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May 12 2013
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on, poems, Quotes, social work, the calendar, what they are teaching me

mother’s day proclamation

woman in the kitchen

In the culturally Christian environment of the south where the rules of who women should be and what they should do, mixed as strongly with who they should not be and what they should not do, I am reminded today of the women and mom’s in my own world who have lived into the fulness of themselves for the sake of the world. Those who seek to follow Christ have just as much lived into themselves for the sake of the kingdom come. In areas of health, justice, faith, education, art, academia, research, motherhood, women are pushing what it means into the heart of what it actually does mean.

So on this mother’s day, as reminded by this recent article, here’s to the women who are changing the world as they were made and meant to do, not quietly living into a solemn story someone else told them they had to act in. And to my own mom, thanks for teaching me to ask the questions.

Below is the “Mother’s Day Proclamation” written by Julia Ward Howe in in 1870, pushing women to pacifism and resistance.

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts! Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly…
“Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, But of God -

For the article by Diana Butler Bass on the history of Mother’s Day as a day celebrating radical mothers, CLICK HERE.
For an article posted today on women seeking to pray through the violence of tradition, CLICK HERE.
Or for a more light-hearted open letter to Moms by Kid President, CLICK HERE.

djordan
Pine Tree

 

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May 05 2013
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guest post, learning to live, on, poems, Prayers

life and love: a guest post by james jordan

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Below is the reading written by my brother, James Jordan, which I had the privilege of reading at their wedding ceremony on May 3 at the Renaissance in downtown Chicago. Well done and congratulations to my brother, and new sister-in-law Emily. Thanks, Jamey, for letting me post. 

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For some reason, we always pick one of the most important days in our lives to attempt to define two of the most nebulous words in the English language: “Life” and “Love.” But we do it today, not just because this is the marriage of two equally hard-to-define people, but because it’s also the marriage of Life and Love.

People say, “love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy.”
But it’s also hard and it breaks. It takes work and effort.
“Love does not boast, or dishonor others.”
But it can make you angry and cry.

Life is sickness and health.
Life does you part.
But it’s life that has a way of bringing you back together.

Love is a well-earned, slow-motion run through flowers and butterflies; flexing the muscles you made carrying each other.
Love is exhausting, like the end of a party.
Love is every shared sunset you watch through your toes.

Life is all the possibilities of all your experiences coming together every instant that you’re alive together.
Life is you being there. Wherever you go.

Love makes you better than you are.

It makes you do things for someone else you would never have done for yourself. Love makes you realize suddenly that you’d trade all the things in your house, all the things you own or ever wanted, old habits and comforts just to have one person beside you for whatever eternity you decide to embrace. Love makes you realize in your heart of hearts that nothing matters more to you, nor has anything before.

People say, “life is short,” when life is literally the longest thing you will ever do.
Love, like the love we’ve tried so hard to describe today, should be at least as long as life.

If not longer.

James Jordan
Chicago

 

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May 02 2013
2 Comments
what they are teaching me, learning to live, on, social work

it’s always past the very end

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I met a friend the other night and he said his latest joke is letting people know how exhausting it is for him to always be right, because he can see clearly into the future. We began laughing at the ridiculousness of this together, and then carried on our conversations, both of us acting as if we can see clearly into the future.

I spent the entire day yesterday joining in on, an hour at a time, the lives of others who find themselves at the end. It may be crippling depression, recent diagnosis of illness, recent shift of parental figure yet again, recent divorce, recent infidelity, on and on. I sit up in my chair and play serious with adults and prop myself up on elbows on the floor and play silly with children.

They don’t need me to tell them what to do, how to respond, what to feel or how to proceed next. In many ways, I’m responsible to listen well and in so doing invite them to listen well to themselves, often for the first time in a long time.

And I’m reminded this morning, riding an old Amtrak feelings myself a part of a different era, of how inside all of the stories in which I became a fly on the wall of yesterday, we are all of us, me and them, quite sure that we can see the future. We are more hesitant to admit it, but we are.

