Discernment works, and through the voices of many we find God’s direction. I am convinced of that as I sit here this morning reading through the many rich and varied responses to our newsletter about the damage at the Mustard Seed Village.
Thank you for all of you who responded with sympathy and encouragement to our plight and for the many who took time not to only pray, but to send us your thoughts and sense of God’s direction for us. We are extremely grateful for the Mustard Seed community around the world and the commitment to us that this has shown.
Discernment At Work
First we appreciate your affirmation of the pathway of discernment and reconciliation that we have chosen. This type of process is at the center of who we are as an organization and we are encouraged by your recognition of that. We have been deeply influenced and shaped by the Quaker listening process and seek to incorporate that in all that we do.
I pin my hopes on the quiet processes & small circles in which vital & transforming events take place. — 19th century Quaker, Rufus Jones
Several people commented that our question, “What would a gospel reconciler do?” was a very compelling one for them to grapple with in their own situation. Some reminded me of the meditation I posted several weeks ago encouraging us to “stay close to the cracks” because it is here that the light shines through. Thank you for the light that you are shining through the cracks in our situation. Out of this process came many other words of wisdom including these words from Deb Burger.
A Clear Vision For Our Building
Your responses made us realize that we have not clearly articulated our vision for this building. Yes it is a symbol of future hope as we look forward to the completion of a residential facility that we call the Mustard Seed Village. But it is far more than that. This building will become the Mustard Seed Centre for Imagination and Innovation.
What MSA has done well historically is inspirepeople to think beyond the status quo, to a brighter future characterized by shalom. We then connectpeople to create communities of re-imagination and collaboration. In these gatherings, we help people to create new ways of living as the people of God, both in the present and with an eye to future challenges.
The completion of this building will enable us to do just that. Located on this beautiful tree-covered property, which encourages discernment and reflection, it will enable us to inspire, connect and create in new ways. We will hold regular faith-based workshops on innovation and creativity; host seminars on sustainability and permaculture; experiment with new models of gardening, housing and business, as well as hold more regular spiritual retreats.
Establish Presence On The Land
The other message that comes through loud and clear is the need to establish presence on the land. This, we realize, has several components to it:
- First, we need to establish more of a sense of belonging in the local community. Brandon Bailey, pastor of Tidelands Church on Camano Island, commented that perhaps if there was a greater sense of how the project is “blessed to be a blessing” and worked out in a visible way among the neighbors, there would be less resentment. He is right.Because none of the MSA team live on the island or are involved with local churches and community groups, it is very hard for the Camano community to feel we belong. We hope in the near future to bring together a group of Camano residents who will help us rectify this. We would love to discover what dreams and hopes local people might have for this property and how it could really be a blessing to the community.
- Second, we need someone living permanently on the property. This would not only cut down the opportunities for vandalism but also make facilitating events at our new center easier and provide new ways for us to connect to the local community. We are looking into possible temporary solutions that would make this possible fairly soon and appreciate your continued prayers as we seek a way to make this a reality.As a first step, several have suggested surveillance cameras and motion lights, which we plan to install, but we are concerned that this could alienate rather than reconcile with those who are responsible for the vandalism. It is not a good alternative to someone living on the property.Because of the vandalism we will not replace the windows or complete this important building until the infra structure is complete and we have someone living on the land. We will also work with island residents to identify the culprits while also looking for a local organization that works in restorative justice so than when the perpetrators are caught we can continue our reconciling work.
- Third, holding more regular collaborative events would make the establishing of our Center for Imagination and Innovation possible. I am amazed at how many individuals and groups responded with requests to camp on the property, or hold workshops and other events. We believe that part of the pathway forward lies in identifying and networking with others who share part of our vision and are interested in collaborating. It is encouraging to see how many of the MSA community want to help make this happen.
We Cannot Do This Alone
It is obvious that our dream for an MSA Center for Imagination and Innovation will not happen alone. Here is how you can help this happen:
- First we need people. Will you help us establish a presence on this land? Perhaps you know of someone who would like to coordinate the ongoing construction. Would you like to be MSA’s representative on Camano? Or would you like to collaborate with us on future events?
- Second we need resources. To establish a permanent presence and use this property as the Center for Imagination and Innovation we believe God intends it to be, we need to complete the infrastructure. Would you help us do that?
If any of these possibilities stir a positive response within you, please let us know, and let’s continue the discussion.
The financial needs to complete the infrastructure on the land are as follows:
Septic
Well pump and water to the site
Access road construction
Utilities (power and communications)
Total site work
$10,000
$10,000
$32,000
$18,000
$70,000
Thank you for your ongoing participation as we move forward to establish the Mustard Seed Center for Imagination and Innovation on Camano Island.
