tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54472479423355954512024-03-18T21:09:20.888-07:00Radical Roadtrip 2013Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-20525944830460294732013-08-30T19:44:00.001-07:002013-08-30T22:10:02.596-07:00Last Stop & Home Base: Oak View, CA<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKx4ACieuncJVXSDRg91pZvyzNek7ClQLw4fyHwYwjs52X6_H5olfYYmhdRx_bbIdpJ_YU9ZrOqmtz2F0ZcjcVIH6vd0Y63pEbcRpzLPG4zpW-kg5IH7y1_nFAk1V1NuWxSLYcvpkZWVg/s1600/bartimaeus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKx4ACieuncJVXSDRg91pZvyzNek7ClQLw4fyHwYwjs52X6_H5olfYYmhdRx_bbIdpJ_YU9ZrOqmtz2F0ZcjcVIH6vd0Y63pEbcRpzLPG4zpW-kg5IH7y1_nFAk1V1NuWxSLYcvpkZWVg/s200/bartimaeus.jpg" /></a></div><i>You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it</i>.<br />
<b>Wendell Berry</b><br />
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<i>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...</i><br />
<b>Alice Walker</b><br />
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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. <br />
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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 <i>only</i> had 75 days!). <br />
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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. <br />
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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 <i>and</i> 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. <br />
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They make up the core of what is the <a href="http://www.bcm-net.org/">Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries</a>, focused on biblical literacy, church renewal and faith-based witness for justice. They accomplish these tasks through 3-5 day <a href="http://www.bcm-net.org/node/21">institutes</a>, monthly <a href="http://www.chedmyers.org/blog/2013/08/21/upcoming-bcm-webinars">webinars</a>, 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. <br />
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I was blown away after reading Ched's ground-breaking commentary on the Gospel of Mark (<a href="http://www.chedmyers.org/books/binding-strong-man-political-reading-mark’s-story-jesus-20th-anniversary-edition">Binding The Strong Man</a>, 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. <br />
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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. <br />
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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." <br />
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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. <br />
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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. <br />
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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 <i>actually</i> look like. Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-47831845730497771082013-08-23T13:18:00.002-07:002013-08-23T13:18:29.207-07:00Keeping Portland Weird<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcEtgROlp3H8n3rDjpawxQ256x53l6p0H5FBPOxmPHcY-xdrmgxQgnXLN9cO2nqd2bR1jRS7c5PAyfrXpNer4OO5XSZ1vCTg4zN1rhBcR1gmrMYaKuVV7tBe6P4Q59BhLs0qUy7BoB60g/s1600/DSCN2265.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcEtgROlp3H8n3rDjpawxQ256x53l6p0H5FBPOxmPHcY-xdrmgxQgnXLN9cO2nqd2bR1jRS7c5PAyfrXpNer4OO5XSZ1vCTg4zN1rhBcR1gmrMYaKuVV7tBe6P4Q59BhLs0qUy7BoB60g/s200/DSCN2265.jpg" /></a></div><i>Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true.</i><br />
<b>Thomas Merton</b><br />
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<i>Portland is where young people go to retire.</i><br />
<b>Portlandia</b><br />
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On the morning of Saturday, August 17, we left Whidbey Island on the ferry and drove south to Portland for a 4-mile run along the Williamette River, across a couple of bridges and into the Southwest part of the city. The weather was perfect. We then drove to Newberg to participate in our very first Native American sweat lodge ceremony at the Eloheh farm administered by Randy & Edith Woodley. <br />
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Randy, a theology professor at George Fox Seminary, invited us to join their monthly "Jesus Sweat" after I met him this Spring on my trip to Portland with Ched Myers. Randy has been conducting these for the past 23 years and on this day, there were 13 of us led by Randy's 18-year-old son Young, the first time he has ever led! This was a powerful experience of prayer, song and open sharing around the circle. We spoke individually, counter-clockwise and finished each prayer or sharing with a communal "aho," the Cherokee word for "amen." <br />
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The focus of a sweat is on confession and purgation. The completely dark lodge is heated with lava rocks and symbolizes a mother's womb, where each participant has a born-again experience, emerging out of the refining heat into New Life. Each "round" of the ceremony got hotter and, by the end, we were both laying on our backs to avoid passing out. <br />
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Randy & Edith have been mentoring radical disciples and conducting retreats for years now. They are passionate about connecting their Christian faith to their Native heritage, something we continue to learn on this trip are two things that are extremely compatible, strengthening each other along the Way (both of which focus on what Seattle-based biblical scholar Wes Howard-Brook calls "God of Creation" spirituality...as opposed to "God of Empire"). While teaching, farming, writing and raising children of their own, the Woodleys infuse everything with a Gospel of hospitality and inter-connectedness. Randy gave Lindsay a copy of his recent <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shalom-Community-Creation-Indigenous-Christianity/dp/0802866786">Shalom & The Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision</a> as a parting gift. <br />
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We got to stay with Tom's cousin, Jeff, on Saturday night in Sherwood. Jeff truly has a global vision of Life and definitely appreciates a good road trip. He has been all over the world, participating in Peace Corp missions and all sorts of other adventures. He currently works at New Seasons, an alternative grocery store (competing with Whole Foods) in Portland. He made us a phenomenal batch of his nachos bell grande out of the freebies he got from the deli the previous day. <br />
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His wife, Melissa, is a speech pathologist who gets to ride her bike to work everyday in the beautiful Williamette Valley. She missed the Saturday night festivities because she was attending the birthday party of her 91-year-old grandfather in Bend, but we connected for Mexican food in Southeast Portland on Monday. Afterwards, Jeff introduced us to his signature dessert: Stumptown ice coffee and a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie from the local New Seasons.<br />
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On Sunday, we met up with The Wilderness Way community for their Nature/Sabbath Sunday, a once-a-month hike to intentionally connect to the Source of ancient wisdom, spend time (re)connecting with each other & learning more about the history and challenges of their own watershed context. <br />
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The Wilderness Way community is committed to the biblical practices of <a href="http://www.wildernesswaypdx.org/home/commonpractices">Sabbath, Jubilee and Shalom</a> as a community while each member is encouraged to commit to taking personal inventory of their own process of practicing the Way of the wilderness. This community has a deep structure with a beautiful liturgy focusing on LEAVING empire, LOVING one another and LEARNING the Way of the wilderness (just like Israel & Jesus) and every Sunday of the month has a different focus:<br />
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<i><blockquote>First Sunday focus: The wisdom of our lives (last year, they shared their nature autobiographies)<br />
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Second Sunday focus: The wisdom of Jesus and the Jesus movement<br />
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Third Sunday hike: The wisdom of nature/sabbath<br />
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Fourth Sunday focus: The wisdom of Sabbath, Jubilee and Shalom (learning about this wisdom more deeply, and sharing about how we are living our community practices)<br />
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Fifth Sunday focus: As the Spirit guides</blockquote></i><br />
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We were welcomed into the home of Peter & Solveig Nilsen-Goodin and their precious boys Soren and Stig. Tom (known to the family as T-Bone) met the NGs in the Spring and Lindsay (L-Bone) was really looking forward to meeting them and participating with the WW community on a Sunday. Solveig is an ordained Lutheran minister and Peter is a junior high music teacher.<br />
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We had a great dinner, met Matt Smith and his son, Jack, heard more about the <a href="http://leavenproject.org/">Leaven Project</a> and related <a href="http://www.missionsaltlight.com/index.html">Salt + Light</a> community, swapped life stories and then capped the night off with a dance party to the latest hits from Alvin & the Chipmunks.<br />
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Married for more than 20 years, Solveig & Peter are committed to leading their boys into the challenges of the Wilderness Way. Their authenticity and passion for neighborly hospitality and peace & justice work are clearly evident. What a perfect family to officially end our journey with. <br />
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Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-69987484639886386232013-08-21T15:42:00.001-07:002013-08-28T15:47:53.379-07:00Sleeping In Seattle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5nank17MXGrLvl4jqIvgOQYE7bt73_DYs9UVA8ONJE_R00MiNLsfm-LKHKP1DaLTkxG63QLbLl7cRgR0GnBUsYuoRQcCwNC6ugNXgX6qVA41yMA3HroHxDJ4tlqNFn6tfS8t1U7fG38Q/s1600/seattle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5nank17MXGrLvl4jqIvgOQYE7bt73_DYs9UVA8ONJE_R00MiNLsfm-LKHKP1DaLTkxG63QLbLl7cRgR0GnBUsYuoRQcCwNC6ugNXgX6qVA41yMA3HroHxDJ4tlqNFn6tfS8t1U7fG38Q/s200/seattle.jpg" /></a></div><i>Playing God, aw nah here we go<br />
America the brave still fears what we don't know<br />
And God loves all his children, is somehow forgotten<br />
But we paraphrase a book written thirty-five-hundred years ago<br />
I don't know.</i><br />
<b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlVBg7_08n0">Macklemore</a></b>, Seattle native<br />
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<i>A lot of people read the Bible stupidly, but that doesn't make it a stupid book.</i><br />
<b>Wes Howard-Brook</b>, professor of Religious Studies, Seattle University<br />
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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. <br />
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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!<br />
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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.<br />
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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. <br />
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On Sunday morning, we met up with Dan Jones at <a href="http://www.seattlemennonite.org/">Seattle Mennonite Church</a> 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.<br />
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At SMC, Weldon Nisly preached a sermon on <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+2%3A11-3%3A21&version=NIV">Ephesian 2:11-3:21</a>, 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 <a href="http://www.pinkmenno.org/2013/07/strangers-no-more-statement-for-phoenix-2013/">Pink Mennos</a>' 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. <br />
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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. <br />
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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' <i><a href="http://www.chedmyers.org/books/binding-strong-man-political-reading-mark’s-story-jesus-20th-anniversary-edition">Binding The Strong Man</a></i> cover to cover (has anyone else <i>ever</i> done this?) in the late 80s. This event catapulted Wes into a life of biblical scholarship and teaching at the Jesuit Seattle University.<br />
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Since then, Wes has done to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Children-God-Discipleship-Liberation/dp/1592444016">John's Gospel</a> 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 <i><a href="http://www.jesusradicals.com/book-review-come-out-my-people-gods-call-out-of-empire-in-the-bible-and-beyond-by-wes-howard-brook/">Come Out My People: God's Call Out of Empire in the Bible and Beyond</a></i>, 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). <br />
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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 <i>9 years ago</i> 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 <a href="http://abideinme.net/">here</a>. <br />
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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. <br />
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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.<br />
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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. <br />
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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. <br />
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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 <a href="http://divinity.duke.edu/publications/2005.09/features/monasticism/01.htm">Rutba House</a> to honor these compassionate, enemy-loving Iraqis. <br />
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Weldon also shared about his commitment to being a pastor, activist and <i>monastic</i>. He has been taking short retreats to St. John's abbey in Minnesota for many years and he was instrumental in starting up <a href="http://www.bridgefolk.net/">Bridgefolk</a>, 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. <br />
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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 <a href="http://www.skeptictank.org/yourpk.htm">back then</a>. 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. <br />
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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! <br />
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Josh pointed us towards nearby downtown Kirkland for an afternoon of rest, reading, running and Thai food.<br />
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On Wednesday, we drove to Mukliteo and took the 15-minute ferry ride to Whidbey Island. <br />
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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. <br />
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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. <br />
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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)!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx7r-hf_F1yUjJbJJ8cDZxyAQ-7TqkC3FS8TaOQiytOYQcbP-Hj8i2fiNUeuZ2fpg6MLquStnD_jp_SBgcDTxYivknURIa90DCmoY2yonCCSWT1kU5lz-6kRXuvAAwTU49tgJQJkv0XYg/s1600/DSCN2210.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx7r-hf_F1yUjJbJJ8cDZxyAQ-7TqkC3FS8TaOQiytOYQcbP-Hj8i2fiNUeuZ2fpg6MLquStnD_jp_SBgcDTxYivknURIa90DCmoY2yonCCSWT1kU5lz-6kRXuvAAwTU49tgJQJkv0XYg/s320/DSCN2210.jpg" /></a></div>Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-36660673857686163482013-08-18T09:48:00.001-07:002013-08-23T13:08:34.083-07:00On The Road <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9aQIKLUJq920wuoJy9w4nASZqCFRsvTKJ2XK04oENtfJ0wr_-8OcRxGmIgplRqjiCOagpTbxGNLPmCy0p9JPiyEr_-y7cqJL1RyphD_5xjoaIHCTLiUYfe7ciKK_Ef9PflL9ZUflRmNU/s1600/DSCN2075.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9aQIKLUJq920wuoJy9w4nASZqCFRsvTKJ2XK04oENtfJ0wr_-8OcRxGmIgplRqjiCOagpTbxGNLPmCy0p9JPiyEr_-y7cqJL1RyphD_5xjoaIHCTLiUYfe7ciKK_Ef9PflL9ZUflRmNU/s200/DSCN2075.jpg" /></a></div><i>The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.</i><br />
<b>John Muir</b><br />
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On Sunday, August 4, we left Durham, NC with the goal of getting to the Pacific Northwest as fast as we could. Lindsay will be taking a flight out of Portland on August 20 so she can get back to SoCal for the annual Capistrano Valley HS girls cross country training camp in Mammoth. On Sunday night at 9:30pm we arrived in Columbus, Ohio at the home of Joe McQueen and Kellyn Muller-McQueen. <br />
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Joe was the worship leader for Fellowship of Christian Athletes 10 years ago when Tom was the campus faculty advisor. Joe has put down the guitar and taken up some serious literary critical work, finishing up a PhD in English at Ohio State University after teaching English for two years in Japan. <br />
