spirituality | most hopeful

Jan 03 2013

grief and trauma, learning to live, Quotes, what they are teaching me

scarred by struggle, transformed by hope

I received a book in the mail today from a friend I met through the blog.

Multiple conversations have been had via email, with time and oceans in between, about issues of faith and justice and loss and hope and hopelessness and holding on. When I recently had a time of near blog-silence, she checked in to see how things were. She immediately hit right on the nature of the issues adding to the silence, and gracefully wrote words that echoed like prayers of acceptance of creative silence, and requesting of hopeful imagination.

And today, after waking up to run, pour a slow cup of coffee and then get back to work at Area Relief Ministries for the first time since mid-December, I walked in to see a package on my desk. I opened it up and immediately knew who it was from, as this friend had referenced the book in an email during those dry days.

The following is an excerpt, and the book itself, sitting on my desk in its packaging waiting quietly like the sneaky gift it was is now a reminder, of how the kingdom community is broader and larger and more powerful than I remember on most days. It is ebbing and flowing in and out of our quiet and alive places, keeping us moving and pushing forward, even when we aren’t sure why it’s worth it.

So to this friend, and the other friends of which there are many brave and marginalized kingdom-souls, who are willing to tell the stories of struggle in an effort to sing the true songs of hope, I cannot say thank you enough.

djordan
108 S Church

“Hope is rooted in the past but believes in the future. God’s world is in God’s hands, hope says, and therefore cannot possibly be hopeless. Life, already fulfilled in God, is only the process of coming to realize that we have been given everything we need to come to fullness of life, both here and hereafter. The greater the hope, the greater the appreciation of life now, the greater the confidence in the future, whatever it is.

But if struggle is the process of evolution from spiritual emptiness to spiritual wisdom, hope is a process as well. Hope, the response of the spiritual person to struggle, takes us from the risk of inner stagnation, of emotional despair, to a total transformation of life. … The spirituality of struggle gives birth to the spirituality of hope.”

from “Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope,” by J.D. Chittister

Tagged blogging, empty, full, God, hope, hopeful, hopeless, jacob, jacob wrestles, quiet, Religion and Spirituality, Scarred by Struggle Transformed by Hope, silence, spirituality, stillness, struggle, wrestling with God, writing

Sep 22 2012

1 Comment

learning to live, poems, Uncategorized

with our necks on the line

In all the complexities
we hold out hope
that we are thinking
and choosing
and doing well.

but we do not know, of course, if we are.

In all the dramatics
we hold out hope
that we are acting justly
being filled with mercy
and taking steps with humility.

but we fear, of course, that we are not.

Yet even in our unsureness
the tasks wait
the issues wait
the choices wait

injustice waits
cruelty waits
arrogance waits

and we cannot stall
until we feel we are sure enough to move
because work
and lives
and hope is on the line.

So we hold our breath
and step into the unknown
and act and choose and do
our best attempts at
justice and love and mercy
hoping we have chosen well
while willing either way to put our necks on the line
to have acted.

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged do, doing, doubt, dramatics, faith, holding our breath, hope, hoping, human-rights, justice, love, mercy, religion, spirituality, unknown, unsure, wanting

Jun 25 2012

thin of a second

it’s sometimes in the thin of second
you get a breath
a shove of breath into your gut
up into your head

it clears your mind for
only the thin of a second

and all is well
and you see the world as if through a glass clearly

then it’s gone.
but the second itself, the thin of it,
changes everything.

and your lungs take a bit deeper of a breath
and your head lightens briefly
lightens in weight and in brightness

and all will be well.

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged Breathing, forget, lack of time, memories, moment, moments, passing of time, pausing of time, presence, remember, spirituality, thin space, time, transcend, waiting

Apr 26 2012

2 Comments

learning to live, what they are teaching me

calling out in the darkness

I sat this morning watching a video (below) that highlights the last five years of a homeless ministry that houses and feeds the homeless in churches every night of the winter months. My mind went back to one evening about six years ago spent with Jonathan Stewart and Wes Gristy; we had been making and serving sandwich dinners on Friday evenings in a parking lot downtown, and our question had become “are there homeless in our community?”

In following that question and other rumors that accompanied it, we met at the church late one evening, made a pot of decaf coffee, and headed to the amphitheater where we had heard those who were homeless stayed.

I remember conversations about exit plans, what we would talk about, how we would find them. We parked facing the main road, flashlights in hand, and started walking through the damp ground toward the amphitheater calling out in the darkness.

“Are you there?”
“We won’t hurt you.”
“We aren’t the cops.”
“We have coffee.”

There was, of course, no one there.

Six years later, with churches across the community working together to host those who are homeless in their buildings night after night, what seems most certain now is that we were, indeed, calling out in the darkness.

We are, those of us fortunate enough to have grown up in church, blessed with a great deal of treasured heritage, and at the same time plagued by a deep spiritual paternalism that we can’t see until we are staring our ignorance straight in the face.

Were I to ask “Are the homeless christians?” the answer would no doubt be, “not necessarily.”
Were I to ask “Are the homeless not christians?” the answer would no doubt be, “not necessarily.”

But were I to have asked “Why do we serve the homeless?” the answer might have likely been “to show them Jesus.”

We are still often calling out in the darkness.

Six years later, I can say that I have learned more about who Jesus is and what he has done from the Christian men who are homeless in our community. Their homelessness is not a result of their not-Christian-ness. And they were not necessarily waiting around for me to show them Jesus.

They are often showing Christ to me, as even Jesus made clear that when we interacted with them we were interacting with him.

But we say we serve to show them Jesus, so we do little looking to see him in them.

But that is changing with those who are willing to open their eyes and see that when we have experienced relationship with those in need, we have experienced relationship with Christ.

Here’s to a future of continuing to open our eyes more and more, and continuing to call out in the darkness less and less.

Theirs is the kingdom, of course.

djordan
South Church St.

Tagged area relief ministries, arrogance, Christianity, church, communitas, community, Denominations, faith, generosity, Holiness, homeless, Homelessness, ignorance, jesus, jonathan stewart, king jesus, learning, paternalism, Religion and Spirituality, room in the inn, spirituality, wes gristy

most hopeful

choosing to be most hopeful

Tag Archives: spirituality

scarred by struggle, transformed by hope

with our necks on the line

thin of a second

calling out in the darkness