Be Longing

Churches seem to be decreasingly useful to the last two or three generations of faith seekers. Why? If these faith people are not in churches, where are they? Where are they spending time, living, being, growing up?

One public space patron had this to say. The question was, “Why do you find yourself so often in small, independent coffee shops and bars?” Answer: “Because it’s like home. I live alone, and staying in [at home] presents a really different reality of environment than going out to do my studying. And sometimes I want to go out not just for a practical reason. Sometimes I go out because I want to see people; my friends, acquaintances or even strangers sometimes.”

“So you might go to the bar without anyone else you know? Why not just stay home?”

“Well, I guess it’s just more inspiring in the places I go to. There’s interesting things to look at. There’s people I might meet who I never knew or people I might see that I haven’t seen in a long time. And there’s always the staff in these places that I sometimes have a relationship with. When I go to the same places over and over it feels like I live there, sort of. It feels like my living room in a way.”

“But why choose these specific places? Why not others? Why do you choose independent places over chains? Why bars and coffee shops over restaurants?”

“I think it’s because of the way they look; they way they’re set up, you know? Like in a chain, you know what to expect and sometimes that’s OK but you don’t look around and get inspired, because you’ve seen all this before. But if you go into an independent place it has the style of the owner or the manager all over in the way things are set up and the way it’s decorated; or the way it sounds, what music is playing, what the lighting is like. I guess this all just means that somehow the person who runs the place had decided what they want the life of this place to be and made it that way. So I get to connect to a real person. And it makes it a better place for me to connect to other real people in the same space at the same time, you know?”

“Can you describe this a little more? What is it about a place that makes it like a living room and not an institution? Is that the right way to ask it?

“Yeah, that’s right. I want things to seem like home and family and not an established, market researched institution. Umm… OK. There’s this place I go to. It’s a coffee shop called the GreenHouse. It’s organic. So already I know something about the owners and their values, even if it’s a small thing. They like to keep things as healthy has possible: people and the earth. Then I go in and see an upright piano in the corner. It’s open for anyone to play if they wish. And I sit in a big chair. It’s like the one in my living room and in the living rooms of most of my friends too. And then I take off my shoes and put my computer on the footstool in front of me. There are lamps and rugs around. I go up to the counter where Ray is cutting turkey. I order some tea and he brings it to me. We have a conversation about school and whatnot before I go back to my chair. I’m reading and writing and people come in and out: a book group from the school next door or a couple of guys drinking coffee after work. And the members of the family who owns the place are in and out too. After a while, Cybil, Ray’s wife starts baking for the next day. And the place begins to smell like the house smells when mom starts supper. So there I sit in my living room chair smelling supper from the kitchen and conversing mildly with people who come in and out of the house as work and school get done. See what I mean? It’s like home.”

As I listen to this unfold, I’m thinking about the idea of home and noting that these places, where so many are spending their time, are more like “home” than our own residences. Why is that? And why is it that we are so driven to find home? This idea of creating public spaces that are like our living rooms, intimate and familiar, is based on the understanding that we want to belong. Like the famous lyrics “Where everybody knows your name.” We, as a whole culture, aren’t as convinced about the value of independence and self-sufficiency as we once were. This mentality is leaving us lonely. It’s not fulfilling our needs for connection and intimacy. So, new kinds of places are becoming meaningful to us. The answer to the question, “Where are these postmodern generations?” is… out. Not at home.

In her essay, contained in Growing Up Postmodern, Sharon Daloz Parks talks about the deep rhythms of the young person’s soul that pulse between pilgrimage and home. These ideas used to by closely related. Citizens of a “home” would press out on a pilgrimage only to return home with “gifts, blessing and wisdom.” But we have since lost this connection as we have, culturally, a dwindling connection to place and “home”. Parks says, “Particularly since the Enlightenment, we have been keenly aware of the limitations of our knowledge – especially our knowledge of God, Truth, Ultimate Reality. We have become poignantly aware of the relativized and partial character of truth. Our understanding is always incomplete – and, hence, we have a consciousness of always needing to press further in an ongoing intellectual and spiritual journey toward but never quite arriving in our quest for truth and wholeness.” So, in essence, today we are on pilgrimages our entire lives. We are constantly swinging, sometimes gently, sometimes not so gently, between the press forward for more knowledge, experience, understanding, truth and wholeness and our desperate search for belonging and home in which to flourish in order to make this pilgriming possible and meaningful.