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Joe and Kellyn have been on a very similar spiritual-theological-political journey. In all his free time, Joe has immersed himself in reading and writing and dialogue. They have participated with Columbus Mennonite Church the past two years and are seriously discerning a move to Seattle to join Joe's brother Josh and his wife Neely (more on these two in a future post!) in an intentional community experiment. Sure enough, the Brothers McQueen visited the Rutba House in Durham for a week this year to learn from Jonathan & Leah Wilson-Hartgrove and the rest of the community about what it takes to commit to this more radical form of communal discipleship. <br />
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We stayed up until 2:30am, eating homemade smore bars and drinking beers from North Carolina, Kansas City and Michigan, talking and resonating about travels, readings, church and where the the Divine Hand will prod us next. We awoke at 7:30 and hit the road for the 2nd longest day of driving on our pilgrimage. Destination: Minneapolis. <br />
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We met our old friend (whom we met 6 weeks prior) C. John Hildebrand at Luce's Pizza in Minneapolis as the sun set over the Mississippi River. John was getting ready for a road trip of his own: he and folks from Reba Place in Chicago were meeting in just a couple of days for a trek down to the Wild Goose Festival outside of Asheville, North Carolina. WG has become a summer mecca of sorts for progressive Christians who enjoy camping out in the Southern humidity. We met a handful of others (like Sara Stratton in Toronto, the Esaus from Germany, and Tevyn East in Philadelphia) along our journey who were planning on Wild Goosing in August. Pictured below are C. John, right, Joyce and Nelson Johnson of the Greensboro <a href="http://www.belovedcommunitycenter.org/">Beloved Community Center</a>, center, and Tevyn East with the <a href="http://carnivalderesistance.com/">Carnival de Resistance</a>, left (featured in our previous Philadelphia post), at the Wild Goose Festival in 2011. <br />
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From Minneapolis, we traveled across South Dakota (the land of eccentric art and billboards) to Rapid City where we met Carl Meyer and Karissa Ortman. Carl first discovered the beauty of South Dakota during a <a href="http://www.cpt.org/">Christian Peacemaker Team</a> mission to Pierre (the capital) while in college at Goshen. Carl and Karissa joined up with <a href="http://www.mcc.org/">Mennonite Central Committee</a> on the Pine Ridge Reservation in Porcupine for four years (when they were newly married!). Carl served us home brew that tasted like Chimay while Karissa served us zucchini and squash from the backyard garden dipped in homemade hummus and a lovely homemade green tomato salsa. <br />
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On Wednesday morning, we met Rev. Robert G. Two Bulls at Red Shirt Table. This was the first time either of us had stepped foot on a reservation. This is beautiful Lakota land, just a few dozen miles from the awful Wounded Knee massacre of the late 19th century. The Pine Ridge reservation has the lowest life expectancy of males (48) in the Western Hemisphere outside of Haiti. The unemployment rate is 80%. This is a place of historic atrocity. Of genocide. <br />
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With the gorgeous backdrop of the Badlands and the eerie silence of the Land all around us, we sat and listened to Robert tell his Story at Christ Church Episcopal, the host site of more than a thousand Taize worshippers from all over the world this past Spring. Robert joined the Navy as a teenager, traveling to the North Pacific, China Sea & the Japan Sea on a Destroyer named USS Radford. After his proud service to country, Robert convinced the beautiful Dolores to marry him and they moved to Rapid City, just a 45 minute drive from Red Shirt Table. Robert worked long hours for decades at an auto body shop to support his wife and five children (we got to meet Twila: see below). He eventually heard God's Call to a commitment to study and service in the Episcopal priesthood. <br />
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Robert shared generously with us of his life and wisdom from decades of serving at Christ Church Episcopal. Perhaps most striking in our Time with him was the strong truth-seeking spirit woven throughout his story, reflected in a constant willingness to learn and reform whenever he came across new understandings of the Way. He sang a couple of hymns in the Lakota language for us and took us for a short tour of the church grounds. The view was breathtaking.<br />
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We planted ourselves in Montana territory for two nights, splitting the time between two university towns: Bozeman & Missoula. <br />
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On our last big travel day of the trip, we visited Tim & Stephanie Lyons (as well as their twin boys Sam and Sean and Tim's parents George and Jean) in Spokane. Tim and Tom first met each other on the 4th Grade Mission Viejo Youth Basketball All-Star Team and they roomed together at the University of Kansas. We had not been to Spokane since their wedding back in 2007. We spent good time with the Lyons catching up on life and getting to meet their two precious little boys, as they fed us generously before getting back on the road for our last 4 hour stretch to Sammamish.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAIiEVOE3OQEO5nBT-FcJ2bPXCjkgACxoCPyAOQ0Cb8ghhQRF5OFsbXdNXlRjBoFW_UgzNKzZBKiWvUAj7gw9XyB7B-vH-TrPHd2sArBFvP2N20FvynmAEUPkIQpyzw2Rim4qFW1O8-G0/s1600/DSCN2115.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAIiEVOE3OQEO5nBT-FcJ2bPXCjkgACxoCPyAOQ0Cb8ghhQRF5OFsbXdNXlRjBoFW_UgzNKzZBKiWvUAj7gw9XyB7B-vH-TrPHd2sArBFvP2N20FvynmAEUPkIQpyzw2Rim4qFW1O8-G0/s320/DSCN2115.jpg" /></a></div>Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-14407061784614708552013-08-08T17:15:00.000-07:002013-08-10T09:23:54.956-07:00No Bull In Durham<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf8c_LS2AynEaTqlehDQPRnhQa3o1FMoEAVG6k9wcDE9kz_6nrwGRMBADu0IrVhci8Bc1gWFFIxgU8ixd3hunkNXNRgmbq4BFJ6PvOOhJ47gQlKBz6uz-XWuOSAhNen7jhtaLdwKgabsY/s1600/DSCN2058.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf8c_LS2AynEaTqlehDQPRnhQa3o1FMoEAVG6k9wcDE9kz_6nrwGRMBADu0IrVhci8Bc1gWFFIxgU8ixd3hunkNXNRgmbq4BFJ6PvOOhJ47gQlKBz6uz-XWuOSAhNen7jhtaLdwKgabsY/s200/DSCN2058.jpg" /></a></div><i>Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.</i><br />
<b>Karl Barth</b><br />
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When we left D.C. we encountered some gnarly traffic on the interstate. Construction. Accidents. A lot of rain. We had our sights eagerly set on North Carolina, the longest leg (a whole week!) of our 10-week trip. Most of our time was spent in the historic University town of Durham, at the residence of our dear friends: The Ashworths. <br />
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We first got to really know Justin (a ThD student at Duke Divinity School) and Tiffany (an English teacher at Jordan High School) during the 2004-05 school year. We were all the adult advisors of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (later changed to IMPACT) student leadership team at Capistrano Valley High School. This was a tremendously fruitful (and fun!) year guiding and mentoring these high school students. In 2006, the four of us participated in our first house church experiment, affectionately called Tangent because of the lengthy discussion sparked by highly academic theological readings.<br />
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We joined Justin at Fuller Seminary, sitting at the feet of legends like Peter Hintzglou, Nate Feldmeth and Marrianne Mai Thompson. We still have great memories of picking Justin up at the Tustin train station at 5:45am to carpool up to Pasadena. Lindsay and Tiffany fermented into besties over coffee and Subway dates all over Southern California. They are not afraid to partake in 3-4 hour phone conversations as they've transitioned into a long-distance relationship since the Ashworth move to North Carolina in 2010. <br />
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Married in January 2007, the Ashworths have dedicated themselves to serious education and service-oriented church life. Justin is currently in his final year working with Willie Jennings, Edgardo Colon-Emeric and Stanley Hauerwas on a ThD dissertation focusing on American immigration policy, a subject that is desperately pertinent and rarely narrated in theological terms. Meanwhile, Tiffany has honed her pedagogical skills in three different schools in and around Durham. Let's just say she's been in the trenches. She's tremendously excited that this school year will be more manageable and less sleep-deprived. <br />
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Our relationship with the Ashworths is special, perhaps one-of-a-kind. Their sincerity and commitment to a life of Christian discipleship is without equal. We have a natural affinity with them seasoned with a brand of vulnerability and authenticity that is about as rare as a losing season for the Duke basketball team. We often find ourselves in deep conversations about God, faith, church, political action and just about everything else that matters in Life. These are honest, disagreements offered freely. But in the midst of differences, the respect we have for each other is paramount. We always seem to learn from each other as Love and Laughter break through the levees of ideology and preconceived notions.<br />
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When we arrived late Sunday afternoon, they had dinner prepared and we joined them at a Durham CAN (Congregations Associations & Neighborhoods) meeting. They are currently organizing around two key issues: national immigration reform and the driver's license requirement for parking passes at the local community college (many undocumented immigrants attend English classes and they have had their cars towed). These organizers clearly have their shit together. The two-hour meeting was substantive, practical and bi-lingual. <br />
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The next day we got to join the weekly Moral Monday protest, rally and march in Raleigh (the capital). MM has been rolling through the Spring & Summer (14 weeks and counting) in response to the draconian measures enacted by the North Carolina Legislature and Governor this year (the first time in more than a century that the Republicans have controlled the state house). This assault on labor, teachers, sexual minorities, women, immigrants and Mother Earth has sparked massive pushback, especially from faith leaders and religious communities all over the state. Many of these faithful activists have participated in nonviolent acts of civil disobedience and been arrested. <br />
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On the Monday we attended, all educators were encouraged to wear red. After all, the North Carolina GOP has stripped teachers of tenure, eliminated the financial reward for earning a Master's degree and so much more:<br />
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<blockquote>*Severely reducing targeted education funding – the budget will cut textbook funding by $77.4 million, classroom supply funding by $45.7 million and limited English proficiency funding by $6 million.<br />
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*While gutting public schools, $50 million dollars will go to unaccountable private school vouchers.<br />
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*Over 9,000 education positions will be eliminated.<br />
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*There will be no pay increases for educators. In five short years, North Carolina has gone from 25th in the nation for teacher salaries to 46th.<br />
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*The cap on class sizes will be gone.<br />
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*10,000 pre-k slots will be removed.</blockquote><br />
Tiffany and thousands of other educators in North Carolina might very well be partcipating in a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-kirk-edgerton/a-time-to-strike_b_3688298.html">strike</a> in a few weeks.<br />
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We also got to meet Isaac Villegas, the pastor at Chapel Hill Mennonite Church. I've always respected Isaac from afar, introduced to <a href="http://www.mennoworld.org/blog/byline/isaac-s-villegas/">his writing</a> on the Menno Weekly blog. Heavily influenced by the former Westmont professor Jonathan Wilson (whose little book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1563382407">Living Faithfully In A Fragmented World</a></i> has deeply influenced our own understanding of Christian community), Isaac was a founding member of the <a href="http://divinity.duke.edu/publications/2005.09/features/monasticism/01.htm">Rutba House</a>, an intentional community of Christians who are committed to the poor, historically African-American Walltown neighborhood in Durham, a town with a rich history of racial segregation. Isaac was eventually called to pastor the church he had been attending during his time at Duke Divinity School. We stayed so long chatting with Isaac this particular afternoon that we also had the honor of meeting his lovely partner Katie as she arrived home from work. <br />
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On the hottest day of the week, Tiffany led us on a one mile hike through the woods just outside Durham...<br />
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And the Path led to an old rock quarry...<br />
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We joined in on the Durham Church small group Bible study on Wednesday night (Acts 10) and, a couple of days later, we connected with Tomi, a friend of the Ashworths and also a ThD student at Duke Divinity. She shared with us her Story of faith and her unique call to work for racial reconciliation at Durham Church. Our prayers extend to Tomi and the entire Durham Church community as they experiment with one of the toughest challenges of the Gospel.<br />
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On our last night together, Lindsay presented the pain and peace cycles, which are at the heart of the Restoration Therapy model designed and refined by Sharon and Terry Hargrave, Lindsay's mentors from Fuller Seminary's MFT program:<br />
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On Sunday morning, we attended Durham Church before we hit the road for Columbus, Ohio. This was a wonderful service, centered around the table of bread and wine, symbolizing the abundance and inclusivity of God's grace and love. It was an appropriate culmination of a week of celebrating old friends and making new ones (like Erin! who we got to meet at the Moral Monday festivities; see above photo).<br />
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We will deeply miss these two, but are so grateful for all the down time we got to spend participating in their world and catching up on life. I'm sure we will see them again soon...after all, Justin promised a ticket to the UNC/Duke basketball game if he gets graduate student tickets this year (I'll keep my fingers crossed):<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAjMlzmZy9JCdWhdNpVafusE7PLJVltfVbuhgJcX8jhOvE0_fjz0kiBD_xlRSYYVFGySwd91sdQ4RghdEmJQvbIH8ozp3QOvNdv4XPY7UkF6EgEu1yspeAD3441-R7ycTNhatQiByGS7Q/s1600/DSCN2073.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAjMlzmZy9JCdWhdNpVafusE7PLJVltfVbuhgJcX8jhOvE0_fjz0kiBD_xlRSYYVFGySwd91sdQ4RghdEmJQvbIH8ozp3QOvNdv4XPY7UkF6EgEu1yspeAD3441-R7ycTNhatQiByGS7Q/s320/DSCN2073.jpg" /></a></div>Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-86761816386053306042013-08-03T12:40:00.000-07:002013-08-03T12:40:58.393-07:00Weeping For A Whole New World<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCiOzORKPq_pV0YgFD0XAzeoFdlAVSKXjLsJU84PM4YxTcw56IN5urkQzbmCzfwFgKj6p0CMOqKfom0eSkkRrF47GPwioKcGtlp3lRgX36bb-ISX117lEsk636M6GfjR_y2O3frrEaWQU/s1600/DSCN1940.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCiOzORKPq_pV0YgFD0XAzeoFdlAVSKXjLsJU84PM4YxTcw56IN5urkQzbmCzfwFgKj6p0CMOqKfom0eSkkRrF47GPwioKcGtlp3lRgX36bb-ISX117lEsk636M6GfjR_y2O3frrEaWQU/s200/DSCN1940.jpg" /></a></div><i>There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.</i><br />
<b>Oscar Romero</b> (1917-1980)<br />
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Durham, North Carolina<br />
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Last Friday, Lindsay and I found ourselves in front of the White House. That White House. In D.C. Where the Obamas live with their hypoallergenic dog Bo. We were wearing orange jumpsuits with some of the residents and friends of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House. The crazy nuns from the Baltimore Jonah House told us we just had to connect with these Catholic resisters. On Friday. At noon. A bones throw from Bo.<br />
