Tears of the Saints - Leeland

This weekend my forum visited the Dream Centre, a local outreach centre for homeless and low-income people. They gave us a tour and gave us some information on what homelessness in Waterloo region looked like and their role in relieving it. They also showed us a movie, and this song was playing in the background. Its an incredibly powerful song so I thought I would share it.

Oh! I found a video on the Dream Centre! Its not exactly the one I saw, but whatevs. Here it is:

Salty Grace by Life in Your Way

Surely death has found me, It has kept a hold of me all this far
My actions will reveal, only time will tell
These passions start to slip away
Memories flash like seconds in a day
I see the world from the outside
There is something to say about being desperate, down and love
Giving a chance to see what it all can mean
There is something to say about being desperate, down and low
Upon my arrival, I either learn to swim or drown
As I struggle for air I see only water
And I reach for anything as I cry for help
I feel my body growing weak
Slipping away, It occurs to me that my cries are worthless
Acknowledging death
I no longer mourn my own loss
And begin to sing praises to the one that has me here
As I sink to my salty grave I drown
No hand to reach for, no ear to listen
Let it be a sweet, sweet sound... In your ear
I sink to my salty grave
Up to the light I will sing praises, surely we will all die
Up to the light I will sing praises because surely we will all die

For the Love of Toilet Paper - A Social Experiment

A couple months ago, my two Christian housemates and I excitedly hypothesized about all the great community-building things we would do in our complex. Basically, we epically failed. But we did do this (and will hopefully continue to do more in the future):

There are 22 units in our housing situation. It is two rows of eleven joined houses. The entrances face each other and have a roof overhead. One would think this arrangement would encourage neighbourly affection. It doesn't. Everyone is as cold as a true-blue suburbanite.

We also live in a somewhat terrifying part of town. In September, there were two sexual assaults that took place within a 5 minute walk from my house, one just outside my complex. These occurences didm't encourage neighbourly affection either.

So we wanted to change the status quo by giving every one of the houses a little gift and an encouraging note.

"What does everyone need?" we thought outloud amongst ourselves. People might throw away food fearing it was poisoned. So we decided on... toilet paper!

Thus, we wrapped 21 rolls in blue tissue paper held together with yellow curled ribbon. We attached a note that followed structure of, "Dear (house #), We hope you like your unorthodox gift! We'd also like to have you over for supper. If you want to do this too, please come knock on our door or leave us a note if we're not home. Sincerely, (us)"

I must admit we came up with this idea weeks ago. But we are busy. (Though, mostly, we are lazy.)

Feeling convicted at our Thursday night Irresistible Revolution book study, we finally finished our project at 2:30am that night. We filled a laundry basket with the tp and went from door to door in our complex, putting our presents in the mailboxes. It was blissful and we felt like Christmas elves.

The next morning my housemate overheard a conversation between a guy who lives in our complex and someone who does not. Apparently the guy was pretty weirded out. Ba ha ha. Its only to be expected, but we hoped that wouldn't be EVERYONE'S response.

AND IT WASN'T! Around 3 o clock the next day a girl with black and purple dread locks came to our door. She thanked us for the present and said she and her housemates would love to come for supper! And they're coming on Wednesday.

It. Gets. Better.

So, Saturday night (Halloween) I found myself unexpectedly alone in the house. Ever since L'Abri I've found I get lonely easily, which is odd since for years before that I was definitely overly reclusive. But anyway, so I was feeling sorry for myself when around 8:30, dreadlock girl came to the door! She offered me pumpkin seeds and we talked.

And then I kind of invited myself over to her place and we watched the Nightmare Before Christmas and a transvestite comedian. But mostly we talked. And she brought up God, really early into the conversation, actually. Interestingly, we have similar stories, both disillusioned by the Church, but she took one road and I took the other. It was amazing though in the sense that I was actually able to share my journey with her pretty thoroughly, and oddly enough I wasn't even flustered. It was a really chill evening.

We also talked about drugs and especially marijuana. They're really passionate about pot at that house, which, while different than my background, is okay with me. We discussed the spiritual aspects of pot-smoking for quite some time. It makes me thankful I read a biography on Bob Marley and watched the documentary Grass. I think those educational experiences helped me come off a little more balanced in my views of pot than I would have otherwise.

Yay life!

Yay experiments!

Yay God!

Whoah

Oh My Goodness...

Don't Give Up

This article is a must-read:

Grandmothers Go to Jail for Peace

I love it! Its so encouraging to see that passion isn't necessarily something that fades with maturity.

Starring Me In the Face

“Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, ‘Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.’ A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?” - C.S. Lewis in Til We Have Faces

A perennial, burning question on my heart has been for quite some time now, "What is the difference between someone who is actively choosing the redemptive process and someone who is actively rejecting it?" Most of the time, I truly feel as though there is none.

But last night, my Mennonite History class went on a field trip to visit an Old Order Mennonite couple in an Old Order Mennonite school house. And it was inspiring.

Old Order Mennonites are people who felt the Mennonite Church was becoming too liberal and individualistic during the Great Awakening that swept North America by storm. Thus, they formed their own little communities, reverting back in time a bit, and they are now known in this area as the "horse and buggy Mennonites."

I like the way they live. Its more eco-friendly. However, they don't seem to realize this, rejecting cars because "it could cause people to want to get involved in impure things - like going to the movie theatre". Personally, I'm not ready to give up my reliance on motorized transportation. But it gnaws on me that there are people who have given it up and are quite content with that.

Its far more community oriented. If someone gets sick, the congregation pays their medical bills. If someone sins and confesses it, an announcement in church is made that yes, brother so-and-so sinned, but he has confessed it and it is in the past now. Decisions about how to live in the world but not of it are discussed at congregational councils. If a tragedy happens, the individuals know their congregation will be there to support them.

It puts a high emphasis on pacifism.
It puts a high emphasis on discipline.
Its obsessed with following the teachings of Jesus.

Part of me desperately wants to join, or at least try it out. Outsiders are welcome to their Sunday services and if someone wants to join, they are encouraged to live with a family for awhile to see if this is something they are willing to do.

Part of me laughs at how entrenched in legalism they are. Or are they? I HAVE seen many things which have affected my purity in movie theatres, and in the media in general. I don't believe a movie theatre is an evil in and of itself though. I have also seen movies with a powerful Christ-like message in movie theatres, like Water, Amazing Grace and obviously The Passion of the Christ.

Sometimes being a Christian is like doing a little dance on a very thin rope, trying not to fall into the crowd below, or falling in, but justifying it by saying redemption can be found in many secular things and backing that argument up by Scripture.

I feel like Old Order Mennonites try not to even climb onto the rope, preferring to occupy their time with other things that have nothing to do with trying to sort through the evils or redemptive qualities of mass culture.

And they stick out so much that they do get questioned a lot about their faith. The couple re-iterated that a few times last night.

I LONG to stick out so much that I get questioned.

But perhaps the bonnets and flowered dresses are simply their own versions of Christian T-Shirts - something unimportant to identify the in-crowd from the out-crowd.

I used to find Christian t-shirts quite attractive before I learned to scoff at them. They WERE handy. In my mind I would think, "Oh, isn't that great! He's not ashamed of his faith! I should marry him."

*Smiles* if you have made it this far in my post I congratulate you. This is more of a discussion topic than a blog topic. I have far too many loosely related ideas bouncing around in my head. Turrah.