Shane!!!

In exciting youth group news: Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution is coming to our all-church retreat in October to speak to our youth!

We are in for a much-desired blessing!

Irresistible Community

I cried this morning as I sat on the porch of my new home. I did not cry because I do not like my new home. Nor did I cry because my home is so whelmingly beautiful and inspirational (although it is absolutely perfectly fantabulous . . . so much so that I'm inspired to write and *gasp* blog again). Instead, I cried after reading this paragraph of Shane Claiborne's book The Irresistible Revolution:

A married couple who were unable to have children happened to meet a woman who had found herself six months pregnant and homeless, so they invited her into their home. It proved to be such a beautiful experience that they decided to continue living together to help raise the new baby girl while the mother pursued her dream of going back to school to become a nurse. They have been living together over a decade now. They are a family, and the baby is now a teenager and the mom a nurse. A heart-wrenching twist to the story is that the wife of the married couple is now very ill with multiple sclerosis, but now the nurse living in her home is caring for her, just as she had cared for the nurse. This is the divine gift of mystical providence and radical interdependence.

I cried because I celebrate the will of God being done on earth, as it is in heaven, through this story. In a time when we are taught to be so fiercely independent, God's will reminds us that, as Daniel Ladinsky paraphrases St. Catherine of Sienna, "vulnerable we are, like an infant. We need each other's care or we will suffer." We are called to community, Communion.

We try so hard to have our "own children," our "own house," our "own healthcare," our "own money," etc., etc. We frown upon 30-year-olds living in their parents' homes and call them "losers." We help others, all the while keeping in mind when our charity is too abundant; soon the needy become "moochers" taking advantage of us.

The kingdom of God, however, looks like a little girl knocking on the door of a family who opened their home to me in South Africa. The child said, "Auntie Connie, we don't have any bread." Without hesitation, Aunt Connie, who did not have much herself, gave a loaf to this child. The kingdom looks like this couple, radically opening their doors to a needy pregnant woman and calling her "family" instead of a "moocher."

The New York Times posted a story today about how lonely U.S. citizens are.

As we face a lonely world telling us there is little hope, the kingdom of God reminds us that hope is in our community and our interdependence.

Mockingbird

My friend Lane introduced me to the album Mockingbird by Derek Webb, former member of Caedmon's Call, on Lane's site The Fastlane. I just started listening to it, so I won't proclaim a bold support of the album yet. I like the lyrics to a few songs I've really heard so far, though. Check out Lane's site for a good review.

It seems that Mr. Webb is getting some backlash from his fans about this album. People are wondering why he's not preaching the Gospel in his album . . . why he's not boldly talking about salvation and passion of Christ, it seems. Interestingly, though, what I've heard addresses the passion of Jesus quite well. He talks about the passion of serving others, loving our neighbors, radically being people of Christ.

On his site, Webb has an interview with Infuzemag.com where he talks about the message of this album:

Because Jesus has kept the law on our behalf, because Jesus has loved the poor perfectly on our behalf, we are liberated. That was the message of the first record.

The message of this record is: it has liberated us unto what? Now that we are set free, now that we don’t have to do anything to earn God’s favor, how shall we live in light of that? And I think that looks very much like helping the poor. And maybe we need to look around us and see that an issue is that we are not around the poor. As Christians, we don’t live next to the poor, or those who are gay, or minorities or anyone who could be difficult for us to love. So now our neighbors are, of course, easy to love. They look like me, talk like me, make the same money and are interested in the same things. So this command has become way too easy.

In another section, he talks about the command to love our neighbor (Luke 10:27) is in the context of the good Samaritan parable (Luke 10:29-37). It's a radical call suggesting that our neighbor may be our enemy. What if we lived this way as followers of Christ, grasping to this great commandment in this radical way? What if we lived into the passion of our salvation that commands us to love our neighbors?