A Reflection

I haven't written on this thing in awhile. I think its time I just plugged down and vomitted some thoughts, regardless of how unorganized they may be inside my head.

If you are unaware, I am a founding member of an experimental community house which officially started this September. Currently, there are five women and two men in this house.

I think what I have learned from past experiences with community is that the first few months are for figuring out what's what. What are our strengths? What are our weaknesses? What is tolerable and what needs to change as soon as possible? Is this an endeavor that actually seeks to follow God first and foremost?

I think, for better or for worse, I try to go into new situations like these with low expectations but high hopes. My heart is guarded by the realization that people are wounded from their pasts, plagued with the diseases of apathy and self-centeredness, and they are just plain busy. Therefore, people WILL let me down inevitably. And I will do the same to them. It also doesn't help that all of us are playing it by ear and really don't know that the heck we are doing.

BUT. God is bigger than our wounds, our apathy, our selfishness, our busy-ness and our lack of experience. And we love God and try to follow Him. Therefore, there is hope.

I love this house. I especially love certain moments when a spirit about this house quiets my soul and puts a tingle of joy in my spine. Its when Abram plays his guitar and sings in the living room. Or Kathleen practices piano downstairs for her volunteer position. Or Trevor makes curry and shares it. Or we all dip a spoon in my Nutella. Or Katie leads a devotion on meditation and it inspires the rest of us to get involved as a house in reaching out to others. Or Calida cleans, decorates and organizes the whole house in a weekend. Or Rebecca and Katie buy me groceries, fair trade stuff, and write me amazingly thoughtful and affirming cards for my birthday - just because they know that that's exactly what I would love.

I love that I can walk around braless and blurry eyed with tangled hair and stale, smudged mascara, in my sweats, well into the afternoon and not even think about whether or not my housemates will care.

This house has SO MANY amazing moments and undertones of love and acceptance. I believe that God is in them.

At the same time, we are nowhere near our original vision. Our house is perpetually untidy and borderline gross(which drives me nuts), we have far more ideas and good intentions than actual follow-up action, and we've been too busy, and perhaps apathetic in many cases, to bond as much as we should have in order to really build a community that can love and support eachother as a whole house and then in turn love and support our greater community as a house as well.

We have a lot to work on, which this semester has revealed to us. But we are growing, slowly but surely, and I'm so excited to see what next semester brings!

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes."

-Walt Whitman

Down

down
down
down
until I'm on my knees
washing the world's feet

By Sarah Kivell

No Jew Nor Gentile

I'm currently reading The Politics of Jesus and its been on my mind a lot the last 48 hours or so. Something that really stuck out to me was that Yoder did a word study on the word, "justification" and how it was used in the New Testament. Despite the assumptions of most Protestants for centuries, the word was usually used making reference to the process of the Christian Jews and Christian Gentiles as they formed a unified, multicultural Church, and has less to do with the redemptive process within the heart of the individual.

He also noted that the Holy Spirit seemed to always be spoken of as moving in ways that helped this Jewish/Gentile relationship progress. The early Church, it turns out, really was following Jesus. They really were trying to figure out how to love their enemies, whether they be Jews traditionally against Gentiles or vice versa. Jesus instructed them to love their enemies and they took him seriously!

And so its got me thinking about the people I don't like very much. There are a lot of them. Mostly its other Christians too, actually. There's some girls at my church, for example, who I have never invited to the Place2Be or even talked to, because years and years ago they weren't very nice to my sister when we all went to the same church or Christian school, and frankly, I'm still pissed off at them for making her Church experience so miserable.

As just or as unjust as my bitterness may be, my attitude needs to stop. And not just towards those girls, but to several different Christians, whether they be individuals in my personal life from the past or present, denominations, Republicans, people I perceive as not worth my time because they are either too cool or not cool enough for me, et cetera.

I'm not sure how to make this change. I need Jesus.

Speaking of Jesus, I think He likes this.

I would say that the following is a snarky, though disturbingly accurate portrayal of what its like being a woman in our culture. And we have it pretty good here in North America.