Since writing yesterday’s post I have thought a lot about my reaction to the idea of God as father. Where does my struggle with God as Father come from? It occurred to me yesterday as I basked in the images of the loving, caring, generous father I wrote about that my struggle begins not with the patriarchal images that we often get hung up on, but with the expulsion from the garden of Eden. How could this possibly be the action of a loving, caring God I have often thought? More like the angry, violent parent I grew up with.
So today I want to do something that you might think a little strange. I am going to reimagine this narrative from the perspective of what I think a loving parent would do and why.
God the mother gave birth to humankind and God the father went out and built a home for his children to live – a beautiful garden dwelling that we call the Garden of Eden. In this wonderful protective environment men and women grew up, walking and playing with God the father and mother in the evenings. All their needs for shelter and food were met by God who hovered around them like a good protective parent. They had a few chores to perform but no responsibility to work for their own provision.
Then they grew up and into the rebellious teenage years when they started to look around and realize that there was a great big world outside the garden that they wanted to explore. In this world, their protective father warned them, there was both good and evil. It is a world, he told them, in which they would now have to toil for their own food and work hard to provide for themselves and their own children. But humankind did not listen. They no longer wanted to be protected from the big bad world, they wanted to find their own way.
So God let them go. God the father sent them away from home out into the world where they would have to fend for themselves. He had given them a good education in how to till the soil and make it flourish but only he knew how much work this involved. Mother God sewed clothes, gave them food and sent them on their way, knowing that life would not be easy for them and that hardship and anguish lay ahead.
God knew his kids would mess up – fighting and killing each other, oppressing and enslaving each other, show greed, prejudice, hatred. He knew he would have to continue watching over them rescuing them as a good father would when they got into trouble, healing them as a loving mother when they got hurt and providing for them when they used up all their resources. But God loved them and knew that for them to come to full maturity they needed to take responsibility for their own actions. To find wholeness and be able to embrace eternal life as God wanted them too he needed to let them go and allow them to make mistakes. He knew that only in this way would they really become mature adults.
I think that it is this kind of narrative that is hidden in the parables and miracles of Jesus:
Good Shepherd Jesus Mafa
God the father is the shepherd who leaves 99 sheep to find the one who has gone astray is God our father tirelessly following the most wayward of his sheep.
God the father is Jesus reaching out to heal the only son of a widow who has been ostracized by her society and has no means of provision or protection without him.
God the father is Jesus sitting on the mountain distributing 2 fish and 5 loaves to feed 5,000 because he wants to remind us of the generosity of good parents.
Rembrandt van Rijn, The Return of the Prodigal Son, c. 1661–1669. 262 cm × 205 cm. Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg public domain
God the Father, is the father who welcomes home all prodigal sons and daughters who have strayed, used up their money, become homeless, turned to drugs, or committed criminal acts and finally recognize that father together with God the mother, really does know best and will still provide a safe haven.
God our Father longs for us to come back home, and at great cost to himself, He has even set up a a well lit pathway – Jesus Christ the way, the truth and the life – to guide us.
For me personally, thinking about this imagery of a loving father protecting, providing for and guiding his children together with images of God the mother working together, is both renewing and healing. What do you think?
This is part of my series on God as Father. You may like to check out the full series:
Meditation Monday: The Father heart of God
Let’s Get Creative for Father’s Day
And for those who want to balance this with maternal images of God check out my posts from the week before Mother’s day:
Meditation Monday – Connecting to the Mother heart of God
Biblical Maternal Images of God by Shiao Chong
Maternal Images of God – a video and a prayer
Let’s Get Creative – Honouring Our Mothers
Anselm’s Prayer to St Paul: Our Greatest Mother
In the week before Mother’s day I posted meditations, prayers and creative ideas for helping us connect to maternal images of God and celebrate the mother heart of God. As we approach Father’s day here in the U.S. I realized how important it is for me to do the same for Father’s day.
I must confess this is much harder for me because I did not have a good relationship with my own father who was physically violent and domineering. Unfortunately I am aware that for many of us such experiences have tainted our view of our heavenly father too. And on top of that we have often been exposed to patriarchal sometimes warlike images of God the father, images that sometimes unconsciously make us feel that God is an angry, vindictive God who punishes us for every wrong doing.
As I meditated on my own views of God the father this week, I realized that central to my understanding of the father heart of God is my conviction that God is love. My image of God as a loving, caring father is still something that I am growing into however. I need constant reminders of God’s love for me expressed through forgiveness, compassion and provision. I need to spend time sitting in the presence of God, imagining myself a child on its parent’s lap. We all need to grow deeper into God’s love.
What is your response?
