Last Stop & Home Base: Oak View, CA

You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.
Wendell Berry

I imagine good teaching as a circle of earnest people sitting down to ask each other meaningful questions. I don't see it as a handing down of answers...
Alice Walker

On Tuesday, August 20, we ended our time in Portland with Lindsay's noon-time flight back to SoCal. She was coaching and chaperoning at the annual Capistrano Valley H.S. girls cross country training camp in Mammoth. Tom drove south through Corvallis, Oregon, to Oregon State University, where his parents met exactly 50 years ago. He took the next week winding south through the rugged Oregon coast and the Redwood Highway of Northern Cal, down into civilization with stops in Sacramento, Berkeley, San Francisco and Santa Barbara.

On Tuesday, August 27, after a week of cross country training camp and recovering, Lindsay took the train to Ventura and Tom picked her up to go celebrate the end of our journey and debrief with Elaine Enns (and share dessert with fellow travel-weary sojourners Tim Nafziger and Charletta Erb!). Elaine and her partner Ched Myers (who had a speaking engagement in Sweden) have been absolutely vital to even imagining this road trip. When we spoke to them of a free summer and asked about some good ideas, they recommended visiting leaders and communities all over North America involved in the "radical discipleship" movement (more specifics on this rich tradition in our next and final posting). We literally laid out the United States road map on Ched & Elaine's kitchen table and they pointed out each and every place that they thought would be worth visiting (and they discussed plenty of places that we were simply not able to visit...alas, we only had 75 days!).

Ched and Elaine have been an irreplacable source of nurture and wisdom for us over these past couple of years. Because they live only 150 miles away (they live one hour north of LA, we live one hour south) and because Ched's 90-year-old mother lives just a stone's throw away from us in Aliso Viejo, we've had opportunities to connect with them over meals, beer & tequila tastings, slumber parties and relaxations on the beach. These times have refreshed, inspired and challenged us to live more intentionally aligned with the Gospel's call to sabbath economics, restorative justice and contemplative creation spirituality.

They possess a rare blend of personality and giftedness. Ched's extroverted intensity plays out in prophetic utterance through pedagogy and scholarship. Elaine's introverted enthusiasm is highlighted by pastoral tenderness through wise intuition and eager encouragement. Both, however, are prophetic and pastoral and both are rooted in decades of experience of challenging work and study. Ched is a 5th generation Californian, theologically trained at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Elaine is a Canadian Mennonite and received her MA in Conflict Management and Peacemaking from the Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary in Fresno. Both have been active in a variety of peace and justice work for decades.

They make up the core of what is the Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries, focused on biblical literacy, church renewal and faith-based witness for justice. They accomplish these tasks through 3-5 day institutes, monthly webinars, speaking engagements, writing and relationship-building. Ched & Elaine are those rare leaders who listen, mindful mentors who allow space for skepticism. They don't claim to have all the answers. They live with awe and wonder at the mystery and majesty of a God found both in a blooming creation and a bleeding crucifix.

I was blown away after reading Ched's ground-breaking commentary on the Gospel of Mark (Binding The Strong Man, 1988) at the end of my seminary journey in 2008. I got a chance to meet Ched over coffee a couple of years later and Ched invited us to come up to the Ojai Valley for a weekend to meet Elaine and find retreat from work and ministry in South Orange County.

Name-dropping Ched and Elaine allowed us to connect with so many great people on this summer journey. Their ministry and experience garner oodles of respect among those committed to biblical scholarship, church work, spiritual direction and social activism all over North America. All these old friends offered so much hospitality to us, a couple of Orange County kids who had relatively little knowledge of the lives and vocations of so many of these pioneers. No longer. We have had the rare opportunity to meet so many and to see their lives up close and personal.

It has been a whirlwind journey, often times needing to pinch ourselves in the presence of greatness, sometimes waking up and wondering where the hell on earth we were. We hope to keep in touch with all of these new friends. But let's be honest, life takes over and proximate relationship become a priority. It will be the cherished memories that rise up over and over that will keep the road trip going into "real life."

I suppose sometime in October I'll be in my classroom (or a local coffeehouse) and something will remind me of the work ethic of Liz McAlister or the wide-eyed wonder of Clancy Dunigan or the energy of Sheldon Good or the warmth of Mike Boucher or the stridency of Mark Van Steenwyk or the consistency of Art Laffin. Or perhaps sometime in November Lindsay will be in the therapy room (or out at the cross country course) and she'll be reminded of the vision of Solveig Nilson-Goodin or the quick wit of Sara Stratton or the curiosity of Isaac Villegas or the dignity-bestowing of Will O'Brien or the hospitality of Wes Howard-Brook. We've already thought of so many of these heroes in the most random of moments back in SoCal.

But, of course, there's nothing quite like being in the presence of real live people who we admire and want to be like. Ched and Elaine will remain a life-line in this upcoming year of teaching and therapy work, intentional community and interpersonal relationship, writing and working with adolescents. We are deeply grateful for the authentic masterpiece of identity and vocation that their coupleship attests to.

Along with our parents and our Open Hearts intentional community, we dedicate all these blog posts to Ched & Elaine, who not only made this 75-day journey possible, but also continue to provide the blueprint and sustenance to raise audacious questions about what "radical discipleship" in South Orange County might actually look like.