on | most hopeful

Aug 11 2013

from the archives, learning to live, on, the calendar, what they are teaching me

from the archives: the last of our twenties

I’m reposting this post, from 364 days ago (wait, was there a leap year this year?). This is the last day to reflect from my twenties. Even the last year of the twenties has made this post from one year ago more true, not less. It’s been a good run so far, I’d say. I’ve been surrounded by good folks.

djordan
Pine Tree

VIEW THE ORIGINAL POST FROM AUGUST 12, 2012 HERE.

THE LAST OF OUR TWENTIES

It is not uncommon to think we know exactly who matters and exactly who will shape the course of our future, or join us as it shapes. At the ripe age of 16, there were several folks who would be those people. They filled the shop for a surprise party that I was too dumb to figure out. Those people still remain friends, and fewer remain close. At 18, we headed to Memphis in a limo and made predictions about the future; we were right on with most of them. And now, at 29, we will head again to Memphis for the last birthday of the twenties. All that we did know, and all that we didn’t know, wrapped up like a gift for the opening.

I remember my high school English teacher, Mrs. Kee telling us once in class that we would never talk to the people we were friends with in high school after we graduated. She was right in most things, crazy in many, but wrong about that. Yet knowing how she worked, and how crazy she was, maybe that was a dare, a challenge, a kind of psychological game to make us make it work.

And now, looking at the last of the twenties, it has worked. The picture above was taken laying down Mom and Dad’s foyer rug on mine and Brooke’s 21st birthday. We will hop in a limo later this week to celebrate the 29th.

I suspect I can speak for all of us to say it’s a privilege to celebrate with old friends.

The privilege is likely greater, though, that the circle has grown.

When I was laying down on the carpet back then, I would never have imagined the role those folks would play in my life, but I would have expected it. What I never would have expected, h on owever, is the role that new friends who have entered the circle would play––how they would become crucial pieces in the story of who I am and who I am becoming.

There would have been no way to know.

Even 8 years ago, two years ago, I would not have guessed what people who crash into the circle would bring, how they would change my mind, broaden my understanding, invigorate my imagination, and strengthen my hope in the already-not yet kingdom come on earth as in heaven.

From West Texas to South Africa; from a desert meal in Israel to a client in a trailer in Lexington; from the front porch on Pine Tree to the valleys of Napa; from a group of those wrestling with grief to a classroom of those disciplining hope; from cheese and toast around the kitchen counter to hors’ doeuvres on white tablecloths under candlelight, from a rocking chair in Nicaragua to a hammock on Pleasant Plains; from a limo ride over ten years ago to a limo ride today, I am now more sure than ever:

I am still confident of this:
I will see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
+ Psalm 27:13

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged Birthday, community, getting old, getting older, gifts, learning, the friendship, thirty, twenty, twenty-nine, wisdom

Jul 23 2013

as fast as it was spoken | on ephesians 4

sometimes we try to breathe it back in as fast as it was spoken
as fast as it was typed
as fast as it was thought, even, because our thoughts streak across our faces like billboards

and sometimes we want to take it back because it should not have been said
and sometimes we want to take it back because it should have been said but we weren’t ready to say it
and sometimes we want to take it back because
we don’t know if it should have been said or not, but the words came out before it could decide

and to say that we are to “speak the truth in love” seems, really, like a cop out
roll your eyes if you wish, but get serious. truth in love?
in those moments where we find ourselves terrified to tell the truth
to speak the truth in love makes some sense, but not enough to give us wisdom on
what to do when those words have flown out of our mouths
slow style
matrix style words flowing out of our mouths and hitting our minds, sometimes, just after the listener’s ears.

but we know, of course,
that we are called to speak the truth in love
instead of being tossed about here and there and everywhere
by craziness
by drama
by frustration
by insecurity
by scheming
by manipulating
by ripping apart another because it’s all that one in pains know how to do.

and so we know
even when it makes no sense
that we are called to find out what it means
to speak the truth in love,
maybe even more so to listen to the truth in love
so that we can grow into the strong and full people of the new kingdom
ligament by ligament.

sometimes it is too late, because the words have already flown out of our mouths
the words have already been typed
the words have already been thought
and we can’t pull them back in
the slow motion button doesn’t work.

but sometimes, we pause early enough
and a third way emerges.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

Tagged Anger, asking, joy, listening, love, Pine Tree Dr, poetry, Relationships, speaking, telling the truth, trusting, truth, truth in love, waiting, Word

May 12 2013

2 Comments

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

mother’s day proclamation

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

Tagged Christ, christian mothers, christian women, civil rights, Diana Butler Bass, Julia Ward Howe, mom, moms, Mother, motherhood, Mothers Day, mothers day proclamation, protest

May 05 2013

life and love: a guest post by james jordan

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

Tagged James and Emily, jordanwedding, life, life and love, love, reading from Jordan Wedding

May 02 2013

3 Comments

learning to live, on, social work, what they are teaching me

it’s always past the very end

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.

+++

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

²⁵About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. ²⁶Suddenly 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

Tagged Amtrak, ending, endings, fortune-telling, future, hope, hoping, Paul, Prison, Silas, the end, travel, waiting, worry

Apr 17 2013

1 Comment

learning to live, on, poems, Prayers

after a long night | on john 21

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.

Tagged Christ, despair, Disciple whom Jesus loved, fish, God, hoping, jesus, john, john 21, lectionary, listening, longing, Lord, peter, Saint Peter, trust, wait, waiting, work

Apr 06 2013

things regarded as dead

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

Tagged death, easter, forgiveness, healing, Health, hope, hopeless, justice, life, resurrection, Resurrection of Jesus, things regarded as dead

Mar 19 2013

6 Comments

learning to live, on, the calendar, what they are teaching me

up for anything

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

Tagged age, aging, Birthday, Christianity, grandmothers, grandson, learning, older, Perspiration, Religion and Spirituality, union university

Feb 23 2013

2 Comments

learning to live, on, what they are teaching me

worth more than a lazy saturday

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

Tagged awake, Coffee, conversations, development, friendship, Health, justice, kingdom, meals, meetings, saturday, saturday morning, sleep, the lord's prayer, the table, value, work

Jan 21 2013

5 Comments

on, the calendar, what they are teaching me

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

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.”

+++

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.

most hopeful

choosing to be most hopeful

Category Archives: on

from the archives: the last of our twenties

as fast as it was spoken | on ephesians 4

life and love: a guest post by james jordan

after a long night | on john 21

things regarded as dead

up for anything

worth more than a lazy saturday

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