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Archive of "the gathering" Category
My Year In Review - Flickr
Go to the Flickr site for images from last Sunday’s “My Year in Review” stations.http://www.flickr.com/photos/fusionokc/sets/72157623035667587/
www.flickr.com
convergence:OKC’s My Year in Review 01-03-2010 photoset Human Trafficking
At last night’s Creative World Justice Gathering, we introduced a new justice issue, Human Trafficking, that we are going to be addressing. If you weren’t able to make it out last night, I’ll try to give a brief summary of some what was discussed. The issue of Human Trafficking, and in particular Sex Trafficking, is one that is quickly growing in attention, though there has been little progress made in our country (and even less in our state and city).What is it? Human Trafficking (HT) is the recruitment, transportation, harboring, or receipt of people for the purposes of slavery, debt bondage, and servitude. There are an estimated 27 million people around the world living in slave-like conditions. HT is an extremely lucrative business with revenues in the tens of billions, greater than the combined revenues of Nike, Google, and Starbucks. That’s hard to even imagine!
Who are the victims? The victims are often from our most vulnerable populations (runaways, refugees, aliens). Approx 70% are female and 50% children. The ages being demanded for sex trafficking are getting younger and younger, with an average entry age of 12 and an overall average of 14. There is also a growing demand for disgruntled middle class white children via online chatrooms. Follow the link to a short video about a girl who came out of this life: “Candace’s Story.”
Who is demanding it? 99% of the demand is created for men. 90% for white men.
Where is it happening? Basically everywhere! Almost every country serves as either a Source, Transit, and/or Destination. An est 50,000 victims are trafficking into or through the US each year. The USA is the #1 destination for child sex trafficking. And, YES, it is happening in Oklahoma City. OKC is at the crossroads of four of the primary trafficking cities (Houston, Kansas City, Las Vegas, and Atlanta). Watch a clip from a new documentary “Playground.”
What is being done? Very little. Only a handful of shelters nationwide, none in OK. Oklahoma law enforcement, social services, health care, and mental health workers are mostly untrained to deal with victims. Only one (most unenforceable) state law on trafficking.
Oklahomans Against Trafficking Humans (OATH). We are connecting with a grassroots organization that started in Tulsa and is just getting their start here in OKC. The list of potential activities is huge: from Awareness Campaigns to Research to Outreach…the list is long. Mark Elam told me that basically whatever we dream up and want to do, we can.
How can YOU get involved? We are going to continue the conversation in our monthly CWJ Gatherings. But for those who really want to get involved, we are planning to meet for a few minutes prior (at 6:00PM) to the monthly OATH Meetings (2nd Tues of every month at the United Way at the SE corner of NW 28th & McKinley) to begin to brainstorm our part in addressing this issue.
If you have any interest in being a part of the CWJ response to human trafficking in OKC, please let me know. I would love to chat over lunch or coffee sometime soon! Call (405.694.8562) or email me (gary@convergenceokc.org).
Gary Caplinger
this is what it means…
This is a poem we used last night at the CWJ Gathering. I think it really summarizes, in so many ways, where we are moving as a community and how we are discovering that we can really encounter God among the Stranger, the Tortured, the Wretched, the Abandoned, and the Fatherless ones. Alicia helped us discover the important truth that when we welcome, sit beside, bathe, bear up, and raise up the least, “that we are offered the grace to heal the suffering of our King.” I have pictured more and more recently how in serving the suffering, we are literal serving Jesus. But to heal the suffering of our King? Are we in some ways bringing healing to The Suffering Servant? I’d love to hear some response to that idea…“Don’t palm me off with your civil religion and your politely murmured prayers,
don’t hand me your filthy mammon or your barns of laundered cash.Don’t flatter me with your pious words catechisms so crisp and clean.
