Tonight I had dinner with two/three members of InterVarsity staff in the New England area, Greg and his wife who act as staff for 3(wow!) area colleges and one of Sara's students, new staff at Roger Williams, found she'd been attending the same church I had as well.
It was really great to hear some of their perspective on what it's been like to be in ministry in this area of the country, where we talked about the difference of a freshman bible study of 12 from a hall of 25 to 3 from a dorm of 300. Hmm. Again, hate to fall into regionalism or type-casting anything.
They talked about having to take time for themselves, some of the difficulties having to raise their own salaries and just in general having to learn general life boundaries--both with students and their neighbors. That's another thing, they have chosen to move into a more run-down section of providence. They joked, calling it the "hood junior." We talked about the adjustment process moving in there, making friends being difficult and getting only great responses from kids.
It was cool to see that they were normal people. That in so many ways they were people just like myself---cursing sometimes, joking about liquor stores, talking about God, the sacred and the profane intermingling into beautifully framed lives.
I think about going into ministry myself. Is this area of the country for me? Maybe, I feel myself fitting into the culture a lot here, well at least in some ways. I really enjoy this city and many of the people I have met. It is reassuring to see myself in them definitely. All the questions and fears I had heard about were manifest in their lives as well, maybe this was normal.
I'm struggling a lot this week with what I want to do in the future. I feel like somedays I could just arbitarily pick something and push forward towards it and have no problem, there's nothing really holding me back from anything (how blessed I am, what a luxury). But I know that isn't god's way. there's something i've got to learn in all of this.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Sunday, July 30, 2006
The second week of SPARK: location, Providence, RI
Not too many revelations came off this second week of SPARK, I think I had a much better/more tolerable/less boy-crazy group of girls on my floor. They were great about including everyone in things they did, even the seemingly-annoying child. Having a large group helped I think. There was at least one that I had to remind myself was only 14 years old, not 21 like myself. The maturity manifests itself in different ways.
The class I helped with this past week was about bay education. This was also a great group of kids definitely, 11 total. Even though we consistently had to meet almost an hour before every other class--7:15am each morning to ride a bus to our class site, eat the same sack lunch (great cookie we bartered amongst the group), they didn't complain as much as last week's group that only had to meet 30 minutes earlier. This time we had 3 long days and 2 semi-long days (most classes only have 2 afternoon days)....so given the extensive class schedule, the kids were great.
The class was pretty cool, we got to go out on a small boat everyday. We took plankton samples and then one day took huge nets that caught large crabs (bigger than my head), sea stars, flounder, other critters so we called them. We got to go swimming most everyday and even snorkeling the last day.
I realized how squirmish I am about dirtiness and touching things like crabs or other fish or objects (and I guess, how seemingly irrational that is).
I've started thinking a little bit about Americorps (met one Americorps volunteer at church, another worked at this Save the Bay organization). The Vista program seems very flexible easy to choose your own location, only a year long. We'll see.
I convinced the kiddos to get me several huge cookies from the Meeting Street Cafe (for Providence locals this is the spot for huge cookies that spoil just about any meal). I've got some other food-requirements before I leave---a fast food dinner truck downtown, the Creperie, and eating a Falafel (sp?, still a little unsure what this is).
Although I was gone most of the week, I got to spend a little quality time with the other RAs, I had a great heart to heart with one RA who'd grown up around the camden-area of New Jersey. Its amazing to me how much, even though I've probably only been in that city a total of 12 days, how many times its provided in-roads for conversation. How much time have I spent in other places, think bangkok, for instance. But somehow my passion for that place has stuck. Hmmm. It was great to really connect with them and learn more about their life, I feel like I haven't really gotten to really-really know any other RAs, so that was a welcome change and experience to better share what we're each "really" about. It was one of my first strong conversations with someone outside of church circles since I've been here, I actually felt a little rusty trying to remember how to listen and just even show love.....weird, sometimes we need practice.
The kids left Saturday afternoon, we had a major food blow-out at Cheesecake Factory Saturday night, 3.5 hour wait and all! (we got a call and came later). We all joked about looking online at the menu all week long--I had decided monday what I wanted and stuck do it--fish tacos (fair, not doing it again) and oreo cheesecake (still good). Spent today recovering from food coma and transcribing my last tape.
Also went to church here for only the 3rd time, but its amazing how much I feel at home there now. I have 2-3 evening activiies planned this week off of relationships from church. They prayed for me to "send me out" after my month in Providence, really great people!
Looking forward to a week to close-up here in Providence. I'll also, at my fathers--and pracically, I understand--request, to check out some area graduate programs. Monday, Brown. Thursday, Yale. Friday, Harvard. I'm not feeling graduate school really at all at this point. But I think I also have a hard time imagining life beyond the span of 2-3 years out, so its good to look anyway.
My time in Providence is coming to a close. What have I learned? What has New England taught me?
The class I helped with this past week was about bay education. This was also a great group of kids definitely, 11 total. Even though we consistently had to meet almost an hour before every other class--7:15am each morning to ride a bus to our class site, eat the same sack lunch (great cookie we bartered amongst the group), they didn't complain as much as last week's group that only had to meet 30 minutes earlier. This time we had 3 long days and 2 semi-long days (most classes only have 2 afternoon days)....so given the extensive class schedule, the kids were great.
The class was pretty cool, we got to go out on a small boat everyday. We took plankton samples and then one day took huge nets that caught large crabs (bigger than my head), sea stars, flounder, other critters so we called them. We got to go swimming most everyday and even snorkeling the last day.
I realized how squirmish I am about dirtiness and touching things like crabs or other fish or objects (and I guess, how seemingly irrational that is).
I've started thinking a little bit about Americorps (met one Americorps volunteer at church, another worked at this Save the Bay organization). The Vista program seems very flexible easy to choose your own location, only a year long. We'll see.
I convinced the kiddos to get me several huge cookies from the Meeting Street Cafe (for Providence locals this is the spot for huge cookies that spoil just about any meal). I've got some other food-requirements before I leave---a fast food dinner truck downtown, the Creperie, and eating a Falafel (sp?, still a little unsure what this is).
Although I was gone most of the week, I got to spend a little quality time with the other RAs, I had a great heart to heart with one RA who'd grown up around the camden-area of New Jersey. Its amazing to me how much, even though I've probably only been in that city a total of 12 days, how many times its provided in-roads for conversation. How much time have I spent in other places, think bangkok, for instance. But somehow my passion for that place has stuck. Hmmm. It was great to really connect with them and learn more about their life, I feel like I haven't really gotten to really-really know any other RAs, so that was a welcome change and experience to better share what we're each "really" about. It was one of my first strong conversations with someone outside of church circles since I've been here, I actually felt a little rusty trying to remember how to listen and just even show love.....weird, sometimes we need practice.
The kids left Saturday afternoon, we had a major food blow-out at Cheesecake Factory Saturday night, 3.5 hour wait and all! (we got a call and came later). We all joked about looking online at the menu all week long--I had decided monday what I wanted and stuck do it--fish tacos (fair, not doing it again) and oreo cheesecake (still good). Spent today recovering from food coma and transcribing my last tape.
Also went to church here for only the 3rd time, but its amazing how much I feel at home there now. I have 2-3 evening activiies planned this week off of relationships from church. They prayed for me to "send me out" after my month in Providence, really great people!
Looking forward to a week to close-up here in Providence. I'll also, at my fathers--and pracically, I understand--request, to check out some area graduate programs. Monday, Brown. Thursday, Yale. Friday, Harvard. I'm not feeling graduate school really at all at this point. But I think I also have a hard time imagining life beyond the span of 2-3 years out, so its good to look anyway.
My time in Providence is coming to a close. What have I learned? What has New England taught me?
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
"They're real people too"
My friend Nate used to espouse about his summer he spent as a middle school youth assistant at a church. Sometimes I thought he was crazy. Long, flowery ideas about talking to middle schoolers, all in their juxtaposed worlds--one minute they're giggling over boys or silly jokes, the next they're making a profound observation on the world. Or, in the case of my science camp, talking about some abstract concept I don't even begin to understand.
But Nate said something else, maybe this part was more recent--he made the point that middle schoolers were people too. It didn't really sink in much until this week.
The night before our second batch of kids I went out for sushi with a couple of ras and we talked about ourselves and what we liked to do. I told them I didn't really care for kids much, would really rather do much anything else than spend time with kids.
I'm beginning to think that that is beginning to change some, or at least I'm coming to some self-realization. I actually do like talking to these kids at this camp, maybe in some way they've reached that point of being beyond "kids" to me, they can hold semi-intelligent/pointed conversations, tell me about their lives at home, what they want to be----and its not all trivial. They have interests and passions, desires and goals. In essence, they are real people too.
I would rather catch up with the girls from my floor or talk to the boys and girls in my class than sit around with the ras or a book most of the time, it seems dis-engaged to not try to get to know them as individuals. I see myself taking the attitude I take with orientation so often---that each person has a story, and I'm not doing my job properly until I attempt to have a few good conversations with each person, and at least show them that they matter to me and that I want to know more about them--in essence, validating the fact that they are people too.
Realization 2: I may someday wish to have children. Yes, probably not a shocker, but I'm not quite sure I'd ever gotten past the self-centered ideas of wanting kids, thinking ohh it'd be fun to make their lunch or dress a little girl, or I'd love to be a mom---all reasons tied to myself.
But I think that's beginning to be refined as well. No worries mom and dad, not thinking of having kids anytime soon (10 years maybe?). I was reading this book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan about a young girl who grows up, marries and has children. At a later point in the book, she reflects on how wonderful it is to see her children grow, to see them develop into different people, thinking individuals, not just objects of affection anymore. Watching her children become people of interest and intrigue that she has the priviledge to have such close, permanent relationship--in essence, watching her children become/be real people too.
Made me think motherhood maybe is something more, maybe something I'd want someday. Sounds silly, but really was kind of a turning point, thinking beyond myself to possibly wanting a child for non-selfish reasons.
But Nate said something else, maybe this part was more recent--he made the point that middle schoolers were people too. It didn't really sink in much until this week.
The night before our second batch of kids I went out for sushi with a couple of ras and we talked about ourselves and what we liked to do. I told them I didn't really care for kids much, would really rather do much anything else than spend time with kids.
I'm beginning to think that that is beginning to change some, or at least I'm coming to some self-realization. I actually do like talking to these kids at this camp, maybe in some way they've reached that point of being beyond "kids" to me, they can hold semi-intelligent/pointed conversations, tell me about their lives at home, what they want to be----and its not all trivial. They have interests and passions, desires and goals. In essence, they are real people too.
