It all began with a cup of hot chocolate. In December 2013, the church I belong to sang carols in a parade of shops we circulated in. We also gave out free hot chocolate. No-one could quite believe it. “Free? Why?”
The church since then has sought wherever possible to give things away. Chocolate and a card to each of the 30 shops both at Christmas and Easter: a quality Easter-egg giveaway to shoppers before Easter, and, this year, a free summer fun day including yet more free chocolates (See www.sharethemiracle.org ). They are the highlights of my year, with some surprising and sometimes poignant conversations.
I remember the lady who, receiving an Easter egg, said “I don’t deserve it”. We were able to say briefly that God’s love was simply there, for all of us, whatever we feel about ourselves. Then there was the elderly lady who brought tears to the eyes of those giving away boxes of chocolates at the summer fun day, by telling them she had never been given anything in her entire life. She walked away still shaking her head in disbelief at the kindness.
From that hot chocolate giveaway though something fascinating grew. A local councillor wondered out loud if something more could emerge: something that could bring the local community together in a time of increasing isolation and fracture. A group gathered, formed of that same councillor, the two church ministers, local shopkeepers and residents: an incredible group who it is a great privilege to know and to work with. The church and parade of shops are on a busy main road and bus route so we were told a closure would never be allowed: it was. There were no Christmas lights in the parade: these were put up.
And so for each of the past three years the Yulefest has been held, and is now firmly established as a local tradition. Generations love walking together across a normally hazardous road, local community groups and schools perform. Children enjoy competitions, face painting and craft: this year the church car park became a food court with the third year of free roast chestnuts and free hot drinks in the church café. Money is raised for local charities, but this is secondary to simply being together and celebrating together.
Jesus in the neighbourhood. It seems to me He is simply there. There amid the fun and laughter. There is the wonder of a child as lights are lit. There as families gather. There as things are given away, as His love is freely given. We don’t need to take Him into our neighbourhoods. He is there already, waiting to greet us in a myriad of ways if we can have the eyes to see.
“The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood.” John 1:14
The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish. (John 1:14 The Message)
I love how The Message translates this verse and to be honest it has often made me feel so self righteous too. I live here, we have a Christian community in the neighborhood, therefore Jesus is here.
At least that is how I tended to look at this verse until the last couple of years. Then Tom and I started walking the neighborhood more. We introduced ourselves to neighbors some of whom have lived around us for years. We invited them to our open houses. We listened to their stories and heard about the wonderful things they are doing.
Jesus was already resident in our neighborhood long before we moved in, we just did not have eyes to see him.
How often is that the case I wonder? Jesus is all around us but we don’t see his glory “with our own eyes” because we are not looking for him.
Who are the Jesus bearers in your neighborhood?
Visualize your neighborhood. Make a list of the names of the people whose houses abut the property in which you live. If you live in an apartment block make a list of all the other tenants. Next to each name write down the Jesus like attributes of each person – love, caring, generosity, kindness. It is amazing what starts to come to mind. How did you come to know them as Jesus bearers?
If you come to a name where you cannot think of any Christ like attributes take some time to pray for that person and to consider ways you could get to know them and their Christ like characteristics more deeply. How could you come to know them as Jesus bearers?
Now consider your own household. In what ways have you been Jesus bearers to the neighbourhood? What else could you do to make the presence of Jesus shine more brightly so that others can see him clearly?
Advent comes at the time of year when our planet turns unstoppably toward winter’s darkness. In this strangest of years, it seems that our awareness of truth or falsehoods and how they shape us has also moved intractably into a dark dissolvingness. We are in a post-foundational world, where we no longer have a fixed point of truth to orient ourselves around.
Lakota Annunciation by Father John Giuliani – Giuliani Foundation
At the time when Jesus was born into the world, the mind and reason were likened to the divine. Matter, body and earth were all seen as lesser, base, and even evil. Today, the mind is elevated in a different way where opinion and propaganda carry as much weight as any set of facts or proofs. Critical thinking seems to be a rare commodity. In this post-foundational era, everyone discerns their own truth. Christianity has over 40,000 denominations itself. So how do we know what is true?