Rape culture is 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is not even talking about the reality that many women are sexually assaulted multiple times in their lives. Rape culture is the way in which the constant threat of sexual assault affects women’s daily movements. Rape culture is telling girls and women to be careful about what you wear, how you wear it, how you carry yourself, where you walk, when you walk there, with whom you walk, whom you trust, what you do, where you do it, with whom you do it, what you drink, how much you drink, whether you make eye contact, if you’re alone, if you’re with a stranger, if you’re in a group, if you’re in a group of strangers, if it’s dark, if the area is unfamiliar, if you’re carrying something, how you carry it, what kind of shoes you’re wearing in case you have to run, what kind of purse you carry, what jewelry you wear, what time it is, what street it is, what environment it is, how many people you sleep with, what kind of people you sleep with, who your friends are, to whom you give your number, who’s around when the delivery guy comes, to get an apartment where you can see who’s at the door before they can see you, to check before you open the door to the delivery guy, to own a dog or a dog-sound-making machine, to get a roommate, to take self-defense, to always be alert always pay attention always watch your back always be aware of your surroundings and never let your guard down for a moment lest you be sexually assaulted and if you are and didn’t follow all the rules it’s your fault.

— Melissa McEwan (Rape Culture 101)

Exerpt from The Politics of Jesus

The believer's cross is no longer any and every kind of suffering, sickness, or tension, the bearing of which is demanded. The believer's cross is, like that of Jesus, the price of social nonconformity. It is not, like sickness or catastrophe, an inexplicable, unpredictable suffering; it is the end the end of a path freely chosen after counting the cost. It is not... an inward wrestling of the sensitive soul with self and sin; it is the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the Order to come. - John Howard Yoder, p. 96

God As My Reason

Lately I've realized that I've been avoiding God the Person. Last week when my friend asked me, "What has God been teaching you lately?" I didn't really have an answer. That sort of thing had stopped being something I think about too much anymore.

I think this has been going on for quite awhile now. Its slipped under the radar screen though because actually, God is a big part of my life. I'm a vegetarian because of God. I go to church because of God. I don't have sex because of God. I try not to support sweat shops or other forms of exploitative business because of God. I conduct my personal relationships in a certain way because of God. I'm starting a community house next year because of God. The list goes on and on. God is my reason for the way that I am living.

While that's all good, its caused me to interact with God in such a way that I do not think of Him as a Friend or a Father but simply as the justification behind my sense of reality. God is a concept, a concept that invented another concept called redemption, and I'm devoted to having that redemptive concept infiltrate my life. Its a beautiful philosophy and I love it.

But at one point, I just really loved God the Person. I loved going on walks with God and feeling His love shine down on me. I loved having every thought be like a prayer. I loved actually having a sense of God whispering this, that or the other thing into my heart on a regular basis.

I miss that. I miss God.

I seriously need to spend some quality time just with God.

Social Apathy

As my housemate and I walked, nay, strutted to church this evening under a warm 5 o clock sun, each of us sporting a cute outfit, hot pink lips and sunglasses, I looked over at her and proclaimed, "I am so content. I know I have been saying this a lot lately, but I know that at some point in the future, I will not be content, and I want to be able to look back on this time and know that at this one point in my life, I was content."

Its not that I don't have a stack of problems and stresses to deal with, but essentially, at this point in time, I am incredibly lucky and its making me happy. I live with awesome people. I am in a functional, nauseatingly cute relationship. I am working part time now and have the promise of a full time nannying job waiting for me just around the corner. I have several reasons to be happy. God is leading me through pretty still waters these days. And I like it.

Tonight though, I realized that I'm not quite as passionate about reaching out to new people as I used to be. I'd rather be with the people who I know will make me happy. They're comfortable. They're fun. I don't need to have awkward conversations with them about what school they go to and what they'll do with the degree they are earning or any of that nonsense. (Why is small talk so uncreative?)

Nevertheless, I am not my own, and I have been blessed with the gift of being able to notice and reach out to lonely people. I am positive that this gift is a large part of who I am meant to be.