I would rather catch up with the girls from my floor or talk to the boys and girls in my class than sit around with the ras or a book most of the time, it seems dis-engaged to not try to get to know them as individuals. I see myself taking the attitude I take with orientation so often---that each person has a story, and I'm not doing my job properly until I attempt to have a few good conversations with each person, and at least show them that they matter to me and that I want to know more about them--in essence, validating the fact that they are people too.
Realization 2: I may someday wish to have children. Yes, probably not a shocker, but I'm not quite sure I'd ever gotten past the self-centered ideas of wanting kids, thinking ohh it'd be fun to make their lunch or dress a little girl, or I'd love to be a mom---all reasons tied to myself.
But I think that's beginning to be refined as well. No worries mom and dad, not thinking of having kids anytime soon (10 years maybe?). I was reading this book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan about a young girl who grows up, marries and has children. At a later point in the book, she reflects on how wonderful it is to see her children grow, to see them develop into different people, thinking individuals, not just objects of affection anymore. Watching her children become people of interest and intrigue that she has the priviledge to have such close, permanent relationship--in essence, watching her children become/be real people too.
Made me think motherhood maybe is something more, maybe something I'd want someday. Sounds silly, but really was kind of a turning point, thinking beyond myself to possibly wanting a child for non-selfish reasons.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
General Life Review
I figured I'd been up to some other things recently, nothing too profound, just thought I'd list some events.....
-Got to visit Greg again in Mass. First day we went to Boston, met a couple of his friends and his older brother for dinner. It was really great to see the city with Mike's native tour-guiding skills, getting to see what they thought about the area.....and getting to enjoy "real" Italian food. I admitted I thought a lot of Italian food was bland.....bad thing to say! It did taste fairly similar to the kind of Italian I had in actual Italy though. I lost points with Ben (Greg's bro) for not getting a cannoli and opting for carrott cake instead.
-Got to see my first "rocky" beach with Greg. Ducksberry(sp?), Mass. Of course only after visiting the cute sub shop across from his high school (small town Mass, Greg knows everyone...or at least they know him, from the subway to the sandwich shop, it was fun). Turns out my perception of rocks was that it would be much more similar to rocky clifts. Actually a "rocky" beach has lots of pebbles. It was a little chilly as well, but just a nice, foggy New England afternoon......and an entire trip out there without a stop at dunkin doughnuts!
-Back late Thursday afternoon, went to Gallery Night in Providence with another RA girl. Gallery Night is the night in Providence when all the art galleries in town (like 25! wow!) are all open for free, there's free food and wine everywhere, buses run for free and celebs give tours! Wow! It was really neat. We probably made it to half the galleries--many are small, modern galleries or shops really that were easy to browse very quickly, but it was wonderful to see the diversity of the arts scene in this town! I feel like such a nerd sometimes around here.....I suggest events around town to the RAs regularly, sometimes people come thankfully.......oh yea, and just to show myself to be the ultimate tourista......we walked into the John Brown House Gallery Night (historic house), and I knew the woman giving the tour (historic society, I'd been on another tour she did......)
--On that note, I am seeing people I recognize more and more around town. Its pretty encouraging, weird none of them seem to say hello. Some are people I've had work interactions with, people who I've bought things from, a guy I met a church, the saxophone player from the street, etc. Providence grows more and more on me everyday.
-In true Providence tourist fashion, I ventured to the farmer's market downtown Friday morning, I'd made it up to be this big thing (the flyers and website made it look that way.....), but as many things I read about, it was a bit of a let down, though overall it was a great experience. This is the practical way to buy organic, local, etc. Even contrasting it with the market I saw in Boston today, I noticed all the produce was local, whereas in Boston it was definitely imported (all the gas costs for that almost make it pointless, environmentally-consciousness-wise).
--Friday evening Rachel Berryman and Nate Nichols came into town. It was so great to see Rachel again, chill out with her in the afternoon on Thayer, gather more supplies together (apparently Rachel was a wine connoisseur! the woman talked about her choice for like 5 minutes....we just stared and acted like we had any idea at all what she was saying....). Nate came later in the evening and I took them down the the waterfront for a picnic! It was great to share the city and the campus. Getting to see the two of them and just have a great dinner together was wonderful, hopefully I'll get to see them both again soon.
-Saturday I took the high school program's free bus into Boston for the day--basically 10am-3:30pm in Boston. It was enough time for the colonial-dressed Freedom Trail guide which was super-fun, touristy as it is. I wandered around several markets for the afternoon, had a great fast mexican-stand experience (my mom had a horror story of carrots on top of nachos instead of cheese in Mass, so I was a bit wary to say the least). It started to rain fairly severely. But I wandered the commons area some, got some ice coffee (grown on me, dunkins of course), and made it in time for the bus back.
Overall, good day.....definitely just an intro to the city. I honestly can't say I love love Boston like I love love new york, but I remember new york took me a few days wandering by myself figuring out the layout and parts I really enjoyed before I really fell in love (the reason I can't seem to pass up a trip to nyc).
I have to say there's something somewhat annoying about not being able to find places to sit (it was wet) or public bathrooms anywhere (including restaurants, well dunkin doughnuts, but come on people!). Kind of annoying, speaks to a place in my mind---nyc is like this too---that is not only incredibly fast-paced, meaning take food and go........but also largely says "we don't even care enough about you to have a nice place to sit or use the restroom, even when you pay for stuff." Just not so hospitable is all. Guess I'm still searching for "my city," or at least a place that calls out to me and provides everything---walking accessible, not so pretensious attitude, public green space, etc......the list goes on, search for perfection? maybe. Thoughts?
-Got to visit Greg again in Mass. First day we went to Boston, met a couple of his friends and his older brother for dinner. It was really great to see the city with Mike's native tour-guiding skills, getting to see what they thought about the area.....and getting to enjoy "real" Italian food. I admitted I thought a lot of Italian food was bland.....bad thing to say! It did taste fairly similar to the kind of Italian I had in actual Italy though. I lost points with Ben (Greg's bro) for not getting a cannoli and opting for carrott cake instead.
-Got to see my first "rocky" beach with Greg. Ducksberry(sp?), Mass. Of course only after visiting the cute sub shop across from his high school (small town Mass, Greg knows everyone...or at least they know him, from the subway to the sandwich shop, it was fun). Turns out my perception of rocks was that it would be much more similar to rocky clifts. Actually a "rocky" beach has lots of pebbles. It was a little chilly as well, but just a nice, foggy New England afternoon......and an entire trip out there without a stop at dunkin doughnuts!
-Back late Thursday afternoon, went to Gallery Night in Providence with another RA girl. Gallery Night is the night in Providence when all the art galleries in town (like 25! wow!) are all open for free, there's free food and wine everywhere, buses run for free and celebs give tours! Wow! It was really neat. We probably made it to half the galleries--many are small, modern galleries or shops really that were easy to browse very quickly, but it was wonderful to see the diversity of the arts scene in this town! I feel like such a nerd sometimes around here.....I suggest events around town to the RAs regularly, sometimes people come thankfully.......oh yea, and just to show myself to be the ultimate tourista......we walked into the John Brown House Gallery Night (historic house), and I knew the woman giving the tour (historic society, I'd been on another tour she did......)
--On that note, I am seeing people I recognize more and more around town. Its pretty encouraging, weird none of them seem to say hello. Some are people I've had work interactions with, people who I've bought things from, a guy I met a church, the saxophone player from the street, etc. Providence grows more and more on me everyday.
-In true Providence tourist fashion, I ventured to the farmer's market downtown Friday morning, I'd made it up to be this big thing (the flyers and website made it look that way.....), but as many things I read about, it was a bit of a let down, though overall it was a great experience. This is the practical way to buy organic, local, etc. Even contrasting it with the market I saw in Boston today, I noticed all the produce was local, whereas in Boston it was definitely imported (all the gas costs for that almost make it pointless, environmentally-consciousness-wise).
--Friday evening Rachel Berryman and Nate Nichols came into town. It was so great to see Rachel again, chill out with her in the afternoon on Thayer, gather more supplies together (apparently Rachel was a wine connoisseur! the woman talked about her choice for like 5 minutes....we just stared and acted like we had any idea at all what she was saying....). Nate came later in the evening and I took them down the the waterfront for a picnic! It was great to share the city and the campus. Getting to see the two of them and just have a great dinner together was wonderful, hopefully I'll get to see them both again soon.
-Saturday I took the high school program's free bus into Boston for the day--basically 10am-3:30pm in Boston. It was enough time for the colonial-dressed Freedom Trail guide which was super-fun, touristy as it is. I wandered around several markets for the afternoon, had a great fast mexican-stand experience (my mom had a horror story of carrots on top of nachos instead of cheese in Mass, so I was a bit wary to say the least). It started to rain fairly severely. But I wandered the commons area some, got some ice coffee (grown on me, dunkins of course), and made it in time for the bus back.
Overall, good day.....definitely just an intro to the city. I honestly can't say I love love Boston like I love love new york, but I remember new york took me a few days wandering by myself figuring out the layout and parts I really enjoyed before I really fell in love (the reason I can't seem to pass up a trip to nyc).
I have to say there's something somewhat annoying about not being able to find places to sit (it was wet) or public bathrooms anywhere (including restaurants, well dunkin doughnuts, but come on people!). Kind of annoying, speaks to a place in my mind---nyc is like this too---that is not only incredibly fast-paced, meaning take food and go........but also largely says "we don't even care enough about you to have a nice place to sit or use the restroom, even when you pay for stuff." Just not so hospitable is all. Guess I'm still searching for "my city," or at least a place that calls out to me and provides everything---walking accessible, not so pretensious attitude, public green space, etc......the list goes on, search for perfection? maybe. Thoughts?
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Some quotations
I've spent the past 3 days mostly transcribing interviews, gotten in another 100 pages and 3 hours from my time in Kentucky. I decided by this time in the summer I wanted to give you all some key snipits of my interviews....all come unidentified, community or person.
"Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement would say the sociologists call us intentional communities I like to say that we are communities of need. You know, communities of need, people that know that they are needy so they get together. Um, so intentional community is kind of a descriptive term from the outside but I take it to be a fairly true description that most of the people who are doing this thing are intentional about living together with other people who want to have a common way of life that points them towards the gospel. "
"welcome is the way that you acknowledge someone’s worth, you know recognize their dignity and shelter them"
"[sharing a meal]--: It’s a great leveler—everybody needs to eat. You all have to eat, great equalizer. There’s something important about taking nourishment together. Eating’s just a very…if you think somebody’s disgusting, eating with them, it freaks you out. You might ride next to them in the subway but you don’t want to eat with them, if they spit all over or they smell funny. So eating together really breaks down a lot of social inhibitions, its an act of having to care for someone, when you eat with someone, you provide food for them."