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And so we stood in solidarity with the "suspected terrorists" who have dwelt in Guantanamo Bay prison, some for more than a dozen years. One of us had a sign that read 170 Days. And counting. That was a reference to how long the hunger strike had been going on. 170 Days of refusing to eat. When you have no control over your Life and those who do refuse to give you dignity, then you do whatever it takes. You stop eating. <br />
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Art Laffin, a resident at the Dorothy Day House for almost two decades, asked me to read the horrific testimony of a <a href="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2013/04/02/from-guantanamo-shaker-aamer-tells-his-lawyer-disturbing-truths-about-the-hunger-strike/">Gitmo hunger striker</a>. As I read, tourists gawked and photographed us white folks clad in bright orange. And Lindsay cried. Tears poured down her cheeks as she listened to this wretched existence. The violent forced tube feeding brought on by 5 prison guards. Just doing their job. Making us all safer. <br />
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This isn't the first time Lindsay cried for someone she doesn't even know on this journey of ours. She's cried for Trayvon. And Bradley too. This crying of hers is a spiritual practice. Sitting shiva is what the Jews call it. Just sitting (or standing) there feeling the pain of someone else. It's some serious Empathy. The opposite of apathy. Or entertainment. <br />
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I'm trying to learn from Lindsay. My partner and sojourner knows how to feel someone and let it all out for the Cause of Love. I've been trained by my culture how to be a man. How to keep it in and be strong. I was raised in a stable, loving family. My dad was a math teacher. I learned how to calculate and solve problems. As a person of Faith, this has translated to reading, praying, writing, speculating and analyzing. <br />
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I am a child of middle class suburbia, the land of achievement and acquisition. This bubble existence blocks out the pain and oppression of the world. It is a hiding place, filled with distraction and entitlement. It breeds addiction. Whatever it is, it doesn't want to know about the racism and torture and targeted killing and collateral damage, generated & justified by our corporations and Congress. <br />
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So I'm learning how to weep, in private and public. It's one of those practices that will bring the suffering world more dignity and hope. And all the while, it will be a vital aspect of my own suburban salvation too. <br />
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So here's to saving the world. One cry at a time. Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-58770221199218875742013-07-28T13:17:00.000-07:002013-07-30T06:25:19.647-07:00Communing, Rallying & Protesting All Over D.C.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHjO35K39mKeVuxqRdiFYxvC5qVSYwuCh3qhhlWoh-Mmdu3DPuq4w_cFXt1F9XRmTa7y27CUSFptCBbRlIEBR-3tN7r3TGJKTXPTuZZ8ABWOvUKFy1hyXrNgX_cEljEFlTdc9aqTXgyoQ/s1600/martin-luther-king-jr-washington-dc-getty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHjO35K39mKeVuxqRdiFYxvC5qVSYwuCh3qhhlWoh-Mmdu3DPuq4w_cFXt1F9XRmTa7y27CUSFptCBbRlIEBR-3tN7r3TGJKTXPTuZZ8ABWOvUKFy1hyXrNgX_cEljEFlTdc9aqTXgyoQ/s200/martin-luther-king-jr-washington-dc-getty.jpg" /></a></div><i>To really belong to one another and to depend on one another–to really share a common destiny–is difficult for a community that wants to be diverse. It is also the community’s only hope of survival. Whether or not we will be honest with each other, whether or not we will let ourselves be truly known, determines everything</i>.<br />
<b>Gordon Cosby</b> (1918-2013)<br />
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We departed Baltimore on Monday after lunch and 45 minutes later we were settled in the Northeast section of Washington DC. We stayed at the 8-room <a href="http://www.emu.edu/wcsc/facility/">Nelson Good House</a> thanks to <a href="http://www.mennoworld.org/blog/byline/sheldon-good/">Sheldon Good</a> (see <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sheldon-c-good/">this</a> for an archive of Sheldon's postings on Huff Post), the associate director of Eastern Mennonite University's Washington Scholar's Program. Tom has had an internet relationship with Sheldon for about 3 years now. They first connected when Sheldon was the editor of Menno Weekly Review's blog site (see <a href="http://www.mennoworld.org/blog/byline/tom-airey/">this</a> for an archive of Tom's work on MWR) and heard from someone(?) about Tom's <a href="http://easyyolk.blogspot.com/">EasyYolk blog</a>. They clicked over the substance of theological & political engagement, but eventually they found themselves connecting on topics of everyday life as well.<br />
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We had never met Sheldon face-to-face, so this was something we were really looking forward to this week in the Capital City. On Monday night, we shared dinner and beers with Sheldon and his friend Aaron Wheldon, who we quickly discovered, was a fellow classmate of ours at Fuller Seminary. Aaron, and his wife Lindsay, have since gone from the world of Anabaptism to Catholicism after they both have continued theological education beyond their Masters of Divinity. <br />
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On Tuesday, we slept in and rested during the day, catching up on some reading, writing and eating. For dinner, we gathered at the home of Rose Berger and Heidi Thompson, a couple who met at <a href="http://sojo.net/magazine">Sojourners Magazine</a> more than a decade ago. Their "first date" was at a dive bar just a couple of blocks from the Sojo office. They were deep in conversation when a group of young men in ski masks robbed the joint at gunpoint. Heidi was facing the thieves while Rose continued her monologue despite the look of horror on Heidi's face. When Rose clued in, she immediately shifted her words to the ski masks, reasoning with them to leave the crowd alone to their beverages. <br />
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Rose, born and bred in Sacramento, has been working at Sojourners since the mid-80s and, for the past decade, has been on the editorial staff. She is a well-known figure at the intersection of faith and activism. In fact, we found out just a few days ago that she got arrested for civil disobedience at an action at a lobbying firm that apparently declared the Keystone Pipeline to be <i>safe</i> for the environment. Rose is a widely published journalist and poet, but doesn't take herself too seriously. Her warm presence is accented by a hearty laugh and a consistently verbal listening pattern that ensures you that she's on your team.<br />
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Heidi, from Youngstown, Ohio, transitioned out of Sojo and has been working with <a href="http://www.piconetwork.org/about/model">PICO</a>, a faith-rooted activist organization committed to ensuring the dignity and equal rights of all people, the immigrant community being their most current focus. She prepared the meal for us and during her "tour of the table" before we ate, she made sure to point out the "complete protein" made available from the combination of bean salad and quinoa. The woman knows the way to our heart. Heidi possesses a curious spirit, a great question-asker who takes the truth seriously and certainly isn't afraid to take the conversation to the next level. <br />
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On Wednesday morning, we awoke early and joined Sheldon for a 6-mile run around the DC Mall. We parked at the Smithsonian and beelined it around the Capitol and then beyond the Supreme Court building and then back past the Air & Space Museum and The Washington Monument all the way to the <strike>Daniel Day-Lewis</strike> Lincoln Memorial. Our pace was much slower than Sheldon's usual. He made for a great tour guide. <br />
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After a quick shower and breakfast, we hustled over to the <a href="http://www.pottershousedc.org/">Potter's House Cafe & Bookstore</a> to meet Tim Kumfer of <a href="http://slschool.org/programs/servant-leadership-school.html">The Servant Leadership School</a>. The very first creative non-profit ministry of <a href="http://inwardoutward.org/">Church of the Saviour</a>, Potter's started back in 1960 to minister to the needs of the neighborhood of Northwest DC. CofS has since added more than 3 dozen other non-profits and the church, at the legendary leadership of her late founder, Gordon Cosby, has remained small, branching out into 8 different cells of various brands and blends around the city.<br />
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Kumfer, a graduate of Duke Divinity School and a former intern at Sojo, is passionate about popular theological education--a space for ordinary people to learn and grow in their pursuit of a more radical faith and praxis. A participant with the CofS community <a href="http://www.8th-day.org/">8th Day</a> (which meets in the Potter's House every Sunday evening), he has just recently been recruited to usher Potter's into a new phase of outreach as the neighborhood rapidly changes. Potter's is set to temporarily close in just a few weeks, or as Tim so eloquently put it, take some needed time of "sabbath rest." In fact, all their books were 75% off when we were there. This set off an orgy of consumerism, mostly from Tom. <br />
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On Thursday, we drove 40 miles to Fort Meade, Maryland for the closing arguments of the Bradley Manning trial. Here's how Sheldon described the scene:<br />
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<blockquote><i>I will not forget this place: the most innocently nondescript "hall of power" one could imagine, tucked away two miles into the Fort Meade military base (a stark contrast to the pristine "halls of power" flaunted across the National Mall). And I will not forget sitting, listening, agonizing through 6 hours of the proceeding, and, with exhaustion setting in, deciding to leave early -- knowing, however, that Manning could not leave, that he may never experience freedom again, wondering if that is fair and just, wondering if we'll ever know the truth.</i></blockquote><br />
We joined 32 other spectators in the courtroom and three dozen others in an overflow portable with closed-circuit TV coverage of the trial. Most of these folks were curious activists who wore black shirts with TRUTH scrawled on the front. On the day we attended the festivities, the lead attorney for the prosecution took up 6 hours for his closing remarks (in contrast, the next day, the defense took 3 hours). Much of it was technical mumbo-jumbo but some of the rather disturbing moments that stood out were calling Manning an "informational anarchist" and his repeatedly ironic claim that Manning was only motivated by his quest for notoriety while methodically doing whatever it took to cover up his misdeeds. <br />
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This was a very difficult day for us, but we are truly grateful to have participated in it. We'll NEVER forget it. The whole scene was depressingly ironic. Manning is being tried for disclosing hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the public. These documents horrifically indict the US government as an Empire spreading violent death all over the world in the names of "peace" and "security." Manning, a bullied gay soldier stationed in Iraq, witnessed plenty of these atrocities and plotted to unveil it to the world by leaking just some of it to Wikileaks. He was arrested and relegated to long days in solitary confinement in a small cell. Now, he is being tried by a military court, largely out of view of the American Public. He will remain in prison for a long, long time. And the US government will be off the hook.<br />
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On our way back to DC on Thursday, we talked about the meaning of our time at Fort Meade and what we might do to make Manning's actions a more powerful Reality in our own lives and in the world. It's easy to become apathetic, cynical, indifferent or just overwhelmed with a story like Bradley Manning. Like the response to the unjust violent death of Jesus, many folks get by one more day by casting the significance into the future, when Redemption might magically come at the hands of Triumphal Divinity. The death of Jesus (and the life of Manning) can become Real when we witness the corruption and terror of the Powers (exposed by Jesus and Manning) and find the courage to nonviolently & creatively confront the manifold injustices routinely displayed by governments, corporations, families and faith communities. This is a Task worthy of our lives. At the very least, this day reminded us of that.<br />
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On Thursday night, we dined at Busboys & Poets, a coffeehouse, bookstore and cafe well-known to activists in DC. We got to finally meet Jenn, Sheldon's girlfriend (we weren't sure she really existed). We shared our stories over paninis and veggie burgers. <br />
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On Friday, we joined the <a href="http://dccatholicworker.wordpress.com/about-2/">Dorothy Day Catholic Worker</a> house for their weekly protest and rally at noon on Friday in front of the White House. Art Laffin led us in word and song as we dressed up as Gitmo prisoners, many of whom are engaged in a daring hunger strike protesting their own maltreatment & torture. A powerful experience of "sitting shiva" with these prisoners, one which penetrated us to the core. <br />
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We digested the action with a walk to the Lincoln Memorial (which had been vandalized that morning) and the newly inaugurated Martin Luther King Memorial.<br />
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We found ourselves between the Capitol and Washington Monument communing with Kelly Nau, an old friend of Lindsay's from college. Kelly has been a nurse at a children's hospital in DC for the past year, after spending the last 2 years working at a Sudanese refugee camp. Our time with Kelly was short but sweet, as we shared in a time of mutual encouragement about our respective journeys since our last meeting (sometime back in 2010). We hope to reconnect with her again soon. <br />
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On Saturday morning, we participated in a march and rally against climate change with a group of ordinary activists called <a href="http://joinsummerheat.org/maryland/">Summer Heat</a>, who spent the week marching from Camp David all the way to DC. <br />
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Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-45920938877933773222013-07-26T07:04:00.000-07:002013-07-26T07:15:19.291-07:00Baltimore: In The Belly of the Beast<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVaHhO91f2Ci26KhhztDddNUCkXxhcIQb2V9VTQ1yohfcKTM9jEkhPrNfPzGMXEnlbkqbreA17AIzsfPPqt3LLA1UU3RPcH2X-DeMPtjVyYcZFw_VgZusbU70lnN8c1S_4FAepOiICQsI/s1600/DSCN1901.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVaHhO91f2Ci26KhhztDddNUCkXxhcIQb2V9VTQ1yohfcKTM9jEkhPrNfPzGMXEnlbkqbreA17AIzsfPPqt3LLA1UU3RPcH2X-DeMPtjVyYcZFw_VgZusbU70lnN8c1S_4FAepOiICQsI/s200/DSCN1901.jpg" /></a></div><i>After 23 years of living within community, I'm a good deal mellower. I've discovered something about forgiveness, mercy, and tolerance. Not as much, perhaps as I should have learned, but more than I knew before. I can accept the deficiencies of other people, just as I can live with my own deficiencies, which, believe me, are legion.</i><br />
<b>Phil Berrigan</b>, <i>The Lamb's War</i><br />
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<i>If God could use Jonah for the works of justice, there is hope for each of us. Are we not all reluctant prophets?</i><br />
<b>From the official brochure of The Jonah House</b> <br />
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On June 1, 1973 (3 months before my birth), the scandalously married priest-and-nun pair Phil Berrigan and Liz McAlister (and a few friends) christened <a href="http://www.jonahhouse.org/archive/">the Jonah House</a> in a 14-foot wide row house in the heart of innercity Baltimore. Many people have actively participated with Jonah House over the years, but Liz and Phil, in addition to their 3 children, were the only members to stay at Jonah House the entire time (Phil passed over to God in December 2002). From the beginning, they were (and had been) thoroughly committed to nonviolent resistance of the Vietnam War. By "thoroughly," I of course mean "willing to get arrested and go to prison for long periods of time." <br />
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Those uncomfortable with the notion of good Christians getting arrested ought to be reminded of the rich 2000-year legacy of such a practice within the Christian Tradition. The list goes on and on and on, from the earliest martyrs of the Roman Empire to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King in the 20th century. And, far-too-often-overlooked, the ministry of Jesus himself was fraught with civil disobedience in the face of unjust laws and mores of Temple and Empire. He defiantly broke the Sabbath, boldly issued forth forgiveness (a radical form of inclusion, pre-empting a power only reserved for the priests) and publicly interacted with women (who, in that society, would never talk openly/publicly with a man who was not a husband or relative), not to mention his radical Temple Action that precipitated his arrest and execution. <br />
