Conference Update

I am here at the conference that my friend Chris is hosting, and it is a virtual homecoming for me. I'm reuniting with many of my good friends from grad school and it is warming my heart.

Yesterday my friend Grace picked me up from the Toronto airport and she updated me on why her and her husband John left Fiji earlier this year when they had committed to two years. Our stories are very similar - as I also had left my posts in South Africa and the West Bank respectively, after having felt like God had called me there. To say that we have all wrestled with issues of calling and what these experiences brought up has been an understatement.
However, it was so good to talk about this things and remember, reflecting that God is in charge and is redeeming those times.

This morning, the speaker was Walter Wink. He's written many books, one of which I read this past year, The Powers That Be. He says that institutions are neither good or bad - but that there are spiritual powers at play within everything. He cited Revelation chapter 12 (I believe it is) where letters are written to the early churches - however, what is interesting is that these letters are written to the churches' angels. If we only remember that all people, institutions, and systems have a spiritual element at their core, we might be more easily disposed to see God's grace at work and His redemptive power to judge, redeem, and call us all back to Himself.

Take the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for example: Here we have two countries at deep odds with each other- each with a desire for autonomy, protection of its sacred lands, and a desire ultimately for their people to live at peace. Clearly this is not the case, and somewhere along the road, the desires got screwed up.

Clearly, as Walter Wink states, the powers within this world were created good, became fallen, and are ultimately redeemable. Powers to promote peace, freedom for people, and respect, as well as governments that protect and promote the welfare of their citizens is at the heart of every country - These types of powers are good. But because we live in a fallen world, those powers have now been distorted in various degrees. It is our goal and life calling, as redeemed children of the King, to work in the struggle to redeem this fallen world. And this struggle is worth it!!

So, sitting night after night in the student center getting to know Palestinian students was worth it; letting people know about the plight of both Palestinians and Israelis is worth it; and loving the families I was placed around was worth it.

There's one more thing I want to add: I added a break-out session led by Walter Wink's wife, June. Although it could seem new-agey, as we moved about the room experimenting with prayer and movement, I found great healing to ask for God's blessing on me physically. At one point, we were asked to touch ourselves and ask for God's healing over this area of ourselves. I prayed for my belly - where so much of the turmoil of this past year was concentrated- from my bedroom throwing up in the West Bank, to returning home, to stresses that have plagued me this past year. It was really healing. God has compassion on these parts - both physically, and what they have symbolized for me over the past year - all that has made me sick and tight in the very core of me.

A final note: Walter reiterated a point he made in his book of how he boldly spent his sabbatical in the 80s under Pinochet's reign in Chile. The stress, the evil, the torture of place seeped down deep within him and manifested itself physically. Yes, I knew what he meant. But once he was able to recognize the Powers at play and call them out, the healing and the de-captivement could take place.

I still have a long way to go, but this will definitely help me as I seek to deconstruct the evils that overtook me and others a year ago in the West Bank, and as I strive ahead to seek God and make Him known in the boarding school institutions of the Northeast.

These institutions are neither evil or depraved in their own right, but only fallen and in need of redemption through God's grace upon them. O, to call this out upon the Israeli soldiers at the border instead of hating them; O, to call this out upon the Palestinian youth who are desperate for voice and compassion instead of reactions of violence; O to call this out upon myself and the Powers that I seek to do battle with even in this day!

Dad's icon, UVA, Epiphaneia, and church history

My dad just came upstairs to tell me that an icon he painted for a church in north Philly is on their webpage! You can check it out here.

I just came up today from a wonderful trip down south to visit some FOCUS volunteers at UVA. A delightful young girl from Emma Willard School hatched the whole idea and I provided transport! Aside from tye-dying, hiking, and attending some classes - we spent a lot of time catching up with people there we know and love. Two of the girls I hung out with are pictured below in the bottom left from the FOCUS camp they led with me this summer:

This weekend I fly up to Toronto to attend my friend's conference on social justice and Christianity - specifically focusing this year on the relevance of our faith to issues of war, recession, food, sex, economics, and the Sabbath. You can read about it all here. More personally, this conference is hosted by my friend who accompanied me in the West Bank last year. Many others from our grad school cohort are coming as well!! Here's a pic from our graduation a year and a half ago.

Then I get back to Philly, gather with other FOCUS 'fellows' (1st and 2nd year staff) and participate in a seminar training us to answer students' "tough questions." I'm designated to tackle the question, "Why is church history so violent?"

I chose this question because I remember sitting in my dorm room sophomore year of college weeping over eyewitness accounts of the era of the Spanish colonization of America. I never thoroughly researched the question before, although I'd come to grips with it at different times in my faith.

Perhaps I'll post my findings on this question in a later blog entry...

For now, it's off to Canada!!

A Bunch of Pictures

At Ivoryton, CT (FOCUS Winter House Party) - over New Year's

All these girls in the above picture go to my old school in Philly!

