Monday, January 31, 2011

Silly Woman—Radical Hospitality is for Men!

I live in Durham, NC--one of the "41 Places to Go in 2011," according to a New York Times article that mentions one of my favorite restaurants, Parker & Otis ( where I'm performing with a trio on February 11 ).

(That was fake HTML markup. I occasionally appropriate computer languages to express tone or to make disclaimers. Sorry?)

I do love Parker & Otis--and the DPAC (Durham Performing Arts Center), and Brightleaf Square, etc. etc.--but much of what I love about Durham did not get and could not have gotten a mention in that NYT article. I do not live in the Belmont or West Village (though I have lusted after those "historic urban lofts"). I live in an old house on Burch Avenue with 5 other people.

Our street is technically its own mini-neighborhood, but we're just across West Chapel Hill Street from the West End, a historic, predominantly black neighborhood where the median household income in 2009 was $20,000 less than that of Durham as a whole (source). We intentionally chose the neighborhood, and actually, when we were looking at the house, there was some concern from one or two housemates (though not expressed expressed in such crass terms) that Burch Avenue wasn't poor enough. We might have looked at houses in the West End proper if not for the fact that my dad was already on the verge of cardiac arrest having heard of gunshots fired and cars broken into on our street (more on that another time).

You may already know why our thought process looked like that. You may be familiar with buzzwords like "community," "hospitality," "downward mobility," "relocation," etc. You may also have read and been deeply impacted by (or not) (hint: I was) Shane Claiborne's book The Irresistible Revolution and, as a Durhamite, the witness of Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and the Rutba House, and the spread of New Monasticism.

I'm naturally idealistic. After becoming familiar with the content of the above paragraph and much more, joining and working at Asbury Temple United Methodist Church (a predominantly African-American church that has strong outreach to the neighboring community, Northeast Central Durham, AKA "the bad part of town"), and living in the West End as part of the Duke Chapel Pathways summer program, I was ready to move to the ghetto and leave my doors unlocked as a sign of trust and hospitality.

OK, I never had THAT romantic of an idea of the whole thing. And I realize this post probably already has a cynical tone, and that is not my intent. But I've learned some interesting--and frustrating--things since moving onto Burch Avenue (where I've lived for a year and a half now).

There's plenty to question in terms of paternalism and white guilt--yesterday my Ethics professor, Amy Laura Hall, quipped about the fact that she doesn't have a TV, something white people like to brag about. That would be me. As if my sacrificing television (but not, let me point out, Hulu and Netflix) somehow makes me a "good" white person.

But I'm going to set that aside for now, because I've already written way too much, and focus on a topic that I just hate dealing with: gender. Growing up, I never gave much credence to feminism of any sort. I was a woman, but where and how I grew up meant that it was never (or rarely) an obstacle for me to succeed academically, athletically and otherwise. In high school, I dismissed feminists as bra-burning fanatics. In undergrad, I railed against professors who insisted that I use general neutral language in my papers. Only in recent years have I started actually to experience the ways in which being a woman can become a liability, even when you don't see it as such or act in accordance with the stereotypes.

This "liability" came into harsh focus a few months ago for me. A young man with a mild but significant mental handicap had befriended our house and begun coming around regularly. There were other issues we as a house had to deal with, like him asking for food and money, but the most frustrating thing for me was the process of realizing I couldn't offer him hospitality in the same way that my male housemates could. This young man presented a special challenge because his differently-abled-ness involved not only low social inhibitions but also a very short temper--and this guy was about 7 feet tall and stronger than he knew. Although we wanted to be welcoming to him, we eventually found we needed to set some boundaries, and for myself and the other female housemate, that meant not allowing him into the house when we were home alone.

It made me very angry to have to set those limits. I am not afraid of people. I have done plenty of walking in Durham after dark when it probably wasn't safe--but that's just how I operate. I may be naive, but I also know that there is danger inherent in some of the choices I've made for my life--and I embrace that danger. As I was thinking about writing this blog, my dad passed on an email from a Duke Divinity grad who was at a workshop he had led recently at a church. I assume my dad had talked about hospitality, radical inclusiveness, outreach, etc.--and this man made an observation: that ministry like that could be dangerous.