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In the mid-90s, Jonah, name after the wavering & whimpering prophet of the Hebrew Bible, moved their operations to an overgrown cemetary plot owned by the Baltimore archdiocese. They are dedicated to living out peace and specifically the issue of nuclear weapons, educating themselves and strategically and creatively plotting symbolic resistance actions--from Michigan to Colorado--at military bases with nuclear weapons installations (more than 10,000 nuclear weapons remain in the U.S.). <br />
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McAlister has been joined by Dominican sisters Ardeth Platte and Carol Gilbert since the mid-90s and are currently in a time of transition, as two young couples, Amber & Kevin and Ted & Amy, will be organizing and administering the daily operations of Jonah House by the end of the summer. The community is structured around highly routinized days and weeks. They meet every morning for Scripture reading and prayer. They eat lunches and dinners together (except for Saturdays), trading off cooking duties each day. They mow and weed the 22 acres of the cemetary grounds. They work the garden. They make food runs to the local pantry every Monday morning. They organize the non-perishable food to give to members of the community who come to Jonah House every Tuesday morning. On Sunday evenings they meet to organize the weekly schedule which includes events such as joining the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House at peace vigils at the Pentagon and White House and attending the Bradley Manning trial at nearby Fort Meade.<br />
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These nuns, who have all served significant prison time as a result of nonviolent civil disobedience, believe that they serve a unique role in witnessing for peace and justice, but that they aren't any better than anyone else involved in the Cause. On Sunday night after we watched a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX8QtlRGCKM">documentar</a>y on one of their actions in Colorado Springs, Carol clarified, "There is not a hierarchy when it comes to social action." <br />
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She explained that a woman who commits to raising children as peacemakers in a society of greed and violence is doing work just as important as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plowshares_Movement">Plowshares Action</a>. And at all the protests and rallies and vigils and organized arrests, everyone is joined together with different duties united in a common mission to be faithful to the nonviolent Jesus. They just want to be faithful to what they believe God is calling them to do...and they encourage everyone to pursue their own calling in regards to peace and justice...and to do it consistently and faithfully.<br />
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On Sunday morning, Jonah House hosts a liturgical community of worship. Members of the community rotate facilitating and leading discussion on the weekly Gospel passage from the Catholic lectionary. They celebrate the Lord's Supper together as an inclusive interfaith People of God (the bread is baked every Saturday night by a Jewish member of the community). This intergenerational blend of radicals includes teachers, students, professionals, blue collar workers and activists. <br />
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After a time of prayer, we all sat down to eat a potluck meal together.<br />
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In the early afternoon, we teamed up in the basement to organize food for Tuesday morning pickup.<br />
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On Monday morning, we joined the community in a <a href="http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Catholic/2000/08/How-To-Practice-Lectio-Divina.aspx">lectio divina</a> session at 6:30. Lectio is an ancient Benedictine practice of reading the daily Scripture passages multiple times and listening for the voice of God "shimmering." Each person then shares a word or phrase from any of the readings and follows up with a more specific response about what that shimmering means for them. Ardeth's shimmering phrase was "do not be afraid, stand your ground" from that morning's Hebrew Bible reading (Exodus 14):<br />
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<blockquote><i>Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today.</i></blockquote><br />
She shared that the Trayvon Martin tragedy was still burdening her heart and then went on to share beautiful stories of people nonviolently standing their ground in a way that diffuses the violence in front of them (one example was of a friend who hopped out of bed and cooked breakfast for an intruder standing over her, no doubt about to rape and/or steal from her. He instead had breakfast with her, demanded nothing further, and left in peace), subverting the Stand Your Ground laws in more than 20 states that allow citizens to use force when feeling threatened. <br />
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After our lectio time, Lindsay and I went for a 30 minute run through the row house neighborhoods of Baltimore and came upon a park and reservoir with a gigantic statue of Columbus raising his sword and standing his ground. This was a simple reminder that the glorification of violence and domination is everywhere, from our history to our contemporary contexts of fear and anxiety. The lives of these beautiful women testify to that Alternative Lifestyle covenanted to Love, Gentleness, Humility, Service and Compassion. Not success. Just faithfulness.<br />
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Thomas Merton once wrote that there must be 20 people in the world who see things precisely as they are and who are not dominated or even influenced by any attachment. According to Merton, these are "the ones who are holding everything together and keeping the universe from falling apart." I'm pretty sure we met some of these folks at the Jonah House. <br />
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Liz stands in the door frame of her room at Jonah House. Above her head, the sign reads (translated from the Latin) "Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down." A desperately appropriate reminder.<br />
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Liz led us on a tour of the 22 acre grounds:<br />
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The garden is planted on the northwest corner of the land. The tent and hanging shirts are there to keep the deer away from the fruits and vegetables:<br />
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Truly, we've never met anyone quite like these radical nuns (and their proteges) at Jonah House. We were intimidated in the days leading up to our trek to inner city Baltimore, but quickly, we were put at ease by their humble service, passionate convictions, curious questions and grandmotherly wisdom. Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-70990929566944692232013-07-23T08:42:00.001-07:002013-07-23T14:34:58.143-07:00Heatin' Up in Philly<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-gO5bDpKRF2PoIMb08bkAyX21umhSKerHTiPAuHH8pFCOH3TJDD_bcAu0gnUYJR9qJz4lU_H4YLxgJRuup-H4L909vIDPY6HjfLfDpdCu8gNuXbVyfwpL9PPt2NF1qfUy5RzRvyfl3ac/s1600/Love.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-gO5bDpKRF2PoIMb08bkAyX21umhSKerHTiPAuHH8pFCOH3TJDD_bcAu0gnUYJR9qJz4lU_H4YLxgJRuup-H4L909vIDPY6HjfLfDpdCu8gNuXbVyfwpL9PPt2NF1qfUy5RzRvyfl3ac/s200/Love.jpg" /></a></div><i>After you take a right on 7th it will get really intense.</i><br />
<b>The closing words of a young man who gave us directions to the North Philly neighborhood of Kensington</b><br />
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<i>Our lands are parched not by nature, but by imperial hubris. In such a world, these biblical visions of redemption as rehydration, of quenching every thirst, are compelling. May we persuade our faith communities to reclaim them for our theology, our liturgy and our political practices--watershed by watershed.</i><br />
<b>Ched Myers</b><br />
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We left the farm on Thursday afternoon and arrived in North Philly just a couple of hours later. The temperature had continued to rise, climbing towards triple digits with horrifying humidity. We immediately encountered scenes like this all over the city:<br />
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Most of these row homes don't have AC so this is, most likely, the only way to keep cool (and sane) on Summer days like these. <br />
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After arriving at the <a href="http://www.thesimpleway.org/">The Simple Way</a> and getting settled into their <a href="http://www.thesimpleway.org/local/Hospitality/">House of Hospitality</a>, we met the Esaus, a gracious young German couple on a pilgrimage of their own. They had just spent 4 days in Brooklyn and were scheduled to visit the <a href="http://www.bruderhof.com/">Bruderhof</a> community in upstate NY and the <a href="http://wildgoosefestival.org/">Wild Goose Festival</a> in North Carolina in the weeks to come. They are traveling by bus in the States, each with a simple backpack. And she's pregnant!<br />
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On Thursday night, the four of us attended an Alternative Seminary event entitled <i>WADING THROUGH DEEP WATERS: Experimental theater, collaborative Biblical study, and a call to action to heal God’s Earth</i>. Tevyn East and Jay Beck describe themselves as <br />
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<i><blockquote>local artists who are collaborating on a series of experimental theater pieces that utilize the powerful archetypes of the four elements (earth, air, fire, water) and stitch them together with storytelling, dance, and live music to connect the message of the Biblical prophets to the current environmental crisis. We hope that these pieces will help to reawaken our senses to the pain of Creation and push us into a greater awareness of the deep truth that our spiritual tradition has always been on the side of the oppressed, including the Earth herself.</blockquote></i><br />
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This prophetic team of artists is really talented and very effective with the proclamation of their message that the citizen's of the Earth must repent from our using and abusing ways. And those of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus must take seriously the biblical call towards love, care and stewardship of Mother Earth. Beck portrayed a splashing John the Baptist and Tevyn played the part of a singing-and-dancing Miriam (see Exodus 15:1-2). Here's a taste of the action: <br />
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Tevyn and Jay will be spearheading the <a href="http://carnivalderesistance.com/">Carnival de Resistance</a> this Fall in Virginia.<br />
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We met Will O'Brien, the director of the <a href="http://www.alternativeseminary.net/">Alternative Seminary</a>, and his partner Dee Dee Risher, the editor of <a href="http://conspiremag.com/">Conspire Magazine</a>: <br />
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Will and Dee Dee started The Alternative Seminary 20 years ago to ignite the traditions of radical discipleship in a community of kindred spirits. The classes are 4-6 weeks and very affordable (about $60, including the textbook). The very first course he offered was a reading of the Hebrew Bible through the work of Walter Brueggemann's The Prophetic Imagination. He then transitioned to the New Testament and used some of Ched Myers' works (Sabbath Economics and Say To This Mountain). The courses are creatively and collaboratively designed and they fill up instantly. <br />
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We connected with Will on Friday morning for a cup of hot java at L'Aube Cafe, just a couple blocks from <a href="http://www.projecthome.org">Project Home</a>, where Will is the special projects coordinator. PH is the brain child of Sister Mary Scullion, a leader named by Time Magazine as one of the <a href="http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1894410_1894289_1894282,00.html">100 Most Influential People</a> in the world a few years ago. They have 600 units of housing, focusing all of their efforts on what they name as a very tangible goal: ending chronic street homelessness. <br />
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Our good friend and former house church participant Jeff Craw rode the bus in from NYC to join us for the day. <br />
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Will took us on a tour of the facilities, greeting every resident by name and introducing us to many. Will is passionate about creating spaces where there is not an ounce of difference between residents, workers and donors. This is truly a picture of the egalitarian Reign of God taught and lived by Jesus. <br />
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Here's the <strike>thrift store</strike> boutique where residents get job skill training: <br />
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Not to worry, we dedicated about 30 minutes of the 100-degree afternoon to some historic sight-seeing. Here we are at Independence Hall, the sight of the signing of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.<br />
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We ended our time in North Philly with a potluck with the good folks from The Simple Way. We packed into their corner housing unit for food and conversation:<br />
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The Simple Way is a community started by Shane Claiborne and friends in North Philly. They are committed to creatively caring for poor and marginalized folks in the neighborhood where they live with them in solidarity. Art and gardening are two obvious aspects of their work, but they are also focusing on after-school programs and ending gun violence: <br />
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They constructed an aquaponics project, an ecological laboratory connecting fish and plants without soil. This creates a symbiotic environment where fish provide nutrients for the plants and the plants clean water for the fish. The only thing required of humans is to feed the fish:<br />
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Before we set our sights on Baltimore, we drove an hour north to the 3rd largest city in PA: Allentown. We met up with Steve Kriss, a Mennonite leader who was introduced to us by Sheldon Good. Steve coordinated and facilitated a lunch with some of the members of a couple Mennonite communities (including <a href="http://ripple-allentown.com/">Ripple Allentown</a>) whose vision, identity and mission all overlap. These leaders gather frequently for shared meals, prayer and discussion and some of them are living together in intentional community. We were deeply touched by their obvious love for each other and the neighborhood they live in (not to mention their thoughtful and heartfelt prayer for our own discerning process at the end, even though we had only spent two hours with them!). An inspired community and genuine embodiment of God's healing presence in Allentown, indeed.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBAlCTb4A8Bzdc1e6Op0Q7nZMRd5QRrckrg5u7kclD0g7nsqWYorJTeoc8kfvk2msfiN5937CuKQoXsvcqEC0C5mBpMJOJGWT94PWPp3ay3c7L7LOrY6Ry3FH0uEw_-WeIU6-CcbBAqxY/s1600/DSCN1859.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBAlCTb4A8Bzdc1e6Op0Q7nZMRd5QRrckrg5u7kclD0g7nsqWYorJTeoc8kfvk2msfiN5937CuKQoXsvcqEC0C5mBpMJOJGWT94PWPp3ay3c7L7LOrY6Ry3FH0uEw_-WeIU6-CcbBAqxY/s320/DSCN1859.JPG" /></a></div>Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-43008415949738575322013-07-21T15:43:00.001-07:002013-07-22T22:24:02.114-07:00Holy Rebels In Rochester<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX6jX9KTOdEXvT-TP8qangFP6ehwkmzS_riEx3ccVXauPV7WsPxrJdRyTcZsyxa0u9Ya4Tjs8hoghfWLSwMUbhRVY4tAcBKBEKa2IgE4AmgJ3HkyqWbtaaoTUs0lA2ueXHaVHlmNfCyg4/s1600/votes-women1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX6jX9KTOdEXvT-TP8qangFP6ehwkmzS_riEx3ccVXauPV7WsPxrJdRyTcZsyxa0u9Ya4Tjs8hoghfWLSwMUbhRVY4tAcBKBEKa2IgE4AmgJ3HkyqWbtaaoTUs0lA2ueXHaVHlmNfCyg4/s200/votes-women1.jpg" /></a></div><i>Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe</i>.<br />
<b>Frederick Douglass</b><br />
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<i>I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.</i><br />
<b>Susan B. Anthony</b><br />
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When Frederick Douglass ran away from slavery, dressed up as a sailor and boarded a train for freedom with fake papers (undocumented!!!) exactly 145 years before my birthday (September 3), it took him 24 hours to get from Baltimore to home base in Rochester. That's a radical road trip. We got to Rochester by car, just a 3-hour trip from Toronto (actually about 3 hours and 15 minutes after stopping for slurpees). Not so radical. <br />
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Douglass was the only African-American to speak at the women's rights conference at Seneca Falls in 1948, calling for an absolutely revolutionary proposal: full voting rights for all American women. As always, he spoke passionately and clearly:<br />