I hate your victory chants in praise of what I’m not:
your oh so personal idol, middle class and mute.But I am not silent to those with ears to hear:
I weep, I groan, I scream, and I am so weary
of your all too clever words your rituals and your rhymes;
your meaningless slick tokens of power-point and song.So once more I’m going to tell you (if you really want to hear),
now this is what it means, now this is what it means to know me:Go love the Hungry One with whom you must share your bread,
go welcome The Stranger who soils your silken bed,
go sit still beside the Tortured One and hear his anguished cries,
go bathe the disfigured, Wretched One caress His weeping skin,
bear up the abused, Abandoned One bent beneath Her grief,
raise up the Fatherless One eating scraps from beneath your feet,for this is what it means, for this is what it means to know me.
Look! to those with eyes to see
I hide my face, buried broken in the bodies of the least,
and offer you the grace to heal the suffering of your King,
for this is what it means, this is what it means,
this is what it means to know me.”by Kristin Jack (Servants Asia Coordinator)
inspired by Jer 22:13-17; Isa 1:1-20; 58:1-14; Amos 5:21-24; Mat 25:31-46
Creative World Justice: Human Trafficking
Tonight 5pm at Convergence will be our first Creative World Justice Gathering. I just wanted to send out a note to let you know that the content of the conversation will be of a very adult matter. I would highly recommend that you let our amazing Sparks workers take care of all of your kiddos tonight, due to the subject matter (Human Trafficking). It is a heavy subject for which I am continually praying God will show us how we are best equipped to respond.Please share your thoughts from the evening…
Conversation: Wholeness (continued)
@ the gathering (5pm most sundays) - we’ve been exploring NARRATIVE. More than just any story, THE BIG STORY that, we believe, is worth tying our life to. It’s the story of WHOLENESS - the story of the way things are and the way things are meant to be. We, as a part of creation, are really experiencing the tension—at all times.last week, we talked through this idea that we, humanity, are all IKONS of God - reflections of God. He has made us to be drawn toward building, creating, naming, engineering - this reflects Him. When we engage these through love/benevolence and creativity—we are perpetuating this God-reflective work He began in creation. However, when we engage these through self-preservation, isolation, and competition - we are perpetuating the wreckage that moves us further from God. We’re building, creating, naming people - no matter what. But, if we destroy or curse or attempt to gain power over others - in turn, dehumanizing others and destroying creation - we participate in fracturing of life as we know it.
But we’re meant for restoration, we’re meant for love. we’re meant for wholeness.
stations:awaken
Fusion has been considering ways in which we might be awake or asleep to the way of God in our world. He is working everywhere and often in ways we might not recognize. Tonight, we encountered a room full of eight stations to reflect, pray, consider art - song - film - and create art - poetry - etc. The next several posts will be the content of the AWAKEN:STATIONS.
Please use this post to respond to the following…
HOW DOES ENGAGING IN STATIONS: which are interactive, experiential, sensory, creative, and contemplative - CONNECT WITH YOU?
stations:feel
FEEL
Watch the first few moments of Garden State. What words describe what you see?
What state of existence would you say you are closer to . . .
ASLEEP < ————————————————————— > AWAKE
What factors are in your life that push you toward being Numb?
What factors are in your life that alert you to be Present?
The prophet Jeremiah is sick of sharing and living the message of Yahweh to a people who are blind to Him. The prophet, an ikon of God to the people is sick of it – saying, ‘forget it’ – protesting from the pain it’s caused. God has seemingly not shown up for him – and he’s done. I no doubt believe he was quickly becoming a cynic, jaded, and carrying a laundry list of complaints for the way his life is turning out.
Hurt does this to us – often we distance ourselves so not to feel life and God.
But Jeremiah admits to the power of God – there is no way to remain asleep. He says, “Sometimes I think, ‘I will make no mention of his message. I will not speak as his messenger any more.’ But then his message becomes like a fire locked up inside of me, burning in my heart and soul. I grow weary of trying to hold it in; I cannot contain it.’”
We say, “Awaken us to You.”
Consider the person, the event, the attitude, or the struggle that contributes to the numbness in your life. Write the word on a slip of paper before you.
Prayerfully repeat “Awaken us to You” as you light the paper and drop it into the bowl to burn up.
