The Heart of the Golden Rule

The Grace of God in our Circumstances: Why you weren't Born as an Impoverished Child in an Unreached Nation

Why was I born into such privilege when most of the world wasn't?

How am I using what I was born into to do unto others what I would have them do unto me?

How can I translate that into thanksgiving?

Good questions to ponder...and then to act upon!

like a dagger to my heart, the Truth

whenever i finally sit down and catch up on the hordes of blog subscriptions that i generally neglect for months at a time, i inevitably end up with several that just really hit me in a deep, good way.  so, as a way of reminding myself and sharing with you, i've re-posted them here. (Click on the title of the first two articles for full text.)

The Costume Kingdom (Paul Tripp) 

Love Warns, Love Rebukes (Paul Tripp)

Prayer Answered by Crosses (John Newton)

I asked the Lord that I might grow

In faith and love and every grace,

Might more of his salvation know,

And seek more earnestly his face.

‘Twas he who taught me thus to pray;

And he, I trust, has answered prayer;

But it has been in such a way

As almost drove me to despair.

I hoped that, in some favoured hour,

At once he’d answer my request,

And by his love’s constraining power

Subdue my sins, and give me rest.

Instead of this, he made me feel

The hidden evils of my heart,

And let the angry powers of hell

Assault my soul in every part.

Yea, more, with his own hand he seemed 

Intent to aggravate my woe,

Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,

Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.

Lord, why is this? I trembling cried;

Wilt thou pursue this worm to death?

This is the way, the Lord replied 

I answer prayer for grace and faith.

These inward trials I now employ

From self and pride to set thee free, 

And break thy schemes of earthly joy,

That thou may’st seek thy all in me.

friends, let us not choose comfort over truth. 

other peoples' thoughts

wanted to share a few articles that i have read lately that have stuck with me...


Community Catalysts
this is actually a really good follow up to my last post, and a good reminder that being distinctive and different in a neighborhood can be good! while there are serious issues of difference that incarnational re-locators must wrestle with, blending in completely is not necessarily effective for joining in the work of the Kingdom.

"Humility is a critical element for incarnational communities of people who have relocated and the inclusion of people from the wider community into the community of relocators can be important. But the thing that makes communities catalytic is not that they become the same as the surrounding community, but that they remain distinctive.

A catalyst changes things, not because it is identical to the other elements in a reaction, but precisely because it is different. In fact a very small amount of catalyst can dramatically promote or inhibit a reaction. The presence of a catalyst changes an environment.

These communities often live prophetically - becoming the change needed in an area, but they rarely really look much like the community in which they are planted.  

 For sure our ethnic, class, and power differences need to be viewed with a healthy dose of caution. We must be vigilant in addressing the messianic complex which can accompany groups who choose a life of incarnational mission. We must live lives of reconciliation in every place humans have put up walls. But I can no longer dismiss a community automatically just because it doesn’t look just like the neighborhood in which it lives. In the presence of humility, reconciliation, grace and peace – differences can be catalytic."

South African "Idol"
a little peek into cultural goings-on in South Africa and a reminder that race is (still) a (big) issue there, 16 years after the official end of apartheid. and oh yeah, the white guy won.

"The real issue is socio-economic. It's about who can pay for TV and who can't. Black folks comprise almost 80% of our population, but in M-Netland they comprise only 17% of Idols viewers. And audiences want to see themselves on TV."

The dangerous side of volunteering
another interesting peek into some of the issues that I will probably face when I get to South Africa. the ironic thing about this piece is that these potential harms of short-term volunteering exist everywhere, whether the volunteers come from america or zambia, and are serving in new orleans or the netherlands.  having committed to living in places of need, i have seen first-hand the effects of well-intentioned people who send a message by forming deep bonds and then leaving soon after. i have experienced the effects of abandonment with children who don't understand why everyone who says they care keeps leaving.  this was even something i wrestled with upon my leaving new orleans--is this how my friends there would see me?  and now to see it in light of where i'm going, i have to keep it at the front of my mind when i think about whether i'm serving for my own benefit, or for the good of others.