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<i><blockquote>In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world.</blockquote></i><br />
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He saved his most radical words, however, for a speech delivered to--get this(!)--the Rochester Anti-Slavery Sewing Society on July 5, 1852:<br />
<blockquote><i>What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.</i></blockquote><br />
Douglass lived in Rochester on and off until 1872 when his house was scorched by arson. He left for D.C.<br />
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When Susan B. Anthony turned 29, she moved her family to Rochester in 1849. She focused on the women's and temperance movements and in 1872, she and some of her fellow female troublemakers voted illegally. Today the 1872 Cafe serves up fresh, fair-trade brew at this very spot in downtown Rochester. <br />
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<a href="http://www.1872cafe.com/">The 1872 Cafe</a> is actually a non-profit ministry of <a href="http://www.spirituschristi.org/spirituschristi.org/Welcome.html">Spiritus Christi Church</a>, a <strike>Roman</strike> Catholic Church which has been pushing the "dangerous" limits of full inclusion for the past few decades. In the Spirit of Douglass and Anthony, these radicals have ordained women, preached in advocacy and solidarity to bring full dignity and equality for sexual minorities (LGBTQTTI) and have committed themselves to serving the eucharist to <i>everyone</i>, regardless of religious affiliation. <br />
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We got the opportunity to sit down with their priest Mary Rammerman, who moved to Rochester from California with her husband and children in the early 1980s to join the beautifully rebellious Fr. Jim Callan and the Corpus Christi Church, which created ministries based on Matthew 25's call to care for the least of these (the hungry, naked, imprisoned, etc). Mary's journey to priesthood has hit numerous snags and roadblocks along the way, including a Vatican takeover of Corpus, eventually leading to the creation of Spiritus in the late 90s.<br />
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We were severely blessed by the hospitality of Mike and Lynne Boucher, a couple who moved to Rochester after meeting at Fairfield University and getting married in 1991. <br />
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They were compelled by the mission of Corpus Christi and were right in the thick of the drama of the Vatican's power moves just a few years later. As a result, Mike (a <a href="http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/typefive.asp">5 on the enneagram</a>) started working as a therapist and supervisor at the <a href="http://www.sjncenter.org/services.php">St. Joseph's Neighborhood Center</a>, a non-profit organization providing medical, dental and mental health services to those who lack health insurance. In addition, Mike is still deeply involved in the ministry of Spiritus Christi. In fact, he just got done leading a 2-day retreat based on Walter Brueggemann's classic <i>The Prophetic Imagination</i> and then preaching three services on Sunday. <br />
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In addition to his work at the clinic, at church and at home, Mike is the Chairman of the Board for <a href="http://www.wordandworld.org/">Word & World</a>, "an experiment in alternative theological education, bridging <a href="http://www.wordandworld.org/index.php/resources/articles-about-word-world/word-world-a-peoples-school-alternative-theological-education-between-the-seminary-the-sanctuary-and-the-streets/">the gap between the seminary, the sanctuary and the streets</a>." Over the past dozen years, W&W has organized week-long retreats focused on specific issues like immigration, ecological justice, sexuality and racial reconciliation. They seek to gather legends of biblical scholarship and social activism (ie, folks actually <i>doing</i> the work) and bring them together with younger leaders in cities like Detroit, Greensboro, Tucson and Rochester. <br />
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Lynne (a <a href="http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/typethree.asp#.UeqkfSp5mSM">3 on the enneagram</a>) is the spiritual director at Nazareth College. She is absolutely perfect for her job. She is a fully-trained yoga instructor and leads all sorts of classes on campus, ranging from the general student population to specific sessions for many of the athletic teams. She has a tremendous heart for her students and seeks to honor the faith tradition of each student she counsels and mentors, not to mention the fact that she possesses more energy in 3 minutes than I do for a whole day. On Tuesday, she led Lindsay through an hour-long yoga session in the Boucher living room. <br />
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And the grand finale:<br />
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The Bouchers have two children (twins!), Jonah and Kateri, who just graduated from high school and are on their way to Hamilton University in upstate NY. Mike and Lynne look far too young to be empty-nesters. <br />
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We hit the road for Lancaster County, PA:<br />
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And got to Tom Longenecker's family farm just before dinner:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5p8XA9ULxB_OYEV6it-_ObCG3DMW7e9EKaeyn3WfZcnm34Y2goziX4HvVKcasIZ6Upj63Jcm_ZdZ-CTR1XPeu9n_-kZtcJ4Ow4FZV7-z2V1dk9tzxdSRBxNS2Zw4M4OXqsUBuCp_F_WM/s1600/DSCN1803.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5p8XA9ULxB_OYEV6it-_ObCG3DMW7e9EKaeyn3WfZcnm34Y2goziX4HvVKcasIZ6Upj63Jcm_ZdZ-CTR1XPeu9n_-kZtcJ4Ow4FZV7-z2V1dk9tzxdSRBxNS2Zw4M4OXqsUBuCp_F_WM/s320/DSCN1803.JPG" /></a></div><br />
We spent the night talking with Tom, a therapist and pastor at <a href="http://www.newhopeharrisburg.com/#!about1/cbe7">New Hope Community Mennonite Church</a> in Harrisburg, his mom Peggy and Valentina Satvedi, a coordinator for the Mennonite Central Committee doing compelling work in regards to postcolonial faith and action. Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-43357594900650722272013-07-16T19:45:00.000-07:002013-07-17T05:54:44.902-07:00Toronto: Cowbirds Stellar, Blue Jays In The Cellar <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIDLm32RjAxgFUScSaTVXeDG746r1nFNtD4RVG7JCChnKFLGbD_85AZ2euxVlsoGz4Ufku1YfrEMXdPrFWCR5a-5W5TG4n2NeQPe5XMPl9cQwd0BaploycfdXWb5uPaUtOprsMObVM3io/s1600/DSCN1757.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIDLm32RjAxgFUScSaTVXeDG746r1nFNtD4RVG7JCChnKFLGbD_85AZ2euxVlsoGz4Ufku1YfrEMXdPrFWCR5a-5W5TG4n2NeQPe5XMPl9cQwd0BaploycfdXWb5uPaUtOprsMObVM3io/s200/DSCN1757.JPG" /></a></div><i>Let’s state it clearly: One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway</i>.<br />
<b>Richard Rohr</b><br />
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We walked into the Romero House 15 minutes late for lunch on Friday. We got to Toronto the night before and were still getting acclimated to the treacherous road conditions: traffic, street cars, timed lights, weaving taxis, parked cars that made two lanes become one lane and then back again. The six Romero interns were downstairs sharing a vegetarian lunch of mashed potatoes, coleslaw, tomatoes and bell peppers, green salad and fresh strawberries. We were received warmly and curiously, no doubt strange that two thirty-somethings from California would find themselves half a world away in this house of refugees. <br />
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Actually, Romero House is four houses of Canadian interns living together with refugee families from Ghana, Iran, Namibia, Romania and elsewhere. The interns, under the care and leadership of director Sarah Villager and Mary Jo Leddy, the Founder of this two-decades-old project, commit to one-year renewable contracts. They eat every lunch and dinner together and divvy up the cooking and cleaning tasks throughout the week. Their food, rent, healthcare and transportation needs are included and their "take home pay" is a couple hundred dollars a month. <br />
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Named after Latin American martyr-priest Oscar Romero ("If they kill me I shall rise in the Salvadoran people."), this community is profoundly committed to solidarity with and advocacy for the refugee families who live in the High Park neighborhood of Toronto. The interns work as advocates and translators with lawyers, health professionals & government bureaus, as well as help provide advice, transportation, and just about anything else these families may need. At the core of their mission, the good folks at Romero are committed to a mentality of <i>walking alongside</i> of these sojourners. They reject paternalism and charity for the deeper, more authentic love embodied in solidarity.<br />
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Lizzie, a 2nd year intern from Wales, took us on a tour of the neighborhood.<br />
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They converted this old garage into a sacred space for morning meditation:<br />
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She led us up to a beautiful rooftop garden:<br />
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Actually...it seemed there were gardens EVERYWHERE:<br />
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We did not know what to expect when we met up with Bill Heffernan at Gate 403 on Roncevalles St, just a 10 minute walk from the Romero House. Billy greeted us immediately with a warm hug and quick wit. A newly-retired Catholic school teacher of the Bible, Heffernan, thankfully, exuded none of the typical qualities of such a profession. Beer-drinking, story-telling and authority-dissing, he took it to another level as he recanted the first time he ever met the Biblical scholar and activist Ched Myers. <br />
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As it turns out, Bill read a Myers essay back in 1980 and was immediately hooked. Bill had been intuitively stretching the imaginations of his high school Scripture students, focusing on God's consistent call for all people of faith and conscience to commit themselves to dynamic social, economic and political action...and now he found the compelling scholarly resources that defended his teachings. <br />
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Bill roused up the other fellow Teachers For Social Justice and they roadtripped down to Detroit where Myers was headlining at a conference. When they arrived, Billy and the boys sacramented late into the night at the local pub. They slept in, missing the morning praise and worship session and raced down to the conference. A quick stop at the coffee vending machine found Myers (and some of the other <strike>speakers</strike> sinners) oversleeping the holy time too! The weekend led to many deep and challenging conversations with Myers and to a now-three-decade-old relationship. <br />
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About 20 years ago, Billy started a little group called Trucks For Nicaragua. He convinced folks to donate their trucks to the 3rd World country and he and his friends drove them all the way down the Continent. This (ad)venture led to the creation of <a href="http://thecasa.ca/about-casa/">Casa Canadiense</a>, an NGO dedicated to educating Canadian youth (his students!) about Central American society through the facilitation of real relationships between Canadians and Nicaraguans. He eventually bought some property from some Catholic priests who held him to a beer-induced promise that he made late one night in Nicaragua: one day, if given the chance, he would buy a place of his own for the Cause. <br />
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Heffernan treated us to local beers and Indian food before he sidelined himself briefly for a nap. At 9:30pm, we reunited at The Hole In The Wall in The Junction neighborhood of Toronto: the Billy Heffernan Trio was playing to a packed crowd! <br />
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On a beautiful 25-degree (celsius!) Saturday morning, we met Sara Stratton at The Spit, a human-made landform with a series of trails and paths jutting out into Lake Ontario on the southeast side of Toronto. Sara's friends, Julie and Jenn, joined us on the bird-watching adventure. We know virtually nothing about winged creatures so this was quite a fascinating time for us. Sara and Julie work for Kairos Canada, an ecumenical Christian organization committed to working with churches and other religious organizations in the realm of social justice education and advocacy, especially ecological and economic. <br />
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We were struck by their ability and desire to get to know us, while still watching and listening for different birds all around us. At one point, Sara was sharing something about her personal life and then suddenly called out "Kingbird! Eastern Kingbird!" And then naturally settled right back into our previous dialogue. Truly impressive. Sara and Julie's sarcastic banter was pure entertainment and made us feel right at home. We heard the three-peat songs of the mockingbird and saw cowbirds, gulls, terns, swallows and a white-bellyed something-or-other that just stared at us from a branch just above our view of the city. <br />
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On Sunday morning, we slept in and then met Wendy Gallegos for brunch at a great little place called the Cardinal Rule. A pastor's daughter from nearby Hamilton, Ontario, Wendy used to work for Sojourners in Washington D.C. She was full of energy and inspiration, two qualities that, no doubt, go a long way in her vocation as a social worker. Wendy's husband, Aaron, was home with their 6-year-old son Amado who had a bit of a summer cold! Hopefully, we'll get to meet them in California soon. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzMlJ-ujfWuOLhiv4gTb2aWuh2SbnRWRDZU3le4hdDyvr5NflmngrBkdYog7exqfT04lTTWUVCMNDJTncErBWqLg0LBx4COxx_eGJAxJ2PnKyKnq5W5e75tKkedgYXbtVLZwshQTbtvCU/s1600/DSCN1747.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzMlJ-ujfWuOLhiv4gTb2aWuh2SbnRWRDZU3le4hdDyvr5NflmngrBkdYog7exqfT04lTTWUVCMNDJTncErBWqLg0LBx4COxx_eGJAxJ2PnKyKnq5W5e75tKkedgYXbtVLZwshQTbtvCU/s320/DSCN1747.JPG" /></a></div><br />
On our journey out of Canadian territory, we stopped at Niagara-on-the-Lake for lunch and coffee and then parked on the side of the road and did a 45-minute midday run to see the Falls. Beautiful, but hotter than dogshit. Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-36455728386263154022013-07-12T08:12:00.000-07:002013-07-13T18:42:09.287-07:00Motoring Around D-Town<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkYBHdXFYyd7bBKwiCHOekRlFlL1h5j5TGQECxqsw2Z7UxUoR0tJLHwqAhcMpiVB-xW8JLtNYtPk2qMNDWW3VwuRhGsGm021d3-et-JSbqIKL-vkAuQheie4QnahZ9Xr1-FVHvcefe69A/s1600/Diego-Rivera-Mural.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkYBHdXFYyd7bBKwiCHOekRlFlL1h5j5TGQECxqsw2Z7UxUoR0tJLHwqAhcMpiVB-xW8JLtNYtPk2qMNDWW3VwuRhGsGm021d3-et-JSbqIKL-vkAuQheie4QnahZ9Xr1-FVHvcefe69A/s200/Diego-Rivera-Mural.jpg" /></a></div><i>I have amazing news for you. Man is not alone on this planet. He is part of a community, upon which he depends absolutely.</i><br />
<b>Daniel Quinn</b>, <i>Ishmael: An Adventure of Mind & Spirit</i><br />
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<i>Being holy does not mean being perfect but being whole; it does not mean being exceptionally religious or being religious at all; it means being liberated from religiosity and religious pietism of any sort; it does not mean being morally better, it meas being exemplary; it does not mean being godly, but rather being truly human.</i><br />
<b>William Stringfellow</b>, <i>A Keeper of the Word: Selected Readings</i><br />
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Growing up in the early 90s in white bread Orange County, I loved Public Enemy's "911 is A Joke In Our Town," but certainly did not get the joke. Fast forward a couple of decades and we find ourselves in Detroit, where clearly, 911 <i>is</i> a joke. The average response rate for Detroit Police is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/us/financial-crisis-just-a-symptom-of-detroits-woes.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">58 minutes</a> and most of the city's ambulances are out of commission. <br />
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Neighborhoods all over the city report numerous street lights out as potholes remain unfilled. One-third of the entire city has been abandoned or burned and the Republican governor and legislature has mandated an Emergency Manager for the city of Detroit, giving him dictator powers over nearly every decision for the future of the city, while the <i>elected</i> officials have been stripped of all power, except--laughably--the power to pound the gavel to begin and end council meetings. <br />