"I think we’ve learned to question some of the kind of radial simplicity that has come up out of the all-white communities and kind of not see that as another kind of righteousness that we need to cling to but rather try to be true to the relationships we have here. I feel like that’s something we’ve learned."
"Well we try not to be a charity. I am pretty convinced that bureaucracies impersonalize our relationships with people which creates dishonesty and all sorts of other nasty things and so we’ve been committed to not being a charity because we want to for one, have authentic relationships with people that we come in contact with but we also want to encourage the rest of the church to have real relationships. Jesus said, you know, the poor will always be with you and I don’t think he was saying so don’t worry about them I think he was saying you’ve got to build real relationship so that maybe there aren’t poor folk so that everyone has enough. "
"I think the charity thing kind of impersonalizes it. And for one thing it makes it easy for us to maintain our roles. The person we’re serving is the client and we’re the service provider in a sort of charity model. And so the maintenance of the model requires that we all stay in our roles. And so charity, sort of assumes we’ll always need the poor because like, that’s my job. (joking almost) If they’re aren’t any poor people, I lose my job. I’d rather say that in the kingdom of God Jesus invites rich and poor to live in an honest relationship with one another and to learn the economy of manna where you take what you need and you share the rest so that no one has need. We’re trying to figure out what that means."
"Yes, I think so. It seem to me that, sort of, Evangelical Christianity in America has kind of become a dominant religion that more or less supports the dominant culture and that I think is a sign of compromised Christianity in the history of the church, all the way back to when the Roman Empire became sort of officially Christian. "
"So what it seems to me is that people at the margins are always doing is trying to develop tactics to try and subvert the dominant system in ways that will point towards the kingdom of God. As opposed to developing a sort of grand strategy that sets up some sort of alternate empire. There’s no ground on which to set up an alternative empire because the culture is everything and us and also that assumes that we have a lot of power and control. I think that the sort of love that Jesus teaches leaves you without a lot of power and control. So its about sort of, you know, almost like guerilla warfare, to get the kind of tactics we need to within the world that is to try and subvert it and have little explosions of grace and God’s kingdom. "
"I think often times, especially in the modern world, we have kind of assumed that religion wasn’t about that stuff. Sometimes it’s said that religion’s not political or religion’s not social or the sociologists say that religion is all culture. I think actually, you know, America offers us a way of life. It comes through things like television commercials and public education and you know, the sort of practices of everyday life, going to the mall (he chuckles). Whatever, whatever it means to be sort of average American. And we kind of learn this way of life that we all think we are making our personal choices to do individual but as a matter of fact, all of us end up looking pretty much the same. All of us are choosing individually to do pretty much the same thing."
"I think, I think, the missional Emerging church is what I’m really interested in. And that can be a lot of different things, I really think that a mega church can be really fruitful and engaging in the world around it. And I think that a house church can be dead as dead. I don’t think the model matters, I think contextualization is the issue. That’s where I think we’re different from some groups that we’ve spoken with, not better, just different. "
"We’ve found so many redemptive things about using bicycles. About walking, about being in public places like the city parks and meeting people that if we were in a private place, we would never have got to see. So I think that’s been another wonderful thing about trying to be focused on the city and, you know, outward. Journeying out, the idea that the church needs to journey out. But in journeying out we’ve just discovered that we don’t have to come up with lots of clever things or even have money because God uses all kinds of ordinary circumstances, places, things in our lives to accomplish things in our lives."
"we believe that the gospel has got the best news, its better than what the liberals are offering, its better than what the local, thoughtful, beautiful activists are thinking, its better than all of that and its not even in competition with all of them, we can get alongside these people, with the gospel, find God already working and really see the gospel living and meeting every need in different dimensions of people’s lives. That means everybody can be involved at some level. And that’s the kingdom, we think the kingdom is real, Jesus already brought it in and we just get to somehow stumble into it and sometime only get glimpses of it."
"We just know it’s a long term view. It could be 20 years before we could say we have real friends. And that’s the attitude we have, it’s very slow and very steady."
"Kind of like we talked about the other night, some of us are trying to bring that up. All of us know it, all of us understand it, knows that that’s true. How does "Our community name here" effect that? We don’t know the answer, what we’re doing right now, because everyday’s a new day and we don’t know what we’re doing, in a good way, we just show up. That’s kind of been, it’s not that we don’t struggle with those issues. We read a lot from these people that are dealing with these big issues, global issues. But when you’re trying to balance that, oh there’s that word, well Jordace and Juan doesn’t have shoes or you know their clothes haven’t been washed in two weeks, you’ve got upfront, in your face need, this tends to pull more of your attention even though this is driving that."
"I guess it just feels like there’s no other agenda than to love and be with people. We’re built that way. I think once you get a taste of that, you need it. We’re built to function in that way, we’re not built to live in all our little isolated boxes and air conditioned cars wipping around, waving “hey!.”"
"You know, everybody wants the party at their house. Everybody wants to say we did this, look at us, give us the money, I don’t think it’s always about the money. But if all of those hearts and all of those resources came together even in just one little neighborhood, these kids wouldn’t be walking the streets, people would have so much more of what they need, it could be so beautiful. And instead, everybody wants the party at their house. "
"I don’t say that lightly when I say we love people because it can sound really, but we really do have people that we love and are connected to and have relationship with and want fuller relationship with. But it just never feels like enough. How can that be enough? And yet when you really start to dig into making bigger change, more systematic change, well then that generally means you have to build a big organization and sooner or later you have to have staff and paper work and grants and pretty soon you’re spending all your time….."
"How do they know we are Christians…starts singing”they will know we are Christians by our love..” It’s an excellent question and we kind of battled that, duked it out a little. It’s a hard place to find language for when you’re not living in the neighborhood. Are we there to convert people? No. Are we there? Yes. We’re not there to convert people but we want, like "Man in group" said, people to know the joy that we have and how different everything is when you have the love of God and when you really understand that God loves you. So do we talk about that enough? I don’t know. "
"But it’s not, it’s almost that we just love. And through that love they see Jesus in us, and that’s the idea. More so than you put the 10 commandments on the wall or whatever, kind of thing. And the conversation comes around, a lot. You know, you just get talking to somebody, and lots of the adults especially have read the bible a lot more than me. So if the conversation does come up, I’m running. And even for folks that can’t read, they’ve had to memorize from stories from other people. So its really amazing the know how much they know from the bible. Where I’ve got to go well I know that’s somewhere in John or Luke and then I’ve got to go do a search on the web where they can go oh yea because that’s their resource for the word of God so that’s always pretty amazing. So it’s not a one way thing, it’s kind of a two way thing too. So that’s where the Christianity is, more of a fellowship than a proselytizing, whatever that word is."
"So I think the solution for the middle class problem that is there, working too much too busy, got to have a Lexus or all those things, that is the answer. To meet Jesus in the poor. And when you do that, all those things become unimportant. Your wants, you realize, become unimportant when you realize that your friend’s, because you built relationships, needs are not being met. All of a sudden your want for a car is not important when your friend now can’t keep the house warm in the winter. All of a sudden takes on a whole different meaning. So that’s why the relationship thing is important because when it’s not us and them and its your friend who’s having the problem, all a sudden, who cares if you ever drive a new car. It goes away."
"I almost kind of think that we need to get over that we’re making a tuna fish sandwich over there [tonight’s meal, shared with people from the neighborhood] and it’s really if we can get more folks to come join us from the middle class, that’s really the ministry, that we do our ministry in our relationships here. "
"I’m asking, well how do you evangelize?
so I’m sitting in the backseat….you know you’re going to the food bank, you’re doing all that, but how do you, how are you ministering to these people, "Name"'s like, I’ll tell you the secret….drum roll please….this is it, he says. “they’re ministering to you”
I went, oh. Oh. I’m done with my question. So when I went to see them, they were not, they were trying to minister to me to change my life. You know, that was a pretty awesome moment. But that was a big thing. Are you printing tracks? I think about that all the time when I’m thinking “you doing this right” and well, defeated sounding, I don’t know…. "
"Jesus kind of did that too. Granted he fought the system, and it got him killed. We struggle with that the system that I was bucking happened to be this church that I was attending, kind of seemed to cause more animosity than not, even though I wanted them to buck the system with me, which I really thought was a great idea."
"We had our own dichotomy. There were people from particularly Conservative denominational backgrounds who didn’t believe in drinking or even going into bars because you should avoid the very appearance of evil. [sarcasm, laughter] you know, like Jesus did. Oh wait, no. And then we had people coming in from 12 step groups."
"But that is kind just our theory behind living in community, is that it’s a lot of giving, gifting of yourself and your time for the sake of others. "
"Well, we can go to Acts 2. The family of believers they had everything in common. Didn’t mean they were like, “really, you like watching lost, I like watching lost” they shared common resources, obviously, they had common faith. And so in some aspects its kind of like being in your church family all the time. It’s a lot harder to stumble away from your faith when everyday another believer in your house sees you and talks to you. "
"I think it is very much the way God intends for the body of Christ to be. I like it that, though, I know that the king james version says mansion, I’m averse to that translation, Jesus says in my father’s house there are many rooms. And so, heck, if we’re all going to be roommates in heaven, we could probably use the practice. "
"Its actually what we’re talking about right now as a discussion series at Colossians—stewardship isn’t just about money. Right now you’re stewarding this relationship that you found online and we’re doing our best to steward it for the sake of the kingdom. Later we might steward it for the kingdom by going out and having a beer and just encouraging one another, hanging out and having a good time. But stewardship is a big thing that needs to be rethought. It isn’t just about us, its about what God’s given us."
enjoy. post or email me comments on specific quotes, hopefully some are thought-provoking
"Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement would say the sociologists call us intentional communities I like to say that we are communities of need. You know, communities of need, people that know that they are needy so they get together. Um, so intentional community is kind of a descriptive term from the outside but I take it to be a fairly true description that most of the people who are doing this thing are intentional about living together with other people who want to have a common way of life that points them towards the gospel. "
"welcome is the way that you acknowledge someone’s worth, you know recognize their dignity and shelter them"
"[sharing a meal]--: It’s a great leveler—everybody needs to eat. You all have to eat, great equalizer. There’s something important about taking nourishment together. Eating’s just a very…if you think somebody’s disgusting, eating with them, it freaks you out. You might ride next to them in the subway but you don’t want to eat with them, if they spit all over or they smell funny. So eating together really breaks down a lot of social inhibitions, its an act of having to care for someone, when you eat with someone, you provide food for them."