I think its okay to be happy - After all, I am happy because of all that God has blessed me with - but I'm not sure we as Christians were ever meant to be comfortable while there is still work to be done. And there is tons of work yet to be done.

Dear God, please make me uncomfortable.

Oh Shane.

There was something written on the stairs, which is why we were sitting that way, with Shane Clairbourne. What was written on the stairs, though, is top secret, and therefore had to be edited out. Yup. We share a secret with Shane Claibourne. Be jealous. He would appreciate me being all elitist about this too, I'm sure.

Baba Yetu is Captivating

I am currently obsessed with this song. It is the Lord's Prayer in Swahili.

You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.

As I Walked Out One Evening,
W.H. Auden

John Doe became a fan of Thou Shalt Not Inflict Your Religious Crap Upon Others.

This popped up on one of my Facebook friends' walls. Since I am avoiding a paper, I have some thoughts on it.

My initial reaction was hurt and self-consciousness. Was I one of the religious psychos he was referring to? Honestly, its possible.

Then it occurred to me. What if Shakespeare hadn't incorporated anything about Christianity into his writings? That would have been very difficult for him because Christianity in 16th century Britain was his cultural context. God, prayers, Jesus, Puritans, etc. were all common themes in his everyday life so of COURSE he would incorporate and react to these things in his writings. Should HE have shut up about it?

I think its the same thing today. I make sense of the world around me largely by Christian ideas. It then makes sense that when communicating about my concept of reality, Christianity inevitably comes up. I am a Christian, and I make sense of life like one.

I am also an artist (Well, whatever that is. But sure). And so, when wondering why the sky is blue and nature is generally green, I like to think it has something to do with the fact that green is a relaxing colour and blue is a creativity inspiring colour for humans. And so, I like to think that all that was considered by an Artist who was figuring out what colours to use where.

A scientist would have a different perspective, and would likely talk about chlorophil (sp?) and the atmosphere and light. Or something. I don't know. I'm not a scientist.

But the point is, we all have different ways of seeing reality. Is it really fair to label one way, "Religious Crap"? We're all relatively equal in our stupidity about ultimate matters, which effect mundane matters which tend to effect everyday conversation. Why should one voice be silenced because another has dubbed it "crap" (probably without researching it much)?

Granted, some theories of why the world works the way it does are more solid than others and some ideas ought to be discredited as soon as possible. Perhaps that's THE BEST reason then to create a culture where these things can be talked about openly without fear of one point of view being called "crap". If people keep their stupid ideas to themselves or to their circles of friends with similar ideas - in part because they're too scared to talk to anyone else about it - then no light can be shone on how stupid those ideas actually are! So its actually counter productive to divide everyone up like this for the sake of a tolerant peace.

Wouldn't it be so much better if say, the atheistic scientist and the artistic Hindu got together in someone's living room over tea and had an open, unjudgemental dicussion about, say, the sun, and the importance of it to human life? Wouldn't both their worlds be illuminated by the other's point of view, even if neither changed their opinions? Isn't it just beneficial to know, in depth, that there are other ways of looking at something than just the way oneself looks at it?

That is why I think hospitality trumps tolerance as a virtue. Inviting people in for open discussion, where there's food, couches and the ability to make a joke or a comment on the art on the walls - this is so much better than cold, academic coexistance. Or worse, insisting that everyone should shut up when discussions about Truth ever come up. Because they will come up. Its natural, and so connected to everday life. We MIGHT AS WELL enjoy spaghetti together while we talk about it.

Just to prove that I'm not completely full of idealistic crap, we (my housemates and I) do actually have this type of relationship with John Doe and his housemates. They have been to our house several times, and we've been over there a few times too. So it works. I even thinks he enjoys us as people and can look past our awkward evangelical labels.

THE END. Back to my paper.

Passion

“Passion. It lies in all of us. Sleeping … waiting … and though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir … open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us … guides us. Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love … the clarity of hatred … the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we’d know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we’d be truly dead.”
—Joss Whedon

Happy!

Sometimes it feels like there's a spinning ball of utter JOY in my stomach!
And not just the Christian kind either.

