As I mentioned in yesterday’s pot, Tom and I are now in Australia. We arrived just in time to celebrate my 63rd birthday. It is the first birthday celebration I have had in Australia for almost 40 years. Significant in the timing of God I don’t know, but definitely for me a sense of new beginnings as I negotiate this trip without my mother’s presence.
Yesterday we had a wonderful birthday lunch with two of my brothers, my niece, one of my nephews and his wife. As you can imagine we started with a lot of reminiscing about our childhood, stories about Mum and our interactions together. Then we started talking about our family history.
My father was Greek but it is probable that my maiden name Aroney originated in the Middle east, a rendition of Aaron. Perhaps way back we have Jewish blood in us. My ancestors migrated to Constantinople, then to Spain and finally to the island of Kithera off the southern coast of Greece. Then in the early 1900s many headed for Australia. Blue eyed Greeks, maybe mixed with Viking blood, no one is sure, but we all wonder and speculate. We want to know where we come from. We want to know where we belong.
My mother’s family is harder to trace. Her parents migrated from Scotland in the early 1900s, her mother from Aberdeen, her father from Keith. Her maiden name was Milne, a common Scottish name and her Dad’s family probably goes back a long way in Scotland. But Mum’s mother’s name was Cato. Is it Spanish, Italian? Again no one knows but we can speculate. Her family was part of the aristocracy and the Scottish nobility had close ties to the Spanish Court.
These discussions have been very important for me. Knowing where we come from and where we belong is important for all of us. When we have no sense of rootedness we feel like souls without anchors.
For us as followers of Christ, our rootedness is meant to be in the story of God and our sense of belonging is meant to tie us to the kingdom of God. It culture, its values, its way of looking at the world transcends the cultures in which we grew up and from which we draw our stories. Living into this culture with its emphasis on love, peace, and generosity is meant to anchor us in ways that the stories of our birth families never can.
But just as I have had to make a deliberate effort to travel back to Australia to reconnect to my family and to my culture, so we need to make a deliberate effort to “travel” regularly into the land of God’s kingdom and immerse ourselves in God’s culture. Only then will be really find the anchors that our souls need to hold us through all the ups and downs of life. So in the midst of my family times I find myself asking a question I would like to challenge all of us with:
What am I currently doing to anchor my life, my values and my world view in the kingdom of God?
Many of you know that Tom and I are on our way to Australia. In fact this post should go live around the time we land and head to my brother’s home for our first few nights. This is my first trip since my mother died and though I am looking forward to it with joy and excitement there is also much sorrow. I know that it is a trip on which laughter and tears will intermingle.
Over the last week, more by coincidence then design, I have been reading Tim Keller’s book Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering. I really admire him for addressing this issue and have been mulling over his words as I travel. He points out that the modern viewpoint of individual freedom and pursuit of happiness has no place for sorrow or suffering. Yet suffering and sorrow is an integral part of the Christian story and in fact becomes part of the perfecting process. In talking about the growth of the early church he comments:
The Christian approach to pain and evil with both greater room for sorrow and a greater basis for hope was part of its appeal (42)
I am very much aware of this as I head down to Australia. It is my belief in the resurrection of Christ and in a personal God who desires to restore all things to wholeness, that gives me hope on this trip. The promises of God do not take away my grief but they do temper it with hope.
At times I felt Keller’s approach, suggesting that sorrow and pain can be dealt with just by reading the Bible more and praying, sounded rather superficial, but generally speaking this is a book worth the read.
Tom and I are on our way to Australia, but my thoughts are still with the garden I have left behind and all I need to do to get ready for the upcoming season. The place I start is always with reading a few books to get me revved up for the season. Leah Kostamo’s book Planted: A Story of Creation, Calling and Community, is a great place to start. It is easy to read, full of delightful stories and yet well grounded in theology and a deep concern for God’s good creation.
Leah’s story of the growth of A Rocha in North America is engaging and fascinating. She wrestles with important issues of justice, poverty, simplicity and environmental degradation. I love the humility that admits to the struggle and frustration that she and her husband Markhu face when they make significant life changes in order to commit to what they believe is God’s call on their lives. Her vulnerability is refreshing.
