the pitt - part seven: genetic predispositions

I mentioned before that we are part of a tribe who follows after Jesus - The Vineyard - and this little dream God has for this faith community in Pittsburgh will be a part of that tribe...we're family, and that family wants to help birth new communities of faith and hope and love in the world.

Though, in my mind, Healthy = Variety, thus there will be - as there should be - a fresh expression of what others have referred to as our "Vineyard DNA" and it will be a fresh expression of what God is doing at this time in our context. As we moved along in our journey, we reached out to the church-planting leaders in the region that oversees Pittsburgh: The Great Lakes - An Exceptional Family of Beers...oops, wrong link, here it is: The Vineyard Great Lakes Region. It just so happens that I know the Regional overseers in the Great Lakes: Ken and Nancy Wilson of the Ann Arbor Vineyard.

Actually I know Ken first of all through being friends with his son Jesse (who leads the Milan Vineyard Church in Michigan) and our good friends Doug and Gretchen Geverdt. I have a lot of other close friends in that region as well, so that important relational piece seemed solid to me. But I have to admit that I was prepared for difficult conversations and lots of questions - to which I probably didn't have great answers - because this...this "thing" that God was birthing in us was...different.

As I eluded to previously, I think the dominant DNA so-to-speak that will be expressed in Pittsburgh is going to be that which has been rather recessive for a while in most Vineyards that I have visited and know...so we won't exactly look like many of our cousins. I'm good with that, but over the past few years I have looked at all of the church-planting materials from the Vineyard online, and I have to admit: I was really rather discouraged. It didn't seem to fit, the questions they were asking were off somewhat. It seemed a bit cookie-cutter and really shaped for something that I didn't see us being called to be. It was all very suburban value-ish. It was all very oriented toward BIG-ness and marketing and entrepreneur-based. In addition, it was all addressed to 20-somethings, and I'm 41.

Admission: all the "prayer for church-planters" at every single Vineyard conference and/or gathering I have been to has gone something like this: "Can we get everyone under 30 to come up, we want to pray for you, that you would be released to plant churches..." While I'm all for getting people under 30 infused with a vision from God and praying for them and that dream God might have for them, I have felt discouraged and excluded every time.  I start questioning what we were doing. Should we get some genetic-testing done to see if we "fit the profile"? Maybe we're just 'over-the-hill' and it was something of a joke, like a certain Father and Mother of the faithful? What was God thinking teasing us with this "thing"?

[aside: while praying for young church-planters is great, I would implore my tribe to be more inclusive in those relationally-ripe and Spirit-empowering moments. I think we're limiting what God might be doing by constantly using exclusive language [with respect to age or otherwise] with our own predispositions...just sayin', because it has left me out-on-an-island previously, and it took a serious wrestling with God to stir the dream again.  Of course, now I think I will begin taking the Keck-ian approach to ministry time - it doesn't matter who or what you are praying for, I'm going!  I do so appreciate how the leaders of the church-planting task force have re-worked their material to be much, much more inclusive over the past 3 years.  Thank you.]

Yet when I began to reach out to my tribe in the Great Lakes church-planting team, and actually spoke with real people, almost immediately most of my preconceived (and possibly shallow) notions evaporated. People like Jim Pool and Nate and Ken and Nancy were really welcoming and open and wanted to know how they could help and were really affirming of what God was up to. Having people who listen and are supportive of what God was stirring in my heart was really a blessing.

And so finally, my wife and I sat down to fill out our pre-assessment paperwork and give good, open, honest language to what we felt God calling us into and who we were and what struggles and experiences we had...we needed to give people a glimpse of what God had given to us so far, and at the same time, tell them our story somehow.