* What would it mean for God to ‘ignite’ you to a life that is PRESENT?
stations:release
RELEASE
At this station you will be using the act of breathing as a way to engage surrender and release. For a full explaination of the practice you can read page 12 in the Awaken booklet.
* Lightly notice the speediness of your breath and thoughts.
* Remember your desire for God in the form of a prayer or wordless feeling.
* Begin breathing slowly deep down into your diaphragm-stomach area. You can put your hands on this area and feel it swell out with your in-breath. Gradually fill your lungs from this bottom point inward.
* Hold the breath briefly, but without closing your throat.
* Release your breath very slowly, twice as slowly as you breathed in. Pause at the bottom of your breath briefly with a very still mind.
Continue this rhythm of breathing for a few minutes or longer, but now with the specific intent of breathing in all that is of God, and breathing out all in your body and mind that is not. You need not think of anything in terms of content; just retain a naked intent to be filled from head to toe with all that is of God, and to release whatever may come between you and God. In the process let your body and mind sink beneath the crowded, surface tension to that more spacious and free place where you are confidently grounded in God.
KIDS OPTION
* Read to or with your child the book provided, Journey to the Heart.
* Engage silence together as adult/child.
* Ask questions about the experience of silence.
* Pray together that you will both be AWAKE to God.
stations:see
SEE
Then those ’sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, or see you thirsty and give you a drink? When did we ever see you a stranger and show you hospitality? When did we ever see you naked and give you our clothes? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to visit you?’ Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to one of the least, someone overlooked or ignored, that was Me—you did it to Me.’ Matthew 25:37-40
Even if our eyes are being opened, how can we see the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the prisoner, if we are not putting ourselves in places where they are? How am I reorienting my life and my location so I am crossing paths with the overlooked and ignored, so I can see them?
Once we look into the eyes of “the other,” we cannot stop there? In the Scripture, the King doesn’t respond to the seeing as much as the doing? What are you doing?
In the video clip and throughout the movie (Holly, 2006), Patrick is struggling with the tension of how to respond to the brokenness and injustice he sees around him. Do I need more souvenirs? Do the souvenirs perpetuate the problem? Do I pay to rescue a girl from slavery, knowing the money will be used to buy more girls and continue the abuse?
Who is “the other” or what is the injustice you are seeing? What tensions are you holding as you attempt or desire to respond to the injustice? With whom are you sharing this burden or tension, so they can help you imagine and create restoration and a new way forward?
stations:move
MOVE
Consider the items before you, running shoes, candles, and the cross. Weeks ago we read an excerpt of an email I received years ago before we began Fusion. The email was a challenge to several church planters about to begin their ventures in cities across the nation. I have been forever touched by the word picture from a mentor.
Read it again and write what comes to mind. Respond and react – not being overly careful to judge the thoughts that come to mind.
MONKS ON THE MOVE (an email sent by Andy Williams)
“So, bottom line, this is what I want to see out of us over time:
Depth with direction. Picture a monk in one of those heavy, itchy brown robes. but with the best, lightest New Balance running shoes you can buy.Monks on the move.
Deep thinking, deep feeling, deeply CHANGED men. But they don’t sit in a dark, damp monastery and chant and plant flowers all day. They MOVE OUT every day, all day with courage, character and compassion into all the places God gives them to move-toward their wives, their children, their co-workers, their neighbors, the least, the lonely, the widows, the orphans, to the ends of the earth..”
After responding to the words – imagine the ways you are moving out . . . consider the deep desires to move out more fully. Express to God what you are feeling.
Identify the dread or heaviness you may experience as you consider these things. Be honest and express that to God.
Light one of the candles before you – as an action of being ‘awakened’ to the movement of God in you. As you light the candle, consider the way the light penetrates the dark room. How the light is growing as more of an illuminating force the more others identify the movement of God in them.