And we are most sure when we’ve reached the end of possibilities. Times get tough, we look around, and realized that the train has made it all the way to the station and there’s nothing more to hope for.

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The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. 23 After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. 24 When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. 26 Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. – Acts 16

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It is, of course, after all hell has broken loose. It’s after the end has flashed across the screen. It’s after the train has made it all the way into the station.

It’s always past the very end when the whole earth shakes, unbreakable things blow apart, and something very new and very unforeseen becomes very real.

And we can all believe.

djordan
City of New Orleans, Amtrak

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Apr 17 2013
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learning to live, on, poems, Prayers

after a long night | on john 21

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It seems more often than not that we find ourselves
in the boat
in the middle of the same damn sea
trying our hardest to do what we’ve done a thousand times before.

We try even harder on the heels of failure
or even on the heels of victory.
And sometimes, like Peter, we try when we can’t tell
at all what we are on the heels of.

And still, all night long, we do what we know to do
and we try what has always worked
and we finally throw it all down, take off our clothes, and try to get some rest
because the work itself is almost unbearable.

It’s then, of course, that we hear Your voice:
Do it one more time.
Do it just like this.
Do it.
Do it.
Do it.

And so, after someone whispers in our ear
that they think it’s Your voice,
we do it one more time,
just like this,
we do it.

And the nets almost burst,
but they don’t.
We bring it all in.

And we don’t know why or how,
but we come to trust
that after a long night of
hard work and nothing to show for it,
you speak
and the nets nearly burst.

Give us the strength to keep listening
and to keep fishing
after long nights of nothing.

Amen.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

RELATED POSTS | On John 21 | In the Meantime: On John 11 | When it’s too late: John 11

 

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Apr 06 2013
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grief and trauma, on, poems, the calendar

things regarded as dead

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I woke up Easter morning to find an email from a friend that only read:

“Today may you start seeing God’s resurrection of things regarded as dead.”

One week later, I’m not sure in what ways I’m starting to see the resurrection of things regarded as dead.

I let a lady check out in front of me today at the store, and she replied that chivalry might not be dead.

Another lady at another store had to ask me a million different questions and try to sell me on a million different offers during the checkout process. I thought nothing of it all until she leaned over the register and said, “thanks, at least, for being nice about all this, young man.”

I went to the funeral today of a good friend’s father who got sudden news of serious cancer, and within weeks, goodbyes were said and tearful thanks given for the notion that the end of life might not actually be an end at all. As much as it still hurts like hell, of course.

And so I wonder, one week after Easter, what it means to begin seeing God’s resurrection of things regarded as dead.

Chivalry.
Kindness.
The lost life of a father.

What about hope that good can overcome evil?
That generosity can overcome greedy anxiety?
That humility beats out power and success and ambition?
That justice can break its way into dark injustices?
That forgiveness is stronger than any force of revenge and retaliation.
That families can come together, no matter how they’ve wrestled apart.
That marriages can make it.
That children can make it to adulthood.
That adults can remember the joy of childhood.
That abundance can make its way to those living in great scarcity.
Abundance and scarcity of money, identity, understanding and freedom.

We don’t build our church buildings next to our graveyards anymore, and we’ve likely forgotten altogether the resurrection we’ve been counting on as a ragtag group of women and men and liars and lovers all these years.

We’ve also likely forgotten that things we’ve already written off and sealed up and buried deep as dead impossibilities are waiting, one week after Easter as much as easter morning itself, for the resurrection.

Hope, generosity, justice, families, marriages, children, adults, abundance, scarcity and equality, identity, understanding and freedom.

Chivalry isn’t dead.

Neither is the hope, and therefore the prayer, that God’s kingdom come, and his will be done, on the earth this week after Easter Sunday, as it is in heaven.

djordan
Pine Tree

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Mar 19 2013
6 Comments
learning to live, on, the calendar, what they are teaching me

up for anything

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Today is my grandmother’s birthday. She turns 82.