[to be continued...]



the pitt - part six: we're on a mission from God

How do you beckon to others with a rumour of God's promise? How do you go about inviting friends into an adventure that is just that it's an adventure...it's fuzzy...it's ill-defined...in fact the only way we define it is by walking into it. We don't have anything but evanescent fog...but I love fog (it represents the Spirit to me) and God is in the fog! Another admission: I think I jumped ahead of the official process at this point, but instead of going to find out about church-planting from the national or regional faciliators in the Vineyard, we went local. We began talking about it with good and old friends...and in the midst of that, others began to wonder if they were called into this thing. It then occurred to us that perhaps it wasn't just us, but God might be whispering to us as we sit and watch re-runs on WGN:




[I love that they are playing "I Love You Just the Way You Are" in the background here...]

So we decided to invite some friends over and have a "Summer of Discovery" group. We invited those who had showed an interest as we were describing what we felt God doing with us, and also those who we thought of when we thought: "I want to be neighbors and live life with these people!" Throughtout this past summer, we gathered, we prayed, we ate with each other, we laughed together, we went and visited Pittsburgh (we even did the ducky tour - It's a Boat, It's a Truck, It's a Duck! - actually not as schticky-bad as I thought, and all my daughters got to steer the craft when we were in the Allegheny river!)


At one of these recent Discovery gatherings, my friend Steven Leyva and I were talking about expectations and this gathering we call church. It was a really good conversation as we went along, and eventually I asked him, what do you want your expectations to be? He then reminded me of a few years ago, when his wife and I were in VLI together. Steven had joined the other students as we were working through one of the weekend intensives on healing, and while the teaching had ended, the ministry was still going on. The Spirit showed up in power as people felt released to risk and pray and bless and midwife what the Spirit of God was doing in our midst with one another, cooperating with God's will being done on earth as it is in heaven. I remembered it well, for it was one of those times that sticks out in my own memory, the deep texture of God's Presence with us.


Well, Steven said that was what he wanted his expectation to be. Yes! I totally agree, I want His Presence with us, and if He's not going with us, we're not going. A few days later I was re-reading James D.G. Dunn's The Christ and the Spirit, Volume 2, and came across this passage: "The basis of community is the shared experience of the Spirit. "The koinonia of the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 13:13-14; Phil 2:1) means primarily "participation in the Spirit," the shared common experience of the Spirit which was the other side of the coin from their common faith in Christ,"...[t]heir experience of the Spirit was not something merely personal, the individual in his or her aloneness. It was a society-creating experience, a body-of-Christ-creating experience, an experience of being knit into a community...[i]t may be significant, then, that Acts never records an occasion when the Spirit was poured out in the earliest days other than on groups - the shared experience of the Spirit..."





Choreography aside (I only wish I had moves like James Brown...or even Jake and Elwood...well, maybe I could get my Elwood on!), sometimes, words take on baggage that was helpful previously, but has become burdonsome in explaining the essence of what you mean. 'Koinonia' is usually translated as 'fellowship' and many people I talk to think "church" when they here that in that context, which makes it all rather vague and dependent on other words and thoughts in the semantic-range. When we limit it to "church", I think we don't really grab hold of it. But fellowship as shared experience...a shared experience that bind us, mold us together...it just strikes me powerfully, and I'm not sure I can articulate why it is hitting me deeply, but I love it. There is a lot to unpack in that, and I want to return and spend some time unpacking it...but for now, just let it reverberate...I'm just marinating in it. Of course, embracing the experience of God in Christ Jesus through His Spirit turns out to be core to our tribe, the Vineyard.


Here's another thing: it's a discernment process.  The very interesting thing to me is that in the whole "Summer of Discovery", people who postured themselves to hear from God and discern with others, actually ended up hearing a call, even though - with about half of the people - it wasn't to come to Pittsburgh with us.  But for others they did hear something concrete in a call from God and have stepped out to do those things.  While others are still waiting, still discerning, still seeking.  A shared experience of the Spirit and a collective seeking and discernment.  It's an on-going journey...and we're in it together.


May it be so, O Lord, in what you do to us and with us and through us...may it be so!






