, history and a vibe that increases their beauty. He shared about the cities he visited in Europe and the Middle East, as well as Philadelphia. It was great to hear about beauty in the city as contrasted to the nature other people (including me) had talked about.

Back a month or two ago, we had a St. Francis Day retreat at Broad & Washington. One of the activities during the retreat was to go out during lunch and find a piece of nature (Francis was, as you may know, all about nature). We were instructed to bring this item back and create an altar from the pieces that people picked up within a couple of blocks of Broad and Washington. I can safely say that this is definitely not an area known for its natural beauty. As my cell mate spoke, I was picturing the small piece of nature I discovered that day. It was a perfect little acorn. It was petite, perfectly smooth on one side and slightly rough on the cap. There were no blemishes. It was simple but very beautiful! Since listening to my friend last week, I am trying to be less focused on the fog and more on the reflections of our creator that surround me everyday. I realized that I often get distracted by the weeds and broken glass that might surround this perfect acorn, but if I take time to look, God’s beauty is all around me.

meditations at a PM

Published
by
Howard Pinder
on December 3, 2007
in Creative Arts and Uncategorized
. 3 Comments

I know your face well.
I know the features,
the silhouettes.
I know the parts that
look well under dim light,
the bags that form
after a short nights sleep.

I know its crinkled lines,
the wear it has taken.
I know the spot
your lips form,
and your cheek, where
your hair touches.

I know these things, and
though we have never
met, you live. Your
face reassures me
that I am loved, even
when I lose my way.

At times I sense
your face beginning to
come into focus,
somewhere on outer edges
a flickering light of truth,
of the full me who
I do not know.

Piece by piece I
make way for you.
I am building a place
for you to reside.
I know your face, Jesus,
because you know mine.

enough to give me hope

Published
by
Julius Rivera
on November 26, 2007
in Community, Dialogue and Uncategorized
. 4 Comments

I know that it is right after Thanksgiving, so if I wanted to have a racial discussion it should have been based on the Quakers and the 1st World Peoples (aka Native Americans). But instead, I would like to talk about a moment in my “Sociology of Race and Racism” class at Temple.

We were studying how Whiteness evolved in the United States and had been advised to pay attention because we would have to write a paper on the subject. As I was listening to the material and beginning to form a central idea for my paper, it hit me. The central idea became “the wealthy will never willingly give their wealth to the poor.” The reality of that statement in my head, in my class, filled my insides with a deep depression. One of the other White students in the class (who seemed flustered) asked the teacher, “Don’t you think that this generation of young White people will get tired of the way things are and try to change it?” I raised my hand and responded, “No, because they live comfortably and in order to change things they would have to be willing to change their lives and there simply are not enough young White people willing to change their lives in order to make a dramatic change in the U.S.” Immediately after making the statement, I turned around and I was filled with a deep sense of “gratitude” as a thought pierced the darkness and overpowered it with its brilliance. The piercing thought was “…there aren’t enough, but I know many…my friends at the Circle of Hope…it is not enough to give me hope for change in our government or in our world, but it is enough to give me hope for my neighbors, my neighborhood, and even this city.” And so, may I say plainly, I am truly and deeply thankful for your willingness to suffer and work towards transformation when the World says that you don’t have to.

Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life

Published
by
Brian Duffy
on November 8, 2007
in Community, Dialogue and Uncategorized
. 3 Comments

In our cell group, someone asked about the “malaise” (the feeling of general uneasiness) that permeates the West right now, and why there was one? I didn’t have an answer then, but I’ve been thinking about it.

I think it’s the removal from our culture of Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Modernism eliminated Jesus as the Way. In The Last Word, N.T. Wright describes one of the Enlightenment’s accomplishments as “kicking” God upstairs (the Truth being somewhere “up there”), and making religion a matter of personal piety. Secularists dismiss God and the scriptures, replacing them with Reason, while Believers reduce those same scriptures to “merely” guides of personal morality and personal salvation. Both work together to “undermine its global, cosmic and justice-laden message.” Jesus is no longer “transformative,” but merely “informative.”

Post-Modernism goes further, and eliminates Jesus as the Truth, because “there is no Truth!” It too dismisses God and the scriptures, but (with an emphasis on extreme complexity, contradiction, and ambiguity) replaces the Truth with nothing else as an alternative, not even Reason. Post-Modernism leaves us to rearrange or dismiss God and the scriptures however and whenever we want, because in its view, all ideologies are power plays anyway (except, ironically, its own). Jesus is no longer “informative”, but merely “insightful.”

Since the Way and the Truth have been eliminated, we are left with the Life, and in this area, we most often appeal to our “experience” as a source of authority. But because experience is “fluid and puzzling and because we are all prey to serious self-deception”, Wright says that “Theology and Christian Living become no longer rooted in God, but rather rooted in ourselves, with the ‘highest’ religious good becoming self discovery, and then being “true” to the self thus discovered.”

Philip Rieff’s Triumph of the Therapeutic describes it similarly, saying spiritual concerns are not abandoned, but recast purely as enhancing personal well being instead of serving as a source of love or awe before God. So, lacking any foundation other than our-selves, we live for today, shying away from commitment that might curtail our personal growth, and view other people as mere instruments to be manipulated in our quest for fulfillment. Yet we also invest too much in emotional experience with others, seeking “the richness and intensity of a religious experience” and investing romantic attachments with demands they cannot possibly fulfill. Disappointed, we develop a protective shallowness and cynical detachment.