When I asked her if it was her 83rd, she replied “No” with an exclamation point and said that she apologized for being blonde, but it would take her another whole year to get to 83. She said, “But I’m up for anything…”

This conversation happened on facebook messaging.

I see TuTu more now (TuTu is what I call her of course) because she volunteers for us at least one day a week at Area Relief Ministries. We joked at the office just today about her requesting to close up shop one day after the office had closed, letting everyone know that she would close up shop because she hadn’t finished what she wanted to finish yet. We didn’t allow it, of course.

Some of my stubbornness comes from TuTu.

So does some of my shortness, my red checks, and my fast sweating. Those all come from TuTu as well.

And hopefully, my willingness at 82 years of age to be a part of what God is doing with the homeless, the at-risk, the materially poor, the families in crisis…hopefully being wiling to take part in the work of the kingdom at 82 years of age…not 83 yet…is some trait of TuTu’s that I will inherit beyond my 5’8″ stature and red, sweaty cheeks. If my height, cheeks, and temperature are inherited from TuTu, I’m proud of them too.

Even more so if I will redefine the 80s and 90s as times to pour into what God is doing in the world to make all things new, it will be a proud legacy. As my boss at ARM used to sing, “Age ain’t nothin’ but a number”.

I teach class at Union University a few days a week, and it brings me great joy to hear from students and acquaintances, “You are TuTu’s grandson, aren’t you. She has talked about you.” To work to keep up with my grandmother’s social calendar might bring me shame, but instead, it brings me great pride. To try to keep up with the textbooks she is reading on New Testament theology and Christian history might make me feel dumb, but instead it makes me ambitious.

To TuTu on her 82nd birthday, you make the passing of time seem like a great reward. Thanks for the legacy, and for my red, sweaty cheeks. All my love.

djordan
Pine Tree

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Feb 23 2013
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learning to live, on, what they are teaching me

worth more than a lazy saturday

more-than-lazy-saturdays

I won’t lie. To all my friends with children, jobs that carry them into the weekend, life that carries them over the edge…I wont lie. I usually sleep in on Saturdays. If I’m in town, which is becoming less and less, I don’t think twice about the thrill of sleeping in till nine or ten on Saturday mornings, waking up then only because the dogs begin to insist on it. And I wont lie that most Saturday mornings it’s the perfect thing for me to do.

Be jealous, if you wish.

Today, however, is worth more jealousy than sleeping-in-Saturdays.

This morning at eight I’m ringing the doorbell to meet for a few hours and discuss the art of counseling, to be given encouragement in y wise steps and wisdom in my ignorant steps. And coffee. To be given coffee at eight in the morning since I usually sleep in on Saturday mornings. For two and a half hours beginning at eight in the morning there is discussion over what it means to listen well, to practice well, to watch well and to craft well. Counseling is, as I’m learning, more the art of listening for what the person speaking has known all along but can’t hear himself say, can’t hear herself know. until someone shines it back on them, both sides becoming changed. This morning at eight in the morning, cup of coffee soon to be in hand, I’m ringing the doorbell ready to discuss the art and privilege of therapy.

This morning at ten-thirty, or a few minutes late because the first conversation went long…but we knew that it would…I find myself walking through another door to another meeting. I find myself, new cup of coffee in hand sitting around a huge kitchen table with people I know and people I don’t know. I find myself sitting with people who share, above all, a heart not for names or labels or agendas but a heart for the kingdom and all it involves. I find myself sitting, a little late for a ten-thirty meeting, around a table with people who have won my respect and people who quickly earned it talking big and thinking hard and dreaming wide about what it means for business and food and health and poverty and community to get smushed together in one hopeful spot. Passing the brownies, the hope of a community sitting around tables together having a party as we were this morning. This morning a few minutes after ten-thirty I find myself in the middle of a moment I wont soon forget because a little piece of kingdom come happened around that table this morning while brownies were being passed.