[to be continued...]

the agenda of angels

wordcraft for the feast of angelic hosts:


bearing burdens unknown
from our Father enthroned

His messengers among us at work

good tidings and ill
bringing flesh to a standstill

these angels secretly at war

some cast crowns before His Majesty
others rebel to their own tragedy

and join an adversary of all

they battle each other
and in history do discover

some that cling to the father of lies

yet others may learn
in the pages of Life to discern

God-in-men a great mystery displayed

and shepherd they do
toward a future rescue

through the Good Shepherd who fell to the ground

yet a reversal they saw
in resurrection were awed

by the Anointed leaving burial clothes behind

and now do they announce
while others twisted seek to denounce

glad tidings and peace on earth to all

while reapers they will become
wheat and tares to summon

and divide them according to kingdom

but now their struggle rages on
in this now-and-not-yet aeon

but someday victory to celebrate

flesh and spirit to congregate
at the Bridegrooms banquet

and in victory commemorate the goodness of our God

haunting music

I think of it again, how it’s only in the emptiness that a song can sing, how in the hollow of the dark places, the notes resonate, reverberate, carry.  How our lives full of cluttered ease, muffle out the songs. That when we go to the places that strip life back to its barest essence -- of courage and love and raw, unmasked pain -- our hearts feel again, beat again, hear again the haunting music of a beautiful, bleeding humanity.


Maybe it's this: God hides with the poor and in the pain and we can only witness Him at His most beautifully creative work in the places needing redemption.  Maybe we are only at our most beautiful work in the same places too --- the places where we don't hide behind the distractions of stuff, where we finally empty our hands of all our possessions and idols and come to God empty and ready. The places where we can make art with tears. 


Where the notes can finally soar in the space.
 
- Ann Voskamp

the pitt - part five: in a Quaker State of mind

So, this may be obvious to most people, but after we discerned and felt God calling to us to join with what the Father is doing in Pittsburgh, it slowly dawned on me that Pittsburgh was - of course - in Pennsylvania...and Pennsylvania is known as the Quaker State: Quakers came there as William Penn, a Quaker himself, offered protection in this colony to Quakers (also known as the Society of Friends) who were being persecuted not only from non-Christians but also other Christians, especially the Puritans.

In fact, one hundred and twenty years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Quakers Mary Fisher and Ann Austin landed at Boston where the Puritan authorities had them seized and kept under close guard. A hundred of their books were burned in the marketplace and they were dispatched to Barbados on the next departing ship. Their bedding and even their Bibles were confiscated to pay the jailer's fee.


Eventually, in 1681, William Penn accepted the grant of land which became Pennsylvania as the payment of a debt which King Charles II owed his father. He met with the Native Americans at the great elm at Shackamason, the ancient meeting place of the tribes and made friends with them. He purchased land from them at a fair price and also concluded a treaty with them that was agreeable to all.  In fact, a century later the French philosopher, Voltaire, would observe that this was the only treaty ever made between white men and the Indians that was never sworn to and never broken (talk about your "yes" being "yes"...that's faithfulness).

This as well as their well-known advocacy and action toward ending slavery (Susan B. Anthony was also a Quaker and worked against slavery while working for women's rights as well!), Friends have tried to apply their faith to every aspect of their lives. Embracing this holistic aspect of their faith in Christ has often led them to be social pioneers and to come up with discoveries in a variety of fields.

Anyway, you're probably thinking: what's with the diversion into Quaker history and this whole Quaker State-thing? Well, we belong to a tribe called The Vineyard, and it just so happens that the Vineyard as a movement of the Spirit has some unique DNA in it's formative early history. The evangelical roots are well attested to elsewhere, but some of the primary founders of the Vineyard came from the Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers: John and Carol Wimber.

[aside: my friend Mike Barrett, teaching pastor at the Coast Vineyard in Oregon, wrote an article awhile back - Searching for Radical Faith - in which he discovered that Quakers had initially founded through their actions the organization known today as Greenpeace.  check out the article, it's a great read!)

