Cross-cultural Urban Monasticism

I’m not really sure what this term means, but I think it’s supposed to be part of the emergent church movement or something. Anyway it doesn’t really matter, because I’m forming some ideas on what it might mean in a cross-cultural context.

I have, in my mind, the image of a traditional “monk,” someone that commits himself to celibacy and being set apart from the world for an extended period of time, in order to devote himself to the study of Scripture, prayer, fasting, works of mercy, service to the poor, etc… Traditionally, this happened in a monastery, and with a community of other like-minded folk.

Things seem a little more different nowadays. This type of experience might happen to some degree during college or seminary, or a few months or years on permafarm. There are some approximations we have. Let me combine a few of these to incorporate ideas of “urban monasticism,” “cross-cultural experience,” “study of scripture,” and most uniquely “simplicity.”

The idea is simple. I’ve been designing in my head a “plan” for living in an urban slum. Let me first throw out a few explanations as to why this would work, and also… ways in which it could not be pretentious. Continue reading

Protected: Disconnect

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Every day do something that won’t compute

The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

The 10/40 window and the Johari window

The 10/40 window is an evangelical Christian missions term made popular I don’t know when, but it refers to strip of area between latitude 10 and 40, where the majority of the world’s population lives and apparently a majority of unreached people groups reside.

The Johari window is a model used to understand self-awareness and self-disclosure, used to graphically represent a person’s knowledge about themself compared to OTHERS’ knowledge of them.

Wouldn’t be interesting if missionaries were driven to reach both? Continue reading

Today I felt like I was in a movie.

Today I felt like I was in a movie. The part where minor innocent bystanders are suddenly and traumatically wiped out by whatever the huge natural disaster is that’s threatening humans worldwide. The scene where unexplained catastrophy falls from the sky and confused citizens scatter helplessly.

Nothing big happened, really, it’s just that as I was casually having a conversation in a bus heading downtown, I suddenly noticed several police cars with lights flashing, and heard people in the bus shouting “¡Cierren las ventanas! ¡Abejas!” Shut the windows! Bees! And sure enough, right swarming above road right by the crosswalk at Centro Commercial del Sur was a huge mass of bees. The air was thick with them. Why? Well, I don’t know. The bus kept going and I never found out.

Attack of the killer bees. I was there.

Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.

You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone. You’ll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and it’s just gone. And you can never get it back. It’s like you get homesick for a place that doesn’t exist. I mean it’s like this rite of passage, you know. You won’t have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it’s like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.

~Garden State

One never reaches home. But where paths that have affinity for each other intersect the whole world looks like home, for a time.

~ Damien – Hermann Hesse

The same thing that makes me feel at home in a place is the same thing that will eventually grate on my nerves more than anything else.

Continue reading

40 jovenes. 1 baño.

Llegamos en Abangaritos (por Puntarenas) después de la noche ha caido. Tan pronto como llegamos, fuimos a la iglesia para participar en el oculto y compartir con la comunidad. Uno de los jovenes de Funda Vida, Gary, cantó unas canciones de Hip Hop, y luego dos compartieron sus testimonios. Después, hicieron un correografía. A pesar de ser una noche durante la semana, todavía hicieron oculto. Fue una noche buena para conocer la comunidad. Pero después tuvimos que armar las tiendas en el obscuro.

Durante los siguientes días, trabajamos muy duro y hicimos muchas actividades. Un grupo preparó musica y adoración para la noche. Unos practicaron coreografía, unos hicieron actividades y manualidades con los niños, y unos excavaron una zanja arrodonda de la iglesia para construir un muro.

Hablé con Edgar sobre esa iglesia y el pueblito de Abangaritos. En ese pueblo solo hay una soda y una pulpería que proveen la comida. Hay una cancha de fútbol y una escuela que ofrecen educación y actividades. Hay un bar que provee la cerbeza. Y la iglesia que provee esperanza y goza. La iglesia trae un poquito de rivalidad contra el bar. Cuando estabamos allá a veces la música, alabanzas, y bailes de la iglesia casi inunda el ruido del bar. De repente no quieren que la iglesia les quite la clientela.

La iglesia ha sido en proceso por 5 años. Ahora unos palos suportan un techo de lata adentro de una estructura de concreto. Durante esos cinco años, las paredes de la estructura fueron construidos bloque por bloque. Es decir, los miembros trajeron sus diezmos… unos bloques… cada semana por años hasta que se llegó soficientes bloques para construir las paredes. Ahora, esperan un techo, que va a ser construido en julio de este año. Me pareció tan interesante que cada persona ha traido un pedazo de esa iglesia hasta que se llegó en lo que tienen ahora.

Poco a poco la comunidad ha aceptado la iglesia en su pueblo. Edgar me explicó que la iglesia le ha apoyado a la gente del pueblo, y muchos recursos, actividades, y bendiciones ha ido a ese pueblo – todo a través de la iglesia para que la gente pueda saber que esa iglesia y él que la iglesia representa es una fuente de vida y esperanza.

Es un lugar con bastante necesidad. La gente de Abangaritos cosecha sandías para exportar. Pero esa fuente de trabajo solo sucede cuatro meses por año. El resto del año – ocho meses del año – no tienen un fuente de ingresos fijo. Y además, cada tres años el río sube y inunda la casa de la pastora y su familia. Tienen que quitar y poner todos sus posesiones encima del techo hasta baja el río.

Hablando de inundaciones, nuestra último día allá, tuvimos una experiencia que nos enseño un poquito de lo que sufre la gente cada año. El noche de sabado, a aproximadamente las 2 de la noche, sucedió un aguacero tan fuerte que algunas tiendas se inundaron. Unos quince jovenes tenían que buscar refugio debajo del techo de la cocina fuera de la casa. Afortunadamente, los mascotes les compartieron sus camas con los damnificados. Pero nadie se quejó, pero nos dimos cuenta que tuvimos una pequeña experiencía que esas personas sufren con frequencia.