"The psychological literature talks about attachment theory — very young children are programmed to build attachments… And so, you've got these sort of repeated abandonments — first with young children whose parents may die of AIDS. And then they go to live in an orphanage where you often have high staff turnover.  And then you've got tourists that are coming as sort of the third wave of this abandonment. Children are left behind to remember a series of these foreigners who come in and then leave them there…"   

why i love psychology
i found this so fascinating because it is such a true picture of the human mind, and the way we justify things--mostly our own behavior.  i know this is true of myself, so to see it verified and studied is very reassuring.  it confirms that i'm not alone in the way i'd like to manipulate my own memory, or self-perception. we really would like to believe that if we've ever been bad, at least that was in the past, our "old selves;" we are constantly improving and our "good deeds" more readily fill recent history. our good-ness is closer to who we are today, so we tell ourselves.  this research confirms, though, that no, actually, we're not as good as we'd like to convince others...or ourselves.  but, there's hope, as the scientists point out that our minds often tend to create future selves even better than we are now, demonstrating an appetite for redemption.

“Now, scientists are beginning to learn how memory assists and even amplifies this righteous self-messaging.  In piecing together a life story, the mind nudges moral lapses back in time and shunts good deeds forward, these new studies suggest — creating, in effect, a doctored autobiography. Recognizing this tendency in oneself, psychologists say, can both reduce the risk of lapsing into middle-aged sanctimony and increase moral vigilance for when it matters most: the present.

 ‘The main finding is that if I ask you to tell me about a positive moral memory, you’ll tell me something recent,’ Dr. Escobedo said. ‘If I ask you to tell me about bad moral memory, you’re going to give me something from much further in the past.’

Future selves may score the best reviews of all, said David Dunning, a social psychologist at Cornell. ‘People seem to situate themselves in time differently than they do others,’ Dr. Dunning wrote in an e-mail. ‘Ask students what’s important for gaining an accurate impression of them and they emphasize more their unwritten future potential than they do when asked the same question about another person. We presume that future potential is more rosy than the past is.’"

"Radical Friendship"

 Excerpts taken from a piece written by Rev. Dr. Donna Jones of Cookman United Methodist Church in Philadelphia, as printed in the Spring 2010 edition of Conspire Magazine.


       I used to know how to preach to my church during Black History Month.  We'd dress in our finest garb and process to the beats of DNA-memory in our bones, singing the songs that have brought us through.  It was the one time a year to celebrate being black; to remember ancestors gone by and saints still present...These services were cultural icons for me.
       Or at least they used to be.  That was before my church's pilgrimage from 100 percent African American, to now 70 percent African American and 30 percent other (white, asian, bi-racial). I can no longer assume any shared gut-DNA.  Even my sermon themes are different.
       Take a few weeks ago.  I was preaching reconciliation, trying to make the experience of the church at Corinth--the struggles to build gospel koinonia across ethnic, class, and religious lines--real to my congregation.  "What do you feel when folks of different races and classes move into this neighborhood?" I asked, almost innocently.  "Do they become friends?"
       Pain in the room, but honesty, too.  "No."
       "Why not?"
       "Because they have come to 'help.'"
       The response of our African-American congregants was visceral.  It speaks powerfully of the inequality of social relationships between groups in this nation.


       Whether real or perceived, we don't feel like equals.  There's long history in some of our bones of being viewed as lower-status, incapable persons whose needs are met by getting something from higher-status persons.  There's a long history in some of our bones of feeling privileged, and needing to assuage that karmic good fortune by sharing resources (money, education, energy, and even ourselves) with the "underprivileged."
       Theologians and activists Ched Myers and Elaine Enns suggest that in his two letters to the Corinthians, Paul advocates "patronage from below"--upside-down relationships where power, prestige, and privilege are turned around to create space for "social solidarity."  Corinthians is our book of radical desegregation and reconciliation.
       Social solidarity is relationship, and relationship is radical.  It is very different from reverse patronage, which is what I call the dynamic when racially-aware and well-meaning pilgrims of privilege try to balance power by staying in the background, avoiding leadership, and consciously or subconsciously withholding resources.  Reverse patronage is usually at work when folks of privilege move in to serve or live in a low-income neighborhood, bringing their wealth and social resources to an area devoid of them.  It's behind emails and Facebook postings in which those well-meaning folk tell stories of how much more they have received (from the apparently lower-status crew) in response to their offering.  In exchange, they receive character gains to their account: love, instruction in some of the realities of poverty, the coolness of slumming it, and admiration from their community.
       I sometimes hear well-intentioned, privileged parents admonish children who are embarking on a mission trip to "elsewhere" (some urban, rural, or foreign working or poor community): "You will get so much more out of the experience than you give."  I cringe.  We are caught in the terms of barter, and my people are again at the bottom of the equation: still giving more.