And at twelve forty-five I find myself sitting across the booth from a good friend for late lunch. Laughter and hats and glasses and jeans because it’s Saturday morning after all. The questions thrown out over salads and salmon about what it might mean to follow Jesus beyond harmful clichés or ceramic crosses and into the streets and the cubicles and the living rooms where vengeance is king and jealousy rages and a feeling like maybe we’re a little behind pushes fast and furious into our hearts. Passing the crackers and stacking the napkins, questions thrown out about where we went wrong or where we went right and how we might learn to tell the difference between the two, how we might assume there’s a difference at all. Back to our cars and back to our homes for errands and work and a little time for play, because it’s Saturday afternoon of course.

And then in the evening, a last minute text. Dinner around the table, prepared as we chat. Children run wildly with giggles and stories and hopeful surprises of what it mean to see their eyes and takes on the world. Sitting down in those familiar seats we find ourselves between laughter and tears because so much is known and so much has been seen. Together. There’s no catching up so only the present is told: where we are, what we wonder and what we all hope. Sweats and pullovers, secrets unhidden, because after all it’s a lazy Saturday evening dinner.

And so most Saturdays I don’t think twice, when I can, to sleep late and give thanks that I have the weekend. But today, in the hustle and the few minutes late, I give thanks that I’m surrounded by people pushing well and pushing hard and pushing often into the thin space where we’ve been taught to pray and taught what it means for his kingdom to come and his will to be done on this dusty earth now as it is in his heaven.

djordan
Pine Tree

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Jan 21 2013
3 Comments
on, the calendar, what they are teaching me

“it’s dark in here” | reflections on MLK Day

mlk-day-2013

It’s no secret that racism is not okay.

Most people know it. A lot of people pretend like they agree with it. Some people fake it. Everyone deals with it.

But we all know that racism is not okay.

And so we think of ourselves as matured. As evolved. As just and honest and good and lovely.

But we are, all of us, racist, of course.

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I was walking through the mall a few weekends ago with a guy who used to be a college student in a small group of mine. We were there for me to run an errand, and this guy, a man who is soon to be a youth pastor in a church, made a comment that has been haunting me since that day.

“It’s dark in here.”

I looked around, looked up at the skylights, around at the stores and back at him.

“What?”

“It’s dark in here.”

The same again.

I looked around, the sky is blue, the light is shining in through the skylights, the mall is brightly lit, and at the same time as my head is turning back toward him in confusion, I understand what he is saying. I feel my heart break the moment we make eye contact, and I wish I could control anything but in that moment I realize that I can control nothing.

“There are lots of black people,” he whispers.

I have no idea what I said. I’m sure I was a jerk. My memories of that day go back to me as much as they do to him.

And today, both Inauguration Day and the day we celebrate the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr., I find myself speechless, still.

I grew up in a world where racism was acceptable, and in a home where it was not. I grew up in a faith where if you are poor and on drugs, it’s because you don’t know Jesus, not because of personal, systemic and global injustice.

More than this, I grew up knowing that it’s not okay to be a racist, but seeing those around me make it okay to be a little racist. At the right time, with the right people, in the right way.

As an upper, middle-class white male, that means that many around me, outside my home and often in a family of faith, think that those who are not any of those things are likely not Christians, so we should pray for them, and that they are both irresponsible and dangerous, so we should be afraid of them.

And whether I admit it or not, that same thought is buried deeply in me somewhere. Thank you, Southern, wealthy, Christian United States.

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And today, I show up for work each day with brothers and sisters of faith, both black and white. I show up for work with men and women seen as equally bringing the truth of the faith and the work of the kingdom. I show up to work each day and hash out the difficulty of what it means to work and live and laugh with those who are both the same as well as different from me, and I am a better man for it.

I am still racist. I still make assumptions about others who look like me that I would hope to never be associated with. And I know, in turn, that I am still seen as someone who makes those assumptions.

It is not completely unfair.