Moreover, during the last few weeks since what must be the strangest election in our history, I’ve spent many hours listening to and supporting those who feel frightened by what has come to pass in our nation. They fear that their black, brown, disabled, or gay bodies will be even less respected and less safe than ever, and that they will face more persecution. Power is a way of putting a clear narrative back in place again, but the rise of this dominant narrative leaves many people out. I feel powerless and sad in the face of it all.
In Jesus’ time there was also a sense of powerlessness and fear for his people, the Jews, who suffered oppression under the Romans. But it seems that in the midst of their powerlessness and fear, God had a pretty strange way of sending help and clarity. He sent a body, a vulnerable human infant.
Christianity was originally very much a body religion. In the coming of Jesus we see an embodied God, born of woman, wrapped in flesh. His body later endured suffering and death, like any other body. His resurrection was of the body. He offers his body and blood to be taken into our own bodies, to nourish and to heal. God entered into the flesh and blood world, came to be a body with us, in embodied community. God expressed God’s heart, true empathy, by entering into our world of matter.
So it seems that the truth that God longs to tell is told best through bodies that move into the lives and reality of others.
I had long been feeling compelled to go up to North Dakota to the Standing Rock reservation, where the Lakota Sioux face the loss of more of the land given to them by Treaty and a serious risk to their water source due to the construction of a new oil pipeline. As I prepared to go, I was inundated with articles sent by well-meaning friends that detailed how the tribe was lying, uncooperative, and violent. I immediately felt the pull of an old familiar assumption that the corporations and the government were right, and the Native peoples were wrong. This was the assumption of my mind from white world.
So how do you find the truth? The advent of God into this world shows us that you go, you dislocate from your place of certainty in order to listen. So my friends and I brought our bodies there, to see and experience what the Lakota Sioux were seeing and experiencing. And I saw for myself the truth of the story there. I saw the land in question. I heard the prayers that bathed every action and movement. I saw the firm commitment to no weapons, alcohol or drugs in the camp. There was only prayer and bodies, holding a line.
In a world that grows more fragmented by the day, I saw people of many ethnicities and colors and religions who were willing to put their bodies on the line for others, to sleep on the cold ground, and share firewood, food, tobacco, and stories. I saw that there are people who are willing to stand with those who are oppressed and forgotten. I saw love. I saw it for myself: This is what is real. This is what is true. There is and always has been a subversive counter movement of love in a world that seems to belong to the mighty, that quietly chips away at the superstructures of power that bulldoze whoever is in their way. It looks weak and fragile by comparison, but it is real.
I can imagine how foolish it looks to use only vulnerable flesh and bone to hold a line, to “fight” in a sense, with only a cloak of invisible prayer as a shield. Yet that is how God came into this world, as a vulnerable infant, without protection or power. He came through a female body and was then adored by others whose bodies were also considered unclean and unorthodox, like shepherds and astrologers and Native Americans.
This paradoxical advent of God into this world shows us the truth of how we can once again find our way. It’s a secret held out in the open. Go to the disenfranchised, the left out, the lonely, the forgotten, the reviled. It is in the very movement of love towards the other that we will see God. The Light that illuminates our darkness does not come by way of weapons or power. It always and only comes by way of mercy.
By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1:78-79
In Advent we wait, trusting the promise that light will come into our darkness and illuminate us from on high. Today, the Lakota Sioux continue to pray and wait and hold the line. And now in this second week of Advent, they have been joined by hundreds of veterans willing to hold the line with them, using only prayer and bodies. Please continue to pray for them all.
Kristen Leigh Kludt —
Advent is a season of anticipation, of waiting in the mess of now for the joy, blessing and healing to come. I feel the anticipation in my bones.
A child grows within me, his or her movements stronger and more pronounced with every passing day. One day soon, in a glorious mess of pain and effort, she or he will enter the world. I am ready.
Today I look down from the office where I write and I see Everett on the preschool playground. He is running, running, running, and soon there is a mob of kids, all running, running, running as fast as their little legs can take them. He is so excited to meet our baby, though he has little knowledge of what this change will mean for his world. What a privilege to watch him, unseen, from this distance.