Listen to the Lord’s prayer
Sit quietly for a few minutes thinking about your own image of God the father. When you think about God as father what thoughts come to mind? Make a list of your impressions.
Now imagine yourself sitting on God’s lap, held in a loving embrace. Read through Paul’s wonderful treatise on love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
Make a second list of the nature of love. Compare your two lists. Sit quietly again the presence of God allowing God’s love to wash over you. What images that you have of God the Father need to change? Offer a prayer for healing and restoration.
Now watch this video which explores some of the scriptures that giving expression to this loving, caring God.
Write your own Father’s love letter. What might God want to say to you at this time about your own impressions of God? Finish with a time of prayer
This is part of a series on the father heart of God. You may like to check out the full series:
Meditation Monday: The Father heart of God
Let’s Get Creative for Father’s Day
And for those who want to balance this with maternal images of God check out my posts from the week before Mother’s day:
Meditation Monday – Connecting to the Mother heart of God
Biblical Maternal Images of God by Shiao Chong
Maternal Images of God – a video and a prayer
Let’s Get Creative – Honouring Our Mothers
In most parts of the world Father’s day falls on the third Sunday of June – this year June 21st. So it is time to get ready. However, Father’s day is a movable feast. In the South Pacific where Father’s day is the first Sunday of September you still have plenty of time so think about which of these ideas you might like to put into action before the day.
There are lots of cheezy ideas out there of what to get kids to do for their Dads. I have tried to make suggestions here that are both creative and outwardly focused – things that kids can do for Dad not just on the day but over the entire year.
1. Many of the ideas I suggested in Let’s Get Creative – Honouring Our Mothers, would just as easily work for fathers too.
2. I love these creative suggestions from US News: Six Inexpensive Father’s Day Gifts
3. Ideas like this one: Dad’s Token Tin that encourage kids to be giving rather than getting are great for Father’s day too.
4. I like this Father’s Day Stencilled Glass Plate because it is a little different from the usual home made gifts and gives kids a chance to get their hands dirty in paint.
5. A Father’s Day book which, as the creator says captured the kids creativity and expressed a love for their dad like only a child can tell it.
6. Dad’s Car wash kit for a kid who loves to help Dad wash the car. This could be creatively adapted for any activity that a Dad shares with his child – gardening fishing, hiking, sports could all be the basis for a gift like this.
7. Dad Rocks Paperweight. I liked this suggestion for its simplicity and adaptability for a last minute idea. And of course you don’t need to restrict the words to Dad rocks – kids could come up with their own creative messages for Dad. And if you have some paints around let them paint them.
8. And while you are thinking about rocks try this idea – How to make garden markers with painted stones. I am sure this could be a hit with kids of all ages.
9. My Father’s Hands. Making photo collections either to frame or in book form are always a hit with Dads. I love this creative variation on this – a photo of a Dad holding the hand of each of his kids.
10. For the photographers in our midst – and that is almost everyone these days – a creative father/child photo would be a great idea
This is part of a series on the father heart of God. You may like to check out the full series:
Meditation Monday: The Father heart of God
Let’s Get Creative for Father’s Day
And for those who want to balance this with maternal images of God check out my posts from the week before Mother’s day:
Meditation Monday – Connecting to the Mother heart of God
Biblical Maternal Images of God by Shiao Chong
Maternal Images of God – a video and a prayer
Let’s Get Creative – Honouring Our Mothers
Anselm’s Prayer to St Paul: Our Greatest Mother
I posted this prayer on my Light for the Journey Facebook page last week and its popularity inspired me to repost it here. The painting is by Malaysian artist Hanna Cheriyan Varghese, whom I met at Overseas Ministry Study Center several years ago. I was saddened to hear that she died not long after of cancer.
I love this painting which so wonderfully speaks of the peace that Jesus brings us in the midst of all the storms that wash over us. Though the prayer was not written to go with the painting for me it is a perfect match, reminding me that when we regularly find that place of inner retreat with God we are able to weather all the storms life throws at us.
Read through the prayer above and sit quietly in the presence of God looking at the painting. Read Luke 8:23-35 several times and allow God to speak to you. Are there places in your life where you are allowing the storms to swamp you? Are there places that you need to release your cares and worries to God? Write your own prayer out of your reflections.
As they sailed across, Jesus settled down for a nap. But soon a fierce storm came down on the lake. The boat was filling with water, and they were in real danger.
The disciples went and woke him up, shouting, “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!”
When Jesus woke up, he rebuked the wind and the raging waves. Suddenly the storm stopped and all was calm. Then he asked them, “Where is your faith?”
The disciples were terrified and amazed. “Who is this man?” they asked each other. “When he gives a command, even the wind and waves obey him!”