I've thought a lot over several years now about where I might live as an adult. I want to be able to live in a neighborhood like Burch Avenue or the West End. I've been challenged on this point--what about when you have kids? The neighborhood I lived in for the first 4 years of my life got rougher while we lived there, and when a bullet shattered the glass doors to our downstairs playroom (my sister and I were upstairs--I don't remember this, and in fact I only learned about it a few years ago), my parents knew it was time to relocate.

I struggle with that. Why should I remove my children from danger when I'm surrounded by neighbors unable to do the same for their children? A major struggle I have with ideas of downward mobility and relocation is that I know I would always have a safety net--even if I divested myself of money and possessions, I still have a father who cares about me very much and would do anything to help me if he could. Most people in the West End, or Northeast Central Durham, have no such recourse.

And my questioning is made all the more difficult by the fact that I am a woman. I'm not sure my father would have allowed me to move into my current house if it hadn't been with one other woman and 4 men (we're now evenly matched, 3 and 3). The whole point of almost everything I believe about the Gospel is that it's not safe--but being 5'2" blond woman puts me in a very different position than even a white male. I'm inclined not to care about my own safety--but I have to, if only for the sake of my parents and my boyfriend, who understandably want to protect me.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this--sorry to trail off. I haven't resolved any of these questions. If you have, you're probably fooling yourself, but I welcome comments from fellow questioners.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Every Time I Remember You: Worship Symposium 2011

I am currently at the 2011 Worship Symposium at Calvin College and Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI. If you want a little taste of the amazingness I'm blessed to experience this weekend, click here for a list of worship times--the services are all being webcast.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

You Don't Need Money To Be Happy

A few weeks ago, I had an interesting childcare job. My mom works for a nonprofit called the W.I.S.H. Program (that stands for Workforce Initiative for Supportive Housing). The program gets working, homeless families into supportive housing, pairs them with a social worker and a team of volunteers from a local church or organization, and works with them to develop money management and other skills.

I was called upon to help with childcare during one of their educational sessions, meaning my sister and I watched 6 kids ranging in age from 5 to 15, all of whom are or have been homeless. We played with the kids for a little while--timed races to complete a Disney princess puzzle were a big hit--and then they asked to watch a movie. After much debate, we finally chose the 2010 film Nanny McPhee Returns.

The entire plot of the movie isn't important here, so let me just say that part of the premise involves a poor family living and working on a farm while the father is fighting for Britain in WWII, but their wealthy cousins come from London to live with them and escape the bombings. As we watched the movie, several of the kids were full of questions, often making funny remarks about how gross it would be to live on a farm (though they're in a low income bracket, that is very different in the city than it would be in the country). When they kept asking about why the rich kids had to go live with them, my sister replied that the point was that they need to learn you don't need money to be happy.

Promptly, one of the girls responded, "Yes you do!" My sister and I replied again, saying that sometimes having too much money can be a bad thing, that rich people are sometimes even more depressed than poor people. The little girl argued with us for a minute, and then I stopped, because I realized something.

Of course I could say you don't need money to be happy. I'm currently in graduate school on a full tuition scholarship, my other financial needs met by my parents or money earned from a very generous field education stipend leftover from last summer. If I get into financial trouble, I can either go to my dad or dip into what's left of my college savings--because even though I've graduated college, there's still money in that account.

All my life I have struggled with my sense that it really might be a sin to be ridiculously wealthy. Of course, we need wealthy people to help the poor people...I guess. Although I've talked enough about redistribution of wealth to get called a socialist (check out this paper I wrote for a Public Policy course in undergrad on relational redistribution). Of course, all the intellectual and moral debate I can have over wealth and poverty and morals is irrelevant to an 8-year-old girl whose mother is just trying to keep a roof over her head.

So where do we go from here?

The House (Concert) You're Building

Last night, I saw Audrey Assad in concert--at a house concert, to be exact. Meaning I was 10 feet away from her in a living room with maybe 60 other people. The show was part of Brookhaven House Concerts, an event series in Raleigh that I will definitely be keeping tabs on from here on out.

I blogged about Assad's album The House You're Building a while back, so it was really cool to be able to see her live. She played a number of songs from the CD as well as many I hadn't heard (or aren't on the album), including her own version of "His Eye Is On the Sparrow" and the lovely original song "Winter Snow."

Throughout the concert, Assad talked about what went into writing many of the songs, often making herself surprisingly--and refreshingly--vulnerable to the audience as she told us about her journey through learning about love with her fiance, her parents' divorce, and her own wrestling with her faith.