"I think we’ve learned to question some of the kind of radial simplicity that has come up out of the all-white communities and kind of not see that as another kind of righteousness that we need to cling to but rather try to be true to the relationships we have here. I feel like that’s something we’ve learned."
"Well we try not to be a charity. I am pretty convinced that bureaucracies impersonalize our relationships with people which creates dishonesty and all sorts of other nasty things and so we’ve been committed to not being a charity because we want to for one, have authentic relationships with people that we come in contact with but we also want to encourage the rest of the church to have real relationships. Jesus said, you know, the poor will always be with you and I don’t think he was saying so don’t worry about them I think he was saying you’ve got to build real relationship so that maybe there aren’t poor folk so that everyone has enough. "
"I think the charity thing kind of impersonalizes it. And for one thing it makes it easy for us to maintain our roles. The person we’re serving is the client and we’re the service provider in a sort of charity model. And so the maintenance of the model requires that we all stay in our roles. And so charity, sort of assumes we’ll always need the poor because like, that’s my job. (joking almost) If they’re aren’t any poor people, I lose my job. I’d rather say that in the kingdom of God Jesus invites rich and poor to live in an honest relationship with one another and to learn the economy of manna where you take what you need and you share the rest so that no one has need. We’re trying to figure out what that means."
"Yes, I think so. It seem to me that, sort of, Evangelical Christianity in America has kind of become a dominant religion that more or less supports the dominant culture and that I think is a sign of compromised Christianity in the history of the church, all the way back to when the Roman Empire became sort of officially Christian. "
"So what it seems to me is that people at the margins are always doing is trying to develop tactics to try and subvert the dominant system in ways that will point towards the kingdom of God. As opposed to developing a sort of grand strategy that sets up some sort of alternate empire. There’s no ground on which to set up an alternative empire because the culture is everything and us and also that assumes that we have a lot of power and control. I think that the sort of love that Jesus teaches leaves you without a lot of power and control. So its about sort of, you know, almost like guerilla warfare, to get the kind of tactics we need to within the world that is to try and subvert it and have little explosions of grace and God’s kingdom. "
"I think often times, especially in the modern world, we have kind of assumed that religion wasn’t about that stuff. Sometimes it’s said that religion’s not political or religion’s not social or the sociologists say that religion is all culture. I think actually, you know, America offers us a way of life. It comes through things like television commercials and public education and you know, the sort of practices of everyday life, going to the mall (he chuckles). Whatever, whatever it means to be sort of average American. And we kind of learn this way of life that we all think we are making our personal choices to do individual but as a matter of fact, all of us end up looking pretty much the same. All of us are choosing individually to do pretty much the same thing."
"I think, I think, the missional Emerging church is what I’m really interested in. And that can be a lot of different things, I really think that a mega church can be really fruitful and engaging in the world around it. And I think that a house church can be dead as dead. I don’t think the model matters, I think contextualization is the issue. That’s where I think we’re different from some groups that we’ve spoken with, not better, just different. "
"We’ve found so many redemptive things about using bicycles. About walking, about being in public places like the city parks and meeting people that if we were in a private place, we would never have got to see. So I think that’s been another wonderful thing about trying to be focused on the city and, you know, outward. Journeying out, the idea that the church needs to journey out. But in journeying out we’ve just discovered that we don’t have to come up with lots of clever things or even have money because God uses all kinds of ordinary circumstances, places, things in our lives to accomplish things in our lives."
"we believe that the gospel has got the best news, its better than what the liberals are offering, its better than what the local, thoughtful, beautiful activists are thinking, its better than all of that and its not even in competition with all of them, we can get alongside these people, with the gospel, find God already working and really see the gospel living and meeting every need in different dimensions of people’s lives. That means everybody can be involved at some level. And that’s the kingdom, we think the kingdom is real, Jesus already brought it in and we just get to somehow stumble into it and sometime only get glimpses of it."
"We just know it’s a long term view. It could be 20 years before we could say we have real friends. And that’s the attitude we have, it’s very slow and very steady."
"Kind of like we talked about the other night, some of us are trying to bring that up. All of us know it, all of us understand it, knows that that’s true. How does "Our community name here" effect that? We don’t know the answer, what we’re doing right now, because everyday’s a new day and we don’t know what we’re doing, in a good way, we just show up. That’s kind of been, it’s not that we don’t struggle with those issues. We read a lot from these people that are dealing with these big issues, global issues. But when you’re trying to balance that, oh there’s that word, well Jordace and Juan doesn’t have shoes or you know their clothes haven’t been washed in two weeks, you’ve got upfront, in your face need, this tends to pull more of your attention even though this is driving that."
"I guess it just feels like there’s no other agenda than to love and be with people. We’re built that way. I think once you get a taste of that, you need it. We’re built to function in that way, we’re not built to live in all our little isolated boxes and air conditioned cars wipping around, waving “hey!.”"
"You know, everybody wants the party at their house. Everybody wants to say we did this, look at us, give us the money, I don’t think it’s always about the money. But if all of those hearts and all of those resources came together even in just one little neighborhood, these kids wouldn’t be walking the streets, people would have so much more of what they need, it could be so beautiful. And instead, everybody wants the party at their house. "
"I don’t say that lightly when I say we love people because it can sound really, but we really do have people that we love and are connected to and have relationship with and want fuller relationship with. But it just never feels like enough. How can that be enough? And yet when you really start to dig into making bigger change, more systematic change, well then that generally means you have to build a big organization and sooner or later you have to have staff and paper work and grants and pretty soon you’re spending all your time….."
"How do they know we are Christians…starts singing”they will know we are Christians by our love..” It’s an excellent question and we kind of battled that, duked it out a little. It’s a hard place to find language for when you’re not living in the neighborhood. Are we there to convert people? No. Are we there? Yes. We’re not there to convert people but we want, like "Man in group" said, people to know the joy that we have and how different everything is when you have the love of God and when you really understand that God loves you. So do we talk about that enough? I don’t know. "
"But it’s not, it’s almost that we just love. And through that love they see Jesus in us, and that’s the idea. More so than you put the 10 commandments on the wall or whatever, kind of thing. And the conversation comes around, a lot. You know, you just get talking to somebody, and lots of the adults especially have read the bible a lot more than me. So if the conversation does come up, I’m running. And even for folks that can’t read, they’ve had to memorize from stories from other people. So its really amazing the know how much they know from the bible. Where I’ve got to go well I know that’s somewhere in John or Luke and then I’ve got to go do a search on the web where they can go oh yea because that’s their resource for the word of God so that’s always pretty amazing. So it’s not a one way thing, it’s kind of a two way thing too. So that’s where the Christianity is, more of a fellowship than a proselytizing, whatever that word is."
"So I think the solution for the middle class problem that is there, working too much too busy, got to have a Lexus or all those things, that is the answer. To meet Jesus in the poor. And when you do that, all those things become unimportant. Your wants, you realize, become unimportant when you realize that your friend’s, because you built relationships, needs are not being met. All of a sudden your want for a car is not important when your friend now can’t keep the house warm in the winter. All of a sudden takes on a whole different meaning. So that’s why the relationship thing is important because when it’s not us and them and its your friend who’s having the problem, all a sudden, who cares if you ever drive a new car. It goes away."
"I almost kind of think that we need to get over that we’re making a tuna fish sandwich over there [tonight’s meal, shared with people from the neighborhood] and it’s really if we can get more folks to come join us from the middle class, that’s really the ministry, that we do our ministry in our relationships here. "
"I’m asking, well how do you evangelize?
so I’m sitting in the backseat….you know you’re going to the food bank, you’re doing all that, but how do you, how are you ministering to these people, "Name"'s like, I’ll tell you the secret….drum roll please….this is it, he says. “they’re ministering to you”
I went, oh. Oh. I’m done with my question. So when I went to see them, they were not, they were trying to minister to me to change my life. You know, that was a pretty awesome moment. But that was a big thing. Are you printing tracks? I think about that all the time when I’m thinking “you doing this right” and well, defeated sounding, I don’t know…. "
"Jesus kind of did that too. Granted he fought the system, and it got him killed. We struggle with that the system that I was bucking happened to be this church that I was attending, kind of seemed to cause more animosity than not, even though I wanted them to buck the system with me, which I really thought was a great idea."
"We had our own dichotomy. There were people from particularly Conservative denominational backgrounds who didn’t believe in drinking or even going into bars because you should avoid the very appearance of evil. [sarcasm, laughter] you know, like Jesus did. Oh wait, no. And then we had people coming in from 12 step groups."
"But that is kind just our theory behind living in community, is that it’s a lot of giving, gifting of yourself and your time for the sake of others. "
"Well, we can go to Acts 2. The family of believers they had everything in common. Didn’t mean they were like, “really, you like watching lost, I like watching lost” they shared common resources, obviously, they had common faith. And so in some aspects its kind of like being in your church family all the time. It’s a lot harder to stumble away from your faith when everyday another believer in your house sees you and talks to you. "
"I think it is very much the way God intends for the body of Christ to be. I like it that, though, I know that the king james version says mansion, I’m averse to that translation, Jesus says in my father’s house there are many rooms. And so, heck, if we’re all going to be roommates in heaven, we could probably use the practice. "
"Its actually what we’re talking about right now as a discussion series at Colossians—stewardship isn’t just about money. Right now you’re stewarding this relationship that you found online and we’re doing our best to steward it for the sake of the kingdom. Later we might steward it for the kingdom by going out and having a beer and just encouraging one another, hanging out and having a good time. But stewardship is a big thing that needs to be rethought. It isn’t just about us, its about what God’s given us."
enjoy. post or email me comments on specific quotes, hopefully some are thought-provoking
Is anybody here?
Rachel Berryman came to visit me last night on her day off from art camp. It was absolutely amazing to see her, see something new and exciting on fire and light up inside of her spirit! I can't wait to watch her attack WM with new excitment. It was great to hear not only some about Prauge, but also her Eurotrip and this summer, it felt really special.
We wandered our way over to another part of Providence I hadn't been to yet--Atwell Ave, the Italian section, some have said the remanant of the mafia area of town I think? But its a pretty hoping street, we had pizza for dinner and wine and gelatto/cannoli dessert, it was pretty neat.