Baby Skulls

Report: Baby Skull Jewelry May Be Linked To Violence

Ode to the Cool Kids

One of my goals this semester has been to learn to love the cool kids. The cool kids are probably the hardest group of people for me to love; After all, it was THEIR KIND who initially made a marginalized specimen out of ME - not the other way around. It all started in Gr. 2 when I was not one of Matthew McCarty's chosen girls to fall in love with. The girls he did fall in love with, making a huge spectackle about being in love with them, remain cool to this very day. Coolness is assigned early and its a hard club to break into once its formed.

The cool kids in my life are no longer kids but young adults. They are stylish. They are good looking. They know what's hot and what's not. And that is not me. So it is my natural reaction to resent the cool kids. If I avoid and hate them, I don't have to deal with their nonsense. PEOPLE LOVE ME, YOU STUPID COOL KIDS, SO I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK, my life attempts to scream at them. Except that when I am forced to be around them my natural reaction is to worship them, which is problematic to say the least.

Anyway, recently a cool kid died in a car accident. I didn't know him, but he was good looking and stylish, which, is quite enough for me to wish to avoid his presence altogether. I don't know what his attitude was, but with a face like that, how could he be anything but "cool"? I am positive that had I had the chance, I would not have bothered to get to know him. He was too pretty.

Except the thing is, I don't think he was "cool". Having met his gorgeous yet humble family, and having heard stories of his life, I don't think he was the traditional asshole I assign to people who look like him. So I decided to no longer discriminate against cool people, or people who I perceived as being cool.

ALL people need love, whether they treat me as an inferior or not. And some people, though beautiful and stylish, are not even like that. They managed to escape that black hole of pride, probably with Jesus' help.

The thing is, I have pride issues against those people. Years of pent up bitterness - YOU BLOODY PRETENTIOUS OPPRESSORS! I DON'T NEED YOU!

Cool people make me angry. They are SO hard to love. It is SO against my nature to even smile lovingly in the direction of a cool person.

And so I have been experimenting with learning to love cool people this semester. Some gorgeous people have been great, and I'm glad I've gotten to know them. I appreciate their presence in my life and their attitude of inclusiveness is SO powerful.

The thing about cool people is that they hold a lot of power. If a cool person treats a plebian well, it speaks volumes. If an average person treats a plebian well, it is significant, but not mind-shattering. An all-inclusive attitude amongst those who are naturally good looking and stylish, I would argue, is crucial to authentic community. When good looking and stylish Christians only hang out with other good looking and stylish Christians, or awkward and ugly Christians only hang out with other awkward and ugly Christians, we are creating STUPID divisions. The body of Christ needs to be unified, not divided into ridiculous subdivisions of levels of cool.

Other cool kids have been less than a stellar experience. There's nothing quite like being reminded of your apparent inferiority. It sucks. I guess the next step for me is to learn to not be bitter towards the cool kids.

They cannot help the role that society has assigned to them. Even if they can, why would they want to? They're on top, and stepping down from there would be a huge blow to the ego, something that would take a lot of strength and courage. I have been blessed to be naturally uncool. I don't have to make the big leaps of status that they do in order to build community.

I MUST learn to have compassion on them. I AM no better than they are, so I need to stop thinking that I am just because I don't have the same struggles that they do.

But it is hard. And I am angry.
But with every fibre in my being, cool kids, I WILL forgive you and you WILL be loved unconditionally by me one day. Because JESUS loves you unconditionally and I long to emulate him.

It would just be a hell of a lot easier if you would get off your bloody high horse.

That is all.

One More Minute... Forever!

A couple months ago my housemate and I were on a bus. I asked, "What time is it?" She looked at her cell phone and replied, "9:49". Then a little while later she looked down again and said, "Still 9:49". Then I responded, "Whoah, what if it was 9:49 FOREVER?"

So we developed a theory out of it. Or at least an alternative universe out of it. What if, for the rest of your life, you were stuck in one minute, and that is how you spent the rest of your life, but also, the quality of whatever you did, could only be the quality of whatever one minute of effort produces.