Tomato theology
Over the last few weeks I have planted 30 tomato plants in the garden – another important rite of spring and and an increasingly important part of the rhythm of my life. Here in Seattle, we rarely have tomatoes before the end of July but they are well worth waiting for. You have no idea how much better tomatoes taste straight out of the garden. Ripened in the summer sun, picked at the peak of their flavour, and savoured immediately with other fresh salad vegetables.
I am amazed at how much better all vegetables taste when freshly picked. Kids who never eat their vegetables at home, will stuff themselves with peas, beans, tomatoes and even broccoli florets when they get out in the garden. It’s often the first time they’ve tasted anything the way God intended it to be, not out of the supermarket. And their parents are amazed.
It makes me wonder if part of the reason many of us struggle with what it means to be a Christian is because we get our theology and our Christian discipleship from the supermarket too – picked before it is ripe, stored for months, and past its prime or else as in the case of tomatoes, gassed to make them look ripe and then pumped up with additives to keep it fresh and tasty.
What do I mean – well most of us learn theology by sitting down in chairs and having people yak at us. Or from our twitter feeds and Facebook pages. This might get some useful information into our heads but it definitely does not get God’s principles into our hearts – and to be honest I think it is the most boring and uninteresting way to learn anything.
The only way that God’s principles will get into our hearts is by us putting them into practice. As I have said before I learned my theology in the refugee camps in Thailand. And I continue to learn it through interacting with people from other cultures and perspectives. I read somewhere once that the early Christians felt privileged to live in a nonChristian society because they believed it was through their interactions with people outside the faith that they learned more about God. Now we think we learn best from people who think exactly the same way we do – and I suspect that explains why our theological perspectives are often regarded as old, stale and full of superfluous additives – a little like the produce we buy in the supermarket.
What do you think?
The title of this piece is the job description God gave me in prayer before I became a writer. I didn’t take it too seriously, after all, Christians aren’t supposed to have any truck with magic and I was not a natural storyteller. But when you ask God in earnest what you are meant to be doing on this earth, he is equally earnest when he replies. And now every day, I make magic and I weave stories. And the two are so tightly bound up with my prayer life that I couldn’t separate the threads if I tried.
Magic, as it turns out, is a shimmering, intangible, beautiful way of expressing the mysteries of Christ and his universe tapped into by many Christian writers, including C. S. Lewis and Hans Christian Andersen. The latter described being a poetic soul as “..a gift from God, a blessing big enough for oneself, but much too small to be parcelled out to others. It comes like a sunbeam and fills your soul and mind. It comes like a waft of flowers, like a melody you know but can’t remember from where.” (from The Artist and Society).
Some would call this inspiration a muse, but for me, and for Andersen, stories are a gift from God, truly an in-spiring, a being breathed into. I’ve been writing tales this way for a few years now, enough to hopefully make some sort of anthology possible. Writing them feels sometimes like unwrapping layers from around a present, or putting flesh and sinew onto bone, the building of words around a framework, a design conceived within the silence of listening prayer.
At the moment I am writing a daily blog, something I’ve been doing for over two years now, and all of the entries are birthed in prayer. This year they are all very short stories, like fables or parables. This took me by surprise at first, as normally it takes a week to write a story properly (for me anyway). But I am loving it, and every day the newness of the thoughts that are given amaze and bless me, as I hope they do my readers. But what do I mean, “given,” how does it happen?
Sometimes the seed of a story is phrased like a question in my mind, as today’s piece for instance, which was, suppose the sky were bored of being blue? Sometimes it starts as a picture, as in a story about a bluebird, where I saw in my mind’s eye a tiny blue shell hatching in God’s hand. Often it is even a case of almost taking dictation, where the words come thick and fast and I struggle to get them down. But the thing that all these beginnings have in common is the listening, the being open to receiving gift. Clearly the discipline of silent prayer, contemplation, meditation and listening over the past eleven years or so has been a great training for this work; and the two things, story and prayer, are symbiotic in my heart and my life.
Stories are central to understanding spiritual truths and wisdom. Jesus chose not to preach theological sermons in his earthly ministry, but to tell stories. We take in and digest myth and magic far more easily than we do dry academic pronouncements. We are geared to understand things that lie underneath and in-between the words, which work with our God-given imaginations. We want characters we can relate to, morals and wisdom that make sense to us and teach us, but without spelling it out or patronising us. Because that deflates the mystery and tries to calibrate something unfathomable.
I’ve always loved words and writing, but was never any good at thinking up plots. Now I can sit quietly with God and my deepest self, it comes far more easily, to the point where it feels like spiritual flow. I wonder what treasures might come to each of us, not necessarily tales (maybe art or ideas, poems or music), if we all learned to sit with the stories within?
© Keren Dibbens-Wyatt
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