But we're walking over there, and I'm all excited to show Rachel this new city I've found, all the history I've discovered...and there's basically no one around, it seemed this small city was largely abandoned. I'm telling her stories of Providence Revitalization plans and then realizing that Providence is still working its way back to something right now. Its still a very small city--174,000 people. We would turn streets and we could walk in the street. It was odd to realize I live on the east-side busy section of town and pretty much the next consistently busy section is Atwell Ave, which requires a bit of walking to get to and a cut over 95.
I'd only been to Providence during the day really before, and I'd only stayed in the clearly downtown areas. I've done quite a bit of wandering and for the most part, now I've seen just about all there is to see of Providence in terms of major landmarks and areas. Maybe last night was a good time to notice a turning point, to notice that maybe this city isn't exactly what I thought it was, and what a good time to do it too.....with still 3 weeks left to explore.
I wonder if I could live in New England, poll, am I up for it?
We wandered our way over to another part of Providence I hadn't been to yet--Atwell Ave, the Italian section, some have said the remanant of the mafia area of town I think? But its a pretty hoping street, we had pizza for dinner and wine and gelatto/cannoli dessert, it was pretty neat.
But we're walking over there, and I'm all excited to show Rachel this new city I've found, all the history I've discovered...and there's basically no one around, it seemed this small city was largely abandoned. I'm telling her stories of Providence Revitalization plans and then realizing that Providence is still working its way back to something right now. Its still a very small city--174,000 people. We would turn streets and we could walk in the street. It was odd to realize I live on the east-side busy section of town and pretty much the next consistently busy section is Atwell Ave, which requires a bit of walking to get to and a cut over 95.
I'd only been to Providence during the day really before, and I'd only stayed in the clearly downtown areas. I've done quite a bit of wandering and for the most part, now I've seen just about all there is to see of Providence in terms of major landmarks and areas. Maybe last night was a good time to notice a turning point, to notice that maybe this city isn't exactly what I thought it was, and what a good time to do it too.....with still 3 weeks left to explore.
I wonder if I could live in New England, poll, am I up for it?
Saturday, July 15, 2006
A Year Later 7/15: Providence, RI, Brown Unv.
-------
I sometimes sit back and wonder how I ended up here, what my purpose is in this place. It is so different from what I thought I'd ever be doing. I'm never one really doing "random" things, hoping/praying they become purposeful, I'm much more likely to be doing purposeful things, on purpose, almost writing out their purpose for myself.
I can't help but think almost a year ago, I stood up in California and accepted a calling on my life, one I still intend to fulfill, to spend at least 2 years--though really, it was meant to be our lives, to be in service to the urban poor, whether through education, advocacy or incarnational ministry.
I remembered yesterday as I got the question from a group of kids about my eyebrow ring, this time instead of just giving them the stock answer of I went to thailand and came back and did it, I gave them the real story. I told them about the biblical idea of an ebeneezer, remembering God's faithfulness in our past as a way to trust for the future.......my reminder to myself that I have accepted God's calling on my life, I am set apart and that the rest of my life should begin to line up into that direction now.
How far away from that I am now.....
I know I am here for a reason.
I sometimes sit back and wonder how I ended up here, what my purpose is in this place. It is so different from what I thought I'd ever be doing. I'm never one really doing "random" things, hoping/praying they become purposeful, I'm much more likely to be doing purposeful things, on purpose, almost writing out their purpose for myself.
I can't help but think almost a year ago, I stood up in California and accepted a calling on my life, one I still intend to fulfill, to spend at least 2 years--though really, it was meant to be our lives, to be in service to the urban poor, whether through education, advocacy or incarnational ministry.
I remembered yesterday as I got the question from a group of kids about my eyebrow ring, this time instead of just giving them the stock answer of I went to thailand and came back and did it, I gave them the real story. I told them about the biblical idea of an ebeneezer, remembering God's faithfulness in our past as a way to trust for the future.......my reminder to myself that I have accepted God's calling on my life, I am set apart and that the rest of my life should begin to line up into that direction now.
How far away from that I am now.....
I know I am here for a reason.
Temptations of working for the Rich
As this week draws to a close, I reflect on how somewhat easy and really cushy this job has been.
The SPARK middle school parents pay I think somewhere in the range of $1,000-2,0000/week to send their kids to Brown to learn about science for a week, or basically a rich, smart kid version of camp. I say this knowing I am fairly wealthy by world standards, but is ceases to amaze me how spoiled or well-taken care of the kids here are.
For one, its camp. These kids all got college singles that are larger than the room that Laura and I together will share next year. Yes, there isn't airconditioning....but I haven't been hot at all, the weather is beautiful. There is no cleaning involved, unlike every other camp I've been to that required kitchen duty or bathroom cleaning, something. The food is great....well I'm not picky, but even when we leave campus we get catered lunches, no one is required to drink anything other than bottled water, we bought individual packets of popcorn for the movie, and the closing reception had pastieries and fresh fruit.....I mind you this is camp! Or maybe it really isn't.
I also see in myself here the strong temptation to get used to the ability here to live the "good life," and take all the perks that come along with being with the rich or working closely with them. I'm getting paid almost double what I got paid at KAA, and at the end of the day I'm really only working 14 days with kids, free room and board for about 3 other weeks involved, its crazy. I get free fancy pizza and ben and jerry's at least weekly, other free treats as well.
The parents have bought me presents on top of already paying tuition for their kids here. Amongst those things that I have received so far include a ton of leftover snacks, a brown nalgene bottle, a necklace, a sizeable Barne's and Noble gift card and $100 cash, and this is only for somewhat watching their kids for 6 days! Wow, how nice, yet how scary to think I could get used to this kind of showering of gifts.
The job of watching kids here is just so different than anything ever was at KAA--at KAA all free time/evening activities were for getting to know new kids and making sure you were with kids all the time, I remember the mantra "if you're with another counselor and there aren't tons of kids along...you are wrong!" When they got in trouble, we ran sprints with them. We only got 2.5 days off. I taught sports classes outside in the hot sun all day long. Seems worlds away now as I am able to shower daily, have my own room, use a computer and sleep in a real bed. But maybe this isn't comparable, it isn't really "camp." Here all the counselors hang out together during events, the kids are for the most part extremely well-behaved, and the problems are pretty much non-existent.
The SPARK middle school parents pay I think somewhere in the range of $1,000-2,0000/week to send their kids to Brown to learn about science for a week, or basically a rich, smart kid version of camp. I say this knowing I am fairly wealthy by world standards, but is ceases to amaze me how spoiled or well-taken care of the kids here are.
For one, its camp. These kids all got college singles that are larger than the room that Laura and I together will share next year. Yes, there isn't airconditioning....but I haven't been hot at all, the weather is beautiful. There is no cleaning involved, unlike every other camp I've been to that required kitchen duty or bathroom cleaning, something. The food is great....well I'm not picky, but even when we leave campus we get catered lunches, no one is required to drink anything other than bottled water, we bought individual packets of popcorn for the movie, and the closing reception had pastieries and fresh fruit.....I mind you this is camp! Or maybe it really isn't.
I also see in myself here the strong temptation to get used to the ability here to live the "good life," and take all the perks that come along with being with the rich or working closely with them. I'm getting paid almost double what I got paid at KAA, and at the end of the day I'm really only working 14 days with kids, free room and board for about 3 other weeks involved, its crazy. I get free fancy pizza and ben and jerry's at least weekly, other free treats as well.
The parents have bought me presents on top of already paying tuition for their kids here. Amongst those things that I have received so far include a ton of leftover snacks, a brown nalgene bottle, a necklace, a sizeable Barne's and Noble gift card and $100 cash, and this is only for somewhat watching their kids for 6 days! Wow, how nice, yet how scary to think I could get used to this kind of showering of gifts.
The job of watching kids here is just so different than anything ever was at KAA--at KAA all free time/evening activities were for getting to know new kids and making sure you were with kids all the time, I remember the mantra "if you're with another counselor and there aren't tons of kids along...you are wrong!" When they got in trouble, we ran sprints with them. We only got 2.5 days off. I taught sports classes outside in the hot sun all day long. Seems worlds away now as I am able to shower daily, have my own room, use a computer and sleep in a real bed. But maybe this isn't comparable, it isn't really "camp." Here all the counselors hang out together during events, the kids are for the most part extremely well-behaved, and the problems are pretty much non-existent.
SPARK Week one in Review 7/15
Well, week one is done.
Some highlights:
-a class called "forces of Nature," with 16 kids, we learned about weather, downloading weather maps and "wild weather"--hail, tornadoes, hurricanes, and lightning.
--as part of our class we spent a day in South County Rhode Island "coring" a piece of earth, done with a motor.....comes out as a long "tube" of dirt and sand in layers. The sand layer represent when the salt marsh we were measuring was over-run by the ocean with sand (indicates a major hurricane....they could measure as long as 5,000+ years back!).
-One kid in our class was self-reportedly more intelligent than all his peers at home. He asks questions constantly in class, often interrupting the ever-patient professor. He left the week with his evaluation saying he came to find smart kids and was disappointed these kids even didn't care as much about learning as he did. I say I could sympathize, but he had an obnoxious side as well.....the other part of his evaluation (he knew I was reading them) said "Kate was awful. Fire her."
--Evening activities were alright: bowling, laser tag and skating, a movie on campus, a talent show (RA fun dance!), and a bonafide middle-school dance! (the RAs were the only one's dancing except for a few bursts from scandelous girls or boys head banging). There were some mummy-slow dances as well.....good fun!
--Overall, the middle schoolers were fine. They were catty, the girls were mean to each other, they were odd around the boys, everyone's sense of humor was a little lame or just weird.....but with some patience and a good attitude, it was more than tolerable.
Some highlights:
-a class called "forces of Nature," with 16 kids, we learned about weather, downloading weather maps and "wild weather"--hail, tornadoes, hurricanes, and lightning.
--as part of our class we spent a day in South County Rhode Island "coring" a piece of earth, done with a motor.....comes out as a long "tube" of dirt and sand in layers. The sand layer represent when the salt marsh we were measuring was over-run by the ocean with sand (indicates a major hurricane....they could measure as long as 5,000+ years back!).
-One kid in our class was self-reportedly more intelligent than all his peers at home. He asks questions constantly in class, often interrupting the ever-patient professor. He left the week with his evaluation saying he came to find smart kids and was disappointed these kids even didn't care as much about learning as he did. I say I could sympathize, but he had an obnoxious side as well.....the other part of his evaluation (he knew I was reading them) said "Kate was awful. Fire her."