“Spirituality is not to be learned in flight from the world, by fleeing from things to a place of solitude; rather we must learn to maintain an inner solitude regardless of where we are or who we are with. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.” – Meister Eckhart
stations:end/begin
thanks to Loren O’Laughlin and his amazing work, “Saul, Saul”
END/BEGIN
Ponder the face of Saul – the surroundings of his body. Imagine the scene of Saul as Jesus violently interrupts his day, his life-mission, his entire world.
Feel Saul’s world as it goes dark.
It is the end of Saul.
John 9: Jesus then said, “I came into the world to bring everything into the clear light of day, making all the distinctions clear, so that those who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great pretense of seeing will be exposed as blind.” Some Pharisees overheard him and said, “Does that mean you’re calling us blind?”
In the ending of Saul – in his despair he has no pride. In his blindness he can no longer preserve his own way.
It is the end of Saul.
Awakened now, Paul’s life is illuminated to what was meant to be.
Open eyes make us Open to God.
* What moves you about this story?
* How does this intimate experience with God connect with yours?
* How is this story a contrast with your own life with God?
stations:share
SHARE
Look over the “canvas” before you. By the end of the night it will be an expression of our collective awareness to God, a mosaic story of the way we are AWAKE to God.
Consider how you have/and are AWAKE: SEEING SENSING KNOWING DOING. Draw or write in each of the tiles an aspect of your life experience that has shaped you – “awakened” you – to see God/life/others differently. To better reflect on each of the four aspects, you may want to consider the following questions:
* How has the way you SEE or perceive gone through a shift?
* How has the way you KNOW or fully assimilate gone through a shift?
* How has the way you SENSE or feel gone through a shift?
* How has the way you DO or engage gone through a shift?
KIDS OPTION
On the butcher paper provided, draw a picture that represents . . .
‘Where do I see God most?’
stations:empty
EMPTY
(listen/watch Be Thou My Vision)
Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart
None is all else to me, save that you are
You’re my best thought by day or by night
Waking or sleeping, your presence, my light
Be thou my wisdom and thou my true word
I ever with you and you with me, Lord
You’re my great father and I’m your true son
You in me dwelling, and I with you one
Riches I need not, nor man’s empty praise
You’re my inheritance, now and always
You and you only, first in my heart
High King of heaven, my treasure you are
High King of heaven, my victory won
May I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s sun
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall
Still be my vision, O Ruler of all
* How do you feel as you listen to this song?
* Do you sense struggle? Resolve? Or something other?
* How does the verb ‘empty’ and this song find any connection to one another?
I was struck by the resolve and willingness to attribute the highest value to the King – praising God. It wasn’t that the words are so unique – but that it exposed the duty and obligation I often feel toward God. It exposed my all too often lack of intimacy and joy with the Father – and it ‘awoke’ me to the contrast of obligation – a life lived through intimacy and awareness. Ron Martoia writes, ‘doing flows organically from a deep sensing that is a response to what is happing and arising around us. This sort of doing flows from a deep self emptying modeled by Jesus . . . this is a self emptying doing, not a self filling accomplishment.’
Our prayer then becomes, ‘be my vision . . . and my greatest desire.’
stations:reflect
REFLECT
Sit before mirror. Is it awkward to stare at yourself? How willing are we to look deep within us – to truly know ourselves? Joan Chittester says, ‘the real material of spiritual development is not in books. It is in the subject matter of the self. Silence is that place just before the voice of God . . . silence is the cave through which the soul must travel, clearing out the dissonance of life as we go, so that the God who is waiting for us to notice can fill us.”
Consider these reflective questions in this moment of silence…
RULE OF LIFE is a pattern of spiritual disciplines that provides structure and direction for growth in holiness. What is my current rule of life?
How is God moving me toward change in my daily life?
What spiritual practices aid your intimacy with God?
AWARENESS OF GOD
God, How have you been addressing me through my thoughts, feelings, work, relationships, symptoms, longings, frustrations, dreams and failures?
SENSITIVITY TO OTHERS
In what ways have I considered others above myself? What needs am I most sensitive to? Where am I most cold—most unresponsive? Am I willing to pray for a change of heart? Who could I be ignoring around me?