---

my Aunt Mimi

AUTUMN WISDOM FORM THE MONASTERY :voices from The Circle of Life, Joyce Rupp and Macrina Wiederkeht ----- "While many people dread the approaching winter season, often these same people claim autumn as their favorite season. Perhaps this says something about the haunting call of this season...Autumn touches the core of the soul with its wordless message about the necessity of transformation and death. We are gently encouraged to look toward the west and embrace the bittersweet truth that all things are transitory. As we face the painful reality that nothing lasts forever, autumn teaches us humility. We learn to honor the dying. Everything is moving, flowing on into something new. In this lovely season when the dance of surrender is obvious, we find large spaces left where something beautiful once lived. As one by one the leaves let go, a precious emptiness appears in the trees. The naked beauty of the branches can be seen, the birds' abandoned nests become visible. The new spaces of emptiness reveal mountain ridges. At night if you stand beneath a tree and gaze upward, stars now peer through the branches. This is an important autumn lesson--when certain things fall away, there are other things that can be seen more clearly. Autumn is a wondrous metaphor for the transformation that takes place in the human heart each season. We we notice a subtle change of light outside...we know the dark season is near...Autumn calls us in from summer's playground and asks significant questions about our own harvest: What do we need to gather into our spiritual barns? What in our lives needs to fall away like autumn leaves so another life waiting in the wings can have its turn to live? ...Autumn speaks of connection and yearning, wisdom and aging, transformation and surrender, emerging shadows, and most of all mystery. This is the season that touches our longing for home, for completion. We are invited to let go, to yield...yes, to die. We are encouraged to let things move in our lives. Let them flow on into some new life form just as the earth is modeling these changes for us." I wonder: As some things fall away, what other things can I begin to see more clearly? What in my life needs to fall away like autumn leaves so another life waiting in the wings can have its turn to live? So, friends, as I look toward January, I look forward to winter...like Edna Buit who looked forward to the winter rest for the land, I too will begin a "dormant" season. Like Edna, I will wonder what new surprising life might emerge come spring, what flower will blossom that I had forgotten was planted. But until then, I will treasure Autumn, look forward to Winter rest, in hope for Spring. (Miriam Bush)

sometimes i feel like perhaps life is just spent throwing out pieces of ourselves around us like fisbees, across space and time and geography. and then running around gathering them all back up again like bright red fallen leaves, only to throw them out once more. and throughout our life span, we simply spend our time throwing and gathering and throwing and gathering. i'm not sure it's such a bad way to live life. throw as much as you can and gather it back in time. but i think the times that hurt are the times inbetween. when we realize we've thrown too much or for too long and it's time to gather again. and we face the gathering with emptiness from the past months or years of throwing it all away. in these times it seems impossible to get it all back again and until we begin to do it, and the pieces fall back together, we just might fear and be sad. but, inevitably, slowing, almost dutifully at first, we begin to collect the parts of our spirit back again and reassemble them in a new way than ever before. and then we get to decide where to throw them out next and to who. and the truth is, we don't have to work at all for this. time does the work. we only think we can control the throwing and gathering. but our spirit does it all on it's own i think. our joy only comes from recognizing and being grateful for the process no matter where we are in it. i guess this is what the earth does. she has seasons: giving and gathering, giving and gathering. i think it's the same.

The Question

What is the relationship between Creation and Hospitality?

i walked by the river with a scarf and a speedway coffee, listening to the September playlist from a friend, as instructed by the... well, instructions on the email about said playlist. and i decided to stop and look over the rail for awhile at the swarm of fisherman in their waders in the river. and a little, black, BMX biker boy came up and leaned on the rail right next to me. our elbows were touching. and he said, slightly audibly above the sound of the music in my head, "i wish i had a fishing pole." and i said, "you don't?" him, "No. Do you?" me, "Nope." he told me he wishes he could just pick up all the water in his hand and hold it so the fishermen could get all the fish without having to stand in the water all day. "like a superpower?" i said "yeah. and i would do it from inside the water, you know, with telekinesis!" and i said cool. then i asked him if he went to school today and where and did he like it. he doesn't hate school. he doesn't love it either. then we commented on the whole, full grown tree that had floated down stream and gotten stuck by the spillway. you can see all the roots. and we decided it was cool and that we had never seen the roots of a full grown tree just out in the open air like that. then we talked about the algae in the river on the rocks and about seaweed. and he said "I think snails eat algae" me, "how do you know?" him, "now i know you don't watch sponge bob but, on one episode they all got covered in this green stuff and i think it was algae and then a snail ate it off them." me, "actually i do watch sponge bob." and then we threw rocks and sticks in the river for a long time. we watched the sticks get sucked down by the current at the bottom of the spillway and we watched the ripples of the rocks we threw, stick in circles in the water. and the circles followed the spillway down on the surface of the water, into the foam at the bottom. and each time it happened we looked at each other with raised eyebrows and muppet smiles as if we just discovered something that seems like impossible physics. he asked, "how old are you?" "25" i said. "how old are you?" "10" he said. i never finished the playlist.

My Faithful Followers...