--Evening activities were alright: bowling, laser tag and skating, a movie on campus, a talent show (RA fun dance!), and a bonafide middle-school dance! (the RAs were the only one's dancing except for a few bursts from scandelous girls or boys head banging). There were some mummy-slow dances as well.....good fun!
--Overall, the middle schoolers were fine. They were catty, the girls were mean to each other, they were odd around the boys, everyone's sense of humor was a little lame or just weird.....but with some patience and a good attitude, it was more than tolerable.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Reviving Ophelia: Middle school development
Coinciding with the beginning of my time as a middle school science camp counselor, I got my hands on the book Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls.
This book has really opened up my eyes to seeing not only these girls but myself in a different light. Its actually a painful read.
I wonder if a book like this could really make me want to call myself a feminist--or at least challenge the fact that I have trouble labeling myself as such. The author states that women and young girls shy from women's empowerment because its seen as ironically, unfemine and basically taking a stand against the male race, well duh, this isn't new information. But I really felt challenged as I read it.....coming out of my adolscent "self-absorbed"(another concept she harps on, that young girls find themselves constantly at the center of their universe, not selfishly necessarily, but by nature....), but coming out of this stage of life or at least getting to watch these girls go through it, I have a lot more sympathy.
I want these girls to believe in themselves. I want them to value themselves for more than just being beautiful or an object to look at. I'm tired of hearing them say "I'm stupid," or purposely fail at an activity because they don't want to appear too engaged---both for the sake of the boys and the other girls around.
The author stresses how girls who are in the pre-adolescent phase are a wealth of livelihood and passions. I remember this in my own life, I read countless books about the Holocaust or weather or plane crashes or just about anything. My parents tell stories about me being loud and able to command a crowd....it seems very foreign to the self I became in adolescence, timid and scared to say the embarassing word, realizing the social sanctions for my actions or words.
The passions begin to subside with adolescence. She says during these adolescent years girls must learn that what they want to do and what is important to them is no longer as great of a priority as learning what it means to please others---which often accomipanies giving up your dreams. I remember in my own life the beginnings of the obssessions, whether hair, clothes, cliques, who was mad at who, categorizing people into my mind, trying to find a way to make sure that at least I wasn't at the bottom of the heap....and being heartbroken when I calculated that I was.
She says only in the post-adolescent years do girls again get a chance to regain or develop passions again, though many girls lose that part of their "selves" never to be found again. I feel thankful that I have begun to show passion again in my life, whether its a passion for my faith or justice or urban poverty, I've seen in the past few years a passion grow in myself that seemed dormant for a long time, lost to thoughts and time spent on obssessing over myself and who I needed to be in order to earn the love of others.
There were many times reading this in the midst of this experience I wanted to cry, times I want to intervene and tell them to stop being so self-absorbed or to stop being so mean to each other or to tell them their self-worth will not come in how sexually they dress or dance or how much attention they garner from others, even when it comes from putting down others.
It's been hearbreaking and has really made me think. So far I'm trying to compliment the girls I interact with more about the comments they make in class or the way they treat someone, avoiding compliments about their appearance or ability to remain silent. I'm trying to boost confidence, though I know that's something I'm not really going to be able to do, they'll have to learn for themselves.
I pity my parents also as I read it, I want to apologize.
This book has really opened up my eyes to seeing not only these girls but myself in a different light. Its actually a painful read.
I wonder if a book like this could really make me want to call myself a feminist--or at least challenge the fact that I have trouble labeling myself as such. The author states that women and young girls shy from women's empowerment because its seen as ironically, unfemine and basically taking a stand against the male race, well duh, this isn't new information. But I really felt challenged as I read it.....coming out of my adolscent "self-absorbed"(another concept she harps on, that young girls find themselves constantly at the center of their universe, not selfishly necessarily, but by nature....), but coming out of this stage of life or at least getting to watch these girls go through it, I have a lot more sympathy.
I want these girls to believe in themselves. I want them to value themselves for more than just being beautiful or an object to look at. I'm tired of hearing them say "I'm stupid," or purposely fail at an activity because they don't want to appear too engaged---both for the sake of the boys and the other girls around.
The author stresses how girls who are in the pre-adolescent phase are a wealth of livelihood and passions. I remember this in my own life, I read countless books about the Holocaust or weather or plane crashes or just about anything. My parents tell stories about me being loud and able to command a crowd....it seems very foreign to the self I became in adolescence, timid and scared to say the embarassing word, realizing the social sanctions for my actions or words.
The passions begin to subside with adolescence. She says during these adolescent years girls must learn that what they want to do and what is important to them is no longer as great of a priority as learning what it means to please others---which often accomipanies giving up your dreams. I remember in my own life the beginnings of the obssessions, whether hair, clothes, cliques, who was mad at who, categorizing people into my mind, trying to find a way to make sure that at least I wasn't at the bottom of the heap....and being heartbroken when I calculated that I was.
She says only in the post-adolescent years do girls again get a chance to regain or develop passions again, though many girls lose that part of their "selves" never to be found again. I feel thankful that I have begun to show passion again in my life, whether its a passion for my faith or justice or urban poverty, I've seen in the past few years a passion grow in myself that seemed dormant for a long time, lost to thoughts and time spent on obssessing over myself and who I needed to be in order to earn the love of others.
There were many times reading this in the midst of this experience I wanted to cry, times I want to intervene and tell them to stop being so self-absorbed or to stop being so mean to each other or to tell them their self-worth will not come in how sexually they dress or dance or how much attention they garner from others, even when it comes from putting down others.
It's been hearbreaking and has really made me think. So far I'm trying to compliment the girls I interact with more about the comments they make in class or the way they treat someone, avoiding compliments about their appearance or ability to remain silent. I'm trying to boost confidence, though I know that's something I'm not really going to be able to do, they'll have to learn for themselves.
I pity my parents also as I read it, I want to apologize.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
7/8 Newport Rhode Island
Today I went on one of the longest day-trips of my life (6:45 am-10:45pm) to Newport, Rhode Island.
Newport was the pleasure island of the rich and richer during the height of the gilded age. I wasn't sure what the sentiment was supposed to be going through these ginormous houses....wow? that's grossely overdone? I want this for myself? Wow, I should work harder to get this? This is beautiful?
The other thing that struck me was the Preservation Society. In Newport there is a large group of people who put a lot of effort into keeping these old homes open. Not just a lot of effort but tons of money--and volunteer hours. This got me thinking about the nature of volunteerism. Sociologists would tell us the idea of "volunteerism" has been born in a lot of ways out of white priviledge and separating the haves and have-nots in society. Often minority culture doesn't qualify the helping, its just duty or the right thing to do.
But in regards to the arts, its interesting how someone can volunteer, I guess put their time towards something of good-end (preservation of art, history and culture), and still never encounter the poor. I guess a lot of charity things do this. But volunteering is always seen as so honorable, such a "good thing to do," but this kind of volunteering is such a high-class form of volunteerism, you'd have to be somebody in order to snag this unpaid gig anyway.
Just thoughts.
Rest of day was good. Saw 2 mansions. Went on a 2 hour hike around the coast of the Atlantic, gorgeous rocky beaches I've been dying to see! Ate clam chowder, some dish called necks in a shell?, and drank Narragansatt Beer, a local beer. Watched the sunset from an Anorandak (sp?) chair and spoke with two older, recently retired women. It was a good day.
Newport was the pleasure island of the rich and richer during the height of the gilded age. I wasn't sure what the sentiment was supposed to be going through these ginormous houses....wow? that's grossely overdone? I want this for myself? Wow, I should work harder to get this? This is beautiful?
The other thing that struck me was the Preservation Society. In Newport there is a large group of people who put a lot of effort into keeping these old homes open. Not just a lot of effort but tons of money--and volunteer hours. This got me thinking about the nature of volunteerism. Sociologists would tell us the idea of "volunteerism" has been born in a lot of ways out of white priviledge and separating the haves and have-nots in society. Often minority culture doesn't qualify the helping, its just duty or the right thing to do.
But in regards to the arts, its interesting how someone can volunteer, I guess put their time towards something of good-end (preservation of art, history and culture), and still never encounter the poor. I guess a lot of charity things do this. But volunteering is always seen as so honorable, such a "good thing to do," but this kind of volunteering is such a high-class form of volunteerism, you'd have to be somebody in order to snag this unpaid gig anyway.
Just thoughts.
Rest of day was good. Saw 2 mansions. Went on a 2 hour hike around the coast of the Atlantic, gorgeous rocky beaches I've been dying to see! Ate clam chowder, some dish called necks in a shell?, and drank Narragansatt Beer, a local beer. Watched the sunset from an Anorandak (sp?) chair and spoke with two older, recently retired women. It was a good day.
7/7 New England has something to teach You
"New England has something to teach you about your faith." That's what one of the campus ministers here at Brown told me when we had coffee on Friday. He talks about his own process of having to deconstruct what "conversion" or even faith meant in light of this new setting.
We talked about how it was to be a Christian in a non-saturated (or Christendom) some would say kind of setting. He talks about it being very hard here. Their numbers of course are small. He is spread between 3 campuses. He talks about the parable of the sower, how here the soil is hard, its almost a post-Christian society. He says in the general process of helping transform people he has to do a lot of "weeding" out of lies or untruths about god, religion, christianity. Pluralism, definitely came up.
He says he was surprised by the way people responded to a Christianity based on social justice issues or even personal justice issues, but that in a lot of ways this area of the country wants to pretend sin doesn't exist (he did say they'd "lost the concept of sin"), that personal morality is unimportant. Maybe not exact words, but the general concept. Of course, we all know one cannot become too overly obssessed either in the personal morality or social justice directions....forgetting that the gospel is found somewhere in the intersection of all these things.
He also mentioned a generally lacking in this area of people calling people into conversion or transformation. I think what he was referencing is that a lot of people hear things from the church or Christians, either socially-related messages or whatever, they may like it or be drawn by god to these places or ministries, attending regularly even in some cases. However, the problem came that people were rarely being challenged to have transformation take place in their lives and selves.
It was not all bad.....
He talked about because "the ground is so hard," and being a Christian here can be so difficult when people grow up with little background to be rooted in, those that do survive and stay Christians tend to be very vibrant, lively Christians. We talked a lot about finding that middle ground between assimilating into the culture and becoming complacent and being too adversely affected by the culture and shocked to the point of inaction.