PATTERNS WITHIN THE CITY
Have you considered your regular patterns and how important they can be in connecting to God and to others?
Develop consistency in the places you go – and pray that God might help you be aware of Him and of the relationships you can build.
Consider what irregularities can you force into your life that you might see God in new places and in new people?
Awaken: knowing…
Last night we considered the Acts 9 account of Saul’s encounter with Christ - saying it was truly a “noetic” encounter. From there, we entered the waters of KNOWING - what it’s been for many of us, and what we hope it might more fully become.Again, KNOWING = DOING is quite limited. We get that, right? And yet, for most of us, that’s been the default we fall into as we journey with God. We’ve taken our comfort with a reason based view of the world—and we’ve assumed that really following God is about understanding more about him. We have in many ways attempted to see transformation in a overly mind focused, modern influenced way. it’s impoverished. it’s limited. and yet our confidences still lie in a view of knowing that is based on gaining facts and words.
So many of you shaped the dialogue last night—that it’s difficult to point to just one or two insights that MADE THE NIGHT. The tone of the night was an vulnerable and healthy struggle with the way of knowing we are familiar with—and the admission that there must be another way.
It’s the way of intimacy—right? I shared a few words that might help us to expand our framework around KNOWING:
*Noetic
*Deeply Intuitive
*Full Assimilation
*Full-BodiedDO THESE HELP US UNDERSTAND THE DEEP SHIFT WE ARE BEING AWAKENED TO? That knowing equals doing is so limited. It’s a knowing that often leads to conclusions about God - but little life AFTER GOD.
Reframing KNOWING awakens our entire life! It leaves the potential that God is working all around us—and we are to EXPERIENCE FULLY a life with Him—gut-level life with Him.
Our natural push-back to an emotional, mental, and physical intimacy with God is that it’s so subjective. As if a reason based, highly-studied, “objective seeking” nose in the Book approach to Spiritual Formation is so very insulated from missing God. Only our modern view of things would place more confidence in encountering God by pursuing the exact and correct conclusion about Him.
Community - true life together and life within the history of the ‘cloud of witnesses’- is the boundary maker. Yes, we can slip off to “wackiness” easily—and yet, why are we so suspect of the GUT - of the EMOTIONAL - the Full-Bodied experience of God? The first 1500 years of Church History show us that Intuition was the viable factor for confidence with God - not correct and reasoned conclusions.
Ultimately—we are getting at a life that merges INTIMACY WITH GOD, EXPERIENCE OF THE EVERYDAY, AND UNDERSTANDING OF GOD. None of these can be emphasized above the other. We long to be AWAKENED - longing to find life together—with God and one another and with the ‘other’ in such a way that we truly See, Know, Sense, and Live with God.
How are you being AWAKENED?
practices that aid in bringing intimacy to the forefront of life are found in Imaginative and Surrendering Prayers - a contemplative life. We’re encouraging this life in the booklet we’ve created (here).
Saul Saul by Loren O’Laughlin
Tonight we had the great opportunity to consider a local artists depiction of Saul’s experience on the road to Damascus (acts 9).How did you interact with the painting? the story? How do you see Paul’s encounter as a ‘noetic’ one?
communion: ‘take this bread’
last night, within our moments of communion, i read from a memoir of a woman truly impacted by the experience of the bread and cup, saying, “Jesus happened to me.”
She records, “the word (Jesus) was indisputably in my body now, as if I’d swallowed a radioactive pellet that would outlive my body flesh.” Communion, for Sara Miles, was the beginning of her process to SEE the reality of Jesus. Because of that moment, that becomes ongoing for her, leads her to SEE the great hunger around her–in her city.
HOW DOES HER STORY CONNECT WITH YOU?
We’ll continue to read from her memoir as we experience communion together.
awaken:SEEING
OPEN EYES MAKE US OPEN TO GOD
last night i said the phrase, ‘Open Eyes Make Us Open To God’.
How do you *see* God opening your eyes? to what? to who? to where?