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As white families and corporations have caught the wave out of the city core into the suburbs, baby boomer radicals like Jim Perkinson, Lily Mendoza & Bill Wylie-Kellermann remain firmly planted in D-Town, creatively and consistently fighting for socio-economic justice through non-violent resistance. Kellermann got arrested at a recent city council meeting after interrupting the "business" with nearly 90 minutes of singing. These leaders have been taking the church service into the streets for decades. For them, it makes no sense singing "We Will Not Be Moved" confined to a pew. After all, the first generation of Jesus followers were known as those "<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+17%3A6&version=ESV">turning the whole world upside down</a>." These prophets are taking that vocation literally and seriously.<br />
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<a href="http://sojo.net/biography/bill-wylie-kellermann">Kellermann</a>, a long-time pastor at St. Peter's United Methodist Church, confessed to us in a conversation just steps away from his backyard garden that he stopped counting how many times he got arrested after about 50. He also confessed that he unwittingly caused a stir at a recent United Methodist annual conference for spray painting some political additions to a "We Love Detroit" mural on the sidewalk leading up to the church hosting the meetings. We found it absolutely legendary that Pastor Bill was (1) unaware that, although the mural had the look of spray paint graffiti, it was actually <i>chalk</i> and (2) upon finding the mural he didn't think twice about heading straight to his car where he always keeps spray paint cans <i>just in case</i> (one of his spiritual practices is redeeming military, sexist and, more recently & urgently, emergency management billboards with his own personal touch). <br />
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Perkinson, a professor at Detroit's Ecumenical Theological Seminary and Oakland University, grew up in Cincinnati playing sports with boys a lot bigger, stronger and older than he was. Time after time, he was the source of bullying and beating. From his early days, he got just a taste of what it was like to be hated and despised and oppressed by the mainstream. It wasn't until he was in college that he became compelled by and called to the African-American neighborhoods of Detroit. With the exception of a couple of timeouts for graduate study (Univ of Chicago) and teaching (Univ of Denver), since the late 60s, Perkinson has been actively organizing for a host of justice issues in the very heart of Detroit, with her 83% African-American population. But the blue-eyed and grey-haired poneytailed Perkinson blends right in, flipping the script with his rare blend of scholarly theological work exposing white supremacy and his gift of spoken word poetry (at our prompting, he performed two epic poems for us before he bid us good-bye). <br />
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At the very core of everything that Jim, and his marriage partner Lily (also a tenured track professor at Oakland U.), do is a courageous expose of the deep effects of colonialism and the ongoing catastrophe of unacknowledged white privilege. Without this deeper systemic analysis it's just too damn easy to go on living a "nice" existence while unmindfully living on the side of the conquistadors (or on the side of Pharoah if biblical reference is necessitated). But everything Jim and Lily do is local. They are fully committed to <i>learning</i> (in word and deed) their beloved, adopted hometown, as Ched Myers consistently echoes:<br />
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<blockquote>We won't save places we don't love.<br />
We can't love places we don't know.<br />
We don't know places we haven't learned.</blockquote><br />
They are deeply distressed by the white flight and corporate maneuvering. They recognize and call out--because they have studied the back stories and lived out the front stories--that Detroit has been raped and pillaged by corporate interests who profited greatly by structurally readjusting 3rd World countries the century before. Detroit's labor and resources were used up by auto factories and other manufacturing endeavors for decades of the 20th century, but now, stripped of the ability to compete during this age of uber-globalization, Detroit has been rendered helpless by the very design of those corporations and banks, which have now turned to finance and debt to make their billions. <br />
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Jim and Lily live in a co-op near the historic African-American neighborhood of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Bottom,_Detroit">Black Bottom</a>, which was pulverized by the creation of freeways in the 50s and 60s. Lily is always sparkling with color and jewelry which match her vibrant spirit and tie her to her indigenous roots which she (and Jim) have been on a deeply personal journey to recover from the colonial project. We learned from Lily and Jim that this project, along with devastating land and culture, to differing extents, has separated us all from our truest indigenous selves. Lily's poetic expression of this journey spoke deeply to our own spirits. <br />
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<blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglY4Of5i8gPe-Fo3NmDV6OLojdNL9E9x4HXuZm5tTijRh7DezmTaQShKPVk7qmqjEeiSeDXjPS69rVdUV-U1mCrnWEFLZuB6CUoEGWLBVSGQr7J9WPOz2bG7BnZ05VI4HgJ9QU0ea_chs/s1600/Lily.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglY4Of5i8gPe-Fo3NmDV6OLojdNL9E9x4HXuZm5tTijRh7DezmTaQShKPVk7qmqjEeiSeDXjPS69rVdUV-U1mCrnWEFLZuB6CUoEGWLBVSGQr7J9WPOz2bG7BnZ05VI4HgJ9QU0ea_chs/s320/Lily.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Over a dinner of beer and pizza, Jim asked us a simple question: "What's your passion?" He LOVES detroit. And even if he and his fellow activists and artists and agricultural bandits can't change the structures over night he is thoroughly committed to this place. He is convinced that Detroit will save white poeple, not the other way around, citing his own experience of being "rearranged" by black culture decades ago, a process he would say continues to this day.<br />
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On Tuesday morning, we got the Perkinson tour of Detroit, routing us through neighborhoods in his 1997 Subaru. We met up at Avalon bakery, an indie cafe started in the early-90s by a lesbian couple participating in the <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/24/detroit_summer_the_youth_program_that">Detroit Summer</a> movement. <br />
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We stopped at what remains of the oldest auto factory in the world. <br />
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We took in scenes like this ALL over the city...burned out, abandoned, overgrown, etc:<br />
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But families, neighborhoods, churches and co-ops are literally digging in to bring redemption to this post-industrial brokenness. Here's a community garden started by a Monastery on the eastside:<br />
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And then we came across this:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvRrDMXi6rwvw4_PNqNtsr40eKF8T8R69MQtReC7V1kuBtskF6yqhmDaKXOl8ErjgvMeUkwEml0r1dVaVkyLm2xmtV4-Mg-EQfO2dujRkZBkQSpg2i0qlLds7XuiUC8P1jyYdcOALsOxU/s1600/DSCN1637.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvRrDMXi6rwvw4_PNqNtsr40eKF8T8R69MQtReC7V1kuBtskF6yqhmDaKXOl8ErjgvMeUkwEml0r1dVaVkyLm2xmtV4-Mg-EQfO2dujRkZBkQSpg2i0qlLds7XuiUC8P1jyYdcOALsOxU/s320/DSCN1637.JPG" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieazeEUvfTqi2IypyzZMt6BEmKNsOH-CsyjslBabuR36batcUoBpDsGsZspVRDs9pTrMMO-9FK0iB3UXIM8AW_Izlc6uwq18KHZ8n0U56xzl16ZHTKK5-tv19QwncWx9LAYKajOZ4DqXg/s1600/DSCN1640.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieazeEUvfTqi2IypyzZMt6BEmKNsOH-CsyjslBabuR36batcUoBpDsGsZspVRDs9pTrMMO-9FK0iB3UXIM8AW_Izlc6uwq18KHZ8n0U56xzl16ZHTKK5-tv19QwncWx9LAYKajOZ4DqXg/s320/DSCN1640.JPG" /></a></div><br />
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Two decades ago, Tyree Guyton started gathering the "junk" (records, stuffed animals, dolls, shoes, etc etc etc) lying around his neighborhood and turning it into beautiful artwork. As houses were abandoned and burned, Tyree would take bright colors and give them a fresh coat, polka dotting them all up. The neighbors and the city initially responded by bulldozing his creations, but eventually everyone has been converted due to the overwhelming adoration bestowed on his work. Today, the Heidelberg Project receives more than 200,000 out-of-town visitors every year. <br />
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A rendition of Noah's Ark:<br />
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Burying the military industrial complex...finally and forever:<br />
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And a memorial to Holocaust victims:<br />
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After our tour with Jim, we met up with the good folks from the <a href="http://jeaniewyliecommunity.blogspot.ca/">Jeanie Wylie community</a> on Detroit's westside. This group of 6, <a href="http://www.chedmyers.org/articles/radical-discipleship/baptism’s-true-claim-memory-jeanie-wylie-kellermann">named after</a> the late wife of Bill and mother of Lydia (and Lucy) & rooted in the Catholic Worker tradition of peace, hospitality and nonviolent resistance, is committed to participating in the urban agriculture revolution sprouting up all over Detroit. Lydia & Erinn (and their 4 month old son, Isaac!), Luke and Joan, and Vicente and Erika make up the core of membership. We also met Marty, who moved to Detroit this summer with her girlfriend Hannah to participate with the JW community. They join together for common meals, prayer and Scripture reading, community gardening and, of course, political activism at all sorts of venues throughout the city. <br />
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Here we are in the Wylie-Kellermann backyard garden started back in the mid-90s:<br />
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Lydia & Erinn pray that Isaac will grow up in a world in which he was never aware of a time his parents did not have full dignity among people and equal rights under the law:<br />
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Luke orchestrated the creation of this community garden a few years ago just a few blocks away from the Jeanie-Wylie community. They do not own the land...but they aren't asking permission to plant! The neighbors love it:<br />
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There was so much to take away and process from our short Time here. These leaders of the nonviolent revolution in Detroit (otherwise known as "discipleship to Jesus") are, quite simply, committed to what Perkinson refers to as "living into it." Like St. Francis of Assisi, they "at all times preach the gospel and when necessary use words." But more than anything, they let their actions speak for themselves. And these actions have had a powerful impact on us. Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-53732143400512151192013-07-10T20:11:00.000-07:002013-07-11T05:34:13.622-07:00Playing Dumb In Big 10 College Towns<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTvcTC8phetURhoAYFtXuvTOJiZGcFpuw3bBllWEbmJgl84_xmXijgZR1knOzBfE6bFWU97fAoUdyTWcRPMGE2qECkShgZPJk9CAgpt6ft-uio8FcF0Opv6_ycbxeOSFL6kZ7DTwOpgQo/s1600/DSCN1570.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTvcTC8phetURhoAYFtXuvTOJiZGcFpuw3bBllWEbmJgl84_xmXijgZR1knOzBfE6bFWU97fAoUdyTWcRPMGE2qECkShgZPJk9CAgpt6ft-uio8FcF0Opv6_ycbxeOSFL6kZ7DTwOpgQo/s200/DSCN1570.JPG" /></a></div>My heart - brings me to my knees<br />
There's God: the forest for the trees<br />
Move me, like the wind will stir the leaves<br />
I give way to the mystery like the branches in the breeze.<br />
<b>David Wilco</b>x, <i>Into The Mystery</i><br />
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<i>Celebrate we will<br />
Because life is short but sweet for certain.</i><br />
<b>Dave Matthews Band</b>, <i>Two Step</i><br />
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Last week, we found ourselves doing rather odd things just a stone's throw from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. We posed semi-nude in front of Camp Randall, the home field of the Badgers:<br />
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And then we hit up the National Mustard Museum on our way out of town:<br />
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We took a long weekend to scout out Evanston, Illinois (the home of Northwestern University) and Ann Arbor, Michigan (U. of Mich), the two schools with quasi-legitimate claims to be "the Harvard of the Midwest." <br />
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Lindsay had a beautiful view of the Chicago skyline as she caught up on her tanning regimen:<br />
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And then she walked through a beautiful lily pond in Lincoln Park:<br />
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Meanwhile, Tom went for a walk around parts of the city and then settled into a little reading and mid-afternoon coffee:<br />
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We went for a run around Wrigley Field while the Cubs and Pirates battled inside:<br />
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On Sunday, we worshipped with the historic Reba Place Church, a Mennonite community started in the late 50s:<br />
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And then we were invited to lunch with the Reba Place Fellowship, a group of 12 folks who live in intentional community at a house called "The Clearing." They commit to an "open purse," which means that they pool all their income together and have a highly organized list of jobs around the house. They eat 19 meals a week together and read Scripture and pray together. Every Saturday night they have movie night. Reba Place has purchased a lot of property in the neighborhood and people from the church live in different buildings.<br />
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On Sunday afternoon, we drove 4 hours to Ann Arbor, Michigan to see our good friend Mike Smith (a man who has attended more than 75 Dave Matthews concerts...and counting) and his girlfriend Nurse Betsy. She has earned 2 degrees from the University of Michigan and is one more year away from finishing her masters in nursing. We really had a great time celebrating Life with this fine-looking couple. Here we are at Zingerman's bakery, a place that Obama demanded to stop at during his recent trip to Ann Arbor:<br />
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And we stayed up waaaaay tooooo late playing Mexican Train:<br />
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We finished our time with Mike and Nurse Betsy canoeing, jumping off bridges, and taking in all the beauty of the Huron River:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWVHgnQmnbmqFEipCO8mYIUxH96dwAOuf3SFfpMDN1GSVV6qs0oWjdoBpqSo3JatOTLhRz_DakpvcSjE6YBrOblw4TwrETzhxwVWiEU1N-Y3NMZXRsHB0nMXKEKAtQUvWJcy_SZNCLvxc/s1600/me+tom+canoee.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWVHgnQmnbmqFEipCO8mYIUxH96dwAOuf3SFfpMDN1GSVV6qs0oWjdoBpqSo3JatOTLhRz_DakpvcSjE6YBrOblw4TwrETzhxwVWiEU1N-Y3NMZXRsHB0nMXKEKAtQUvWJcy_SZNCLvxc/s320/me+tom+canoee.jpg" /></a></div><br />
We left this portion of our trip Tuesday afternoon feeling enlivened by some epic stops overflowing with generous hospitality, stimulating conversation and new learnings, and adventurous antics with new and old friends. Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-34301065349398168702013-07-05T08:56:00.000-07:002013-07-05T09:14:07.218-07:00Oooooo Wisconsin.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQkOSqwQG-ZkclPk9qHCSl5ZTWedpbVTwjsBXzxv7NAFJpES0_wL9TQ56aO9DrFdFvyX6NnEkojebRfm1V9Gvuu3IFWnCio-a7tZYuhH1MK5w8Noj2pjvl1LNXWUW6jXDRViqzVbcQIaE/s1600/DSCN1367.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQkOSqwQG-ZkclPk9qHCSl5ZTWedpbVTwjsBXzxv7NAFJpES0_wL9TQ56aO9DrFdFvyX6NnEkojebRfm1V9Gvuu3IFWnCio-a7tZYuhH1MK5w8Noj2pjvl1LNXWUW6jXDRViqzVbcQIaE/s200/DSCN1367.JPG" /></a></div><i>We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.</i><br />
<b>Wendell Berry</b><br />
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On Sunday morning we crossed back over into the States and wheeled south through North Dakota and back into Minnesota territory. After a short run across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis and dinner at a little Indian food restaurant close to "The U," we ended up trekking all the way to Eau Claire, Wisconsin. On Monday, we drove to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin and floated the Chippewa River for two sublime hours. It was incredibly peaceful, listening to the chirping of a myriad of birds who filled the trees on both banks. We even saw a bald eagle. <br />
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After the float, we homed in on our next big destination: Madison, Wisconsin. Dubbed "76 square miles surrounded by reality," Madison was the epicenter of Vietnam Era protests and is still widely known as a progressive hippie town in an otherwise mostly conservative rural state (the GOP controls both houses of the Legislature and occupies the governor's mansion). Although it hosted some epic public teacher's rallies at the Capitol building just a couple of years ago when Governor Walker legislatively scapegoated public unions, in actuality, the place is quite mild in terms of everyday radical activity (full disclosure: we've vacationed in Berkeley the past two summers). Bummer.<br />
