Tag Archives: Community

Bastards, two dads, unplanned pregnancies: the Birth story of Jesus

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What a crock! Have any of you paid attention to the lyrics to “Away in a Manger”? Really? Jesus didn’t cry as a baby? Have you ever bucked hay before? Try sleeping in it! You ever see a baby that never cries? That song is just one example of how we have romanticized and thus taken away some of the power of Jesus’ birth story.

How cool is it that Jesus was the bastard child of an unwed teen mom? How cool is it that Jesus has two daddies? How strange is it that Jesus was poor? That he grew up as an illegal alien? That he spent his formative years in the ghetto? That he pooped his pants as a baby. That Jesus had to be potty trained. Potty trained!

The story of Jesus’ birth is not a romantic pretty story of God coming to meet his subjects. No, it is a story that completely captures the experience of humanity in so many ways. When we dull it over we ruin the reality of the story. We miss the beauty of the gift.

Here’s the Christian birth narrative–

A divorced God* decides the only way to bring hope and restoration back to humanity is to work within it. So he sends himself in Jesus as an unplanned pregnancy to a poor teenage mom. He was a child who had to not only hold the tension of having that stigma but he also held the tension of having two dads, one was Joseph and the other was Yahweh–both fathers, both real, both belonging to him. He was born in a barn ’cause apparently daddy number two wasn’t on good speaking terms with his family in Bethlehem. Their impoverished family soon had to flee to Egypt where he grew up as an illegal alien until he was able to return back home to Nazareth–a place that you NEVER want to live and always want to be leaving. It’s the ghetto, it’s Detroit (sorry Detroit).

We’ve missed the story and I think we’ve missed out because of it. Christmas season should propel us to reorient our lives not only around the ideals of the Kingdom of God but around the manner in which that Kingdom was brought to earth. Single moms in our neighborhoods must be cared for! We can’t give them the ugly eye when their kids act up with the store, we must extend grace! The ghetto can’t be avoided as a place too dangerous for us in the burbs (or wherever you live) because Jesus grew up there. That’s his hood…and I  if I were you I’d try to go where Jesus goes ’cause I think he was on to something. Whatever we think about gay marriage maybe we should have space to honor any two individuals regardless of gender who want to love on a child–Jesus seemed to do alright. Maybe we should be gentle with those who come across our border because like Jesus it’s quite possible they’re running from hell on the other side. Maybe the Christmas story is even more than just a season of giving (though that’s pretty frickin’ important and totally fits the story too) but it’s also a season of reorienting our view of humanity because of how Jesus chose to redeem all of it…even Detroit.

 

* All throughout the Bible a metaphor is used referring to God as a jilted lover. As someone who has given his bride (us) everything only to have us turn our backs on him and demand a divorce. Even though he repeatedly says that he hates divorce (’cause divorce so often sucks. We know that) he, in fact, within the metaphor (and everything when talking about God is in fact a metaphor isn’t it?) is a divorced and hurt groom still waiting for things to be made right. God totally gets divorce and thinks that it sucks.

Listening People Into Free Speech

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Listening might just be the best thing we can do to care for another. There are so few people in this world who are willing to listen. We all want to be heard but few of us want to hear. A phrase that emerged out of my schooling experience was “listening people into free speech”. Beautiful. That’s an experiment that many of us should step up to, listening people into free speech.

It’s important, I think, not simply to hear people but to truly listen to them. Listening first and foremost requires asking questions, shutting up, remembering what was said, and responding when appropriate. It’s often when we actively listen that we learn how and where to serve our neighbor.

I know I don’t do this perfectly. As a matter of fact I recently frustrated a neighbor due to my poor listening. But how great and how beautifully simple would it be to develop a community of people whose primary concern was listening those around them into free speech? This is what I hope becomes a defining characteristic of the Grassroots Conspiracy movement here in downtown Vancouver. Listening. It’s simple. It’s subtle. And it’s strangely transformational.

Dreaming, Eating, and Saying Goodbye

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A little over a year ago a group of people from the neighborhood met in our living room to dream about what our neighborhood could be. We dreamed about how neighbors could connect with neighbors, how neighbors could dream together, and how new things could emerge. It was a great dialog but honestly I don’t remember many specific things from it. The one thing I remember clearly is that after we had got to know each other, dreamed together, and decided that we’d each go back to our neighborhood in order to ‘make a difference’ Oso stood up and somewhat incredulously said “well that sucks. I just got to know all of you (few of us had ever met Oso before this night) and now we’re saying that I won’t see you again? That sucks. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want friends, I want more of this!”

Fast forward to yesterday when the group from our weekly Arnada Community Meal read blessings over Oso as he ate with us one last time before moving to Seattle. For nine months now we have been inviting people to eat together on Sunday afternoons. There’s no agenda, there’s no schedule, and no pressure on weekly attendance. From week to week you’re never quite sure who’ll be there or whether the food will be an epic success or an awkward failure. In general, however, 25-30 people drop by between noon and four and eat together. Oso has been a part of this group from the very beginning. I mean, this was what he was whining about on that evening of discussion so long ago!