Our awakening to God must include seeing - where our awareness is limited–we may very well miss the God work around us. So, WHAT ARE YOU SEEING? In what ways have you been aware of God smearing mud, sending you to the water to wash, and now peering into the world with different eyes?
Read again John 9 - what continues to resonate?
Read Numbers 13 - the story of Joshua & Caleb is certainly about SEEING. Isn’t it tragic that the others spies in the story are confident that they are seeing - both the promise lands abundance and the overwhelming of their tribe by the warriors already in the land. These spies truly believe that they should not go in the land because of what they’ve seen. Don’t we all believe we SEE. However, the great contrast in the story is J&C - absolutely SEEING that God will lead the way.
What way of the Kingdom has yet to be expressed in our lives, in this city, in the brokeness of the global slums do to our LACK OF SEEING?
AWAKEN: to our limited view . . .
We’ve now spent two gatherings on the topic of ‘Awaken to our Reduced View’. I think it’s key that we see how shaped and limited we are at any point in time by the dominant media of the day. The Oral Tradition dominated for the first 1500 years of church history - leaving Intuition as the key to knowing/pursuing/being shaped by God. Since the Print age - we’ve been left brain, rational, linear dominated. And the Broadcast age (circa 1950-now) we’ve been shaped yet again by media—images are king, birthing the return of the right brain—causing us to ‘feel’ more deeply our experience. What does all of this matter—well, we must know that throughout history—we’ve been ‘bent’ toward a certain way (default way) to process, store, and view information. And in this default, we enhance aspects while limiting others. Do we want a faith bound by rationale, linear thought, and detached from our praxis due to theorizing? Do we want a faith bound by only our personal experience, bound only by what we feel, without learning the larger implications? Do we want a faith bound by autonomy and self-reflection? OR do we want a ‘full-bodied’ faith - synthesizing the right/left brain - bringing together the vitality of the tribal/community connectedness and the complex reflection upon the theology of Paul. Can we break out of a KNOWING = DOING framework of Transformation to be AWAKENED to a SEEING > KNOWING > SENSING > DOING framework for transformation?Does this connect with you? And how do these ideas connect with the following understanding of media—that the medium is the message? Check out the video—and share some insights!
What stands out to you?
McLuhan said, “We are moving out of the age of the visual into the age of the aural and tactile . . . We are the television screen . . . we wear all mankind as our skin.”
THE GATHERING: @ McKinley Park
Just a reminder - THIS SUNDAY @ 5PM - on this holiday weekend, we’ve chosen to get together @ McKinley Park - on 13th and Mckinley. Bring your own dinner, drinks, and games/chairs. We’ll hang out and toss a frisbee together.RAIN OPTION: We’ll plan on the above scenerio - but, it is scheduled to rain all weekend. So, plan B - if it’s raining - we’ll meet at FALCONE’S in Bricktown for a 5pm Dinner. Falcone’s has a ton of room - you can order first, and you can order pizza by the slice (or many other great items). They are a local restaurant—so we love to support locals!
SO - RAIN OR SHINE - We’ll make the Memorial Day weekend one to change our regular rhythm and hang a bit over a meal.
CHECK OUT NEXT WEEK:
* Next Friday @ Convergence: Eutopian Accident $6
* Next Saturday SPARKS WORK DAY 9am
* Next Sunday AWAKEN: to GOD in full view“monks on the move”
I shared an excerpt from an email i received just before venturing out to start Fusion over five years ago. This email has been something i’ve returned to many times—to keep in front of me the encouragement and the picture of what i am confident the church must look like. In writing this, Andy W. was putting words to my heart for what has now become the Fusion Community.
How do these words connect with you? How are they an encouragement to what you are seeing happen within our community?
MONKS ON THE MOVE
“So, bottom line, this is what I want to see out of us over time:
Depth with direction. Picture a monk in one of those heavy, itchy brown robes. but with the best, lightest New Balance running shoes you can buy.Monks on the move.