My favourite quote:
What I’m striving for in my own daily life is true simplicity, characterized not by deprivation, but by honest, joyful living. Out of this place of joy and material simplicity one is able to question both consumer trends and one’w own desires…. If we live in this sort of freedom we are also released from making simplicity a goal in itself
I highly recommend this book not just to all my garden friends and to those who are interested in environmental stewardship, but to all those who want to take the purposes of God seriously. This is a great book to give to your friends who need to be gently introduced to these concerns.
Its time to get ready for Lent and Easter and I want to challenge all of us to consider taking Lent seriously this year. Lent is often regarded as a season of soul-searching and repentance for all Christians as a preparation for the joy and celebration of Easter. Unfortunately our soul searching is often as perfunctory as our sacrifices. We spend a little more time reading the Bible and praying. Some of us spend a few hours working with a local mission, but otherwise our lives are unchanged. And after Easter, there is very little to show for our commitment.
So lets us take Lent more seriously and help others to take the plunge too. Let us accept the challenge to develop new disciplines and reach out more actively as God’s loving and compassionate hands. The theme for our Lenten journey this year is is A Journey Into Wholeness. We are planning a multi-pronged approach to the season.
Here at Godspace we will post daily reflections, prayers and practical suggestions for the weeks of Lent. We already have an exciting array of bloggers signed up to contribute posts. These will complement the publication of our new Lenten/Easter devotional A Journey Into Wholeness: Soul Travel from Lent to Easter, now available for pre-order at a special discount price from the MSA website. This book is based on the popular Lenten guide we published some years ago but information and resources have been updated and daily reflections have been added. We hope that you will consider journeying with us through the book as we share the season together. As many of you know this book arose out of my frustration with the triviality of most peoples’ commitment to Lent – giving up chocolate or lattes for 40 days just does not seem to cut it.
Each week of Lent emphasizes a different area of brokenness in our world. Over the five weeks of Lent we will deal with issues of inner healing, hunger, homelessness, stewardship of creation and the brokenness of God’s family.It is our hope that the daily reflections in the book and the additional reflections on the blog will help draw people more fully into those themes, beginning a few days before Lent with reflections on preparing for Lent and Easter.
Keith Anderson President of the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology comments:
To offer daily reflections into wholeness will require substance, range, and depth, if it is to be richly whole itself. The readings in front of you now offer all of that in an accessible way. The material recognizes that we come to the journey with others—there are reflections on the Cross, on self but also on others, creation, and God’s family. The material offers practical ideas for individuals and households. And, because it is written by an ensemble of writers, the material is evocative. You will find yourself drawn into ideas, stories, and more—invited to set out on this journey with others in the season of Lent. I recommend it to you with great hope for what you will see on the journey.
We hope that you will not just read along with us but commit to some of the suggested practices. Maybe you would like to join us for the $2 challenge , or leave your car at home for a week and take public transport. Perhaps you would like to spend a night in a homeless shelter, or visit a couple of churches with different theological perspectives and seek to understand their viewpoints. Whatever you decide we hope that you will share your stories with us so that we can encourage each other by our actions.
Those who live in the Seattle area might like to join us March 1st for our pre-Lent retreat, Return to Our Senses In Lent. This will provide a great opportunity to prepare your heart and establish some new practices for the season. We are also working on a new set of Lenten prayer cards that we hope will help us follow through with our intentions. I suggest you write your weekly commitment on the back of the card so that you can revisit it at regular intervals through each day.
So my question for you today is: How will you use the season of Lent to move from brokenness to wholeness this year? Will you join us in the journey?
It is a new year and in a few days we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. A new year challenges us to try new things. So in this new year – what if each of us would put fresh mental energy into a relationship with someone who is in some way different than us?