You cannot have a terribly deep conversation in one minute but perhaps you can meet someone.

Maybe on that bus you could find someone to make out with in less than a minute.

You could do a shocking dance, holler out, whatever. Because the consequences of your actions would only be insofar as a minute lasts. So, you're pretty free in this one minute of time.

Me? I decided I would want to find someone to give me a head massage. I feel like that's a doable thing in one minute and it would also be a pleasant way to spend eternity.

I am Going to Cut Katie's Hair!

This isn't so much an experiment with Truth I suppose...
But it is an experiment! An experiment with life, and simplicity since haircuts are expensive and I am working for free!

I've never cut hair before.

Apparently this is how you do it:

Women are Just as Capable of Leadership as Men... I Guess...

A couple weeks ago, a friend was saying that she noticed a change in me after I cut my hair. She said that long-haired Gloria was a follower but short-haired Gloria was a leader. Its a little more complicated than that, but its interesting because there actually was a direct correlation between why I cut my hair and why I became a leader.

The reason for both was this: Honestly, I was waiting to find a nice Christian man who had dreams so that I could support him in whatever he wanted to do. I DID have dreams of my own - of community and having a very open house to marginalized people... but it was an awkward dream and I didn't like thinking about it. Its weird to answer, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" with "live in community with marginalized women." Its easier to just say, "oh, you know, maybe teach?"

And then, one night last year I was up fretting about the future. And I realized that I had this dream and I knew it was attainable and I knew it was all I really wanted. So I got out of bed and went to my kitchen fridge and made a poem prayer with our fridge poetry. The poem took me about an hour, maybe more, but it was that night that I realized I needed to grab life by the horns and pursue my dreams.

This seems almost sinful to me, pursuing my own dreams. It seems selfish, like, who am I, a WOMAN, leading ANYTHING? It seems like such an unflexible situation for any man to appear in. I mean, isn't it my role to be his "helper"?

But the thing is there was no man, and there may never be any man. Mother Teresa didn't have a man and she did fine. So... sometimes you just have to go for it, and who cares if its a turn off.

So, in a wash of independence I cut my hair short. I did so because the main reason it was long was because I had read somewhere that guys like long hair. The hair hadn't done a tonne to attract many guys anyway, and the ones it had attracted hadn't been stellar anyway. And I was no longer waiting for a guy to come along for my life's ministry to start. So, if I wanted it short and I wasn't waiting around for a guy for my life to start, why not cut it short?

And I also switched schools and majors. I wanted to stay in university because I loved learning, but I realized I didn't really need to worry about the practicality of whatever I majored in because getting a career wasn't what I wanted to focus on anyway. I didn't want to become a psychologist, to get paid to counsel people, and I didn't even like Psychology! So why would I major in something I hated so much?

Everything became clear. Well, except that I still don't know what I'll actually do to make money, but that really doesn't matter. I believe God ordained these dreams or else they wouldn't be so persistent. And God has lots of money. So screw it all!

I still feel a little weird... and this still feels really selfish. How dare I pursue something I WANT to do! Its just so... unfeminine. Or, at least it is if you believe the sole purpose of women is to be supportive to men. But again, there was no man, so I had nobody to do that for!

It scares me that my automatic thinking is so medieval. I *know* that's wrong, that God gives women dreams and leadership abilities too. I know that because I am a woman with dreams and the ability to lead.

Oye. I don't know. I don't like feeling thrust in the position of being an angry, defiant bra-burning feminist but it seems necessary.

Why My Facebook Profile Has Gotten All Christiany Lately

On December 11, a 22 year old leader at my church died instantly in a car accident. Since then there has been a lot of processing done by the Embassy community, not the least of which has taken place in our living room. Though I personally didn't know him, I can truly say that his death has changed my life.

This guy totally lived his faith out loud and labelled it clearly. I used to make fun of people like that. Christian T-shirts. Overly Christianized Facebook profiles. It all seemed like such a good way to ostracize yourself and then not make any non-believing friends at all, thus having nobody to show Jesus to except people who already know Him. I think I also feared replacing true Christian spirituality with its squeaky clean, made-in-China merchandise Christian culture counterpart. But this guy, he had a message, a thesis to his life, and it seems to have been splattered all over everything he did.