Deep thinking, deep feeling, deeply CHANGED men. But they don’t sit in a dark, damp monastery and chant and plant flowers all day. They MOVE OUT every day, all day with courage, character and compassion into all the places God gives them to move-toward their wives, their children, their co-workers, their neighbors, the least, the lonely, the widows, the orphans, to the ends of the earth..”
awaken from our numbness
Tonight we watched the first few minutes of Garden State. In the opening scene Zack Braff’s character is emotionless as he hears of his mom’s death. he is numb to life - and unresponsive to everything around him.Do you see any parallel’s to your faith? Are we distant, numb, asleep or moving toward an awakening to God and to others?
Awaken: Christ’s Compassion
Tonight we considered the following passage. Take time this week to further meditate on Christ’s compassion for the shepherdless. Jesus is our picture of feeling deeply the hurt of the city.As you process the passage - please share any thoughts with the entire community.
<matthew 9> Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.
Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, (because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.
Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.
“Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.”
this week @ the gathering: AWAKEN
This Sunday night @ 5pm we’ll be engaging in a thread of conversation, AWAKEN: to a whole new way of seeing. It’s not that it’s “new” - but that we are often not “awake” to the many ways in which God shapes us - and brings restoration to our world. While we have often reduced faith in Christ to a KNOWING = DOING (understanding something yields acting different) - we’ll work through a conversation about how we are ultimately shaped more holistically - through a depth of seeing, knowing, sensing, doing. So the entire night will be a collection of elements intended to AWAKEN.Shared - Stations of the Cross
DON’T FORGET SHARED GOOD FRIDAY TONIGHT: Stations of the Cross@ Skyline Church 123 Kerr McGee in the Sandridge building 6:30 or 8:00Comment back and let us know who is planning on being there!40 days = a process toward hope
from the Responsive Reading i wrote for last night . . . it’s been a part of my journey this Lent . . .Forty days of warning. Forty nights of rain. Forty days of fasting. Forty years of wandering. Forty, the amount of time a nation had to REORIENT their life in a posture of humility and embrace the conceptions of Yahweh. A new allegiance forged. Forty, the amount of time given to purify the earth through the God rains that flooded the wicked. An earth renewal springs forth. Forty, the amount of time Jesus would expose Himself to hunger and thirst while making space for His Father–even in the midst of Satan’s attempts to fill the space. A new ministry is birthed. Forty, the amount of time Israel wandered, exposed to the mirror of their own conceptions that had been rooted through years of slavery in a foreign land. A new generation emerged. Out of the Forty comes hope and new life.
Forty days. Once a year.
That we might see the new orientation of our compass heading.Forty days. Once a year.
That we might expose and smash
the false conceptions that distort our view.Forty days. Once a year.
That we might truly see who we are,
what we are becoming as people and a community.Forty days. Once a year.
That we might ready our hearts for an evolution - an incremental transformation - that ripples out from the Resurrected One.Resisting the Season of Lent (The Forty)
Last night we poured through the life of Jonah. He is the most prominant figure of Resistance i can think of in Scripture. Throughout the story - Jonah’s either going the opposite direction or he has a fist toward God, angry about living in a world where God’s love knows no boundaries. While we could have focused on many things - i chose for us to zero in on Jonah’s resistance to God-believing that is part of the ongoing message to us - Are we resisting God’s work?This season of The Forty leads us to a place (initially) where none of us are probably thrilled about going. Lent is a process of coming to our end - a process of becoming more desperate in our dependence upon God. This may look different for each one of us - but it IS the process we undergo if we are to follow Christ and be utterly effected by the Resurrection.
TO AVOID THE CHANCE TO LIVETHEFORTY (process of repentance) IS TO TURN AND GO THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION OF OUR CALLING, JUST LIKE JONAH.
Any Thoughts?
Entering the End of our “strengths”
Where are my “supports”? - the things that keep me propped up and living a life that seems to be put together - rather than facing my altogether needy and fragile existence.How do I “cope”?
What other “idols” have i constructed?
In what does my faith lie?