Part of what I love about her music is the depth and poetry of the lyrics, not to mention the beautiful melodies and piano-based accompaniment. Plus, her writing often incorporates Scripture or the wisdom of ancient theologians--like "Restless" (below), one of my favorites, which she taught to us last night and had us sing along with, interjecting the hymn "Come Thou Fount" in the middle. "Restless" refers directly to St. Augustine of Hippo, who wrote, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

Check out Audrey Assad. Trust me.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Sigh No More // Mumford and Sons

A few weeks ago, my roommate and I were in our room chatting, and we got onto music. She asked if I'd like to hear her new favorite band. Ever the junkie for good music recommendations, of course I accepted.

She then proceeded to play the song "Awake My Soul," off the new album by Mumford and Sons (see the video below). Their CD Sigh No More is, to quote a review in Paste Magazine, "an album chock full of gorgeous remorse." The lyrics attend to universal truths of relationships and reconciliation, but they constantly brush up against spiritual realities in such a way as to turn apologies into something resembling confessions. This is not CCM (Christian Contemporary Music), but there is more than one reason that Mumford & Sons has become popular in the halls of the seminary I attend.

In these bodies we will live
In these bodies we will die
Where you invest your love
You invest your life

Awake my soul
Awake my soul
Awake my soul
For you were made to meet your maker

The music of Mumford & Sons revives old-timey folk music as well as the spirit. This is a far cry from the bubblegum pop dominating the radio waves right now, and for that I am grateful.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Revival2011 // Pastor's Testimony

Tonight was the kickoff of Revival2011 at Myers Park UMC, a great event that is only the beginning of a call to, as C. S. Lewis might put it, go "further in and higher up" in terms of faith commitment, wherever your starting point may be. Here's a bit of what it's all about:

Thursday, January 6, 2011

The Road Home // The University of Utah Singers

The Myers Park UMC choir is doing this on January 23. The text, the music, it's all just lovely.



Tell me, where is the road
I can call my own,
That I left, that I lost
So long ago?
All these years I have wandered,
Oh when will I know
There’s a way, there’s a road
That will lead me home?

After wind, after rain,
When the dark is done,
As I wake from a dream
In the gold of day,
Through the air there’s a calling
From far away,
There’s a voice I can hear
That will lead me home.

Rise up, follow me,
Come away, is the call,
With the love in your heart
As the only song;
There is no such beauty
As where you belong;
Rise up, follow me,
I will lead you home.

Not Your Grandmother's Revival

My dad is the pastor of a large Methodist church in Charlotte, NC. Recently, he decided to hold a revival--his first in 30 years of ministry. There's no tent, but there is Twitter, Facebook, and all sort of media involveda lot of social media. Revival2011 centers on these basic questions:

How is it with your soul? Are you happy? Have you ever really committed to following Christ? Or is it time to make a deeper commitment?

The kickoff is this Sunday, January 9 @ 7:00 p.m. both at MPUMC and online. The revival will span 15 days during which conversation will be going on continuously via Facebook, Twitter and text messaging, small group discussions (schedule available on the main website), daily reflections written by my dad, etc. Click here to learn more, or visit the website and join the conversation.

The Way He Carries Me (a quote from Frederick Buechner)

"A Christian is one who points at Christ and says, 'I can't prove a thing, but there's something about his eyes and his voice. There's something about the way he carries his head, his hands, the way he carries his cross--the way he carries me.'" -- Frederick Buechner

Sunday, January 2, 2011

What I'm Reading #14: Life of the Beloved (Henri Nouwen)

Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World, by Henri J. M. Nouwen

I love Henri Nouwen. His book The Inner Voice of Love was my first "What I'm Reading" post, and The Return of the Prodigal Son remains one of the most important books I've read in my life. I have called Nouwen my "spiritual twin" because I identify so strongly with his writing.

Life of the Beloved
was one of two more Nouwen books I bought online on a whim (the second I'm sure will turn up here soon enough). It interested me because Nouwen's goal in writing the book was to provide a window into the spiritual life for people who were thoroughly non-spiritual--this came at the request of a good friend of his. Nouwen uses the notion of the "Beloved" as well as the actions mirrored in Eucharist--taken, blessed, broken and given--to frame his discussion.