Social psychologists point out that we as humans tend to conserve our mental energy, and researchers Shelley Taylor and Susan Fiske coined the phrase “cognitive miser” to describe what we do. One way we do it, based on Christena Cleveland’s new book Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep us Apart , is by hanging out with people who are most like us. It turns out that when we spend time with people who are most like us, we can more easily predict their behavior and therefore the entire social interaction is easier (i.e. less cognitively tiring) for us.
Cleveland’s point is that on Sunday mornings we are “cognitive misers” and find it easiest to worship with others who are most like us. Indeed, Sundays mornings are still the most segregated hour of the week, something that Martin Luther King frequently pointed out.
I love when I see examples of how Bridge of Hope is breaking down barriers and stereotypes for people. Like when a mentoring group is comprised of both African-American and white mentors. But multi-cultural churches remain an anomaly in our society today.
So let’s take the challenge for 2014 – and commit ourselves to overcoming our tendency to be “cognitive misers” and instead exert whatever mental energy it might take to build a friendship across areas that divide us, whether that is racial/ethnic difference, economic status, culture or language. The old dividing lines of housed or homeless, black or white, middle class or poor, unemployed or employed, Democrat or Republican, are transformed in the realization of God’s intention for humankind.
May we live into this reality in 2014.
Today’s post is written by Edith Yoder Executive Director of Bridge of Hope, a ministry which provides a church based approach to ending homelessness.
Edith Yoder
Tom and I are getting ready to head to Australia tomorrow. Our dog sitter, an old friend from Milwaukee, commented this morning that it was awfully dark compared to where he had come from. Thinking about that as I prayed through the morning scripture readings and watched the dawn slowly break inspired this prayer
Martin Luther King via wikimedia commons
This next weekend here in the U.S. we will celebrate Martin Luther King Day which commemorates Martin Luther King’s birthday. I will not be here this year – Tom and I head down to Australia on Wednesday, but it is one of those days that I think should be celebrated throughout the world. It is a day used to promote equal rights for all Americans, though I like to expand that to consider it as a day to promote equal rights for all people. Here are three quotes from King’s speeches that I found very compelling this morning
The great problem facing modern man is that, that the means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live. So we find ourselves caught in a messed-up world. The problem is with man himself and man’s soul. We haven’t learned how to be just and honest and kind and true and loving. And that is the basis of our problem. The real problem is that through our scientific genius we’ve made of the world a neighborhood, but through our moral and spiritual genius we’ve failed to make of it a brotherhood. Rediscovering Lost Values, Sermon delivered at Detroit’s Second Baptist Church (28 February 1954).
Today I would probably say – we have failed to become a global community, but the sentiment is still the same. We are more closely connected than ever yet less concerned about the needs of others.
We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.
Probably my favourite quote of all is this one:
“Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.”
When we don’t do what is right and trust our God for provision but rely instead on the values of greed, exploitation and oppression, evil does indeed take over. We have seen it in the enslavement and genocide of peoples. We have seen it in the confiscation of native lands. And we have seen it in the destruction of the earth’s animals and habitats. My home country Australia is suffering from record breaking temperatures that have soared to over 50C or 122F.
Surely there has never been a better time to refuse to look the other way. All of us need to do what is right for those who are still oppressed and marginalized in our world. We need to do what is right to reduce emissions and reduce our consumption to contribute our small bit to the fight against climate change.
As Martin Luther King suggests, our souls suffer along with our bodies and our world when we do not do what is right. And the only way to change that is with the love of God. I pray that today all of us will catch a fresh glimpse of God’s incredible shalom kingdom in which all humanity is set free, creation is restored and we all live together in peace, harmony and mutual concern.
May we dream of a world made new,
Where all of us do what is right.
Where together we shout for justice,
And as one we fight for freedom.
May we dream of a world made new,
Where all of us do what is right.
Where together we seek God’s righteousness
And as one we sing God’s praise.
May we dream of a world made new,
Where all of us do what is right.
Where together we climb God’s mountain,
And as one we enter the promised land.
May we dream of a world made new,
Where all of us do what is right.
Where together we proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom,
And as one we enjoy its peace, abundance and love.
Amen
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