America the brave still fears what we don't know
And God loves all his children, is somehow forgotten
But we paraphrase a book written thirty-five-hundred years ago
I don't know.
Macklemore, Seattle native
A lot of people read the Bible stupidly, but that doesn't make it a stupid book.
Wes Howard-Brook, professor of Religious Studies, Seattle University
On Friday night, after a delicious Thai dinner in the surprising little college town of Ellensburg, WA, we drove two more hours and arrived in Sammamish, the home of Tom's cousin Cindy and her husband Greg. Sammamish is a town nestled between Seattle proper to the west and Snohomish Pass (elevation 4,000) to the east. Cindy and Greg live in a beautiful home at the end of a maze of roads about 15 minutes off I-90. It is what they call a "tear-down home," built in the 70s and will, no doubt, inevitably get snatched up by developers who will turn the acreage into 3-4 new homes.
Cindy is the firstborn of all the Airey cousins and is clearly the most organized and committed to staying in contact. She always makes it a point to connect with us when she comes down to SoCal for business with Boeing. In fact, I have fond memories of bonding with both Greg and Cindy on the night of April 2, 2008: we watched the Jayhawks win the national championship together at my parents' house in Mission Viejo. We are tremendously thankful for their hospitality this week and that they sacrificed their usual Saturday (sailing? golfing?) to entertain us!
On Saturday morning, we were delighted to participate in Cindy and Greg's Saturday morning ritual: sleeping in. Apparently, we had slept right through a major summer lightening storm. No surprise. We awoke to cool weather and eventually the four of us, and the energetic Kya (a mysterious collie mix), jogged through their forested neighborhood, past Pine Lake, the soapbox derby and over to cousin Larry's fixer-upper about 2 miles away. Larry and his daughters Alexa and Sydney showed off their pool, new dog and remodeling projects.
Then, it was time to party with the cousins, aunts and uncles. Coming to the Pacific Northwest is a bit like coming home to my roots. My grandfather Val Airey came to the States as a young boy just more than 100 years ago and eventually settled his family in nearby Renton to start his pharmacy business. My dad's younger sisters Kathie and Vicky (see below) still live in the area close to their children and they continue a decade-long tradition of meeting on Sunday mornings for a lakeside walk to stay connected.
On Sunday morning, we met up with Dan Jones at Seattle Mennonite Church in the north district of Lake City. Dan was a Capistrano Valley H.S. Fellowship of Christian Athletes student leader a decade ago, a fellow student at Fuller Seminary and a participant in our 2nd house church experiment back in '08-'09. He currently is the Residents Life Coordinator at his alma mater Seattle Pacific University while studying for Presbyterian ordination.
At SMC, Weldon Nisly preached a sermon on Ephesian 2:11-3:21, what Biblical scholar Tom Yoder-Neufeld calls "the greatest peace text in the entire Bible." Weldon lamented a laundry list of recent hostilities (Trayvon Martin, the Mexico/US border, the Israel/Palestine border, the Pink Mennos' missoin to bring full dignity for the LGBTQ community...and more) while proclaiming the good news that Christ has "broken down the dividing wall" (of race/ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, gender, etc) that separates too many of us with the hope that he will "create in himself one new humanity" to experience true reconciliation and redemption in the world.
After church, we drove east to Issaquah, the home of biblical scholar and activist Wes Howard Brook. Wes had just arrived back home the night before after 6 weeks in Australia with his partner Sue. Wes was apparently jet-lagged but no one would have guessed it. He whipped us up a pasta and salad lunch and then led us on his daily hike up Tiger Mountain.
Wes grew up as a secular Jew in Beverly Hills raised by a single mom. He went to Berkeley, became a lawyer, worked in DC for a US Senator...and then read Ched Myers' Binding The Strong Man cover to cover (has anyone else ever done this?) in the late 80s. This event catapulted Wes into a life of biblical scholarship and teaching at the Jesuit Seattle University.
Since then, Wes has done to John's Gospel what Ched had done to Mark's: recovered a socio-political reading that is more at home in the Roman imperial world of 1st century Palestinian Judaism. In addition to other writing and editing, Wes has published the ground-breaking Come Out My People: God's Call Out of Empire in the Bible and Beyond, a full-length anti-imperial treatment of Scripture. His thesis is that, when we open the Bible, we find a competition between authors advocating for a top-down, hierarchical, dominating and triumphalistic God of Empire and those scripting a from-below, compassionate, indigenous-privileging God of Creation (of which Jesus is the fulfillment and climax).
Rumor has it that, in addition to his scholarship and teaching at Seattle U., Wes serves Sue a latte in bed every morning. With the rest of their free time, Wes and Sue host a couple of Gospel of John studies in their home. They started with John 1:1 9 years ago and they are now on John 19 (there was an 18 month review in there at some point). Each session the focus is on undomesticating the Gospel while they eat, pray and (of course) laugh. Check out Wes and Sue's spiritual direction website here.