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We spent most of our time on State Street, a half dozen blocks of indie restaurants, bars, coffee houses and clothing shops wedged in between the Capitol and the University. This is a truly great scene, better even than Massachusetts Street in our beloved Lawrence (mostly because State Street lies adjacent to the campus). There were a lot of live musicians and the weather was shockingly perfect. Where did the humidity go? <br />
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Madison is saturated with socially conscious businesses like Fair Trade. After all, the Bottom Line cannot possibly be sky-rocketing profits at the expense of the rest of God's Creation (these businesses <i>dare</i> to live out the above Wendell Berry quote):<br />
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We were floored by the generous hospitality of Jonny and Michelle Hoffner, college friends of our boy <a href="http://matthewankeny.com/ma/Matthew_Ankeny.html">Matt Ankeny</a> (the 6'6" "Ank The Tank"). The Hoffners moved to Middleton, a little town just outside the Madison city limits, just a few months ago from Minnesota. They are <a href="http://www.paperantler.com/blog/">wedding photographers</a> and took a ground-breaking road trip of their own in 2012, packing up their Honda Fit and traveling all over North America, donating $1,000 from every wedding they shot to an organization that works with women who have been kidnapped by sex traffickers. Their trek was called <a href="http://www.thefiftynifty.com/fifty_nifty/about.html">The Nifty Fifty</a>: they raised $50,000 and they put 50,000 on their Honda.<br />
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Our time with the Hoffners was delightful. Conversation peppered and tangented all over the map (literally): stories of falling in love, struggles with finding community of fellowship and solidarity, book and movie recommendations, our jobs, John Piper's peculiar <a href="http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/ask-pastor-john/what-would-you-say-to-a-young-man-who-is-considering-sleeping-with-his-girlfriend">"thrusting"</a> analogy and, of course, the emerging (post)Evangelical convictions about gay marriage (and so much more). More than anything, the Hoffners embodied a rich display of hospitality (<i>philoxenos</i> in the Greek: literally "love of strangers"). We didn't know each other at all before we touched down in Madison on Monday and they bought us dinner, served us up the finest locally fermented and distilled beverages and allowed us to stay at their place the rest of the week while they were out in San Diego shooting a wedding. <br />
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Jonny & Michelle's apartment was converted from an old condensed milk factory. It is just blocks from a coffee house, local restaurants and bars and the Capital Brewing Company right behind the apartment complex:<br />
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Lindsay found some friends on State Street...<br />
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...and Tom got a bit more intimate:<br />
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State Street is flooded with talented street performers...<br />
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...some of whom take a break to enjoy a cigarette with admirers of their work. This is community!<br />
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We visited "The Mendota Terrace" on the Fourth of July...<br />
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...and then went for a 45 minute run on the University lakeside trail:<br />
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Then we settled in for an East African dinner at <a href="http://www.burakamadison.com/Welcome.html">Buraka</a> (the name means "joy" or "contentment" in the Oromo language):<br />
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The local Baptist church was handing out tracts. As it turns out, they interpret Romans a bit differently than we've been trained to (see <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Arrogance-Nations-Critical-Contexts/dp/0800697685">this</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Empire-Religion-Imperial-Society/dp/1563382172">this</a> if you want to move beyond the fundamentalism of "the Romans road"):<br />
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Fortunately, we know University of Wisconsin educated Presbyterians who love beer. Steve and Sara Jo Craw steered us 30 minutes south to New Glarus, a little Swiss hamlet with <a href="http://www.newglarusbrewing.com/">a famous family-owned hilltop brewery</a>. They refuse to export any of their product outside of Wisconsin:<br />
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A beautiful drive: this scene could easily be 5 km outside of Interlocken:<br />
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And, lastly, a quick bike ride through the Middleton Nature Preserve before we left Wisconsin:<br />
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Today, we continue the college town portion of our pilgrimage as we travel southeast to Evanston, Illinois (Northwestern University) to visit the <a href="http://www.rebaplacefellowship.org/">Reba Place</a> community and then on to Ann Arbor, Michigan on Sunday to experience Life with our good friend Mike Smith and his girlfriend Nurse Betsy. <br />
Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-76339330227647668802013-06-29T17:19:00.000-07:002013-06-29T20:12:46.433-07:00Ohhhh Canada!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifbd2o4U9FFvL6Ojk0EsWic5vkPSfYubNX0opViWFXc6E08PzQNF7rKpTCB_5sQd5CSZl0WdQqva6XbAZrpNCeKS-Vy3DQqiKLzVrx3vyzKXuq2S4vH4fMq6h01imot9hfDw8lPYyiPZw/s1600/DSCN1309.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifbd2o4U9FFvL6Ojk0EsWic5vkPSfYubNX0opViWFXc6E08PzQNF7rKpTCB_5sQd5CSZl0WdQqva6XbAZrpNCeKS-Vy3DQqiKLzVrx3vyzKXuq2S4vH4fMq6h01imot9hfDw8lPYyiPZw/s200/DSCN1309.JPG" /></a></div><i>Conversation is a discourse that holds within it the possibility of mutual conversion.</i><br />
<b>Ched Myers & Elaine Enns, <i>Ambassadors Of Reconciliation, Volume II</i> (2012)<br />
</b><br />
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<i>We are all involved in politics whether we like it or not. Otherwise you are in denial.</i><br />
<b>Bill Blaikie</b><br />
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<i>Mitakuye Oyasin</i><br />
<b>Lakota Sioux Phrase</b> <b>used to end prayers meaning "everything and everybody is connected"</b><br />
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First time in Canada for both of us. On Tuesday, the warmest day of the summer so far (30 degrees celsius!), we headed to Winnipeg, just an hour north of the Minnesota/Canada border. We met A LOT of fascinating people this week. When we got to town, we shot over to Canadian Mennonite University, south of the Assiniboine River, where Ched Myers and Elaine Enns were teaching a one-week intensive on Restorative Justice at the <a href="http://csop.cmu.ca/">Canadian School Of Peacebuilding</a>. They were teaching the material from the "textbooks" they co-authored on the subject: <a href="http://www.chedmyers.org/books/ambassadors-reconciliation-vol-i-new-testament-reflections-restorative-justice-and-peacemaking"><i>Ambassadors of Reconciliation, Volumes 1 & 2</i>.</a> <br />
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They are uniquely gifted, a rare marriage blending expertise in both the biblical/theological (Ched) and practical/experiential (Elaine) notions of bringing together victims and offenders towards reconciliation and forgiveness which leads to authentic healing (as opposed to the normal societal practice of lawyers, denial of wrong-doing and harsh sentencing upon guilty pronouncements). Their Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries is dedicated to bringing together the seminary, the sanctuary and the streets in pursuit of peace and justice. Ched & Elaine have had a HUGE impact on us, in both word and deed. Here's how they describe (in <i>AOR, Volume 2</i>) where they are coming from theologically (a starting point that we resonate with greatly):<br />
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<i><blockquote>...we identify as noted with the Anabaptist tradition of Christianity, especially its historic commitments to radical discipleship, to biblical justice and nonviolence, and to noncooperation with all forms of state domination.<br />
</blockquote></i><br />
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On Tuesday night, we were honored to attend a BBQ at the home of Gerald/Esther Gerbrandt. Gerald was the president of CMU for decades, presiding over the school back in the 90s when Elaine was a student. He held the presence of a warm, scholarly grandfather, quick to joke, but also interested in talking about more controversial subjects (like the Mennonite denomination's current wrestling match with [homo]sexuality issues). The dinner Esther prepared was top-notch, but her rubarb dessert dish was absolutely heavenly. <br />
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On Wednesday afternoon, Ched and Elaine invited Bill Blaikie to speak to their class. I had never heard of Blaikie, but he is well-known to virtually all Canadians due to his work in the spotlight as a federal legislator for more than 2 decades. He's 6'6" with a grey beard and a quick wit. What is particularly unique about him is his commitment to the prophetic "social gospel" Christian tradition, which of course, bears fruit in progressive policies. Like his mentor Tommy Douglass (the Canadian prime minister who courageously fought for universal health coverage half a century ago), Blaikie is an ordained minister with the United Church of Canada. <br />
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Blaikie learned to develop thick skin, not with secular legislators and constituents, but with fellow Christians, most of whom are obsessed with "below the belt" issues and tend to triumphantly claim a monopoly on "the Christian position" on every issue. But in class, Blaikie proclaimed that "if people take their faith seriously, they will eventually go down the road of the social gospel," a scenario that played out for him early in life as he studied the message of the Hebrew prophets to repent of <strike>personal sins</strike> oppressive socio-economic policies of the 1% elites. But, of course, there are far too many Christians living in denial he says, citing the 8th chapter of Mark, of those "who have ears but fail to hear."<br />
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Blaikie viewed his vocation as that of a "double-agent." Back in 1999, the WTO was holding meetings in Seattle and there were massive anti-globalization protests going on in the streets. Blaikie spent most of his time in the <i>streets</i>, but he held the credentials to go inside the meetings as well. He felt much more comfortable with the activists. Ultimately, he believed that it was more important to be faithful to God's idea of justice than it was to be successful. But this didn't mean he courted defeat. It was always pertinent "to be successful enough to be in the room." This was the tension that Blaikie constantly lived in.<br />
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He kept his head and heart straight by reading theology everyday. This was his crucial spiritual practice. "There's a tendency in Christian circles," he laments, "to love God with all your heart and soul and then to give your mind to someone else." He was always on the look out for those so-called "neo-liberals" who do whatever they possibly can to reduce the power of the government to keep corporate power accountable. He cites (as one small example) the cosmetic pesticides industry, or what he calls "have-a-nice-lawn-industry," which has consistently embraced a strategy to challenge folks in court in order to settle out of court, intimidating the rest of us while staying under the radar at the same time.<br />
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There really hasn't been an American politician, on the national level, who has combined a passion for socio-economic justice and a fervor for Christian faith quite like Blaikie has in Canada. Perhaps the great Civil Rights Movement leader and Georgia congressman John Lewis is the only American correlation. Lewis, a graduate of American Baptist Seminary in Nashville, was, at 21, the youngest speaker 50 years ago at the March on Washington. <br />
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This week Lindsay and I celebrated from afar the US Supreme Court's overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act. Here's what Lewis announced from the floor of the House about the strongly bipartisan-supported DOMA back in 1996 when it was being debated: <br />
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<blockquote>This bill is a slap in the face of the Declaration of Independence. It denies gay men and women the right of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Marriage is a basic human right. You cannot tell people they cannot fall in love. I will not turn my back on another American. I will not oppress my fellow human being. I fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation.</blockquote><br />
So maybe Blaikie is the white Canadian John Lewis. Brilliant.<br />
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On Wednesday night, Ched & Elaine invited us to join them for a Thai dinner with the political-theological cartoonist Bob Haverluck, Blaikie and his wife. We then went to "dessert" with several of Ched/Elaine's friends (old & new), a fantastic line-up of passionate and brilliant Winnipeggers:<br />
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<a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2011/01/07/a_faith_magazine_for_the_unchurchable.html">Aiden Enns</a>, the founder and editor of <a href="http://www.geezmagazine.org/"><i>Geez Magazine</i></a>, talked of the vital soul-benefits of going off-line and making time to put our hands in the soil of a backyard garden. He also lamented our society's insane practice of removing <strike>human waste</strike> our shit by flushing it into <strike>potable water</strike> our potential drinking water. He passionately shared about his 3-year experiment with a <a href="http://www.sun-mar.com/"> compost toilet</a> in his home. It doesn't use water and creates compost for his backyard garden. Not sure how this works in a studio apartment in Irvine, but it opened our eyes (and noses?) to socio-political-spiritual practice that is becoming popular with folks who care about the Land. Holy shit!<br />
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We were also joined by Scott Kroeker, a chemistry professor at the University of Manitoba whose life was changed after reading Ched's <a href="http://www.chedmyers.org/books/who-will-roll-away-stone-discipleship-queries-first-world-christians"><i>Who Will Roll Away The Stone</i></a> two decades ago, Matt Dueck and Cicily Hildebrand who help run the Canadian School For Peacebuilding and will be heading to Fuller Seminary in a year, and Kenton Lobe, a professor at Canadian Mennonite University and the mastermind behind the University community garden. <br />
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It was great to listen to Ched & Elaine talk about their own theological journey with the garden in their Oak View, CA backyard. Tending the soil has kinesthetically taught them about patience, interdependence, trust and the overwhelming Life force springing up everywhere around us. The capacity for Growth is so often overlooked and underrated. No wonder Jesus used so many stories and analogies from Nature: mustard seeds, yeast, vineyards, soil, living water, lilies and ravens. And no wonder we open up the Scriptures to find so many eventual followers of the Divine path connecting with the Land in shockingly ordinary ways: Abram & Sarai at the oak tree, Zaccheaus climbing a sycamore tree, a woman at the well and a prodigal feeding pods to the pigs (just to name a few).<br />
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Building a backyard garden, all these folks were echoing, is a small part of participating in the Kingdom of God. We shouldn't expect quick, massive world-changes, but this small-but-crucial spiritual practice powerfully transforms our souls into Something authentic while chipping away at the insanity of our society's factory farm system of <strike>growing</strike> manufacturing food.<br />
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On Thursday we got the opportunity to hear <a href="http://csop.cmu.ca/index.php/instructors/">Mubarak Awad</a> speak at the CMU lunch banquet. A Palestinian and self-proclaimed "Troublemaker," Awad was booted out of the Holy Land by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1988 for his participation in nonviolent civil disobedience. Awad, as a follower of Jesus, is deeply committed to nonviolent action and enemy love as he "fights" for justice in Palestine. In addition to his many peace and justice activities, he is currently working with an organization called <a href="http://www.gazaark.org/about-us/who-we-are/">Gaza's Ark</a>, raising money to build an ark to challenge the illegal and inhumane Israeli blockade of Gaza <br />
