Book Discussion?

Do we want to get started on reading and discussing From Brokenness to Community? Let me know if you've gotten a copy.

Rutba House in the Boston Globe

Check it out here. Not a bad article. Recognize anyone in the picture? I especially like Jonathan's line: "The real revolutionaries these days aren't quoting Che Guevara or listening to Rage Against the Machine on their iPod, they're learning how to pray."

Gospel Music

While I was in Jackson, MS I went to a organization where they fed over 300 people each day. It was in an old building, 5 stories high, filled with services, people and smells. Some pleasant, some not. After meeting the Director I was invited to their chapel service. I wish that all of you could have been there with me.
My face was the palest in the crowd. People kept "getting the Spirit" and standing up to share the songs or scriptures on their heart. One woman, who I later learned was named Geneva, really struck me. Her voice was raw, rough, from the heart. Her eyes soft, loving, gentle.
After the service I started talking to her about the song that she had sung. It had talked about how the world can't give it, so the the world can't take it away. The "it" she was singing about was joy. I asked her where she had learned to sing and she told me that at an early age her mother would speak songs to her and she would then just sing them.
Quickly she asked me if I wanted to hear the "ABC" song. I told her for sure. For the next two minutes I laughed, people hollered and swayed, we were all moved.
I went back the next day in between working and recorded the song and made a quick portrait of her.
I hope you are encouraged by Geneva as much as I was.

Click here to listen to Geneva.

A House of Hospitality

I have this flaw, (and before you say anything i know what you're probably thinking - how could someone come as close to perfection as Jonathan and still have flaws?), but it's true I am not perfect. My close friends have often referred to it as a certain "moral flexibility" but in all honesty I think it's more akin to just flat out not caring about certain things in life. It would be difficult for me to explain what these things are in just one post and because I'm the laziest busy guy you'll ever meet i'm not going to even try. Instead you'll just have to get to know me if you don't already. But forget all of that because I'm not writing this post to tell you about my moral shortcomings, but to tell you that i was truly inspired last weekend.

It wasn't a particularly fascinating story for me at first because it didn't contain hobbits, wizards, space travel, or any of the other truly crucial (yet truly nerdy) elements that all good stories must contain. It was instead about a CPS (child protective services) agent calling a friend.

So the story goes... One of the pastors at St. Marks gets a call late Friday night from a friend wanting to talk and release some job related frustrations. He had just finished assessing a family case and made the determination that the child should be removed from a possibly dangerous home situation. And this is where his problem began. Being late Friday night the case worker needed to find housing/shelter for the newly removed child but couldn't because all of the shelters and volunteer homes that take in children were completely full. So now the guy is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He can't let the child stay at home...it's too dangerous. He can't find a shelter to take the child in... they're all full. He can't bring the child home to his family... it's not allowed. So he's forced to keep the child with him at the CPS office until Monday morning when the shelters begin accepting kids again. And he has to find another CPS agent to stay with him.

My first thoughts were "WTF?" are there really so many children who need temporary shelter that all of the san antonio options are full? And then I began thinking about the child. It's one thing to be taken away from your home, no matter how bad the situation, it's another thing to have to live in your case workers office for three days. My mind raced with all the emotions this kid had to deal with in such a short period of time.

Becoming a parent recently, this story made me sick with grief and try as I may I just couldn't shake the disgusted feeling. How could a parent do this to their kid? How could a state agency concerened for a childs social welfare let something like this happen? And why have I never heard anything about this process before? I guess because I never gave it much thought, I assumed all kids taken from their homes went to other homes without complication.

Anyway, my suggestion is this. Would we as a community - a house of hospitality - be willing to provide temporary (3-5 days from what I understand) housing for children in this situation?

I look forward to hearing your responses, whether they are for or against.

Article on Alternative Christian Communities

A while back Christian Century magazine published an in depth article on intentional Christian communities that featured a number of the communities Jackie and I have been privileged to get to know and learn from over the past few years (Rutba House, Church of the Sojourners, and Church of the Servant King). The author does a good job of giving the reader a sense of the diverse "personalities" of the different communities as well as the diverse ways in which these communities are structured and organized economically, geographically, and even theologically (for example, in how they relate to the wider church). You can read the article for yourself here. If you do read it (and I hope you do), I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. I think its a good piece for stimulating our imaginations about what our life together could be.