To my faithful blog followers (of which there seem to be about...2), this is for you. Don't kick me off your lists. I often don't even know where to begin. Do you get the feeling sometimes that writing about life not only doesn't capture your thoughts and experiences but actually makes them less real? I get that feeling often. I wish I was more articulate.. or perhaps less articulate. Whatever... I just wish writing was like taking pictures, expressing things without having to sift them through my own lens first. But I suppose photographers are forcing things through a lens too. I want to write like a security camera: grainy,black and white and objective. Then again, the world is more than that, even the most drab security camera view can't catch the truth of it. It's raining today. And yesterday and the day before... And I'm fantasizing about the emotions of nature. If nature has emotions, what does the rain mean? What are the clouds for? I have this pair of glasses that I only wear on the days when I feel the most introspective and melancholy. And they remind me, each time I have to slide them back into place, of how I feel. And I like that. If nature feels melancholy some days, maybe the rain are her glasses. Just so she doesn't forget to embrace the gray, disconnectedness of that day. It's been melancholy out for days now. I like it.. I'm feeling tragic romantic.

It was one of those moments. You know the ache you feel when you realize you can’t possibly put into words what you see lying on that bench, looking skyward. You know you’ll never be able to quite remember how the sparks of the fire mingle with the tiny bright stars, frozen in the sky. And something inside you freezes too, when you think about how you’ll never get this moment back. No matter how you try you’ll never recreate the suspended stars and the dancing sparks. Or maybe you will, but you’ll never feel this way again. You’ll never be as taken aback as right now. Shocked by the clarity of it all, the even, still, 3 dimensional living of it all. Cold air, orange embers and the bitter smells of the past that force your heart down the paths of the future where things will never be the same. For better or worse, the days that burn the eyes of our hearts today will flow by us and new days will take their place. This, what I see above me tonight, the sky, the smoke, the pain and the promise, written so obviously in the life of nature, this is my life too. Time and space are creation. I am creation too. Even after all these words, I still have that ache.

Well, it finally happened. I don't actually know where I am. I'm blank. I'm sitting in an airport but I don't know if it's in Cincinnati or Cleveland. I think Cincinnati. Regardless, it feels strange not to know exactly were I am. And it seems even more strange that it doesn't actually matter. At all. I always assumed this would happen someday. Here is how I've spent the first part of my layover. There's a chapel about a mile away in this airport. I stumbled upon it. Went in. Listened to my Gregorian Chant. Meditated (it was almost loud enough to drown out the final boarding calls). Said my Our Fathers. Listened to some Lakota George Flutes and took these pictures. I left refreshed. Amusingly refreshed. Now I'm here. Trying to stay calm. Trying to love life. Trying to pass the time. And doing a fine job of it all. Hope the flights on time. When did flying cease to be an adventure and end become instead simply a mode of transportation?

Trip #3

Leaving for my third trip of the summer. I'm at the Grand Rapids airport on my way to San Fran. I'll continue my studies there. Some upcoming reading: Creation and Reality; Micheal Welker, Crooked Little Heart; Anne Lamott (just for fun). And others I'm sure. Once I get going it's hard to stop. Why California? you ask. Well, it just so happens that my beloved sister is there for the summer and I just couldn't go 8 weeks without seeing her. I don't have many plans beside seeing her and reading (by the pool of course). Labri update: My great friend Sarah got home from Labri the other day. She lives in Atlanta. And she wrote about the separation on her blog. She said just what I, also, had felt. Something about how we leave and not only does some of our heart stay there at the Manor House but little pieces of our heart and self also fall scattered across the Atlantic on the way back to our old lives. It's strange, we decided. We leave some of us there and instead of missing just those people and that place, we seem to miss that part of ourself as well. It's as if we are still there. Rattling around in the house, doing chores, reading on the couch, arguing over lunch. And life feels strange for awhile. Until, sadly, we begin to forget and disconnect and perhaps even turn back into who we were before we knew of that place. But we are never really the same I suppose. And that's we we go. So, it was nice to read her blogs and hear the sorrow and relive that moment just for a bit. How does all this fit into my paradigm of finding a home and staying there? Cedar Rapids update: My last post of Cedar Rapids was called "Are floods and tornadoes weeds?" While I was there, I heard my Uncle preach a sermon about weeds. He preached the parable about the weeds and the wheat from Matthew. Several things about it were of interest to me in my search for the heart of this Creation. First of all, I felt compelled by picture of plants to illustrate the idea of creation. Because I think the plants are not only humanity but perhaps more. Perhaps they are systems and themes and idea and trends and emotions. Perhaps that parable has something to say to us about micro and macro life. Inside and outside of ourselves. I'm a little ahead of myself. Let's just say that the reigning idea of my Uncle's message was the we are to take care NOT to pull the weeds. What looks like weeds may be wheat. And, as it would seem, visa versa. The parable states that the garden was sown with seeds of fruit bearing plants. And then, later, another came along and scattered seeds of weeds in among the plants. I think two things. I wonder if the weeds a real. I wonder if what we think are weeds could always turn out to be wheat. I'm not sure if I believe it, or what the implications are, but I'm asking the question. I guess the parable does say that the seeds of weed were sown. Question two: We are taught that creation was distorted, or broken by sin. But does this parable apply here? Is the garden not destroyed or broken but sin is just added to the picture? Added to the already complete garden? this could mean that we are left to contend with sin in our world but that it need not have changed the nature and state of the garden. As I discussed this with my mom after the service. We tried to reconcile this idea with the knowledge that our own natures and wills are not unaffected by sin. But we discovered that here the parable might work on a micro level. There is a garden inside us as well. And there is perfect completion but also the invasion of sin. So within the world there is good, complete, unbroken wheat. And sin. If we are not to pull the weeds in the world or the church, for danger of pulling wheat accidentally, are we to not pull the weeds in ourself either? And there is a larger, more complicated, diverse question left to answer. Are the floods and tornadoes of the weeds? Are they sin sent in among the good order?