So on this day, when I think about the black pastor in the southern US who wrote letters to white pastors in the Southern US saying this must be the time––when I think about a pastor who wrote those letters from a Birmingham Jail–I hear them now in a deeper place than I have heard them before. I see and feel those white pastors listening who are convinced that the calls are untimely. And the challenge is more personal than it has been before. And in the global world, in the polarized world, in the rich and poor world, I hear the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. say “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” and I hear my King say, “The kingdom of heaven belongs to them.”

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To my buddy in the mall that day, as I felt my jaw drop and my eyes broaden and heart sink, I wish I had told you, “There is so much of the kingdom you are missing.”

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

Other recommended links for MLK DAY

KATHY ESCOBAR | THIS DREAM IS SO POSSIBLE – Kathy Escobar
10 THINGS YOU MAY NOT HAVE KNOWN ABOUT MLK – Huffington Post
A DREAM THAT CAME TRUE - The Washington Post

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Jan 02 2013
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on, Prayers, the calendar

cheers to the 2nd of January

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the 1st is easy enough
to be big
to be bold
to be daring
to be hopeful enough about the future
to set big goals
to make big promises;

we reflect on a year that has passed and
choose what we hope will be better
or more
or truer
or braver in the year to come.

But most days of our lives
happen on the 2nd
the day after we make
big decisions
bold promises
daring declarations
hopeful comments about the future
big goals for the days and weeks ahead
big promises for the future that waits ahead.

And so we ask that
the prayers and hopes and energies of our 1sts
become the fuel of our 2nds.
And that we hold out hope,
and join with others who do the same for us.

Happy January 2nd.

djordan
Pine Tree

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Jan 01 2013
5 Comments
grief and trauma, learning to live, on, the calendar

intolerance of uncertainty | thoughts on a new year

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It’s no doubt that the things which are the most important for us to know are the things which, once heard, feel the most obvious. The things which, once said, feel the most simple. And yet, it is these things which are often, once heard and said, the things which change us the most. The things which make the biggest impact in our worlds because even though they are obvious and even though they are simple, they are still the things which are most important and have the most impact.

A New Year’s resolution has been to read an article a workday. Workday means ultimately five articles a week, and article means a research or peer-reviewed journal article, so what to do when throwing a party or how to build biceps fastest doesn’t count as articles.

I was reading, a few days ago (because I’ve also learned that New Year’s resolutions I wait to start until New Year’s are 100% less likely to happen than New Year’s resolutions I start a few days before) an article* about depression, anxiety and rumination. I was reading for a client that I’ve been making little progress with, and also reading for myself as is almost always the case whether any of us in the field choose to admit it or not.

The article speaks to depression, anxiety and rumination, or ongoing perseverative thoughts about situations or details, as moderated by the intolerance of uncertainty. And while the phrase “intolerance of uncertainty” feels as common and as known and as obvious as any other phrase that’s said over coffee or in elevators or across lunch tables, I felt myself freeze in the phase of the written words, as if the obvious and known was suddenly becoming an answer to a mystery.

The more we are intolerant of what we can’t control and what we don’t know, the greater our anxiety, depression and stalling.

With multitudes of caveats and uncontrollable variables, the notion has stuck with me since. The ability that I, or others, have to tolerate uncertainty influences the way we see the future and handle its impending realities in the present. Since all of the future is uncertain, no matter the degree at which we enjoy misleading ourselves, my ability to tolerate that uncertainty is a predictor of my emotions, attitudes, and decisions.

Since reading this article, no doubt an encouragement to keep up my New Year’s resolution, I’ve been challenged to face each day with a reminder to myself that what is to come is unknown, and my trust in the fact that all things are done well and that all things work together is and will be a major factor in my ability to move forward well into the grief and joy that lies ahead in 2013.

Here’s to an uncertain new year.

djordan
Pine Tree

* Liao, K. Y. & Wei, M. (2011). Intolerance of uncertainty, depression, and anxiety: The moderating and mediating roles of rumination. Journal of clinical psychology, 67(12), 1220-1239.

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