Tall Monastic Guy

do you want to see?

Last week I visited a good friend who is serving time in the city detention center for a bad decision. The weight of his words as he was describing his stay in the jail sits heavy on my mind.  "Ryan, nobody sees me here. We get herded around like cattle to slaughter. I’m just a number and nobody knows my name.”

At the end of our 30 minutes of assigned time I did my best to deliberately look into his eyes and call him by his name, but the implications of his words unsettled me and serve as a poignant reminder during this Lenten season.

The jailers have a job to do. Their very occupation is to display authority and power without much of a priority on seeing and valuing the basic humanity of those they've been placed in charge of. 

Sadly, this normative lack of consideration and critical reflection isn’t just a brutal characteristic of correctional facility workers. The reality is the same can be said for most of us within the privileged Christian middle-class matrix.

The truth? I become so accustomed to filling the gas tank, meeting a friend for coffee, and stopping on my way home at the market for an avocado that I easily overlook the fact that these daily mundane activities of mine that I unconsciously feel entitled to make up a lifestyle of a privileged minority. The very expectations and feelings of entitlement within my lifestyle of privilege become toxins that lead to my blindness and prevent me from truly seeing my marginalized brothers and sisters.

Philoxenia: a posture of parenting

These thoughts arrive after a pathetic night of sleep due to Josiah’s cough along with his apparent lack of consideration for his dad’s mental and physical health when asking if I could fetch a bowl of cereal at 3am. Isn’t it reasonable to expect a three-and-a-half year old to share concern over how much quality sleep his dad receives? 

These days I'm learning just how hard and humbling parenting actually is. More often than not Josiah and Micah don't do what we've asked of them. They cry and whine and demand of us and at the most inconvenient of times no less.

After a few years of working with street people, mentally ill, chronically homeless, and addicted much of the same things can be said. Many of those friends of mine cry and whine and demand of me and often it seems they do it most when I'm tired and emotionally drained. But they - those 'others' - often get a gracious pass from me. They're the poor and it's good and right to care for the poor.

our symbolic hedge: low or high?

A couple quotes here... first:

Earth is crammed with heaven,
and every common bush afire with God;
but only he who sees takes off his shoes.
The rest sit around and 
Pluck blackberries.

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I love this and believe it to be true. The following comes from Ronald Rolheiser in his book, The Shattered Lattern, and perhaps part of the reason for our lack of everyday burning bushes is what he would call a "low symbolic hedge."

Access Denver: film project

The following was a class project for students at Grace Prep Academy in Durango, Colorado. These awesome students spent a week in the city with me last spring which left significant impact on us all. They returned this past November asking if we could spend another week together in order to develop a film as part of a class project. 

Their expanding heart for the marginalized coupled with their amazing creativity points to the kind of Kingdom collaboration that humanity is capable of and leaves me hopeful for our future...

 

 

Steps to move forward...

The following image has had significant meaning for myself and others the past couple weeks as I've used it to help me consider what I'm heading toward in 2012.

Where do you find yourself in the image?

Perhaps you are standing at the bottom of the steps indecisive having yet to enter into the challenges ahead...

Or maybe you see yourself within the walls safely running around child-like in the forrest on the hill...

Still... Many of us will see ourselves between the two arches... Within the tension of liminal space having left one dimension of life although not yet ready to enter the next. 

An interesting image and question to say the least...

What determines where we see ourselves and the ensuing movements that take place in our next season is inevitably impacted by our addictions.

A Blessing over Denver Neighborhoods

What is a blessing but a rain of grace falling generously into the lives of those in need;

And what neighborhood in our city is without need?

2012... move toward the Shadows

"To the eyes of Christians the incarnation is the irruption of God into human history: an incarnation into littleness and service in the midst of overbearing power exercised by the mighty of this world; an irruption that smells of the stable."

~ Gustavo Gutierrez

This time of year always presents a unique struggle for me. With the NFL playoffs around the corner and college basketball in full swing, I find myself at least on occasion, committed to a television screen. And my ego feels it... 

Social scientist, Rene Girard, would say that our culture, not just in sports and entertainment, along with every culture throughout history has been largely based on competition and winning. 

Can you feel it? ... The reality that a deep sense of rivalry doesn't just stop at the end of the game? It's actually pervasive throughout our culture and at times even among our closest of friends.

Who is pouring the wine?

Earlier this week I was in Texas attending a workshop that helps churches develop a vision and strategy for becoming a “missional” church. Within that two day intensive church staffs were charged with the task of creating a plan that allows them to look outside of their own walls and partner with civic leaders and non-profits who are about the redemptive work of the city. After a full day of placing our energy on strategic discussions and ideas, the architects of the workshop invited us to conclude our day around some good wine and hor d’oeurves.

After engaging a few conversations I had a moment to reflect and observe the room and that’s when I noticed the gentleman behind the catering table who was serving our wine. He was a middle aged Latino man and although I don’t know his story my imagination went its own way. So, I walked over to refill my glass and introduce myself. The look on his face led me to believe it was highly unusual that anyone would break away to interact with him.

Give me that "Old-Time Religion"

Last month, the street community of Denver said goodbye to one of our favorites. For over thirty years "Pastor" Peggy called the streets home. At some point in the last ten years she had a legitimate encounter with God, which resulted in her turning into a driven street evangelist and welcomed her nickname, Pastor Peggy. She was known for that duck tape cross that she placed on the back of all her sleeveless jackets. With courage and a determined Texas smile she'd walk right up to crack junkies and gang bangers and hand them a gospel track along with a cigarette. 

She’d come into the coffee house and knowing my background in ministry she would earnestly ask me questions about the end times and what a 7 headed monster represented in the book of Revelation. (As you could imagine, my answers left much to be desired.)

Her faith was characterized as mostly black and white and a contradictory mix of poverty, grace, and end times judgment. Her faith and the way she lived it was a grace to her and so many others on the streets who loved her. 

Did you catch that? I said her simple fundamentalist faith was life giving!!!

"missional" diversions

A friend recently pointed me to an article called Why the Missional Movement will fail by Mike Breen on the Verge blog which surfaced the following...

"We took 30 days and examined the Twitter conversations happening. We discovered there are between 100-150 times as many people talking about mission as there are discipleship (to be clear, that’s a 100:1). We are a group of people addicted to and obsessed with the work of the Kingdom, with little to no idea how to be with the King."

I am as grateful as anyone for the voices within the missional movement but I'm especially encouraged to hear some healthy self-criticism.  Regarding this idolizing of "missional" I was reminded of the following powerful scene...

  

kicking the bucket...

It seems that many are kept from growing up because of the immature and rigid expectations they have on their first half of life family.

It’s been called the crab bucket syndrome because you try to get out and move on but the other crabs just keep pulling you back in. While I’ve recognized this gravitational pull in my own midwestern small-town rural experience, there’s just as much if not greater challenge for inner city low-income folks for whom material resources seem impossible to come by.

In both of these settings what is typically absent is a bigger vision for something beyond... something greater… further than the sufficiency, safety, and tradition of the bucket.