Tag Archives: kingdom

Jul 01 2012
Leave a comment
art and photography, learning to live, Quotes

as mad as a hatter

I try to believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast. + Alice
There is a place. Like no place on Earth. A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger! Some say to survive it: You need to be as mad as a hatter.  Which luckily I am. + The Mad Hatter

The more I think about it, there is incredible power in a kingdom imagination. Weighted down by constant thoughts of what we could and couldn’t and should and shouldn’t do, our conversations twist and configure to make the kingdom about our own personal pious behavior or lack thereof instead of the whole of redemption and all things new, including our little selves…in the context of the big kingdom.

And this morning, I woke up thinking of the Mad Hatter’s words: There is a place. Like no place on Earth. A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger! Some say to survive it: You need to be as mad as a hatter.  Which luckily I am.

When Mom and Dad would go somewhere and find a little something they thought we would enjoy, whether a bag of coffee or a cd or a book or whatever, they would return and inform us they had brought back “a little happy” … an unrequested, unsolicited, undeserved, unneeded little something that only is a little happy because it hits the spot.

These are my little happys (little happies? who knows…) this morning. Enjoy.

I insist on following Christ with a holy imagination into the kingdom, but even to imagine such a place requires me to be crazy. And luckily I am.

djordan
Pine Tree

 

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Jun 28 2012
1 Comment
Quotes

all of us are homesick for it

If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand,
we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of
holiness, goodness, beauty
is as close as breathing and is
crying out to born both within ourselves and within the world;
we would know that the Kingdom of God is
what we all of us hunger for above all other things
even when we don’t know its name or
realize that it’s what we’re starving to death for.

The Kingdom of God is where our
best dreams come from and
our truest prayers.
We glimpse it at those moments
when we find ourselves being
better than we are and wiser than we know.
We catch sight of it when at
some moment of crisis a strength seems to come to us
that is greater than our own strength.

The Kingdom of God is where we belong.
It is home, and whether we realize it or not,
I think we are all of us homesick for it.

+ Frederick Buechner

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Jun 10 2012
1 Comment
grief and trauma, guest post, learning to live, what they are teaching me

“Thank you for your prayers, we are tired of war” | a guest post by Caroline Powell

Caroline Powell is a dear friend of mine and native of Cape Town, South Africa. She works with The Warehouse, also dear friends of mine seeking to see the church be a transformative presence in the community in issues of poverty, injustice and division. Caroline has been sent on sabbatical by The Warehouse, in Caroline’s words, to seek kingdom “stories of hope and people of peace.”I’ve been following her blog these last several weeks, and this post is one I’ve enjoyed the most.

Join Caroline on her sabbatical journey at www.thelongwindingroad.me, and in the meantime, thank her for joining the guest voices here at mosthopeful.com. Her words are always words with which to spend considerable time and generous thought. Thank you Caroline. 

“Thank you for your prayers, we are tired of war” | a tribute to the DRC

When I was planning this trip, one of the first places I desired to visit was the town of Goma, on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) side of the western border between DRC and Rwanda. There were several reasons for this. In Cape Town, I study with and enjoy the friendship and encouragement of several Congolese people, through connections at college, church and my work at The Warehouse. I have been fascinated with and deeply troubled by the story of this part of Africa for some time. I have met some very inspiring residents of Goma through Amahoro-Africa who run awe-inspiring initiatives through their churches in their town, and I longed to see first hand what they are involved with on a daily basis.

Getting there and fulfilling this dream has been a different story but one that has invited me into a deeper sense of love and committed prayer for this nation. Advised by Joel from Goma, that I must  have a visa before trying to visit the DRC, I went about filling in application forms and getting invitations letters from my friends in Goma. Once this was done, and all was sent off to the embassy in Pretoria, the waiting game started. I was convinced that visiting this region was to be part of the plan for my trip and especially felt that I would love to go there to encourage my friends by receiving their hospitality – visiting them despite the fact that at times, there are more people leaving the DRC than coming to visit for a holiday. I prayed about it and felt that, while I would take no unnecessary risks at all, if it was a time of peace, I would strive to spend a portion of my trip there.