       Simply sharing neighborhoods with one another doesn't work to create the radical beloved community articulated by Martin Luther King, Jr. and enfleshed by Jesus.  And simply inviting diverse folk to the meetings, the demos, and the campaigns certainly doesn't work.  We need another way.
       I believe what works is true friendship--a friendship that comes from empathetic relationship-building over time.  Friendship allows for empathy instead of sympathy.
       ...My elders believed that removing the legal U.S. apartheid system would fling wide the door of hospitality and friendship, casting out the fears fueled by prejudice and replacing them with respect, affirmations of capability, and shared creativity.  Forty years later, it hasn't yet worked out that way.  U.S. citizens remain separate and unequal by race in all quality-of-life indicators (health, education, housing, jobs, economic development, literacy.)  What is a vision that will now move us toward healing?
       Downwardly-mobile pilgrims of privilege who relocate to marginalized neighborhoods certainly model  relocation strategy that moves us past our centuries of legally enforced desegregation.  However, when relationship-building does not occur at a level strong enough to desegregate friendships, we remain segregated.
       Our community's experience of relocators is that they usually reside for a season, and typically maintain their original support systems from afar.  Eventually, personal variables--or plain old "movement frustration"--cause them to leave the neighborhood for more familiar or homogeneous urban, suburban, or rural surroundings.  This "move on" syndrome points to the inescapable power difference between these pilgrim residents and those rooted to the neighborhood.  Those who come in have the economic, relational, and social capital to leave when they choose.


       We need to build reciprocal relationships while remaining conscious of power dynamics.  Empowerment issues are real, but when one group holds back in order to ensure balance of power, benefits (in relationship, resources, wisdom, and strategy) are lost on all sides.  We must all give one hundred percent, and we must offer that from friendship and relationship.  Friendship is reciprocal.  Friendship is meaningful, faithful, and artful.  Friendship is challenging.  Friendship is loving.  Friends make mistakes, but speaking the truth in love, friends forgive, heal, and make mistakes again.  We must forge ahead with the social mess of friend-ness.  
       Ultimately, we will have to learn to gather as friends, as neighbors.  We must join organizations not to integrate them (and certainly not to "help" them), but rather because we share their goals.  We'll have to hang out.  Go to the parties.  Attend the weddings and stay for the reception...
       Church is a great place to become friends.  It offers a unique social environment, rooted and grounded in love, for the purpose of creating family beyond birth-ties.  What could happen if Christian communities truly, radically desegregated?  Miracles.  
       This is difficult, and it will cost us.  Institutional ethnic churches exist for an important socio-political purpose.  They have been places of refuge where we could experience solidarity in our DNA memories, or wrestle with the oppression of systems without having to explain our pain...
       But I think the gain will be worth it.  The last few decades have seen radical disciples moving into marginalized neighborhoods as part of a very necessary and helpful pilgrim journey towards liberation from oppression.  Going forward, our challenge will be to move toward intimacy and rootedness in those neighborhoods.  This is a road less travelled, and its pilgrims will experience joy, challenge, pain, misunderstanding, conflict, alienation, recovery, triumph.  We can trace the beginning of that story in letters to the Corinthians, but I think it will end in Beloved Community. 