In the epilogue, Nouwen essentially admits that he failed to do what his friend asked. Being so immersed in the Christian worldview, he had, without realizing it, written in such a way that he employed assumptions that non-Christians simply couldn't understand. However, this book turned out to have an impact on many searching Christians; hence, we have it on our shelves today.

Nouwen traces the idea of the "Beloved" through 3 stages: Being the Beloved, Becoming the Beloved, and Living as the Beloved. Within the second are the 4 Eucharistic actions I mentioned above. One core aspect of being, becoming and living as the Beloved is explained in the section called "Blessed"--Nouwen insists that in blessing someone or something, you are not bestowing anything on it, but simply acknowledging, naming and affirming the blessedness inherent to it. So it is with our "Beloved-ness"--it is not something we have to earn or to be given by the world or by others; it is God's gift of who we are as God's beloved children.

I agree that this book didn't quite do the job Nouwen set out to do with it. The Eucharistic imagery is enough of a give away to show that didn't work. But it is still a lovely book that has been very helpful for me as a devotional jumping-off point lately. I probably have a lot of favorite quotations marked, so I'm going to stop writing now. Point being: read some Nouwen. Any Nouwen.


Favorite Quotations

"The greatest gift my friendship can gives to you is the gift of your Belovedness. I can give that gift only insofar as I have claimed it for myself. Isn't that what friendship is all about: giving to each other the gift of our Belovedness?"

"Isn't arrogance putting yourself on a pedestal to avoid being seen as yourself?"

"That is the great joy of being chosen: the discovery that others are chosen as well. In the house of God there are many mansions."

"Our sufferings and pains are not simply bothersome interruptions of our lives; rather, they touch us in our uniqueness and our most intimate individuality. ...each human being suffers in a way no other human being suffers."

"...the first step to healing is not a step away from the pain, but a step toward it."

"A happy life is a life for others."

"...when focusing on talents, we tend to forget that our real gift is not so much what we can do, but who we are. The real question is not 'What can we offer each other?' but 'Who can we be for each other?'"

"As those who are chosen, blessed, broken, and given, we are called to live our lives with a deep inner joy and peace. It is the life of the Beloved, lived in a world constantly trying to convince us that the burden is on us to prove that we are worthy of being loved."

"God is a Lover who wants to be loved."

Monday, January 31, 2011

Silly Woman—Radical Hospitality is for Men!

I live in Durham, NC--one of the "41 Places to Go in 2011," according to a New York Times article that mentions one of my favorite restaurants, Parker & Otis ( where I'm performing with a trio on February 11 ).

(That was fake HTML markup. I occasionally appropriate computer languages to express tone or to make disclaimers. Sorry?)

I do love Parker & Otis--and the DPAC (Durham Performing Arts Center), and Brightleaf Square, etc. etc.--but much of what I love about Durham did not get and could not have gotten a mention in that NYT article. I do not live in the Belmont or West Village (though I have lusted after those "historic urban lofts"). I live in an old house on Burch Avenue with 5 other people.

Our street is technically its own mini-neighborhood, but we're just across West Chapel Hill Street from the West End, a historic, predominantly black neighborhood where the median household income in 2009 was $20,000 less than that of Durham as a whole (source). We intentionally chose the neighborhood, and actually, when we were looking at the house, there was some concern from one or two housemates (though not expressed expressed in such crass terms) that Burch Avenue wasn't poor enough. We might have looked at houses in the West End proper if not for the fact that my dad was already on the verge of cardiac arrest having heard of gunshots fired and cars broken into on our street (more on that another time).

You may already know why our thought process looked like that. You may be familiar with buzzwords like "community," "hospitality," "downward mobility," "relocation," etc. You may also have read and been deeply impacted by (or not) (hint: I was) Shane Claiborne's book The Irresistible Revolution and, as a Durhamite, the witness of Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and the Rutba House, and the spread of New Monasticism.

I'm naturally idealistic. After becoming familiar with the content of the above paragraph and much more, joining and working at Asbury Temple United Methodist Church (a predominantly African-American church that has strong outreach to the neighboring community, Northeast Central Durham, AKA "the bad part of town"), and living in the West End as part of the Duke Chapel Pathways summer program, I was ready to move to the ghetto and leave my doors unlocked as a sign of trust and hospitality.

OK, I never had THAT romantic of an idea of the whole thing. And I realize this post probably already has a cynical tone, and that is not my intent. But I've learned some interesting--and frustrating--things since moving onto Burch Avenue (where I've lived for a year and a half now).