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On Friday, we attended Ched & Elaine's class to see <a href="http://www.livingjusticepress.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC=%7B503CE3B2-591E-444D-99AE-09D408C99A94%7D&DE=%7B3B3368A2-011C-42FA-9E17-A5DDE1BFC18B%7D">Harley Eagle</a>, a facilitator of restorative justice of Dakota descent. He is married to a white Mennonite woman and they live in Winnipeg with their two home-schooled daughters. <br />
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Harley is committed to a "circle process" of dialogue, walking together in a practice of listening to the other. Particularly, Harley is interested in a reconciling process between indigenous (1st Nations) and white settler people. A key to this process is the unresolved trauma that has been erased from the memories of white folk. We simply do not know where we come from, and therefore, unwittingly perpetuate the cycle of violence and domination in all our grasping for control. To start this process of recovery, we whiteys need to flip the script and embrace the Way of our marginalized indigenous brothers and sisters. We have an enormous amount of violence in our histories and we are literally bursting with guilt, shame and a survivalist mentality. We need to finally learn how to walk as guests on this Land and this will begin with our own healing. <br />
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On Friday night we were invited to dine at the home of Elaine's best friend Cheryl and her on-call doctor/husband Carl. The spread was extraordinary and Carl assured us all that the Canadian Universal Healthcare was working fantastically for patients...and doctors (I've heard many Americans claim that doctors in Canada are grossly underpaid). <br />
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This week was filled with the little differences that make journeys to a new Land so sweet: Canadian accents, lightening storms, sunsets at 10pm and more Mennonite and Aborginal folks than we've ever met. Our heads and hearts have been filled with paradigm-shifting lectures and deep conversations. Winnipeg has a flat, rather boring geography with bad roads exacerbated by summer road construction (do you really think they work on roads when it is below-40?). But it is filled with wide-open parks and forests and flowing rivers, with a nice little downtown communal space ("The Forks") to get centered. We will certainly carry all these sights and sounds with us back to the States. On to Wisconsin.<br />
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A view of Winnipeg across the Red River where we had some great runs<br />
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In front of our Winnipeg headquarters: Mondragon, a vegan/anarchist coffee house, restaurant, bookstore and grocery<br />
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Lindsay spending a little time reading James Douglass' amazing book about JFK's death<br />
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Our last night at a pizzeria in the Corydon district<br />
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Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-18116156025173371452013-06-20T13:50:00.000-07:002013-06-21T11:07:04.108-07:00Mile High Meanderings: Louisville, Boulder, Denver...and Lawrence!<i>And talk of poems and prayers and promises and things that we believe in.<br />
How sweet it is to love someone, how right it is to care.<br />
How long it's been since yesterday, what about tomorrow<br />
and what about our dreams and all the memories we share</i>?<br />
<b>John Denver</b><br />
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We left Highlands Ranch (we only left a Richard Rohr book and Lindsay's running shoes) Monday afternoon and headed 50 miles north to Louisville, a beautiful suburb of Boulder. We stayed with Steve and Gunilla Sorensen, a couple I met in 1991, the summer before my senior year in high school. Steve was (and still is!) the head coach and executive director of News Release Basketball, an Evangelical Christian basketball organization that recruits players and coaches to travel to Europe to play games against local club and pro teams and conduct clinics for area youth. I was playing on the team back in '91, but signed up to coach and direct tours from 1997 to 2000. <br />
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The Sorensens have had a major impact on my life and thinking. Their focus on Christian discipleship and community formation (as opposed to stressing individual conversion and personal "salvation" models of witness) in both the States and Europe shaped my early understanding of what it means to be a Christian were a vital precursor to my current rooting in Anabaptism. If it looks like Gunilla is 20 years younger than Steve that's because she is ;)...another major impact Steve has had on me.<br />
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It was great to reconnect with the Sorensens and Sean/Content VonRoenn (below with their two children: they met each other on News Release tours during the summer of '98). Gunilla is fired up that NRB is bringing a team to her native Sweden for the first time ever! <br />
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We went for a run on the Boulder Creek Trail, just a stone's throw from the University of Colorado and the Rocky Mountains:<br />
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On Tuesday night, we headed to downtown Denver to find our good friend Gavin Fabian hard at work. He founded <a href="http://www.medpassage.com/cms/index/22">MedPassage</a>, a medical tech company, and moved to Denver last year to be geographically close to his business partner...and to get out of Orange County! Gavin refers to his creation as "disruptive," changing the paradigm of how device companies and medical centers conduct business. It's highly collaborative and keeps the powers accountable by disclosing costs of products. It also seeks to eliminate the middle-man--the deeply inefficient medical device company salesman who curries favor with doctors and hospital execs by taking them out to high society dinners and, yes, strip clubs. <br />
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Gavin has taken a huge leap-of-faith to start this company as he travels around North America pitching MedPassage to wealthy friends and venture capitalists. When we walked by the sparkling new <a href="http://www.davita.com/index.cfm?gclid=COWSnPDd9bcCFQfl7AodwBYAPA">Davita</a> headquarters building in Denver, he told me that he often wonders if he should just join the 20-somethings in brand new suits making $150,000 at a safe job with solid benefits. Here's to Gavin and MedPassage beating the odds (and the corporate lawyers) to make it big by changing the way devices are bought and sold. It will be a better (and cheaper!) world with a thriving MedPassage. <br />
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Gav insisted that we ride bikes to his apartment. He and his wife Christina each have a B-Bikes city membership. $60 per year allows them to use bikes stored at racks all over the city. All they have to do is insert their credit card and they are ready to roll. <br />
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In June 2010, I was honored to officiate at the Malibu Canyon wedding of Gavin and Christina ("Gavstini"). Now they live just a few blocks from Coors Field and the Great Divide Brewing Co. <br />
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The four of us ate a late dinner on the rooftop of Linger, a chic diner in the LoHi District of Denver, watching the lightening storm go by and then headed downstairs to Little Man for some salted Oreo ice cream.<br />
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A very romantic evening. Indeed.<br />
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On Wednesday morning, we bid the Sorensens and the Rockies good-bye and hit up the Great Plains. A stop in Colby, Kansas provided hot beverages and a tornado warning.<br />
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Our tradition, since Labor Day Weekend 2005 when we got engaged, is to hit up Pyramid Pizza as soon as we arrive in Lawrence: <br />
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The weather was perfect for the weekly Concert in the Park:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjagJgXlC08fVSJXGZ97E_MDD_f3I0-mKzsTHJ8WkjluocQOKYca5pSXVy1AA1JpFiOOFUBAbqu8p1KFDUqqMbrPfuhr6Qzcq4uSBCAUrKDY6a4zQUzJjXarlFMGZv0Bo7xsKAfPJC_fDI/s1600/DSCN1185.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjagJgXlC08fVSJXGZ97E_MDD_f3I0-mKzsTHJ8WkjluocQOKYca5pSXVy1AA1JpFiOOFUBAbqu8p1KFDUqqMbrPfuhr6Qzcq4uSBCAUrKDY6a4zQUzJjXarlFMGZv0Bo7xsKAfPJC_fDI/s320/DSCN1185.JPG" /></a></div>Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-27340341266980977782013-06-18T10:01:00.001-07:002013-06-20T13:55:15.348-07:00I Mustache You A Question: A Hipster Father's Day in COOur godchildren Trey (7) and Iree (4) know how to celebrate their Daddy Dale. <br />
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The twins head to Dale's last ordination event:<br />
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Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-80367929031673796222013-06-16T14:37:00.001-07:002013-06-18T10:04:18.289-07:00The Beautiful Reality: Highlands Ranch, Colorado<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBGn4JhjxcBB5DK3YWwi1KVF8SF3ykm7VJklXXFhYukk7FEGYHMdUNSJLcgWugSpCszTFxP1Svdra4X4UVlTUI3BOZXunfYYXdCqbQXUJlTHI5R_HMQLfMbEqr_440sHzrx-pGHk15zUQ/s1600/Rockies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBGn4JhjxcBB5DK3YWwi1KVF8SF3ykm7VJklXXFhYukk7FEGYHMdUNSJLcgWugSpCszTFxP1Svdra4X4UVlTUI3BOZXunfYYXdCqbQXUJlTHI5R_HMQLfMbEqr_440sHzrx-pGHk15zUQ/s320/Rockies.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<i>At their best, religious and spiritual communities help us discover this pure and naked spiritual encounter. At their worst, they simply make us more ashamed, pressuring us to cover up more, pushing us to further enhance our image with the best designer labels and latest spiritual fads, weighing us down with layer upon layer of heavy, uncomfortable, pretentious, well-starched religiosity.</i><br />
<b>Brian McLaren</b><br />
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On Friday, we left Mission Viejo at 5:12am and traveled 1000 miles, through the deserts, the valleys and the Rockies to get to Highlands Ranch just after midnight. We only ran out of gas (!) once...just 2 miles from Cedar City, UT. That's right: the Prius went 450 miles on one 11-gallon tank of gas. <br />
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We are staying with our great friends, Dale and Stacy Fredrickson, whose children Trey (7) and Iree (3) are our godchildren! Here we are 3 years ago at Trey's baptism in Rifle, CO:<br />
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We got the opportunity to participate in the Wildflowers service last night, a church-within-a-church community that meets once a month on Saturday night at St. Andrew United Methodist Church. Dale and Stacy cast a vision, organize, delegate and facilitate the service. Last night we worshipped outside and we had a phenomenal view of the Rockies (see above).<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilus-XetKnFemoWxQIe3fd71MuNYaWtGf4z2xUqwZzgPDcAUUBK5MDVK5X9C5C9GE2JM2c8lHKyXcMsGnl_iSNwjp5qBbZFIivz5aW0k3bOT8SV6PW6-kcuEF_C6aGxasj-N5OVVDfS3Q/s1600/wildflowers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilus-XetKnFemoWxQIe3fd71MuNYaWtGf4z2xUqwZzgPDcAUUBK5MDVK5X9C5C9GE2JM2c8lHKyXcMsGnl_iSNwjp5qBbZFIivz5aW0k3bOT8SV6PW6-kcuEF_C6aGxasj-N5OVVDfS3Q/s320/wildflowers.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Yesterday morning, we got to sneak into the United Methodist annual conference and listen to guest speaker Brian McLaren address the assembly of pastors. McLaren has been a vital theological conversation for both the Aireys and Fredricksons. Dale introduced me to McLaren sometime back in 2001 or 2002. We read his little book<i> More Ready Than You Realize</i> together and Lindsay and I read his <i>New Kind of Christianity</i> trilogy and <i>Generous Orthodoxy</i> early in our theological/spiritual pilgrimage together. <br />
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McLaren was a pastor at a large church in the Washington DC suburbs and educated himself into a kind of Christian faith now largely labeled "emergent," meaning a forward-thinking, progressive version of following Jesus. McLaren is passionate about re-forming and re-framing our connection to the God of the Bible, taking the focus off what happens in the church building and living out a "gospel" in real time that is far more holistic than most contemporary expressions of Christianity: social, political, economic and spiritual. God invites us ALL into The Beautiful Reality, an amazing dance that EVERY living thing participates in. God wants us to join in on the healing and redemption of the whole world...not just our souls.Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-35967586396111862052013-06-11T11:17:00.001-07:002013-06-11T13:24:20.836-07:00A Virtual Prayer of Blessing<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfLwcH8enIVWPDwTltjMl0I106EVL1VvsmRex6CenSMnCc2nby1B91WyItV_PsM8sbFsmcNKSmAr0RAqlumGzdjFFPCnJY8sThlMS6USMsB0JNMKWiyFxumbA09w0HBDvJ7iqsqj1ln0o/s1600/chedelaineoak.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfLwcH8enIVWPDwTltjMl0I106EVL1VvsmRex6CenSMnCc2nby1B91WyItV_PsM8sbFsmcNKSmAr0RAqlumGzdjFFPCnJY8sThlMS6USMsB0JNMKWiyFxumbA09w0HBDvJ7iqsqj1ln0o/s320/chedelaineoak.jpg" /></a><br />
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From an email from Ched Myers this morning:<br />
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<blockquote><i>Well, this will be an epic trip. We pray that the Spirit both guides your way, and brings you to clarity about the next season of your lives. It’s a sacred thing, pilgrimage is. Wish we could lay hands on you and send you off. Consider this a virtual prayer of blessing. </i> </blockquote>Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5447247942335595451.post-58323887025684933462013-06-05T12:16:00.001-07:002013-06-06T09:27:46.383-07:00Ready To Roll<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgxqSCfr2uXWpfxg8zLOa10uHR-ANhulX5u2GzMjsRlKX5c0yTVkWH9yIDS8gNFwblvFfys7UgDqGJGxNVbF8h8uKPXzROeeV6scfQs6Lk_806POU_GPMhaLT-VMWZtGsgNhpzC3dMu-g/s1600/boston.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgxqSCfr2uXWpfxg8zLOa10uHR-ANhulX5u2GzMjsRlKX5c0yTVkWH9yIDS8gNFwblvFfys7UgDqGJGxNVbF8h8uKPXzROeeV6scfQs6Lk_806POU_GPMhaLT-VMWZtGsgNhpzC3dMu-g/s320/boston.jpg" /></a><br />
<i>My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.</i><br />
<b>Thomas Merton</b><br />
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On June 14, Lindsay and I embark on a 10-week journey across the United States (and Canada!) in a Toyota Prius that our good friend Mike Smith has generously allowed us to borrow. The stars have aligned to give us the Time and resources for this pilgrimage: my summer was extended about 10 days due to CA state budget cuts (furlough days!), Lindsay has achieved her 3000 client hours and is now in the final stage of her licensure process (studying for the MFT this Fall) and the lease for our apartment is up so we can take the few items we own and put them in storage for the summer. <br />
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We love driving together. We took our first roadtrip in January 2005 for our honeymoon (Carmel, Mendocino, Kern River) and we've made annual journeys since. This one will be unique. We are traveling to see some old friends and meet new ones. We will be seeing some amazing sights, going for runs in the city and in the wilderness, floating rivers and eating good food! <br />
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However, we are particularly interested in visiting radical discipleship communities that are thriving in different places throughout North America. Our mentors <a href="http://www.bcm-net.org/">Ched Myers and Elaine Enns</a> are connecting us with many of these communities and we look forward to hearing their stories. Some of these our <a href="http://www.mennoniteworker.com/">Catholic Worker Houses</a> of hospitality compelled by the vision of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Some of them are rooted in the movement known as "<a href="http://emerging-communities.com/tag/rutba-house/">new monasticism</a>." Some of them are devoted to specific causes like racial reconcilation, restorative justice, the prophetic denunciation of <a href="http://www.jonahhouse.org/archive/jhbrochure.htm">nuclear weaponry</a> and <a href="http://vcnv.org/vcnv-calendar/covering-ground-to-ground-the-drones-13">drone killings</a>, solidarity with the <a href="http://www.thesimpleway.org/">urban poor</a>, <a href="http://www.sanctuaryphiladelphia.org/">sanctuary for immigrants</a> and protecting the oppressed and abused. We have been involved in intentional Christian communities ("house church") for the past 6 years and we'd like to learn from the vast wisdom and experience of these prophetic leaders and organizers. <br />
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We look forward to documenting this "once in a lifetime" trip on this blog. Feel free to comment or email us recommendations along the way...we are always looking for new adventures!!! <br />
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Tom Aireyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05730577814110261081noreply@blogger.com1