_______________________________

       When I first read this piece several months ago, so many things in my heart rang in agreement with what Rev. Jones wrote.  There is so much that I have pursued in my life that mirrors her call to the Church, but I have also been the one excitedly proclaiming how much more I received than I gave while living and serving in marginalized communities.  I have taken advantage of the subtle power dynamics at play.  And none of this was intended as harm, but seeing my self reflected in these words was eye-opening.  
       I had an experience during my time in Oakland which made me wonder if my neighbors would ever really truly see me as one of "them."  Despite appearances and some obvious differences, I really wanted to blend in and become a part of the community.  I didn't want to stick out, I didn't want my differences to send a message of superiority.  I have seen that while this desire to blend may have been coming from a good place, there is a difference between trying live as poor versus living among the poor.  The interwebs tells me that "among" is defined as being surrounded by or in the company of, or being a member of a larger set.  And that is what I desire.  Of course, to authentically live among any group of people different from one's natural environment, one must take certain efforts to sacrifice or blend to some degree.  But the point is not to deny everything I am to become something that my neighbors know I'm really not; the point is to dive in and immerse in a different kind of life in order to be counted as a friend with those who are different from me.  
       As I look forward to moving into Soshanguve, I must remember the Rev. Jones's points about friendship in order to keep my inclination towards power in check.  I know there will be very little opportunity for me to "blend in" with my neighbors, and in fact any attempts to do so will probably stand out even more.  But, I am hopeful for chances to become friends, to be given the gift of invitation into another person's life.  Not because I have the answers, or because my worth is in helpfulness or access to resources; but because in friendship I can reflect Christ's heart for each one of us...that we would be drawn together, and to Him, in love and humility.  

sometimes prayers have more than one answer

An Open Letter to St. Roch Community Church

August 29, 2010

         About 5 1/2 years ago, I didn't know what church was really meant for.  I was attending a mega-church about 30 miles from where I lived.  Honestly, I enjoyed the anonymity of worshiping with 2,000 other people.  No one knew my name, or my junk.  In January 2005, a woman who I had just met prayed for me and put into words what I didn't know I was missing--church as a family, an intimate body, a group of people who know & care about you.  That prayer was a sign of God doing something and leading me on a course that is still going to this day. 

       Soon after that, I stopped attending the mega-church and found a cool little church-plant in Chicago that was all about racial reconciliation and other Kingdom-oriented things.  The people were nice and I thought my prayer had been answered.  

       Then I moved to Oakland for Mission Year and my team was assigned to work & worship with a traditional style Missionary Baptist church in the 'hood.  My four white teammates and I stuck out like a bunch of sore thumbs, but that church welcomed & loved us as if we had been there our whole lives.  A year later when we were leaving Oakland, I remember tearing up and thanking that congregation for really showing me what church could be--a family, a home filled with love.  I thought my prayer was answered.  

     Then I moved to New Orleans and didn't know what to expect.  Some of my first friends recommended a presbyterian church uptown.  This was like the polar opposite cultural experience from Oakland, but this body was equally as warm and inviting--and I don't think it's just because I was in the city as a volunteer.  This intimate congregation was a real family and people genuinely cared about each other.  Wow, I thought, God is really answering this prayer in even more unexpected ways!  

      At the same time, I began hearing the murmurings of a dream, a vision to plant a new church on the other side of town, a church that would serve & preach the gospel in word and action, intentionally loving neighbors who looked different from each other, in order to restore dignity & leadership to transform the community.  Little did I know how it would look 4 years later!

      St. Roch Community Church has become my community and my family.  I am proud to claim and identify myself with this group of people.  I am known here, junk and all, and still loved!  There were many days when I was frustrated with the work or didn't understand why certain things happened, and I was always and constantly challenged, encouraged, and pushed to see beyond myself.  God is indeed doing something, indeed building this church.  He has allowed his spirit to fill this body with Truth and grace, love and compassion.  I feel I have learned so much more than I could have taught.  This church is a living example of God's abundant grace & mercy.  There is a real authenticity to the depths of relationship and love here--it's a love that sees & speaks Truth, builds up and does not pursue its own agenda.  

    The friendships I have here, this body, defies odds & stereotypes and really is like a breeze from heaven.  I shared at Thanksgiving that this type of thing doesn't just happen everyday.  Look around and remember that God has something special going on here.  If those other churches along the way had been God's only answer to my prayer, that would have been enough.  But how do I express my gratefulness for what He has done here, in me?  It is truly a gift to call you my family, my home; God's goodness is all over this place.

      It is bittersweet for me to know I must leave my family here.  But I know God's work will continue.  There will surely be tests & trials ahead but I believe that God will not abandon this work that He has begun.  This church is a part of me and I know I leave some of my heart here.  It is with joy and hope and eager anticipation that I will continue to pray for God to use this body to touch lives, neighborhoods, this city, and beyond.  I feel great joy & humility & honor to be sent out on behalf of St. Roch Community Church, and to see God's Kingdom continue to advance!  I love y'all!!!   

with Love, 

emily