After a lunch of prayer and story-telling, Wes led us on a hike up nearby Tiger Mountain, playing nature tour guide, Bible Answer Man and pastor-therapist all the same time. Wes even fed us snacks from the local wild blackberry bushes.
On Sunday night, Dan's wife Sara joined us for Thai food in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. Sara is in the MFT program at Seattle Pacific University. She and Dan met during their undergrad years at SPU and, although Dan still suffers from mental illness (see photo below), Sara has been a huge factor in his ability to be a functioning member of society. But seriously, these two have been incredibly busy this past year. Sara has worked full-time while being a full-time, first-year MFT student and Dan just completed a graveyard shift at the hospital (an unpaid internship for his Presbyterian ordination work) while working full-time as the chaplain at Northwest University. As always, we combined some deep dialogue with a lot of laughter.
On Monday, Pastor Weldon took us out to Persian food in the Lake City neighborhood. Weldon grew up in Iowa and, from early on, was passionate about electoral politics (a rarity in his Mennonite context). Just 2 days before my birth in 1973, Weldon felt the call to ministry, a life dedicated to a blend of prophetic preaching and peace witness. After a stint in D.C., Weldon has pastored churches in Cincinnati and Seattle. He has thrived in this urban context, while his wife longs to bring it back to the countryside as retirement approaches this November.
Weldon told us the phenomenal story of traveling to Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003. He was part of an American peace delegation with Jim Douglass, Shane Claiborne and Jonathan & Leah Wilson-Hartgrove (among others). This was an extremely dangerous mission that his church and family prayerfully sent him on. While in Iraq, the car he was riding in blew out a tire and careened off the side of the road during an air raid by U.S. forces, dislocating Weldon's shoulder, breaking bones and gashing the back of his head. The people of the local village of Rutba carried him to safety and doctors cared for him.
This Good Samaritan-Iraqi saved his life and Weldon (along with some of the American delegation) came back years later to thank him and the other members of the Rutba crew of lifesavers. The intentional community in Durham, NC (started by the Wilson-Hartgroves and Isaac Villegas) is called Rutba House to honor these compassionate, enemy-loving Iraqis.
Weldon also shared about his commitment to being a pastor, activist and monastic. He has been taking short retreats to St. John's abbey in Minnesota for many years and he was instrumental in starting up Bridgefolk, a Catholic-Mennonite peace group. As Weldon spoke, we were struck by his balanced and passionate life of pursuing a deep connection with God and service to others.
On Tuesday, we met up with our old friend Josh McQueen who, with his wife Neely, used to work in youth ministry at Saddleback Church. The McQueens moved up to Seattle a decade ago to work at Overlake, a megachurch going through difficult leadership transitions back then. Josh took us to a soulish coffeehouse in Redmond and told us the story of their conversion of the imagination. About 5 years ago, Josh started reading works by Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (among others) with his brother Joe. They have continued a long-distance dialogue over the real-life implications of these ideas about God, faith and everything else there is.
Josh has challenged other members of the Overlake staff to immerse themselves in this dialogue and has led small group studies on some of these books. The McQueens (with three kids of their own) are in serious discussions to develop an intentional community under one roof, centered around practices of prayer, meetings and meals. Sure enough, this rugged commitment to deeper relationship and sacrifice is even infecting the megachurches!
Josh pointed us towards nearby downtown Kirkland for an afternoon of rest, reading, running and Thai food.
On Wednesday, we drove to Mukliteo and took the 15-minute ferry ride to Whidbey Island.
This was a much-needed 48-hour getaway for us. We slept in, caught up on some reading, played Scrabble, went for a run, caught a film at the local theater, picked blackberries, made our own food, and lounged around the little two-bedroom house that we rented off Airbnb, tucked away in the trees, just a mile from the town of Langley.
On Friday afternoon, we drove 15 minutes to the home of Marcia and Clancy Dunigan, a couple who participated in the Bartimaeus intentional community in Berkeley with Ched Myers and others back in the late-70s/early-80s. These two moved to the heavily-wooded island after the birth of their son, Kevin, in the mid-80s.
Marcia and Clancy poured on the hospitality and story-telling. We were especially interested in how they met each other, how their faith convictions evolved over time and their time in intentional community. Their unique personalities played off each other as they recanted moments from 30 years ago, ranging from hilarious to heart-rending. They took a 3 month road trip all over the US back in the late-70s and even stayed at some of the same places we have. With hours of road ahead, they lavished upon us some vitally useful gifts: some country blues gospel from Clancy (he is known as the top blues DJ on the island) and some Richard Rohr CDs from Marcia (they knew Richard back in the 70s...when no one else did)!
THIS WAS SO GREAT!!!
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