greed | most hopeful

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“People hurt the things they fear,” has become for me one of the most haunting lines of Glennon Doyle Melton’s not-so-new book.

And I’ve tried about ten times now to type out how Carry On Warrior has made me exhale so strongly and peacefully over the last week as I’ve been reading it. Her words have been a kind of subversive undertone to everything else I’m seeing and reading as the news unfolds.

Something in me is pushing hard against the rhetoric of hatefulness and fear, of greed and warmongering I hear predominantly from Christians as each day breaks across the globe. Something in me is pushing hard against this fear of neighbor, fear of other, fear of different. Since when did Jesus say kill for my sake, hate for my sake, marginalize for my sake? Something in me is pushing hard through the psuedo-christian noise for voices that speak to something altogether clear, and noble, and lovely, and gracious, and simple and beautiful. I don’t feel the need to kill the person who threatens to kill me; I feel the need for peace. I don’t feel the need to hurt the person who has hurt me; I feel the need to forgive. And I need to know other people feel that need too. And I need to know how to move into that need.

I don’t know how, though.

And Melton doesn’t claim to know how either, but somehow her words in Carry on Warrior actually begin to do it. Honoring a kind of David-like offense to face the giants of anxiety and fear and terrified christian culture, she manages to walk to the middle dropping one piece of heavy armor after the next knowing that it might be her end.

But also knowing that it might be her only chance in hell at an actual beginning.

I’m envious, really. But hopeful. I’m working to lean in to the call to be honest and hospitable when it means standing with those the church is screaming at and setting targets on. I’m working to lean in to the challenge to show up and do my best to return justice for injustice, generosity for stinginess, and even openness for rigidity and fear. It’s infuriating, and then again completely freeing. Something as if from another world altogether.

People harm the things they fear, she says. I’m doing my damnedest to stop being afraid.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

To follow her blog, visit momastery.com, and click here to find “Carry On, Warrior.”

beyond trayvon

beyond even the tragedy of a teenage life lost
which is tragedy enough all by itself
is the tragedy that we cannot have
a conversation about the place in which we find ourselves
that goes beyond Trayvon

we have a story on our hands that rocks the airwaves
and makes for good television, whether legal or talk or music or news
and the story gets stuck in the soundbites
ignorant and hollow and poorly polarized
that sell ads for laundry detergent and weight loss aids

and all the while
there’s an issue on our hands
much greater than Trayvon Martin
which is by itself the loss of a teenager walking down the street
and is a great loss all its own

we have an issue on our hands that makes it impossible
to have real and needed conversations with people of the “other”
we know by name, not our token “other friends”
about what it means to live
black
white
hispanic
asian
gay
rich
poor
single
mentally ill

and in the meeting of our differences
we might find the answers that could lead us
from violence and hip-shooting ignorant vigilantism
to the deep and horrifying and necessary conversation
about what it means to work toward
a day when everyone,
perfectly different,
becomes perfectly alike and different together
celebrating kingdom come.
toward justice.
toward compassion.
toward the ordered throwing of stones.

But, because we can’t think outside the lines
given us by the news that sells laundry detergents and weight-loss aids
we run the risk of being stuck in a conversation that ends
with more hatefulness, ignorance and racism.

But, because we know we are ultimately able to think outside the lines
we run the risk of asking questions that citizens of the kingdom ask
with more compassion, empathy, and christlikeness.

and the story changes depending on which risks we decide to take.

God give us courage to take good risks.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

OTHER POSTS ON RACE AND RISK AND COURAGE

it’s dark in here
failure to imagine
rosa parks
let us turn our thought today

most hopeful

choosing to be most hopeful

Tag Archives: greed

carry on, warrior

beyond trayvon