And that’s where the malaise hits us. With nothing shared beyond “a commitment to the self” we are left with a commitment to nothing. Jesus became only “informative”, not “transformative,” and then even that was taken from us, partially of our own doing. In a popular culture where everyone’s self expression might result in celebrity status, its difficult to argue for any sort of moral, or spiritual (let alone Jesus-based) way of Life.

Jesus is “an alternative to the dominant ways of the world, not a supplement to them” as our culture and its “spirituality” (the form of religion without its substance) would have us believe. But Eugene Peterson sees how we adopt so many of these ideas, and take on “the very ways and means that Jesus rejected.” How do we stop looking inward as self- serving consumers and get out of this malaise? In The Jesus Way, Peterson says the local Christian congregation and community of believers is the “primary place for getting this way and truth and life.” It is the place for listening to and obeying Christ’s commands. “The Jesus way and the Jesus truth must be congruent. Only when the Jesus way is organically joined with the Jesus truth do we get the Jesus life.”

ask what you will

Published
by
Robert Lairmore
on October 30, 2007
in Dialogue, Interact and Uncategorized
. 3 Comments
A man will get from life everything he asks for, because he does not ask for that which his will is not in. If a man asks wealth from life, he will get wealth, or he was playing the fool when he asked. ‘If ye abide in me.’ says Jesus, ‘and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’ We pray pious blether, our will is not in it, and then we say God does not answer; we never asked him for anything. Asking means that our wills are in what we ask.

You say, ‘But I asked God to turn my life into a garden of the Lord, and there came the ploughshare of sorrow, and instead of a garden I have been given a wilderness.’ God never gives a wrong answer. The garden of your natural life had to be turned into ploughed soil before God could turn it into a garden of the Lord. He will put the seed in now. Let God’s seasons come over your soul, and before long your life will be a garden of the Lord.

As I read though this devotion by Oswald Chambers last night, I thought a lot of different things. Initially, my gut response was to be repelled by what appeared to be fuel for prosperity preaching. But after allowing my mind to wander into all of the reasons I’m repulsed by this line of teaching, I realized Chambers had something in mind much deeper.

What slowly began to sink into me was the emphasis that Chambers puts into the word ‘will’ that Jesus uses. Before, I had always read

this passage by interpreting ‘will’ as what I wanted. Chambers deepens this by transforming ‘will’ into something that’s at my inner most being. It is my passion. It is my might. We cannot expect to receive things that we do not truly want. I cannot expect to lose weight no matter how hard I pray if I have an open bag of Oreo’s in my lap.

Now this does not mean I do not ask for things that are too hard for me. No, Jesus tells us to ask, seek and knock. Another time he tells us of the man who so desperately needs bread for his newly arrived guest that he continues to pound away at his neighbors door, even though it is the middle of the night, until the other man relents. It is like Lewis’ phantom with the red lizard. We cannot expect our inner most desires to be changed with the first halfhearted and often dishonest request. But it is with this constant repetition of asking that we begin to trust that our request can be answered. Then we begin to realize that God can take our oftentimes misguided request and transform it into something that is far more beautiful than we could have initially imagined. ‘By our prayers we come to discern the [heart] of God.’

Christianese, Economics, and Context

Published
by
admin
on September 26, 2007
in Community, Dialogue, Family and Uncategorized
. 1 Comment

By: Alison N.

Last week I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker (for those who don’t know, I am a social worker and a therapist for a child welfare agency). My co-worker, Amy, was telling me about how she has been sending out resumes in France and is thinking about moving there. Amy grew up in a missionary family and spent her high school years in France, where her family still lives. I asked about her reasons for wanting to move back, and Amy commented that she hasn’t really been happy here for a while, and that she can’t figure out how to be a Christian in America. I thought this was very interesting (maybe partly because I’ve never tried to be a Christian anywhere else, so this concept never occurred to me), and asked her to say more.

She went on to talk about how she grew up in places where the distinction between Christians and others, or “non-Christians”, was very clear. She lived in places in Africa where Christians were very much in the minority and were sometimes persecuted to various degrees. And then in France, where it’s not as culturally common to self-identify as Christian, and she found “living her Christian walk” to be a simpler, more clear-cut endeavor. She described her confusion and frustration over Christianity in America—a Christianity that she sees as being very divisive and superficial. She talked about knowing people here who use lots of Christianese—the God-blesses and the Praise-the-Lords—but in whose lives she fails to see God reflected. She elaborated about this a bit more before looking at me and asking, “So what do you think?”

This caught me a bit off guard and I wasn’t really sure what to say. This may be, in some ways, because there’s also a part of me that craves for circumstances in which living out of my faith is, even if not easy, very simple and clear. I too can feel bogged down by how to live my life, participating in our society as I currently choose to do, and genuinely follow Jesus. How do I serve God and others with my money AND pay my mortgage, student loans, and, admittedly, sometimes buy shoes? How do I serve God and others with my time AND work full time, go to school (thank God a thing of the past!), and work on my house? I don’t know if I’m getting any of this right! Working these things out can be daunting and complicated—certainly for me, at least. But as I thought about it more over the past week or so, I began to realize that this is why community is so important. This is hard! We need each other to challenge, support, and love each other…to mutually care about living this life together, to reconciling with each other and our neighbors, to seeking justice for our communities. I wouldn’t want to try to do it without you—and it’s good to be reminded of that.