There's plenty to question in terms of paternalism and white guilt--yesterday my Ethics professor, Amy Laura Hall, quipped about the fact that she doesn't have a TV, something white people like to brag about. That would be me. As if my sacrificing television (but not, let me point out, Hulu and Netflix) somehow makes me a "good" white person.

But I'm going to set that aside for now, because I've already written way too much, and focus on a topic that I just hate dealing with: gender. Growing up, I never gave much credence to feminism of any sort. I was a woman, but where and how I grew up meant that it was never (or rarely) an obstacle for me to succeed academically, athletically and otherwise. In high school, I dismissed feminists as bra-burning fanatics. In undergrad, I railed against professors who insisted that I use general neutral language in my papers. Only in recent years have I started actually to experience the ways in which being a woman can become a liability, even when you don't see it as such or act in accordance with the stereotypes.

This "liability" came into harsh focus a few months ago for me. A young man with a mild but significant mental handicap had befriended our house and begun coming around regularly. There were other issues we as a house had to deal with, like him asking for food and money, but the most frustrating thing for me was the process of realizing I couldn't offer him hospitality in the same way that my male housemates could. This young man presented a special challenge because his differently-abled-ness involved not only low social inhibitions but also a very short temper--and this guy was about 7 feet tall and stronger than he knew. Although we wanted to be welcoming to him, we eventually found we needed to set some boundaries, and for myself and the other female housemate, that meant not allowing him into the house when we were home alone.

It made me very angry to have to set those limits. I am not afraid of people. I have done plenty of walking in Durham after dark when it probably wasn't safe--but that's just how I operate. I may be naive, but I also know that there is danger inherent in some of the choices I've made for my life--and I embrace that danger. As I was thinking about writing this blog, my dad passed on an email from a Duke Divinity grad who was at a workshop he had led recently at a church. I assume my dad had talked about hospitality, radical inclusiveness, outreach, etc.--and this man made an observation: that ministry like that could be dangerous.

I've thought a lot over several years now about where I might live as an adult. I want to be able to live in a neighborhood like Burch Avenue or the West End. I've been challenged on this point--what about when you have kids? The neighborhood I lived in for the first 4 years of my life got rougher while we lived there, and when a bullet shattered the glass doors to our downstairs playroom (my sister and I were upstairs--I don't remember this, and in fact I only learned about it a few years ago), my parents knew it was time to relocate.

I struggle with that. Why should I remove my children from danger when I'm surrounded by neighbors unable to do the same for their children? A major struggle I have with ideas of downward mobility and relocation is that I know I would always have a safety net--even if I divested myself of money and possessions, I still have a father who cares about me very much and would do anything to help me if he could. Most people in the West End, or Northeast Central Durham, have no such recourse.

And my questioning is made all the more difficult by the fact that I am a woman. I'm not sure my father would have allowed me to move into my current house if it hadn't been with one other woman and 4 men (we're now evenly matched, 3 and 3). The whole point of almost everything I believe about the Gospel is that it's not safe--but being 5'2" blond woman puts me in a very different position than even a white male. I'm inclined not to care about my own safety--but I have to, if only for the sake of my parents and my boyfriend, who understandably want to protect me.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this--sorry to trail off. I haven't resolved any of these questions. If you have, you're probably fooling yourself, but I welcome comments from fellow questioners.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Every Time I Remember You: Worship Symposium 2011

I am currently at the 2011 Worship Symposium at Calvin College and Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI. If you want a little taste of the amazingness I'm blessed to experience this weekend, click here for a list of worship times--the services are all being webcast.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

You Don't Need Money To Be Happy

A few weeks ago, I had an interesting childcare job. My mom works for a nonprofit called the W.I.S.H. Program (that stands for Workforce Initiative for Supportive Housing). The program gets working, homeless families into supportive housing, pairs them with a social worker and a team of volunteers from a local church or organization, and works with them to develop money management and other skills.

I was called upon to help with childcare during one of their educational sessions, meaning my sister and I watched 6 kids ranging in age from 5 to 15, all of whom are or have been homeless. We played with the kids for a little while--timed races to complete a Disney princess puzzle were a big hit--and then they asked to watch a movie. After much debate, we finally chose the 2010 film Nanny McPhee Returns.