Being trained in history myself, all of this began to resonate as I dug into the history of Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, and my tribe, the Vineyard, with its strong Quaker roots. All to say, my intuition tells me that while this planting and faith community is sort of a grand-child, given the generation between us and the beginning of the Vineyard movement, I believe the DNA in us that will be dominant will be the Friends/Quaker DNA, while the evangelical - still there - will be more recessive, genetically-speaking. Not that I'm into labels, but I do believe we live our lives by metaphors. Just a hunch, but a strong one.

and the journey continues...even so, Come Holy Spirit!



[to be continued...]

the pitt - part four - "but" nothing

So we arrived home after our glorious weekend in Pittsburgh. We felt good, real good...but.

Is there always a freaking 'but'? My mother used to ask me to do something, like clean my room, and I would begin to answer: "But...," and she would cut me off with: "But nothing, go do what I told you to do."  (Scary-reveal time: I swear I have now said that to my children lots of times too: But nothing).  Does there always have to be a 'but'?  Well, not always, at least not with me most of the time. See, throughout my rough-and-tumble relationship with God, I have come to have what I would call a Davidic Perspective. It kind of goes like this: I get an idea. I discern that its a good idea. I talk to some trusted people about it and we collectively discern that it's a good idea. I do it. I don't need a super-giganto-out-of-the-blue sign of God to do it.  I just go for it after some initial discernment.

The 'Davidic Perspective' is primarily based on the exchange in 2 Samuel 7 between David and the prophet Nathan. David has this very good idea. He goes to discern it with Nathan. Nathan basically replies: "Go for it. You're filled with the Spirit of God, do what your heart beckons you to do."


If my idea is off somewhat or if God has a particular issue or needs to nuance or re-direct what I'm doing, He'll do the "divinus interruptus" that He did with David and Nathan, right?

Yet, while that normally has become my practice - practially-speaking - it's not quite the path I journeyed down this time. While I was commuting to work the next morning after returning from our weekend away, I was talking with God about this idea of cultivating and fostering a faith community in Pittsburgh. The conversation - well, at least from my side - went somewhat like this: "I usually run with ideas and feelings like this Papa...You know that. But, this seems more charged with lots of responsibility and lots of challenges and lots of difficulties that we would have to walk through and we couldn't really avoid. So, I know I'm going all Gideon on You and all...but I want a sign. I have good feelings about this, no doubt. It seems like a "good" idea. Others seem to think it's a good idea...but I want a sign. I want to know You'll go with us, in a special way, even though intellectually I know You are there and everywhere all ready. But I want a sign."

I actually got kind of emotional while talking about it to God as I arrived a few minutes before they opened the doors at work (yes, ladies and gentleman, I'm an early-rising, hard-working bureaucrat!! Shout-out to all civil servants and bureaucrats: woo-hoo!).

Thus, I got to stew for a few minutes in the car while I "waited" for my sign or the building to open. Annnnd...nothing. nada.  zip. 

So, I went in and began my workday, while the conversation receded to the back of my mind. I checked e-mail, phone calls, and my calendar for the day. I got lost in a few early assignments. Eventually, I took a break, grabbed my english muffin and peanut butter and went to the break room. Mysteriously, there was no one in the break room, so I put my muffin in the toaster oven, and looked out the window.

With this pause, my lingering conversation with God slipped back to the front of my mind, and while one thought was occurring to me, I felt the sense that Someone else had joined me there...was there in the place I was with me. The someone-is-there-or-watching-you kind of feeling.  A mysterious feeling.  The thought that occurred to me was a memory verse from of old in Exodus 33: "Then he said to Him, "If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here. For how then can it be known that I have found favor in Your sight, I and Your people? Is it not by Your going with us, so that we, I and Your people, may be distinguished from all the other people who are upon the face of the earth?" The LORD said to Moses, "I will do this thing of which you have spoken..."