One interesting passage he referenced as Acts 17 where Paul goes into some city and sees they have tons of idols, so many they even have an idol to the "unnamed God," in case they forgot one. Instead of telling these people: damn you, you are hopeless and clearly idolatrous in extreme ways, Paul instead remarks "I see you are religious people....let me tell you about the God I know." Paul works with what the people have, with what's already in their system, what they can undestand. That's how he described ministry here.
On another note....
After I saw this guy, I walked over and joined the end of a visitors-welcome bible study going on in the student union. It was lead by a couple of his students, I didn't find out about it from him but instead from a poster. Turns out one of the guys there has 2 friends that go to the Wednesday night bible study I mentioned in an earlier entry. Those same people that lead that bible study also volunteer at a ministry the guy mentioned to me (3rd time this week I've heard abotu this service that goes on 1 hour from here). And of course, almost all of these people/minitries were referenced at church.
It is somewhat odd that I've pretty quickly networked into the christian scene here in providence. In other ways its really exciting and really refreshing, it creates a true feeling of an underbelly, a subculture that is alive and working.
We talked about how it was to be a Christian in a non-saturated (or Christendom) some would say kind of setting. He talks about it being very hard here. Their numbers of course are small. He is spread between 3 campuses. He talks about the parable of the sower, how here the soil is hard, its almost a post-Christian society. He says in the general process of helping transform people he has to do a lot of "weeding" out of lies or untruths about god, religion, christianity. Pluralism, definitely came up.
He says he was surprised by the way people responded to a Christianity based on social justice issues or even personal justice issues, but that in a lot of ways this area of the country wants to pretend sin doesn't exist (he did say they'd "lost the concept of sin"), that personal morality is unimportant. Maybe not exact words, but the general concept. Of course, we all know one cannot become too overly obssessed either in the personal morality or social justice directions....forgetting that the gospel is found somewhere in the intersection of all these things.
He also mentioned a generally lacking in this area of people calling people into conversion or transformation. I think what he was referencing is that a lot of people hear things from the church or Christians, either socially-related messages or whatever, they may like it or be drawn by god to these places or ministries, attending regularly even in some cases. However, the problem came that people were rarely being challenged to have transformation take place in their lives and selves.
It was not all bad.....
He talked about because "the ground is so hard," and being a Christian here can be so difficult when people grow up with little background to be rooted in, those that do survive and stay Christians tend to be very vibrant, lively Christians. We talked a lot about finding that middle ground between assimilating into the culture and becoming complacent and being too adversely affected by the culture and shocked to the point of inaction.
One interesting passage he referenced as Acts 17 where Paul goes into some city and sees they have tons of idols, so many they even have an idol to the "unnamed God," in case they forgot one. Instead of telling these people: damn you, you are hopeless and clearly idolatrous in extreme ways, Paul instead remarks "I see you are religious people....let me tell you about the God I know." Paul works with what the people have, with what's already in their system, what they can undestand. That's how he described ministry here.
On another note....
After I saw this guy, I walked over and joined the end of a visitors-welcome bible study going on in the student union. It was lead by a couple of his students, I didn't find out about it from him but instead from a poster. Turns out one of the guys there has 2 friends that go to the Wednesday night bible study I mentioned in an earlier entry. Those same people that lead that bible study also volunteer at a ministry the guy mentioned to me (3rd time this week I've heard abotu this service that goes on 1 hour from here). And of course, almost all of these people/minitries were referenced at church.
It is somewhat odd that I've pretty quickly networked into the christian scene here in providence. In other ways its really exciting and really refreshing, it creates a true feeling of an underbelly, a subculture that is alive and working.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
7/5 Bible Study
On Sunday when I went to the Renaissance Church, on my way out a girl stopped me, gave me her phone number and invited me to her Wednesday night group that a couple from the church lead.
Not doing anything Wednesday night, I went to what I thought would be a church-related small group or something. Actually turned out to be a non-affiliated bible study that she had found out about off of meeting someone from the bus! Ha!
I would actually venture to call it a house church/bible study. It was pretty amazing. About 20 people there, all my age or older (maybe 50-55 was the age cap?), evenly split men and women. People from all walks of life. We sat in a large circle, sang some songs, and then read Hebrews 10. It was amazing to see such a diverse group of people really getting a lot out of God's word, I didn't speak but just sat back and listened to the wisdom.
And who said New England was godless? (probably me, or at least I thought it.......wrong again).
Not doing anything Wednesday night, I went to what I thought would be a church-related small group or something. Actually turned out to be a non-affiliated bible study that she had found out about off of meeting someone from the bus! Ha!
I would actually venture to call it a house church/bible study. It was pretty amazing. About 20 people there, all my age or older (maybe 50-55 was the age cap?), evenly split men and women. People from all walks of life. We sat in a large circle, sang some songs, and then read Hebrews 10. It was amazing to see such a diverse group of people really getting a lot out of God's word, I didn't speak but just sat back and listened to the wisdom.
And who said New England was godless? (probably me, or at least I thought it.......wrong again).
7/4 Arrived in Providence, Great 4th
I have officially arrived at my most stable location for the summer in Providence, Rhode Island. I have been dreaming of visiting Rhode Island in specific and New England in general for a long time, this is great to finally be here and to be able to see what it is like. In the summer at least.
Transitions are always hard for me though, especially when I go into a situation where I'm supposed to be making new friends, like my job here as a summer RA for middle school students at Brown. My first day was a little rough. However, by the second day I really started to feel like I was connecting with the other RAs.
I also found this wonderful small church very close to campus called Renassiance Church that took me in and made me feel like family. I met many Texans there but mostly very friendly, loving people. I had several dinner invitations within an hour. It's great to see the people of God aren't changing with the location. I am continually getting to experience a lot of hospitality this summer. I'm learning that even that is not going to change when I'm in this location where I was expecting that to stop. Ha!
I got to spend a couple of days with my dear friend Greg in Massachusetts for the 4th. Greg is incredibly hospitable himself, always for all his friends as well. And on top of that he has a great group of friends, they are amazing and I feel so blessed to continue to get invited to spend time with all of them as well. Oh, and it added to my "states visited" count...Mass. down. 4th fireworks in Plymouth! great fun!....and a good acquaintance with the good folks of dunkin dounuts, and the mayflower replica....and the rock remains. Regardless, good times....and its only been 4 days!
Transitions are always hard for me though, especially when I go into a situation where I'm supposed to be making new friends, like my job here as a summer RA for middle school students at Brown. My first day was a little rough. However, by the second day I really started to feel like I was connecting with the other RAs.
I also found this wonderful small church very close to campus called Renassiance Church that took me in and made me feel like family. I met many Texans there but mostly very friendly, loving people. I had several dinner invitations within an hour. It's great to see the people of God aren't changing with the location. I am continually getting to experience a lot of hospitality this summer. I'm learning that even that is not going to change when I'm in this location where I was expecting that to stop. Ha!
I got to spend a couple of days with my dear friend Greg in Massachusetts for the 4th. Greg is incredibly hospitable himself, always for all his friends as well. And on top of that he has a great group of friends, they are amazing and I feel so blessed to continue to get invited to spend time with all of them as well. Oh, and it added to my "states visited" count...Mass. down. 4th fireworks in Plymouth! great fun!....and a good acquaintance with the good folks of dunkin dounuts, and the mayflower replica....and the rock remains. Regardless, good times....and its only been 4 days!
Sunday, July 02, 2006
6/30: Visiting a childhood I don't remember
Location: Princeton, New Jersey
Well, some of you may know this and others not. Before we moved back to Texas when I was 10, we spent almost 3 years living in Princeton, New Jersey. (Evidence for some for why I have no Texas accent).
I had not been back to this community since I was 10 years old. Some neighbor-friends picked me up from the train station (I had to ask someone if this was the right stop, so unfamiliar). The entire drive home until we turned on our street and I saw my old elementary school, we might as well have been any here, I had no idea.
By the next day though getting to go downtown and seeing the old Palmer’s square area, I did get to recognizing some pretty key areas. Most of the shops where I remember my family shopping have since been closed as more upscale and designer shops have moved in. The demographics of the place look about the same, much more diverse than where I come from now. It is still an ivy-league college town though it doesn’t seem to have a large student presence.
Another funny connection here, the church I went to in Princeton has strong ties with Shane and the simple way! The family I had ice cream with in the afternoon talked about seeing him and loving what his group does.
On another thought, having seen 3 of my friends from that era of my life (hadn’t seen any up to this point) within the past 48 hours, I’ve had several people tell me I’m just the same. And I do feel like most of the people I’ve seen have retained a lot of their personalities and qualities over that time period as well, not just physically but basically acting not too far from how they did in the past. I was lacking self-awareness at age 10 though, I wonder, was I obnoxious? Energetic? Interesting to think I haven’t changed.
I ventured over to my old home and got a look at my old house. The decorating looks similar in some places, my mom’s apple wallpaper. My friend and I had placed a time capsule in the closet of my house. We included lots of funny little items—a coin, a lock of my hair, some little toy, a math quiz. I also had a sheet all about my likes and dislikes. I liked (at age 7): my dog, reading…..disliked: hurting my dog(hmm), getting in fights with people (still my least favorite thing now!). There were some pretty funny spelling mistakes: favorite food: articokes. Favorite outfit: Sweat shits and turtle neaks. It was a fun discovery.
I really wonder what my life would have been like had we stayed. I grew up on a busy corner with a bus stop that went directly to NYC. The rest of downtown was walk-able from our home as well. On the other side of my house was the Princeton Jewish community center and synagogue. Since then I’ve lived in an isolated suburb and have had maybe 1-2 Jewish friends. Would I be a Christian? I certainly would’ve had a more culturally and religiously diverse group of friends.
Wasn’t meant to be obviously, as I’ve said to many people these past few days, Texas is home, it always feels that way. And it feels good.
Well, some of you may know this and others not. Before we moved back to Texas when I was 10, we spent almost 3 years living in Princeton, New Jersey. (Evidence for some for why I have no Texas accent).
I had not been back to this community since I was 10 years old. Some neighbor-friends picked me up from the train station (I had to ask someone if this was the right stop, so unfamiliar). The entire drive home until we turned on our street and I saw my old elementary school, we might as well have been any here, I had no idea.
By the next day though getting to go downtown and seeing the old Palmer’s square area, I did get to recognizing some pretty key areas. Most of the shops where I remember my family shopping have since been closed as more upscale and designer shops have moved in. The demographics of the place look about the same, much more diverse than where I come from now. It is still an ivy-league college town though it doesn’t seem to have a large student presence.