It was beautiful to see some of that dreaming realized. It was beautiful to see how a bustling kitchen can be the perfect place for relationship to happen.

Oso, we’ll miss you’re claims of food superiority, we’ll miss you bringing your dog with you, and we’ll miss how you modeled what it looks like to center your life around the rhythms of a neighborhood.

May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face;

The rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,

May God hold you in the palm of his hand…even in Seattle

 

We Need Structure…but do we want it?

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When we talk about becoming a community who does life together and we speak of how we’re better off together than we are on our own we often run the risk of falling off into fanciful ideas and dreams that materialize into nothing. Intentionality is tough to come by. Follow-through is tough to come by. Action is tough to come by.

I’m speaking biographically here.

The challenge isn’t just that huge transition from dreaming to experimenting but it’s the mental shift that accepts that intentional structures can be of value…or, dare I say it, are essential to doing life together!

That’s right, I’m going to go as far as to say that for us to do life together, for a community to be shaped by the truth that we’re better off together than we are on our own we must have intentional (routine?) structures that draw us together, that invite us into doing life together in deeper ways, and that give us a venue for personal and communal transformation.

The idea that we’ll all be transformed and that we’ll develop into some sort of alternative special community through randomness, organic-y activity*, and an all out embrace of fluidity is a pipe dream. The best things in life happen with some level of intentionality.

So here in the ‘Couve I’ve been spending significant time trying to discern and dream up what type of structures will bring about the life that we so desperately need and desire. How are we shaped as individuals amongst the community? How are we shaped as a community amongst a larger neighborhood? How are we agents of transformation in a neighborhood within a city? The reality, I think, is that it’s hugely ordinary stuff. What’s not so ordinary about it is the willingness to commit to each other, the willingness to experiment together, and the willingness to commit to a way of life together.**

It might sound boring, but we need structures to sustain life together. Weekly community meals. Bi-weekly discussion groups. Theology pubs. Mom’s groups. Neighborhood associations. Monthly gatherings. Annual gatherings. Random gatherings. Meals. Meals. And more meals.

The question isn’t do we need it…but do we want it?

 

*  “Organic” as a term shouldn’t refer to things that are left on their own…though that’s how it’s often used and that’s how I’m using it here. I don’t know if any of you garden organically but it’s a whole lot harder than gardening with chemicals. It takes work, time, effort, intentionality, planning, etc. It’s not a loosey goosey process!

** I would add that it’s essential that this ‘way of life’ must invite us into something bigger than ourselves (not just greater than ourselves but even greater than us). If we’re not a part of a larger redemptive story then I don’t think we’ll ever break out of the ordinariness of life as most of the world experiences it.

Can you Handle This?

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the immortal words of Destiny’s Child

Can you handle this?

Can you handle this?

Can you handle this?

I don’t think they can handle this.

In the movie 50/50 that I blogged about recently the main character’s girlfriend cheats on him in the middle of his cancer treatments. She doesn’t just cheat on him but obviously fails to be a support to him in many ways. On NPR, speaking about the story behind the movie, the writer shared how the girl friend character represented all those who were unable to walk with him in his journey of fighting cancer.

This really resonated with me. I have had an amazing support system through all of this (and continue to be supported in amazing ways) but there has been loss. There’s been loss of relationship in different areas of my life and in many of those areas it’s come down to some unknown element of that person not being able to deal with the reality of what cancer brings. At first I was a bit hurt by it, I felt a bit abandoned by certain people who I thought would be present during the sickness because they were present before the sickness.

Today I feel much more compassion and understanding (I’m grateful to the movie for helping me to process some of this). While we’re each responsible for our own choices, there is an element of reality to the fact that some are just not fully equipped (for whatever reason) to deal with the harsh realities of a friend fighting cancer (one could probably fill in the blank with many different diseases or crisis’ here). We all have baggage and some of our baggage does not allow us to walk in certain places. Some people just can’t go there, it’s too intense, or too painful, or too…something. On the flip side, some of our baggage allows us to walk with people in places where very few others can go! We’ve had some of these people too! Surprising people, previously unknown people have stepped up in the midst of the last five months to care for us in ways that we never would have expected…and almost %100 of the time it’s because they’ve had experiences that allow them to go with us to some of these places.

I don’t want to blame people anymore for their lack of ability, for their lack of experiences, for their lack of whatever that has kept them from being close during all this. It’s not fruitful and it’s also causing me to wonder how it reflects on me! I know of people in my past that I’ve abandoned because it was easier to forget than to care…and I know there will be more in my future! I want to extend the same grace to others that I hope has and will be extended to me.

Regardless, I grieve the (temporary?) loss of some relationships along the way, but I’ve come to understand that it’s just another exhibit of our humanity playing itself out in real life. I don’t want to blame people for their brokenness as much as I would hope they wouldn’t blame me for mine. Destiny’s Child was right, some people just can’t handle this…my body’s too bootilicious…but then again, so is yours.