At about the same time as I was planning for my visit, rebel warlords in the region were planning their next move and just as my passport was arriving in Pretoria for processing, war was breaking out in the very region I was hoping to visit. My passport got stuck at the embassy for too long, as they were in crisis mode due to the conflict and it became clear that this was not to be part of my journey. I called the visa agency and asked them to send my passport home to me. I wrote to my friends, thanking them for the great effort they had gone to in writing invitation letters, scanning signatures and planning to host me. With a deep sadness in my heart I explained that I would not be visiting. With a hope that they did not sound like empty words, I said that I would be praying for them.

A kind reply came back to me, sharing sentiments that they hoped there would be a chance in the future. It was signed off: “Thank you for your prayers, we are tired of war”

Very few words on a computer screen have affected me as deeply as this simple, sad greeting. In much the same way as I might say “I am tired of being cold” at the end of a long winter in Cape Town, they stared back at me. A stated fact. We are tired of war. A fact that I cannot imagine for my own context and yet a fact for countless numbers of people on our planet.

I have just returned from visiting the town of Gisenyi on the border of the DRC. I had arranged to meet my friend Joel on the Rwandan side of the border that is shared between Gisenyi and Goma, and as I travelled from Kigali towards Lake Kivu, the lake that shares is shores with the two cities, the man seated next to me on the bus pointed out a large tented settlement. “Transit Camp” he told me. We were passing one of the many refugee camps that exist, sometimes temporarily, but often permanently in this part of the world. I have made friends in the past few weeks with people who grew up for many years of their childhood in a camp much like this.

Joel met me at “Grand Barrier”, a not so grand piece of road that makes the enormous difference between living in a land at war and a land in times of peace. This same piece of road operated in the opposite direction during the 1994 Rwandan genocide as thousands of people fled their homeland. Then, the transit camps were on the others side. Today, for me, it is a cul-de-sac on my long and winding road. A country that I can only dream of visiting. Homes, less than a kilometer away with rooms and beds where in more peaceful times, I would have visited and slept. Joel took me on a walking and moto tour of his town from the safe side of the border. The two towns are separated by a stone wall at most in some places, even less in others. They are reportedly the two closest border towns in the world. He showed me the region where his family home was destroyed along with thousands of others during the eruption of Ndiragongo in 2002. I took a photo of him with this still active volcano in the backdrop. He pointed toward where he now lives with his family. We walked and talked- of church, recycling, youth ministry, war, upcoming life events and hope. And then he returned home and I went back to Auberge de Gisenyi and watched some of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations on TV in French.

It is my hope that this essay, as insignificant as it is in the grand scheme of things, will serve as a tribute to the Democratic Republic of Congo and her courageous people. There are too many wars like this one in the world for us to pray individually and with understanding for each one, but sometimes, as the case is with me in this season, God brings one thing to your attention, and all you CAN do, is pray. DRC, I pray for hope, peace, courage and patience for you. I pray too, that one day I will be able to enjoy your hospitality on your soil, not just from over a stone wall.

Amen.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Jun 01 2012
2 Comments
learning to live, what they are teaching me

a world lives in you

It’s surprising, really
the way it rattles the ribcage
and then leaps into the lungs.
missing.
missing and needing.
especially on days like today
the missing and needing arrive
when face to face again.
the miles and miles made it easier
to forget the ways they make up my world
to forget that it was them who began to teach me
who I was
who I was not
what the world could be
what the world actually was
how the kingdom insists on bursting through
how the kingdom waits to be released.

but today, this morning
on the edge of the literal sunrise
on the bumpy, muddy roads
on the way to school
when seeing your faces
and hearing your giggles
and feeling your faces
the way we feel faces when it has been so long

I was reminded that you are a part of me as I carry you inside me

and the only words are thank you
thank you to the kiddos who keep growing
growing in their shrinking sandals
growing in their brilliant brains
growing in my heart as they expand my world
expanding the spaces inside me that
had closed in a little too tightly.