Leave it to God to know me and be patient and gentle with me. If I had felt His Presence while I was all emotional and rambling during my commute or even just after, possibly later I might have had a check in my mind about: Did I feel God's Presence or was that all the emotion in the moment? But God waited for me, and then when I least expected it: He was Present and accounted for. No hype, just simple, exquisite Presence.

And then He played a joke on me.  The glimmer of a thought came to me: ...but I still want another sign.  And God said: 'But' nothing, do what I told you to do...and stick with me, because I'm with you and you'll have signs and wonders for the rest of your life!

And that - for all intents and purposes - sealed the deal. We were going, even determined now.





[to be continued...]

the pitt - part three: East Enders

After discerning where God might be calling us to land and cultivate a faith community [see this post from last time], I have to admit, when I first mentioned Pittsburgh, it was a memory that triggered it. I had remembered a friend from the Vineyard Great Lakes Region mentioning to me where they thought God was leading them to pray for church-plants. Indianapolis was one of them, and even though I was raised right at the suburban/rural edge of Indianapolis, that wasn't it. They also mentioned Pittsburgh, and there was something mysterious about it...not a bolt of lightning, for sure, but something.

So I mentioned it to Chaundra, and her immediate reaction was: "Don't even go there unless you are serious." I was caught a little off guard. OK, admission time: I had thought of Pittsburgh based on another conversation, but somehow it didn't register to me: that's where Chaundra had grown up as a little girl. (I know, I know: Bad Husband!) Her grandparents had a farm north of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh was - as she says - "her peeps". OK, so we were onto something with Pittsburgh - they are my wife's peeps! - but I had never been there, so we planned a short weekend to explore, walk around and pray and get a taste of Pittsburgh.


Of course, anyone who really knows God can guess that He totally set us up. It was perhaps one of the best weekends in our life, in good and bad ways. Pittsburgh the place was fantastic. The weather was perfect...fresh, with the pleasant sound of three rivers passing by us, we strolled along the Allegheny, we adventured from neighborhood to neighborhood. One of the surprising things was how neighborhood-oriented Pittsburgh is. It felt a little New York-ish, so distinct were some of the neighborhoods.


The first neighborhood we actually stopped to get out of the car was Lawrenceville. We got out and stretched and walked in the park next to Arsenal High School. Mysteriously, as we caught our breath from the days travel, something stirred within us, and we could barely grasp its elusive paradox: a suddenness that surprised us...surely we couldn't have accidentally stopped at the very beginning of our adventure weekend in Pittsburgh at the very place God had called us? Yet sudden are the wounds of God that heal, and we felt such a good weight in that we were seeing possibilities for missional intiatives, but we also - at the same time - felt the lightness of joy in that we knew an incarnational community was ripe and ready to be formed here...and it felt like home. Which is a strange thing for me to say, because I feel at home in most places (or perhaps I don't feel at home in places at all), but for my wife, who has a much more acute sense of place, it felt like home for her. The fresh breeze on our face, tears of joy and a yearning within our hearts sealed the deal. We could feel the Spirit mysteriously swirling all around us there. The heartbeat of God that we had tuned into had met us and we knew this was it.


[to be continued...]

the pitt - part two: can we hear God calling to us from this place?

Last time, I began talking about God kicking my butt and wooing me into a dream He has for cultivating a faith community. I also mentioned my reflections of the best, totally-messed-up, inside-out, up-and-down life I've ever been given a shot at living with God. Our on-going relationship has been wide-ranging: strained, elusive, distant, lacking intimacy...this set of words describes some of the most widely fluctuating epochs of my eariler life with God; of course they merely live at one end of a wide spectrum. There have been seasons of disenchantment, followed by deeply falling in love all over again. A time of dryness and bitterness that opens onto the fruited plain and a largess that humbles even this at-times expectant soul. Such are the life and times of an actual relationship with the Unseen God.