The entire plot of the movie isn't important here, so let me just say that part of the premise involves a poor family living and working on a farm while the father is fighting for Britain in WWII, but their wealthy cousins come from London to live with them and escape the bombings. As we watched the movie, several of the kids were full of questions, often making funny remarks about how gross it would be to live on a farm (though they're in a low income bracket, that is very different in the city than it would be in the country). When they kept asking about why the rich kids had to go live with them, my sister replied that the point was that they need to learn you don't need money to be happy.

Promptly, one of the girls responded, "Yes you do!" My sister and I replied again, saying that sometimes having too much money can be a bad thing, that rich people are sometimes even more depressed than poor people. The little girl argued with us for a minute, and then I stopped, because I realized something.

Of course I could say you don't need money to be happy. I'm currently in graduate school on a full tuition scholarship, my other financial needs met by my parents or money earned from a very generous field education stipend leftover from last summer. If I get into financial trouble, I can either go to my dad or dip into what's left of my college savings--because even though I've graduated college, there's still money in that account.

All my life I have struggled with my sense that it really might be a sin to be ridiculously wealthy. Of course, we need wealthy people to help the poor people...I guess. Although I've talked enough about redistribution of wealth to get called a socialist (check out this paper I wrote for a Public Policy course in undergrad on relational redistribution). Of course, all the intellectual and moral debate I can have over wealth and poverty and morals is irrelevant to an 8-year-old girl whose mother is just trying to keep a roof over her head.

So where do we go from here?

The House (Concert) You're Building

Last night, I saw Audrey Assad in concert--at a house concert, to be exact. Meaning I was 10 feet away from her in a living room with maybe 60 other people. The show was part of Brookhaven House Concerts, an event series in Raleigh that I will definitely be keeping tabs on from here on out.

I blogged about Assad's album The House You're Building a while back, so it was really cool to be able to see her live. She played a number of songs from the CD as well as many I hadn't heard (or aren't on the album), including her own version of "His Eye Is On the Sparrow" and the lovely original song "Winter Snow."

Throughout the concert, Assad talked about what went into writing many of the songs, often making herself surprisingly--and refreshingly--vulnerable to the audience as she told us about her journey through learning about love with her fiance, her parents' divorce, and her own wrestling with her faith.

Part of what I love about her music is the depth and poetry of the lyrics, not to mention the beautiful melodies and piano-based accompaniment. Plus, her writing often incorporates Scripture or the wisdom of ancient theologians--like "Restless" (below), one of my favorites, which she taught to us last night and had us sing along with, interjecting the hymn "Come Thou Fount" in the middle. "Restless" refers directly to St. Augustine of Hippo, who wrote, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

Check out Audrey Assad. Trust me.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Sigh No More // Mumford and Sons

A few weeks ago, my roommate and I were in our room chatting, and we got onto music. She asked if I'd like to hear her new favorite band. Ever the junkie for good music recommendations, of course I accepted.

She then proceeded to play the song "Awake My Soul," off the new album by Mumford and Sons (see the video below). Their CD Sigh No More is, to quote a review in Paste Magazine, "an album chock full of gorgeous remorse." The lyrics attend to universal truths of relationships and reconciliation, but they constantly brush up against spiritual realities in such a way as to turn apologies into something resembling confessions. This is not CCM (Christian Contemporary Music), but there is more than one reason that Mumford & Sons has become popular in the halls of the seminary I attend.

In these bodies we will live
In these bodies we will die
Where you invest your love
You invest your life

Awake my soul
Awake my soul
Awake my soul
For you were made to meet your maker

The music of Mumford & Sons revives old-timey folk music as well as the spirit. This is a far cry from the bubblegum pop dominating the radio waves right now, and for that I am grateful.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Revival2011 // Pastor's Testimony

Tonight was the kickoff of Revival2011 at Myers Park UMC, a great event that is only the beginning of a call to, as C. S. Lewis might put it, go "further in and higher up" in terms of faith commitment, wherever your starting point may be. Here's a bit of what it's all about:

Thursday, January 6, 2011

The Road Home // The University of Utah Singers

The Myers Park UMC choir is doing this on January 23. The text, the music, it's all just lovely.



Tell me, where is the road
I can call my own,
That I left, that I lost
So long ago?
All these years I have wandered,
Oh when will I know
There’s a way, there’s a road
That will lead me home?