Cabin U3!


The following pictures are from a week in January that the "FOCUS fellows" (1st and 2nd year staff) spent at The Episcopal School for Ministry outside of Pittsburgh, PA. We took a course on the Old Testament. It was awesome!!

We played a lot of bananagrams!!



And this is my roommate's bird, Sonny :)

New U2 Album!!

In heightened anticipation of the new U2 album, I wanted to post an anonymous theological review of the new album No Line On The Horizon (out March 6th) that was posted on a blog a couple of my friend's write in NYC as part of their ministry. Here is the link!!! http://mockingbirdnyc.blogspot.com/2009/02/i-found-grace-inside-sound-theological.html

Here is a picture of the new album cover:

And here is a picture I googled... Hey, The Edge, that's Arabic right? What does it say?

February Update

It's a Saturday night and I'm sitting here alone on the most comfortable couch in my neighbor's living room. A tray of tea ready to be made sits on the coffee table, surrounded with copies of "Maternity Today" and a gigantic candle. This is the site of my beloved homegroup on Tuesday evenings. Tonight though, I am babysitting for my friends as they go out and enjoy some important time together.

Living in New Haven has been full of these wonderful surprises and opportunities. Today even, my roommate and I took a long walk in our neighborhood, saying hi to people we passed, talking about boys, our jobs, and horses. It was finally a warm enough day to take a stroll. Later, we went to an African drumming and dance class that my roommate has been attending. It whipped my arse, but I was grateful for the outlet and for meeting new people.

My other roommate is attending a retreat we are hosting for Deerfield Academy; a school that has a strong Christian fellowship, but with students desiring to go deeper in their faith. I'm not attending because they desired more students and less staff; something I am not offended by at all.

FOCUS has seemed really random as of late - where I must plan everything every week, be hyper-intentional about the time I give to students, and try to drive safely (something unsuccessful accomplished, as I got into a small fender-bender of my own doing this past week). However, ministry continues to be a strange blessing. Even last night, it seemed strange to travel with my staffmate after a dinner at Chili's to attend a school play at a girl's boarding school in the middle-of-nowhere Connecticut. However, after the play, the student we came to support beamed with joy when she saw us, as did another student we met up with during the intermission. This high school actress' parents also applauded us in a way we didn't expect. They had done high school ministry in their younger years and looked at us with compassion and deep gratefulness for the work we are doing. We wanted to say to them, "Really, you don't understand how little we do." But we let it rest and offered up silent prayers to God that He could understand our bizarre lives and gratefulness that only He could reach these students through us, even if we feel like we don't do much.

In other news, God continues to wash sweet balms of healing and understanding upon me as I process experiences from South Africa, the West Bank and other places. In a book I read last year by Henri Nouwen called "Compassion," he describes how the monstrocities of this world can only be understood, prayed for, and responded to through the healing and constructive work of people in community. As I pray about the future and where God might take me, it gives me great encouragement to know that often God places us in places of community for our own healing and other's, and that He desires us to live this way the rest of our lives.

In conclusion, I'm incredibly grateful for this season, but continue to offer prayers for healing, for perspective on my life, and for boldness to step where He may be leading me.

In the words of my Guinean drum and dance instructors this evening, "C'est tout! Merci!"

The Evolving Church: Amidst the Powers Commercial

This conference, hosted by friend Chris who I worked in the West Bank with, will deal with social justice and Christianty. Toronto, March 21st. Should be freakin' awesome.

Depoliticizing

As I sat in an apartment on the Upper East Side of New York City last weekend, I began to understand that I need a new approach as I unravel this past year. With Gaza reeling in the aftermath of war, I would be seething in anger at moments, but proud to hold back emotion at others. Something was clearly wrong and I had been praying for a breakthrough. Two have come.


The first was a sermon by R.J. (a FOCUS alum) in his house-church in NYC. As he spoke on suffering, I realized that I need boldness to step into the depths of the pain I saw and take off much of the Palestinian versus Israeli lens which has clouded my vision, and see how Christ speaks to the human suffering I saw and experienced. Easier said than done. However, this encouragement was vital. It is the way out.


Secondly, I'm befriending an Israeli. She's stood at interesting crossroads and lives a story of redemption. Born in communist U.S.S.R., lived in Israel; a Jew, became a Christian at Yale, now Eastern Orthodox. She entered the threshold of my homegroup two weeks ago and I held back a gasp - one of relief that at present someone in the room could understand eastern orthodoxy (a road my family is traveling), and secondly that God could coordinate something so ghastly ironic. This homegroup - such a place of healing for me from my experiences abroad now embraces someone who's political persuasion deep down contains something vastly different from my own.
It seems that God is teaching me something.

None of this is easy, but if I am to take the words of Scripture seriously, the words which say of Christ, he was "a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering," (Is 53:3) - then I know I am steered rightly, and I will learn much by traveling this way.