are flooding and tonados weeds? and who put them here?

Downtown Cedar Rapids had somthing like 32 feet of water. All the government offices and disaster centers had to be relocated. There were empty spaces in the Mall. Here's what it looks like with the County Treasurer next door to the Gap... and so on. Pretty ingenious. Anything touched by the water was considered contaminated. The water was toxic because of all the stuff that gets into it as it rushes around town. Sewage, gas & oil, fertilizers, chemicals, etc. So the first step of four in the flood clean up is hauling the muddy contents of thousands of basements (and some entire houses) out to the curb to be collected by the contracted trash removers, needless to say, working overtime. You have to ask yourself when you see the streets lined with 25,000 people stored atricles, "where has our consumerism gotten us today?" Sort of a poetic human statement here. You think? This is the house next to the one we worked in the first day. As you can see, the water washed away the entire block foundation, right out from under the house. But here is the same house. Curious how those pretty little delicate flowers managed to survive, with gusto, what the block foundation could not.

Behold, I am bringing a flood of water upon the earth.

So my study on nature and creation has taken me on a field trip. To Cedar Rapids IA, (it's been tagged a natural disaster area), to help with the flood clean up. An interesting perspective on the nature of nature, to be found here. Especially for 25,000 people who now have no homes. The yet unofficial, lateset word on the street is that FEMA(national disaster relief) has only been to two disaster sites of higher magnitute than this: Katrina and 9.11. They anticipated a foot of residential flooding. They got 10 feet. But as you can see, it's still as beautiful as ever here. More to come later.

I miss L'Abri. It's strange how simple it is to form connections in a totally other part of the world. Can we say modern marvels? It's so easy to get from here to there, and I think we suffer in the end because of it. Here I am in Michigan, with part of myself still in England. How strange and modern of a predicament. Who am I that I feel the right or privilege to go where I want when I want, even when it's utterly impractical? And since when does it seem like a good idea to spread myself and my heart all over the globe so flippantly. I think it's part of what brought me home early. I was beginning to wake up to this strange phenomenon of how travel and distance can affect the soul. I don't wish I hadn't gone. I don't wish I stayed. I simply reflect on the unexpected and usually hidden effects on my self, which I only now, at this point in my life am turning my attention to. Michelle and Sarah, remember the other day when we talked about the idea of running away and around from where we have our roots? I think that's what I'm feeling now. I feel that it's good and fitting, as creatures, for humans to be home. It's not a matter of avoiding challenges or adventures or keeping a narrow world view. In fact it's more difficult to stay I think. It's more risky, more of the heart to be lost when we invest where we are and have a mind to stay. But in the end and on the journey we are who we are most when we are where we belong. When we are home. That's how I feel at Western Sem. Thank you God. Love you all at L'Abri. I miss you. The house, the walks, yes. But mostly just you. And now that part of my heart is there, it's there to stay.

Well, I'm home. I woke up at 6am this morning. It felt like 11am. Imagine that. I can't wait to get into the hammock but first I wanted to let all the fellow LAbri-ers know that I finally put up the facebook group English L'Abri Summer 08. I love and miss you all dearly. Yes, all of you. I missed tea this morning. Not sure what I'll do with out it. Love you all.

Went to Winchester today. I was late for the bus, this is me running after it. Josh (UK) Winchester Cathedral: The largest Cathedral in Europe. We took Holy Communion there at noon. The Royal Oak: The oldest Pub in England. It was dark. We don't have McDonalds like this in the States! Or candy like this...

Sarah (Atlanta) "Where is my make-up." "Can I have that with one of those.. you know... straws with the crazy shapes." Philip (Canada) Anthony (Michigan) Josh (Britain) Me and Michelle at the Pub.