Even though this old, enfleshed soul has only entered its middle ages - in this very present age - I've felt like an odd, old couple with God. There have been seasons where we are distant, but we've been through so much we can't give up on each other. And still, the bloom on the rose of our relationship seems to come back ever-youthful, full of energy and intimacy as co-conspirators making plans for the upheaval of more than just money-changers tables.

Of course as I was ruminating on my life "so-far" with God, and as this new inspiration dawned on me, I was talking through this stuff with my wife, Chaundra. To my slight surprise, she was very supportive. She thought that God had always had us on a trajectory to do some sort of ministry, and if it was going overseas that was cool, and if it's planting and cultivating a faith community somewhere else, then let's see what's happening, afterall God is the most Free Person we know, and He could be up to just about anything. So we began to dream and discern together about where we thought God was beckoning to us from.

It's interesting to me that as we laid out some intial thoughts and options off the top of our heads, they had several things in common: urban context and gritty-hard-working tradition. My wife kind of loves this sort of exploration, so she bought us a big map and we put push-pins into it and began looking deeper into a few places, doing basic research on living conditions and people, always praying and discerning: can we hear God calling us from this place? So over the span of a few months we dreamed, we researched and we listened to the echo of God's whisper in our collective heart.

Eventually it came down to one place. I laid a big clue out there last time, and Ramon was the only one to get it: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Urban Pittsburgh that is, probably East End/Central Lawrenceville-area.



[to be continued...]

a little blog-keeping today

I wanted to do a little blog-keeping to keep everyone abreast about the happenings here at verve & verse. 

First, my blogging has split several times, and so while I'll try to keep everyone from verve & verse aware of any guest posts I have on other people's blog, I am regularly blogging and managing a few other blogs at-present:

• Here at Verve & Verse, I'll keep blogging personal stuff, for instance, at-present the call and journey of planting and cultivating a faith community (and I'm hoping to coax a few of our emerging team members to share and guest blog our journey from their perspective as well, so watch for that!), and also some wordcraft (as always) and other stuff along the way
• We just launched the Justice Response/VAST blog, where I'll be writing posts and tracking the efforts of VineyardUSA's Anti-Slavery mission of Justice Response and with my fellow team leaders Kathy Maskell and Cheryl Pittluck!
• At the Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force blog, I'll keep track of our local task force efforts,  media and justice items from our efforts here in Maryland and general stuff from the larger Anti-Trafficking movement
• There hasn't been a lot of new stuff lately at the Vineyard Bible Study blog, but I have some plans for new new material in the near future, so watch for it, otherwise, if you haven't done the several studies we did through 1 Samuel, check it out!
• I also manage the content and blog occasionally (mainly lectio and monk-ish material) at Dave Nixon's Sustainable Faith blog, so be sure to check it out...

OK, I think that's all the up-to-date blog keeping for now...

peace

the pitt - part one: fast and furious

As I mentioned earlier this week, I am going to begin blogging about cultivating and fostering a new faith community.  While I have thought about leading a church and fostering a church-plant on-and-off for several years, I can't say that I had a specific call to it, although I'm not sure I was that open to it either. Even though - having been raised in a Christian faith community, and having owned my relationship initiated by God through Jesus Christ and His Spirit - I kept finding myself in leadership when I was involved and embraced into faith communities along my journey of life.  Thus, I can attest to the mess of church...it's like making sausage...it's messy. But, back in February earlier this year, I felt like I was missing God...in that while I was making time with my regular rhythm of life, creating space to be with Him, I felt like we were missing each other. So, I went on a week-long fast to re-sensitize and re-connect.


Fasting in the past, while typically difficult and messy in that fasting usually makes me sit with my own stuff and deal with my stuff, the actual process of liquifying my diet is typically not hard for me. In fact, after a few days, I feel the weight lift and my heart opens wide after a few days of becoming more and more sensitized.