Some days I am anxious. On Friday I felt the imminence of birth in the persistent squeeze of my belly. I slept little, waiting for the pain to strike at any moment, but it didn’t come. I woke in the morning and the feeling had passed.
I stand at a threshold; everything in my life is about to change. How do I linger well in now?
Tonight, Dave and I will go to a movie. Tomorrow, dinner with friends. I will watch Everett intently, hold him close, share with him the intensity of focus that I know is about to change. I also know that I will love him all the more as he becomes a big brother; my heart, like my ligaments, is stretching, shifting, making room.
Paula D’Arcy writes of going to the woods this time of year. “In the woods, nothing rushes. The woods laugh that any date on a calendar seems more real or important than this very morning…. The woods teach me that the only entry point to divine love is now. This moment is all there is.”
Here, now, is the place we meet God.
I feel the coming change in my bones as they shift and bend, opening a path. They ache with the effort of preparation. And yet, now is all I have.
I take a deep breath, feel the air stretch my lungs. I watch the bare branches sway outside. I look down and see Everett climb onto a tricycle and ride in loops around the playground.
I am grateful. I am full.
Kristen’s first book, A Good Way Through: My Journey with God from Disappointment into Hope will be available February 21, 2017.
Reposted from Kristen’s blog from Advent 2015
Gregory Nelson —
It is 5 AM in the Pacific Northwest and I am listening to the ancient choral music of Thomas Tallis in my den. Each morning I light three candles in front of a small wooden cross on my bookshelf. Above the cross is an impressionist painting of four dancers – a reminder that in our incarnation we dance with the Trinity.
All of this is sacred space to me. There is nothing magical about the collection that makes up my room – pulled apart and scattered into other rooms these ‘sacred objects’ become quite ordinary and most likely overlooked amidst the busyness of life. It is the intentional pulling together and visitation that creates space for the sacred.
I am hoping that you are reading Godspace today because you too find sacredness in the intentional gathering of voices that make up this blog. I am also trusting that you will consider helping support this space that you intentionally visit.
Will you buy us a cup of coffee?Thank you,
If each of you who regularly read the blog could symbolically “buy the team a cup of coffee or a beer” once a month, Godspace will be able to not only carry on its mission but have the necessary resources to cultivate new voices and readership.
Whether it is $5, €5 or £5, your monthly support at the table will make all the difference.
Thank you,
Gregory Nelson
Board member, Mustard Seed Associates
He was smiling ear to ear when I opened the door. “What’s up? Why the big smile?” I asked. “I did it!” he replied. “Did what?” I asked. “I overcame my fear of your door!” he said triumphantly.
As it turns out, this young man had been coming over to visit another young friend who was living with us at the time. Every time he arrived he would stand out on the sidewalk and text his friend inside our house to come out and get him. I had no idea this was going on.
“What do you mean, you overcame your fear of our door?” I asked. “Your house scares me,” he said. “It’s so peaceful.”
As we talked further I learned that life was not so great at his house, and he never had experienced such peace just coming into someone’s home. It was such a foreign experience for him that he didn’t know how to respond.
I think back on this story as I’m reflecting on our theme “Entering the world with Jesus, in our homes”. What does it look like to welcome Jesus into our home? I imagine it means that people who enter will discover peace. Our home isn’t always a place of peace. It’s often chaotic. And now that our oldest son, his wife, and our seven-month-old granddaughter are also living here, it seems the activity never ceases. But we’re still a house of peace. Why?
Shalom is at the root of our English word, peace. It is not just safety, but also flourishing, wholeness, and abundance. If Jesus, the prince of Shalom, enters our homes, what does that mean for others who pass through our doors?
One of the areas my wife and I have worked to cultivate in our lives is being open and welcoming. This begins by affirming through our actions and interactions that the image of God is present in all people. We all need that image to be coaxed out of its shell, some more than others. All of us are a reflection of God’s image waiting to be more fully revealed.
This is our desired attitude. Sometimes we live into it well, other times not so much. But a house of peace, of Shalom, is a place where everyone is welcome and everyone is encouraged to grow more fully into who God created them to be.