About Hunger

Yo. as all of you know for the past 2 years I have been working on a project on hunger with michael nye.
Michael finally got a site up.
http://www.michaelnye.org/hunger/abouthunger.html
I leave tomorrow for about 5-6 days in Mississippi to continue working on it.
also to get more refrigerators...
just wanted to share.

San Antonio Catholic Worker Community

Some of you are already familiar with the San Antonio Catholic Worker Community. It's a community of hospitality on the East Side that offers a soup-line four days a week and rooms for homeless families in need of a temporary residence. The Catholic Worker philosophy is one of the works of mercy as a way of life and recognizing Christ in the stranger and the poor. You can find out more about the history and philosophy of the movement here. The name is a little misleading, as it has no official connections to the Catholic church (many of the communities are composed either partly or entirely of non-Catholics), and "Worker" refers not to the "good works" performed by the members, but the working poor the movement sought to serve when it began during the Great Depression.

The reason I bring all this up is because while we were in San Antonio, I had some conversations with the director of the CW in San Antonio, Jim Batterton, who is a member of San Antonio Mennonite Church, where Mark and Rachel and Josh and Emily have been attending. One of the things we discussed is various ways in which we might connect our two communities.

Jim is currently the only long-term member of the CW community. Most of the daily operations are carried out by short-term volunteers, some who live on site, but most living elsewhere in San Antonio. Those who live at the CW come from all over the world and have been sent there for 6 months to a year by the Brethren Volunteer Service. Jim expressed to me that it has been difficult to foster a sense of community internal to the CW itself, since he is the only one there long-term. Most of what the CW does is outward oriented--serving the homeless and poor who come from all over the city. Jim would like to see this outward oriented service balanced, supported, and nourished by a stronger internal community. He has been looking for people interested in making a long-term commitment there and helping to build stronger, deeper relationships with each other and with the residents of the neighborhood. Right now, most of the people the CW serves and has gotten to know do not actually live in the neighborhood, because, well, a lot of them are homeless.

The CW community currently owns four houses in the same vicinity. One hosts the soup kitchen and guest families. The other is undergoing a major remodel and will eventually be devoted solely to the soup-line. The one that currently hosts the soup-line will be torn down and rebuilt to be more spacious and comfortable for the guest families. Another house is being fixed up to serve as the new home for Jim and the short-term volunteers. When this is completed (in the next year or so, I believe), the house that Jim and the volunteers currently live in (Faith House) will come available. It's a very large two-story house, with 6 bedrooms, 1 full bath, 2 half-baths, 1.5 kitchens, and various common areas. I think it could be made to accommodate 2-3 families or some combination of families and singles, though it is in need of some pretty serious cleaning and renovations.

One possibility would be for us to become "official" members of the CW community. It's not clear to either Jim or myself what exactly that would mean, though it would at the very least entail that the CW (recently having become a registered 501-C3) maintain ownership of the house, and our community having some kind of accountability to the CW's board of directors (comprised of 5 people who do not live on site, but have responsibility for the purchase and maintenance of the CW properties, as well as fundraising for the community). This is all kind of fuzzy and somewhat complicated--this particular CW has never done anything like this before, so it would mean moving into some uncharted territory for everyone involved. But Jim is open to thinking and talking with us about how it might work out, and he thinks the board would be too. Among the possible benefits of this option, as I see it, is the immediate bond we would have the tradition of the Catholic Worker movement and its communities around the world, which, besides providing companionship and encouragement along the way, would also give us something of an identity to grow into ("We're Catholic Workers"). Also, given the way the CW community in San Antonio is set up, we wouldn't have to worry about paying for and maintaining the house, since it would remain the property of the CW.

Another option Jim proposed would be for the CW to sell Faith House to us (and he thought they could give us a good deal on the place). This would allow us to be institutionally independent from the CW community, but still proximate to the work it is doing and the people it is serving. This would allow our community maximal freedom to develop in its own way, as well as to do whatever we wanted with the property.

All of this merely represents the brainstorming Jim and I did together over the course of a couple of conversations. Neither of us committed to anything except further brainstorming and conversations. Perhaps neither option would be a good idea for us. I just wanted to let all of you in on the conversation and see what you think about it. Are you interested open to either of the two possibilities I mentioned? Questions? Concerns? Ideas? I would encourage those of you who don't know Jim and the CW community to stop by some time for a visit. Jim's super laid-back and easy to talk to and would be happy to show you around and tell you more about what they're about. See the link above for the address and contact info.