His thesis: Live your life for God right now.

Everything you can possibly stalk about him on the internet BLASTS this thesis. Stalk him on Facebook yourself! His name is David Powell and his facebook page is relatively open. Its in each of his Facebook pictures, of him on some sort of adventure, with people he clearly cares about or being silly.

His profile, in his religious views, his little box and his quotes ALL scream this thesis. Just look:



Even his last facebook status update before his death read, "I want to run, jump and spread life in this world..."

Lastly, at the Embassy we have a weekly question to answer on camera and then everyone's answers get smooshed together for a 2-3 minute video which introduces the sermon the next week. Usually the question is silly and usually people's answers are silly. In October, the question was, "What are your words of wisdom for the world?" Most people gave silly answers (you can see the full video here).

His unedited (or, less edited) answer is not silly, but thoughtful and beautiful. And he says it again, "Live your life for God now!"

Here is that version:



Having examined his life on the internet, hung out with his family a couple times, talked to his friends, I've seen the impact that having a clear life thesis can have on your surrounding community. Why would I ever want to be ambiguous about what I want to say to the world?

So I thought about it. What DO I want my life to say to the world? I decided: "God loves you!" So I'm going to say it clearly and directly, a lot. Its not enough to live a life of love. People need to know Who's light I'm shining because it is not my own! I would hate for someone to see my life and, not knowing I was a Christian, think, "Well, if she can be a great person without Jesus than so can I." That would be so opposite to what I want my life to be about!

And that, blog world, is why you will now always see in some form or another, "God loves you" under my Facbeook dp and why my statuses have gotten a little more spiritually meaty.

"You are not defined by what you are not." - Mike Richardson

Lately this quote has been resounding in my head. Also this one:

"We do not want to be beginners, but let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything but beginners, all our life!" — Thomas Merton

Goals for 2010

1) Be able to bike from Guelph to New Dundee with Michelle by the summer time (Approximately 40km.

2) Figure out how to have strong convictions without coming across/being a judgemental prick.

3) Become vegan, stay vegan - except for when people offer me food.

4) Acting more on all the weird and wild ideas my housemates and I come up with on how to love people.

5) To go streaking in the field of my old high school.

6) Sit outside and paint something, then and there, in one afternoon.

7) Fast. Actually, practice all the spiritual disciplines.

8) Become undignified in a public worship service.

9) Write more poetry.

10) Have no male "that friend..."s, you know, the sort of person you are nice to to their face but then make fun of behind their backs. That's NOT showing Jesus' love and I don't think its my job to be particularly nice to awkward guys. That can be a Christian guy's job.

11) Be tidier.

12) Stop church dating and COMMIT!

13) Get baptized and have a baptism party.

15) Make something useful.

16) Get more involved at the Dream Centre (see below post).

17) Become less of a hypocrite when it comes to recycling and general environmental responsibility.

18) Plant a garden.

19) To consider school important, but to consider other people more important - to remember that my life's goal is not to get awesome marks, but to love, and sometimes that conflicts with school.

20) To memorize the Sermon on the Mount.

21) To get dread locks when my hair is long enough to tie back.

22) To learn to love all people, even perfectly beautiful or cool people who I am sure don't need another shred of affection coming their way. I think I have some sort of reverse prejudice... it looks holy but I actually harbour a lot of bitterness towards exceptionally gorgeous people.

23) Write more letters.

24) To learn to listen better and flip down the laptop screen when someone is talking to me about something serious.

25) To learn how to be an effective leader.

26) To become comfortable with the fact that it is not my job to change other people.

27) To be more brave.

In other news, this is a beautiful song written by the little brother of a leader at my church who recently died in a car crash. He was 22. As an Embassy leader, I've had the priveledge of spending a couple days at his family's house trying to be a support to his family. His little brother is very creative and musical and I can't believe he composed and recorded this in such a short time.

Follow this link: Ecstacy