There is a Celtic belief that we are to be God’s words spoken back to God through our lives.
Like each of us, Jesus came as a unique person enfleshed to bring Glory to God. He was likely born in the in-house stable area of an extended family member’s home. This would have been a Jewish family with all the do’s and don’ts of any good Jewish family. Although the stable area was a distinct part of the house, it was still part of the house.
Now imagine when the Shepherds arrived. Those smelly outcasts of Jewish society. They were welcomed in to greet the baby. Jesus was already changing the expectations of welcoming others into our homes — even those who make us uncomfortable.
The circumstances surrounding Jesus’ birth foretell the purpose of his coming. At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus stood in the temple and read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Echoing Mary’s song of renewal and release, Jesus declared the year of Jubilee had finally arrived. Those held in bondage would be set free, debts would be forgiven, restoration and healing were at hand.
Welcoming Jesus into our homes is not just about being open to everyone who comes in, but also about actively standing with them through the process of wholeness. We become conduits of God’s healing presence. We become advocates and friends to those who enter yet are bound up by fear, hatred, anger, and deep wounds. Entering the world with Jesus is to allow Jesus free reign in and through our lives when the world enters our homes.
I write this knowing full well that I have not even come close to living fully into this vision. But this is the beginning of another season of Advent, another opportunity to reflect on the coming of Jesus – Jesus revealed in the world now through the lives of his followers. It might be easier to lament my failings, but how much more welcoming to Jesus would it be to embrace his incarnation as an invitation to love more deeply all who come into my home?
The Word made flesh spoken back to God through homes and lives filled with shalom.
This is my Advent prayer.
In 1981, a futurist/lecturer/writer/evangelical activist named Tom Sine published a book that sent many in that generation, including my wife and me, on a new life course. The book gave insight into an astonishing secret — that “God has chosen to change the world through the lowly, the unassuming, and the imperceptible”, like a mustard seed that is the smallest of all the seeds on earth but grows to become the greatest of all shrubs. Tom called God’s strategy “the conspiracy of the insignificant”, and he extended God’s invitation to each of us to join this Mustard Seed Conspiracy.
In the years since, Tom and Christine Sine have together created an international network of Jesus followers who are planting mustard seeds of faith and imagination around the world.
Through their many books, speaking appearances, blog posts, conferences, and warm gatherings in their home, Tom and Christine have impacted thousands of lives. Now they’re passing the baton on to the next generation. This is our opportunity to say “Thanks” and to make sure their Mustard Seed vision stays alive.
A big part of this effort is Giving Tuesday — TODAY
Giving Tuesday is the beginning of a month-long campaign to provide a solid financial foundation for Mustard Seed Associates and Godspace for the coming year.
Please donate today and help us effectively navigate this season of transition as we move boldly forward. Your Giving Tuesday donations will help kick off this event, encouraging others to join the party to connect and inspire the next generation of leaders.
Here are a few things your gift will make possible:
- Developing and delivering new workshops around the themes of spirituality, sustainability, hospitality, community and justice
- Updating the Godspace Community Blog to efficiently support more content and provide better collaboration
- Developing new Camano Island partnerships in transformation, education, imagination, and innovation
- Simplifying and updating our accounting system to be more efficient and transparent
- Streamlining our office to allow our team to work locally and act globally
A special thank you gift to our first twenty $100 contributors
I’ve created a brand new calendar based on our popular “Praying with Nature” prayer card set. Each month features a different photo of God’s beautiful creation along with a brief reflection.
Measuring 11″x17″, it includes Christian holidays, feast days for our favorite saints, US holidays, and other significant dates recognized by MSA/Godspace with space to spare for you to write in your own appointments.
How you can help:
- Be generous with your donations on Giving Tuesday and beyond
- Share our campaign through your social media channels, using #GivingTuesday and on Twitter, @msaImagine
- Encourage others to give and to get involved
- Pray often: for the transition, for our Board, for Tom and Christine, and for this giving campaign
Thank you for supporting us over the years. You are the “Associates” in Mustard Seed Associates. Even more, you are mustard seed changemakers and friends.
Shalom,
Andy Wade
Director
Mustard Seed Associates // Godspace
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