And all is well once again.
And the world grows bigger once again.
And the kingdom protests once again.

djordan
León, Nicaragua

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Apr 08 2012
Leave a comment
on, the calendar

resurrection and the third way

It’s not even that we are being foolish to assume that one of two options is all we have to hope for, or if we’re lucky, all we have to choose from. We can feel the tension building as the story climbs to the cross, and if we didn’t know better, which of course we do know better, we would be hoping that they would change their minds and let him down. Or at least he would finally decide to call some winged agents in to take him down so he could find his place of importance on the throne.

We think it is only that, now, or death.

And death is final.

So we can’t blame the ladies for waking up the next day and taking the spices and oils they had worked on the night before as their tears feel into the mix. There were two ways, death or something spectacular there on the cross, and death is the way that won. So they head there prepared to prepare his body.

And that’s when we all learned for the first time, of many times by now, that there are more than two ways of being and moving forward in this world.

That empty gravesite sits for us now as a reminder of our calling to follow Christ into the kingdom of the third way, the kingdom of impossibility, the kingdom of breathing new life into dying things, the kingdom of defeating death, the kingdom of upside-down conclusions to right-side-up stories.

With the poor.
With the lonely.
With the addicted.
With the greedy.
With the grieving.
With the marginalized.
With the marginalizers.
With the hopeless.

With those of us who have resigned to the fact that all is lost, so we prepare to bury our hopes and dreams for a new life and a new kind of world.

Welcome, today, in light of the resurrection, to the kingdom of upside-down conclusions to the stories we find ourselves in.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.
On Easter

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Apr 03 2012
4 Comments
learning to live, what they are teaching me

not drumming alone

“Never give up. Never give up. Never give up.” she said into the camera on her computer.

We were finishing class today, and I had just asked my friend Caroline––skyping in from a patio in the shadow of the great Table Mountain in Cape Town––what advice she would give to my classroom full of students going into the world with the issues of poverty and the church on their minds and hearts.

I was sitting in the front of the classroom which I suddenly regretted as these words came out of her mouth.

“Never give up. Never give up. Never give up.”

She went on to elaborate, and my mind floated back to my days in Cape Town last spring almost a year ago. I was in the middle of major transitions where the issues of poverty and the church were becoming issues that meant a world of difference when it came to my job, my income, my church, and my future. I remember sitting, clinging to the future as we now refer to it, scared of what the future held, but knowing there was nowhere to go but into the issues of what it means for the church and its people to worry less about success and more about obedience.

Caroline went on to say to the students, with me sitting in the front of the classroom, “Never give up. You will follow Christ in pursuit of the kingdom, and you will struggle. And you will feel like you are the only one. And you will feel as though you have been beating a drum for a very long time all by yourself and no one is listening, and no one else is beating that kingdom drum…”

Sitting in the front of the classroom, where the students can see me but Caroline cannot, I feel my eyes beginning to well with tears.

“…but you are not the only one beating that drum. And there are others, too, following Christ not into success but into obedience, into the kingdom, who feel as though they are the only ones being champions of justice, and they need to find you as well. Never give up. Never give up. Never give up.”

My intentions had been for our class to pray for Caroline before we ended the Skype call, but we were not able to.

I caught myself trying to say, “Caroline is a dear friend who has taught me much. And she and other very dear friends have reminded me in times that felt quite lonely that it is worth speaking out for justice and working toward the kingdom…” But that is where the thank you had to end, because my eyes were getting thick with tears at the wrong time.

Another friend spoke today at the community-wide Holy Week noon service. “The time is now,” he said, “to worry less about seeking our own success, and more about seeking the kingdom.”

He also reminds me that I am not drumming alone.

I had a conversation tonight with an elderly gentleman about our small house church joining their older congregation in serving the homeless this summer. He reminded me that I am not drumming alone.

A dear friend once grabbed my shoulder at a time when I needed it more than anything else, he looked me in the eyes, and he said, “You are not alone. There are many of us, and we are seeking the kingdom together.” He reminds me constantly that we are not drumming alone.

Thanks, Caroline, for making me choke up in front of my class.

And thanks for reminding me, and them, that we seek first the kingdom together, and that we are not drumming alone.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Newer posts →