Another funny connection here, the church I went to in Princeton has strong ties with Shane and the simple way! The family I had ice cream with in the afternoon talked about seeing him and loving what his group does.
On another thought, having seen 3 of my friends from that era of my life (hadn’t seen any up to this point) within the past 48 hours, I’ve had several people tell me I’m just the same. And I do feel like most of the people I’ve seen have retained a lot of their personalities and qualities over that time period as well, not just physically but basically acting not too far from how they did in the past. I was lacking self-awareness at age 10 though, I wonder, was I obnoxious? Energetic? Interesting to think I haven’t changed.
I ventured over to my old home and got a look at my old house. The decorating looks similar in some places, my mom’s apple wallpaper. My friend and I had placed a time capsule in the closet of my house. We included lots of funny little items—a coin, a lock of my hair, some little toy, a math quiz. I also had a sheet all about my likes and dislikes. I liked (at age 7): my dog, reading…..disliked: hurting my dog(hmm), getting in fights with people (still my least favorite thing now!). There were some pretty funny spelling mistakes: favorite food: articokes. Favorite outfit: Sweat shits and turtle neaks. It was a fun discovery.
I really wonder what my life would have been like had we stayed. I grew up on a busy corner with a bus stop that went directly to NYC. The rest of downtown was walk-able from our home as well. On the other side of my house was the Princeton Jewish community center and synagogue. Since then I’ve lived in an isolated suburb and have had maybe 1-2 Jewish friends. Would I be a Christian? I certainly would’ve had a more culturally and religiously diverse group of friends.
Wasn’t meant to be obviously, as I’ve said to many people these past few days, Texas is home, it always feels that way. And it feels good.
6/29/06: DC with Three Friends.
This past 4 days I’ve have the privilege of getting to spend time with 3 friends, of mine, all separately providing something different for me. Let me describe them, funny if anyone can guess who they are.
My first friend has been my friend a long time. A very calm and calming person. This person, the more I spend time with them the more I value their place in my life. Not the kind of person, on further reflection, that I’m usually friends with at all. Despite some inherent differences, this person doesn’t seem to reject me too often. We make good companions for one another, this person is very easy, at least for me, to just “be” with in some sense or another. The character of this friend unfolds for me over time as well, I see how they express their care for me through what the love languages people would say are the gifts of acts of service and quality time. Though sometimes part of me can be easily offended by my friend not always wanting to listen to my long stories or ideas, taking a step back, I see they really do care, though in a different way. This person is loyal and will be a great provider someday, saying much with their actions. I’m glad we got to spend a lot of time together this past week, it was good to reconnect with someone familiar, chill out a little, and just enjoy this person’s company.
My second friend, is energetic and enthusiastic. This person, though, when not buzzing off of sheer joy and love of life, has a very caring side. It was wonderful to reconnect with this friend to catch up on some things we’ve each been learning this summer. I’m continually impressed with the increasing maturity of this friend of mine, humbly recognizing where they’d been at fault recently. This friend will be the kind of person who keeps up with friends long after college, making a point of seeing various people on a regular basis. Though our time was short, it was good to see this person in a new habitat and see how they’re handling the “working world,” and that is with amazing grace and enthusiasm.
My third friend, very different from the first two, was someone I hadn’t seen in almost 12 years. Amazingly, we got along just fine and had a great conversation. Funny how 3rd graders can pick cool friends too. We lead very different lives now, my friend how boasting a strong interest in “political philosophy,” manifest in their love of their think-tank job and strong engagement with the world around them. I loved the excitement of this interaction, getting to basically catch up on 12 years of life, wow, how to go about it? I really hope to stay I touch with this friend though, recognizing how culturally active and just flat-out interesting they are. It was a great afternoon, good to see how generally enthusiastic and friendly this person was.
I have some great friends.
My first friend has been my friend a long time. A very calm and calming person. This person, the more I spend time with them the more I value their place in my life. Not the kind of person, on further reflection, that I’m usually friends with at all. Despite some inherent differences, this person doesn’t seem to reject me too often. We make good companions for one another, this person is very easy, at least for me, to just “be” with in some sense or another. The character of this friend unfolds for me over time as well, I see how they express their care for me through what the love languages people would say are the gifts of acts of service and quality time. Though sometimes part of me can be easily offended by my friend not always wanting to listen to my long stories or ideas, taking a step back, I see they really do care, though in a different way. This person is loyal and will be a great provider someday, saying much with their actions. I’m glad we got to spend a lot of time together this past week, it was good to reconnect with someone familiar, chill out a little, and just enjoy this person’s company.
My second friend, is energetic and enthusiastic. This person, though, when not buzzing off of sheer joy and love of life, has a very caring side. It was wonderful to reconnect with this friend to catch up on some things we’ve each been learning this summer. I’m continually impressed with the increasing maturity of this friend of mine, humbly recognizing where they’d been at fault recently. This friend will be the kind of person who keeps up with friends long after college, making a point of seeing various people on a regular basis. Though our time was short, it was good to see this person in a new habitat and see how they’re handling the “working world,” and that is with amazing grace and enthusiasm.
My third friend, very different from the first two, was someone I hadn’t seen in almost 12 years. Amazingly, we got along just fine and had a great conversation. Funny how 3rd graders can pick cool friends too. We lead very different lives now, my friend how boasting a strong interest in “political philosophy,” manifest in their love of their think-tank job and strong engagement with the world around them. I loved the excitement of this interaction, getting to basically catch up on 12 years of life, wow, how to go about it? I really hope to stay I touch with this friend though, recognizing how culturally active and just flat-out interesting they are. It was a great afternoon, good to see how generally enthusiastic and friendly this person was.
I have some great friends.
6/28: God and Government?
Location: Washington, DC
God and Government. Is it right for Christians to regularly use the government to achieve “kingdom purposes” (what God wants for the world, God’s will)? Is it what God desires—or only in special circumstances or for special purposes (Ester, etc)?
The anarchists would remind us of passages from Romans 13 and Revelation 13, reminding us that ultimately there are two kingdoms we cohabitate—one of this world, the earthly government that is, and another, being God’s holy kingdom. We American Christians can forget that very often.
So the last seminar/talk I went to at PAPAfest was entitled “Christianity and Anarchy” given by someone I really respect, and 24 hours later, and several states over, arrived at a Sojourner’s conference, basically 3 full days about how Christians should lobby the government and take an active part in politics. There was no talk of how the government was out to subvert and destroy the church. However, I was impressed with several speaker’s emphasis on the church’s need to care for the poor, not just hope in the earthly government to do the job.
We spent a day lobbying on Capitol hill, meaning for me, lobbying Texas Senator John Cornyn. I was really unimpressed with the woman from his staff. We came to talk about the poor and the minimum wage (40hr weeks on the current minimum wage places a family of 4 at almost half the poverty line, not at the poverty line—but half!). The staffer largely avoided the topic, suggesting the need to think about empowering “those people” to get better jobs….so what? How empowering? Education….ummm not funding that much are we? And then supposed people are “empowered,” then what? Then who fills the unskilled jobs. She turned to trying to refer us to the specialist on welfare, funny considering we were talking about the working poor.
Ok, so that’s really harsh, but it wasn’t the best experience. Talking to a Texas senator from a Christian perspective (as we were), you would expect some response at least.
Well, back to my thesis statement there. Having these two ideas in my head—either the one guy who’d advocated for small Christian, almost rebellious centers (growing own food, not watching tv, setting up economies not influenced or dependent on the other essentially) to the others who talked adamantly about working through the government. Well, it was a dilemma and it wasn’t, leaving back at some confusion on the issue but also feeling like that somewhat doesn’t matter really a lot right now either.
In other news, some other highlights: meeting an ex-Iraq soldier now Conscientious Objector, eating dinner with Brian McClaren, and—on a sad note, hearing what I though, in good faith, to be progressive Christians discussing race, only to find some people who didn’t believe there was a race problem in America, or at least totally misunderstood the problem (one man talked on and on about black on white racism in prisons….hmmm not to mention the fact that most of the men in prison are black, speaking of the real race problem).
God and Government. Is it right for Christians to regularly use the government to achieve “kingdom purposes” (what God wants for the world, God’s will)? Is it what God desires—or only in special circumstances or for special purposes (Ester, etc)?
The anarchists would remind us of passages from Romans 13 and Revelation 13, reminding us that ultimately there are two kingdoms we cohabitate—one of this world, the earthly government that is, and another, being God’s holy kingdom. We American Christians can forget that very often.
So the last seminar/talk I went to at PAPAfest was entitled “Christianity and Anarchy” given by someone I really respect, and 24 hours later, and several states over, arrived at a Sojourner’s conference, basically 3 full days about how Christians should lobby the government and take an active part in politics. There was no talk of how the government was out to subvert and destroy the church. However, I was impressed with several speaker’s emphasis on the church’s need to care for the poor, not just hope in the earthly government to do the job.
We spent a day lobbying on Capitol hill, meaning for me, lobbying Texas Senator John Cornyn. I was really unimpressed with the woman from his staff. We came to talk about the poor and the minimum wage (40hr weeks on the current minimum wage places a family of 4 at almost half the poverty line, not at the poverty line—but half!). The staffer largely avoided the topic, suggesting the need to think about empowering “those people” to get better jobs….so what? How empowering? Education….ummm not funding that much are we? And then supposed people are “empowered,” then what? Then who fills the unskilled jobs. She turned to trying to refer us to the specialist on welfare, funny considering we were talking about the working poor.
Ok, so that’s really harsh, but it wasn’t the best experience. Talking to a Texas senator from a Christian perspective (as we were), you would expect some response at least.
Well, back to my thesis statement there. Having these two ideas in my head—either the one guy who’d advocated for small Christian, almost rebellious centers (growing own food, not watching tv, setting up economies not influenced or dependent on the other essentially) to the others who talked adamantly about working through the government. Well, it was a dilemma and it wasn’t, leaving back at some confusion on the issue but also feeling like that somewhat doesn’t matter really a lot right now either.
In other news, some other highlights: meeting an ex-Iraq soldier now Conscientious Objector, eating dinner with Brian McClaren, and—on a sad note, hearing what I though, in good faith, to be progressive Christians discussing race, only to find some people who didn’t believe there was a race problem in America, or at least totally misunderstood the problem (one man talked on and on about black on white racism in prisons….hmmm not to mention the fact that most of the men in prison are black, speaking of the real race problem).
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