Anyway, this fast was different almost immediately. It was a real struggle, a wrestling and a relinquishing. I would describe it in that I wanted to be with God, but it was my agenda. I was making time to sit with and hold hands with God...but He wanted to wrestle. And while that sort of pissed me off at first, eventually I decided to wrestle because that's the only thing God seemed prepared to do with me at that point.

So I was thrown off, my expectations dashed, and I was mired in the pit, wrestling with God and myself and while I wish I could say I was nice about it...I wasn't.

And yet something deeper was happening and I don't even think I have words even now to describe it, except to say that in the wrestling a deep shift occurred within.


Thus afterward, in reflecting on what actually happened, in an apophatic kind of way, I kept coming back to some episodes from my youth. I felt like God had been reminding me of some of our interactions along the way, and this wrestling had brought newness to some old things...some very good, old exploits and echoes of conversations with God were emerging as the dust was settling. Some moments of claritas were shining through, as Aquinas might put it.  The shape of things to come was forming, re-forming in a prophetic imagination kind-of-way, and I had to admit I felt I was discerning the sense of call to go and cultivate a faith community deeply connected and moving with Christ.


[to be continued...]

a day of trumpet blast

if there is an alternate calendar that you just have to love, it's the biblical/Jewish calendar.

today is Rosh HaShanah - the celebration of a new year...and it begins with the fresh air of autumn...i love it!!

biblically, it's never called rosh hashanah, it's referred to as zikhron teruah ['memorial of blowing (trumpets)' from vayikra/leviticus 23:24] or it's called yom teruah ('day of blowing (trumpets) from b'midbar/numbers 29:1].  the trumpet traditionally used is the shofar, a curved trumpet made from a ram's horn.  i find it interesting that although the blowing of these trumpets was ceremonial on this day, they were also used for practical purposes: a call to gather an assembly (b'midbar/numbers 10:2-4) or it sounded a battle call (b'midbar/numbers 10:9; shoftim/judges 3:27; 7:19-22 and others). 

the ancient prophet tz'fanyah/zephaniah makes a reference to this kind of trumpet blast:

"The great day of YHWH is near
near and coming very quickly
Hear the sound of the day of YHWH!
when it arrivs, even a warrior will cry out bitterly
That day is a day of fury
a day of trouble and distress
a day of devastation and desolation
a day of darkness and gloom
a day of clouds and thick darkness
a day of trumpet [shofar] and battle-cry..."

in the jewish tradition, the 10 days from rosh hashanah to yom kippur [the day of atonement] are called: the days of awe.  this is usually a time for reflection, prayer and repentance (repentance being to change your mind about the ways you might be living and turn to your God while he may be found).  there is a jewish blessing that i would bless everyone with this day: 'leshanah tovah tikatevu - may you be inscibed [in the Book of Life] for a good year'  and i guess that's my blessing on all of you this day and new year...

peace

when i...

"When I fed the hungry, they called me a saint.  When I asked why people are hungry, they called me a communist."

- Bishop Dom Helder Camara

weigh in on wilderness wanderings

OK...whew...summer is finally winding down!  i know, i know, lots of people live for summer, but i live for autumn!  love it, birthday is in it, want it now.  weather is fresher...it's just better all around.  not that it's been a bad summer, in fact [aside from record hot weather here in funky-fresh maryland] there have been some summer stuff happening here that will change the face of the planet as we know it.


first, as we've just finished up a whole summer of wordcraft, i thought - for those of you who actually read this stuff - maybe you'd like to leave a comment and say which was your favorite and why.  i'm always interested to hear and know how poetry and beauty affects/disturbs/stimuates/stirs people...you can peruse back through the summer wordcraft series on this link: wilderness wanderings


in the coming weeks, i'm going to begin blogging about what God has been up to with us and a budding rag-tag league of extraordinary men and women...yes, you might have guessed it, but God has seeded a dream of cultivating and fostering a new faith community through us.  i'm stoked and like i said, i'll be posting my thoughts and our dreams along this present journey in the coming weeks and months ahead...


peace