After wind, after rain,
When the dark is done,
As I wake from a dream
In the gold of day,
Through the air there’s a calling
From far away,
There’s a voice I can hear
That will lead me home.

Rise up, follow me,
Come away, is the call,
With the love in your heart
As the only song;
There is no such beauty
As where you belong;
Rise up, follow me,
I will lead you home.

Not Your Grandmother's Revival

My dad is the pastor of a large Methodist church in Charlotte, NC. Recently, he decided to hold a revival--his first in 30 years of ministry. There's no tent, but there is Twitter, Facebook, and all sort of media involveda lot of social media. Revival2011 centers on these basic questions:

How is it with your soul? Are you happy? Have you ever really committed to following Christ? Or is it time to make a deeper commitment?

The kickoff is this Sunday, January 9 @ 7:00 p.m. both at MPUMC and online. The revival will span 15 days during which conversation will be going on continuously via Facebook, Twitter and text messaging, small group discussions (schedule available on the main website), daily reflections written by my dad, etc. Click here to learn more, or visit the website and join the conversation.

The Way He Carries Me (a quote from Frederick Buechner)

"A Christian is one who points at Christ and says, 'I can't prove a thing, but there's something about his eyes and his voice. There's something about the way he carries his head, his hands, the way he carries his cross--the way he carries me.'" -- Frederick Buechner

Sunday, January 2, 2011

What I'm Reading #14: Life of the Beloved (Henri Nouwen)

Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World, by Henri J. M. Nouwen

I love Henri Nouwen. His book The Inner Voice of Love was my first "What I'm Reading" post, and The Return of the Prodigal Son remains one of the most important books I've read in my life. I have called Nouwen my "spiritual twin" because I identify so strongly with his writing.

Life of the Beloved
was one of two more Nouwen books I bought online on a whim (the second I'm sure will turn up here soon enough). It interested me because Nouwen's goal in writing the book was to provide a window into the spiritual life for people who were thoroughly non-spiritual--this came at the request of a good friend of his. Nouwen uses the notion of the "Beloved" as well as the actions mirrored in Eucharist--taken, blessed, broken and given--to frame his discussion.

In the epilogue, Nouwen essentially admits that he failed to do what his friend asked. Being so immersed in the Christian worldview, he had, without realizing it, written in such a way that he employed assumptions that non-Christians simply couldn't understand. However, this book turned out to have an impact on many searching Christians; hence, we have it on our shelves today.

Nouwen traces the idea of the "Beloved" through 3 stages: Being the Beloved, Becoming the Beloved, and Living as the Beloved. Within the second are the 4 Eucharistic actions I mentioned above. One core aspect of being, becoming and living as the Beloved is explained in the section called "Blessed"--Nouwen insists that in blessing someone or something, you are not bestowing anything on it, but simply acknowledging, naming and affirming the blessedness inherent to it. So it is with our "Beloved-ness"--it is not something we have to earn or to be given by the world or by others; it is God's gift of who we are as God's beloved children.

I agree that this book didn't quite do the job Nouwen set out to do with it. The Eucharistic imagery is enough of a give away to show that didn't work. But it is still a lovely book that has been very helpful for me as a devotional jumping-off point lately. I probably have a lot of favorite quotations marked, so I'm going to stop writing now. Point being: read some Nouwen. Any Nouwen.


Favorite Quotations

"The greatest gift my friendship can gives to you is the gift of your Belovedness. I can give that gift only insofar as I have claimed it for myself. Isn't that what friendship is all about: giving to each other the gift of our Belovedness?"

"Isn't arrogance putting yourself on a pedestal to avoid being seen as yourself?"

"That is the great joy of being chosen: the discovery that others are chosen as well. In the house of God there are many mansions."

"Our sufferings and pains are not simply bothersome interruptions of our lives; rather, they touch us in our uniqueness and our most intimate individuality. ...each human being suffers in a way no other human being suffers."

"...the first step to healing is not a step away from the pain, but a step toward it."

"A happy life is a life for others."

"...when focusing on talents, we tend to forget that our real gift is not so much what we can do, but who we are. The real question is not 'What can we offer each other?' but 'Who can we be for each other?'"

"As those who are chosen, blessed, broken, and given, we are called to live our lives with a deep inner joy and peace. It is the life of the Beloved, lived in a world constantly trying to convince us that the burden is on us to prove that we are worthy of being loved."

"God is a Lover who wants to be loved."

 

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