It seems–throughout the Gospel Narrative - those at the end of any supports or those void of any supports (or strengths)–those on the fringe—are the ones who see God and follow. It’s those with ample “supports” or “strengths” who saw Christ as a threat to their way of existence. If the support was power–Herod assasinated all the little boys–Pilate worked the system–the religious flexed their righteousness.
For the woman we spoke of tonight (Matthew 15) - she had no supports. In her day and culture - she had little honor - and she dissolved any of her “social honor” by making a spectacle and approaching a man–a Jewish man of all things. We may not see it - but Jesus and this woman were causing a scene by even getting near one another. But her cry for Jesus was one He poured out His grace.
For us to engage God–truly respond to the Lent Season– we’ll need to rid ourselves of our supposed supports/strengths.
What supports are we protecting?
Who would we be if we no longer sought support other than the worthy Christ?
To LIVETHEFORTY - won’t we need to expose these - fast from them, in order to make space for God to fill?
Community is . . . SUSTAINABLE
We spoke sunday night - and are continuing the dialogue about what it looks like to sustain any level of community—AND to perpetuate more community within Fusion.I shared a quote from Shane Hipps to help us grasp a few values present within true community . . .
” . . . community involves high degrees of intimacy, permanence, and proximity. These practices foster shared memories as well as a shared imagination of the future . . . Without (proximity, permanence, and intimacy) we lose our shared memories and imagination for where we are going, elements central to our identity as God’s people.” - from The Hidden Power Electronic Culture
This week there was a video interview with Shane Hipps posted on vimeo. He addresses the nature of Virtual Community - good stuff. Any thoughts?
the gathering “Community Is . . . REDEMPTIVE”
just a few notes from tonight - thought there might be some more we could process about some of the words from tonight.RONALD ROLHEISER QUOTE:
, ” . . . God walked this earth, physically, for thirty-three years, and then returned to heaven, leaving us the Holy Spirit, a real but less physical presence of God. The physical body of Jesus, the word made flesh, was with us for thirty-three years and is now in heaven. What is wrong with this? Is it right—in its own symbolic language–about many things: our sin, God’s mercy, God’s coming physically to earth. Where is it wrong is that it gives the impression that the incarnation was a thirty-three year experiment, a one-shot incursion by God into human history. In this version, God came to earthy physically and then, after thirty-three years, went back home. It uses the past tense for the incarnation and that is a dangerous under-understanding. The incarnation is still going on and it is just as areal and as radically physical as when Jesus of Nazareth, in the flesh, walked the dirt roads of Palestine.”
GOD ALWAYS WORKS to create community . . .
God’s work in creating Community is redemptive to us, to others, and to the world. God’s work is only understood when it is understood as the restoration of humanity so that they form a new Community that lives out His ways which transform all of life.
QUESTIONS WE MUST CONSIDER:
WHO are we to be “near”?
HOW are we to be “near” them?
It’s a matter we discern as a community, as McKnight puts it, “Each community will work out its own praxis of atonement.”Were there any other themes you’d like to consider?
Plaza District
Check out the latest in the Plaza District!
writings:
others:
* Awaken Retreat (Spring 09)
* Metanoina: forty days (Lent) to face a fundamental shift
* Community Is . . .
* My Year In Review 2008
Flickr
books we are reading
Making Room by Christine Pohl
EXILES by Michael Frost
Compassion by Henri Nouwen
Synchronicity by Jaworski
Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture
Take This Bread by Sara Miles
To Be Told by Dan Allender
Static by Ron Martoia
The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle
Living in the Presence by Tilden Edwards
Sadhana: A Way to God by Anthony de Mello
Saving the Appearances by Owen Barfield
Signs of Emergence by Kester Brewen
Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren
Divine Intervention by Tony Jones
Community and Growth: Our Pilgrimage Together by Jean Vanier
Created for Community by Stanley Grenz
From Stone to Living Word
The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture
Intuitive Leadership by Tim Keel
The Divine Commodity by Skye Jethani
The Great Giveaway by David Fitch