Hicimos mucho más, llegando gastado en nuestras bolsas de sleeping cada noche. Hicimos trucos, clases de hip-hop, manualidades, una fogata, y dramas. Mostramos una pelicula familiar y gratis para toda la comunidad. Mucha gente vino pero no quiería entrar y sentarse. Pero algunas familias nuevas, que no eran miembros de la iglesia, vinieron y miraron la pelicula.

 

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Holiness and justice – two legs for pursuing a loving and deeply involved God

I was just listening to a lecture by Walter Brueggemann on the Old Testament Law, and he mentioned something and one of the questions asked him by the audience mentioned something that finally shaped a more complete concept in my mind of the role of holiness and justice in Christian life.

Brueggemann doesn’t hesitate to use specific examples in contemporary U.S. American society, specifically addressing the animosity between the largely homogenized polar opposite groups of conservative/Republican/evangelicals and liberal/Democratic/secularists. His specificity in addressing these two camps, and this particular comment about Old Testament Law, helped “unite the two so long divided” in my mind. Psychologically speaking, another epiphany moment where a long-held division of dissonance was resolved to unite my experience, beliefs, and behavioral values in a way that is really rather exhilerating.

Something was mentioned about the Old Testament’s call toward two innate attributes of God. Both these attributes are supported by the Old Testament law, by the narratives told and retold throughout Jewish history, and the teachings of Jesus. From all these founts of wisdom come a testiment to God’s holiness, and a testament to his justice. These are inseparable in our one true God – he is completely Holy and calls us to that same holiness. And he acts on behalf of the poor, oppressed, and enslaved – he is justice, and he calls us to that as well.

These two paths are inseparable – justice and holiness bond and reinforce each other in chemical-reactionary type way. Without holiness, the pursuit of justice is pretentious, pejorative, non-sustainable, and exhausting. Without justice, holiness is divisive, self-absorbed, incomplete, and numbing. These two must go together, as we learn they do in the Bible. The Law is given to create a holy people, one set apart from the other nations in their obedience to God. Holiness. The Law also details protection for the widow, the orphan, and the illegal alien, and how a society can live together peacefully by ensuring all its members are cared for. Justice.

The recipe for a whole-hearted pursuit of God is one that is rooted in love, love for him and his holiness, and love for others in a compassionate response of justice.

Brueggemann also makes a critical generalization about U.S. American society that I feel holds true across party lines. Consumerism and materialism is a plague, or at least an ungodly cultural pressure, that infects everything about our daily lives. To perpetuate its momentum and keep consumerism running, our society is kept in a state of fear instead of hope. We see this technique used across party lines.

http://fpcknox.org/daily-readings/walter-brueggemann/

Protected: Robbed of my certainty

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I sit over here, but feel over there.

I sit here in a worship gathering, and the familiar feeling returns.

I am at a wedding for someone I do not know. I watch the joyful expressions on the faces of others, I see their faces glowing with hope and starry-eyed wonder, but this celebration is for a unity I do not know. An event I have no relation to. At times I weep with joy along with the other friends of the family. But leave with an empty feeling of loneliness. At this time, I write my thoughts, unable to cheer for the team I’m not rooting for. Unable to pledge to the flag of the country I don’t know. Unable to cry for the death of someone I never met. The building is throbbing with energy and music, yet I feel like a lead anchor weighing the rising jubilation down.

Oh, weird. I think I just felt emotion.

But I feel, only when my thoughts are worlds away from the real life around me. I am only when I am not here. My thoughts, feelings, and passions are not with my location but on some other level. Not a higher or lower level. Just a different level.

I sit watching people congratulate the newlyweds, unable to allow a happy grin to escape my heart, uncertain of how to talk with everyone so happy and giddy at this joyful occasion.

The next evening I walk into the funeral of someone I do not know with a misplaced grin on my face, suddenly unsure of how to relate to the mourners surrounding me.

All that to say – I often find myself thinking, writing, and believing the opposite of what I know I should in any given situation. And now, I’m going to start writing and sharing my incongruous thoughts, without any explanation or hope of finding resolution between what I write, what I feel, and what is actually happening in the world around me.

Now when I pick up this pen, I will write for the sake of writing, speak for the fear of having nothing to say.

Even if my thoughts
are the wrong thoughts
at the wrong time.

I will share what makes me shed a tear at a flourishing party.
It’s loneliness.

I will share what makes me laugh at a funeral.
It’s meaningless.

I will share what makes me think of sex in church.
It’s intimate,
stimulating,
and I can lose myself to it.

I will share what makes me think of God in sex.
It’s beautiful,
intense,
and fulfilling.

I will share what makes me say foolish things
when I defend a thesis in college.
Only by knowing nothing
am I willing to learn anything.

I will share what makes me mature
when nothing is expected of me.

I will share what makes me think impulsively when responsibility is given me.

I will share why I feel at home
when I have nowhere to lay my head
and haven’t seen a familiar face in 6 months.

I will share why I feel like a stranger,
when I’m with people who’ve known me since birth.

I will share what makes me feel liberated when I say
“I don’t believe in God.”

I will share what makes me feel trapped,
when I say I’m a Christian.

I will share what makes me a kinder, more thoughtful person
when I talk about my self-centeredness and selfishness.

I will share what makes me a pious hypocrite,
when I deem myself most righteous and holy.

I will share what makes me think we should free the murderer
and execute the person who never harmed a soul.

By writing these things in their naked truth, perhaps they will not cease to be true,

but they will cease to be felt.

May God let it be so.

I will write why I write,

to free myself

from what compels me to write.

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