justice in the burbs

how can you love two people so much when you've never met face to face before? i don't know, but two of my most favorite people in the blogosphere, who also happen to love each other so much and HAVE met face to face are will and lisa samson. i am pleased as punch to hear of their new endeavor together and want to highlight it here on my blog.

most of you if you've been reading my blog for some time already know of will and lisa, but just in case you don't their blogs alone are reason enough to get to know them, let alone their writing. they are living out the kingdom in Lexington, Kentucky and have put so much of what they have learned and who they are into the pages of this work. i have yet to lay my little fingers on it - but can't wait to begin to plumb it's depths.

it is a practical guide to kingdom living for those of us who can't drop everything and join that commune we've always dreamed of. mother theresa said it best: “We can do no great things; only small things with great love.”

here's what lisa and will have to say about in their own words:



here's what others have to say:

"Will and Lisa have joined talents to offer a compelling argument for living justly in an unjust world, and for loving our neighbors in a hands-on, life-changing way." LIZ CURTIS HIGGS, author, Bad Girls of the Bible.

"Whatever happened to the vital social and moral energies of the Christian faith? They are alive and throbbin in this book that shows how the gospel can walk the missing sidewalks and unfriendly cul-de-sacs of the suburbs." LEONARD SWEET, Drew Theological School, George Fox University.

"Will and Lisa are provocateurs of imagination, writing for a desert where folks are thristy for more than the American dream. This is a much-needed invitation for justice to flow throught the suburbs liek mighty waters and bring to life all the parched souls trapped in the ghettos of poverty and wealth." SHANE CLAIBORNE, activist, author, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical.

"Will and Lisa Samson's new book, Justice in the Burbs, is a moving book. I wept with joy, knowing how many people will be moved to join the work for justice God has already begun in the world." CHRISTIAN SCHAREN, author, One Step Closer: Why U2 Matters to Those Seeking God.

follow the Justice in the Burbs blog for yourself here.

buy your own copy of Justice in the Burbs here on Amazon

congratulations will & lisa - i am just so excited and proud of this amazing product. i can't wait to see what it releases into the kingdom!

glow in the dark lives

i celebrated a milestone yesterday - 7 1/2 years of abstinence from sexual addiction, chocolate and some other destructive behaviors. it was wonderful to mark this anniversary with serenity and the knowledge that i have been really working my program.

part of my abstinence includes the discipline of sitting on the edge of my bed every night before i go to sleep and reading the "next" part of wherever i am in the bible. i pick whichever book interests me and read it through, pick another book and read it through. while reading in james (i come back to him frequently) i noticed a verse i hadn't seen before - james 5:10 - "Take the old prophets as your mentors" - i have always wanted a mentor and had been avoiding the old testament as of late, the warring and violence (and plain old inconsistencies irritate me) - but i love james and thought "what the heck, maybe i'll read one of those old prophets to see what he means".

so i started isaiah - crap it's long. and lots of it is crash and burn religion, it was hard to get through it - but somehow on easter i was actually at isaiah 53 - uncanny timing, and last night i had progressed to isaiah 58 (i only read the "next portion - however peterson divides it, that's what i read). i thought 'oh man, now i'm to the good stuff' - yes, i have read isaiah before - it's just that the NASB and the NIV are just like reading someone else's mail to me - the message draws me in, makes it personal some how.

i awoke this morning to find that my dear friend erin was reading my mail:

Marking this place...

“You’ll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, making the community livable again.” Isaiah 58:12

for those of you who don't know erin is a highly skilled renovation carpenter, she is so humble she probably wouldn't tell you herself - but this verse is HER - turns out i was reading HER mail!

read the rest and see if it's your mail too:

This is the kind of day I'm after:
to break the chains of injustice,
get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed,
cancel debts.

What I'm interested in seeing you do is:
sharing your food with the hungry,
inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
being available to your own families.

Do this and the lights will turn on,
and your lives will turn around at once.

If you get rid of unfair practices,
quit blaming the victims,
quit gossiping about other people's sins,
If you are generous with the hungry
and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,
Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness
your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.

I will always show you were to go.

I'll give you a full life in the emptiest of places --
firm muscles, strong bones.

You'll be like a well-watered garden,
a gurgling spring that never runs dry.

You'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,
rebuild the foundations from out of your past.

You'll be known as those who can fix anything,
restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
make the community livable again.

Isaiah 58:6-8, 9-12

mentor me isaiah!

my hero on my favorite show

my hero on my favorite show - 'the hour' is one of the most thought provoking, interesting hours on television - be sad you don't have access to the cbc - but enjoy george stroumboulopoulos (say that 10x fast!) on you tube if you get a chance. he asks intriguing questions and takes interviews in really intense directions. people feel safe with him and they open up - this interview is over 9 minutes - but worth watching the whole piece.

i kept checking back to see if they had loaded this clip yet, but just saw it on the church of the exiles blog - thanks jordon!

hope for today

just when you think it's too dark lights begin to break through - for me today it was three posts by three amazing friends in the blogosphere. need a little hope?

share some of their's:

• biscotti brain: I'm standing in a River

• adventure: 28 days

• Abiding: Trudging Along

another world is possible

Vol. III Rooftop Introduction

Add to My Profile | More Videos

shane claiborne's myspace

to the least of these

another article in the nyt highlighting something the church, albeit a very informal one, is doing in new jersey to help the homeless. it made me cry. we waste so much, and people like minister steve have so little help. and yet he is so very faithful. what a great heart he has for his little church:

NYT - A Ministry in the Cold, with the Gospel of Propane

now THIS is church!

ben witherington pointed to an article in the NYT about an episcopal parish that was reaching into the world of the homeless and poor in a new/ancient way.

ben also tells everyone's favorite tony campolo story - go and take a read:

Ben Witherington - A Church Home for the Homeless

and here's the link to the NYT article -

NYT - No Altar, No Pews, Not Even a Roof, but Very Much a Church

thank you church of the epiphany - you are well named and are doing a great, great work!

today is the anniversary of gandhi's death

i bought this image for liam from sojo a couple of years ago. it spoke truth to me when i read it then, and still does today. 59 years ago today gandhi was murdered at age 79. you can read the nyt article of the account here:

Gandhi Is Killed by a Hindu; India Shaken

why is it that the voices for peace are always sacrificed by those who think they know god's way? god help us not to silence those in our world today.

thanks to will for this head's up.

question and answers - part two

one of the bloggers who always makes me think outside the box, kristen noelle asked:

Have you had a chance to visit any soup kitchens? If so, what kinds of thoughts or feelings were evoked?

i remember visiting the famous "Pacific Garden Mission" in downtown chicago as a teenager. it was a very "us and them" situation to me at that time. the smell was overwhelming and all i could think of was how long before we got to leave.

facing my own addictions and living under crushing debt and in a situation where we had no options but the food back during our first time in ministry i realized there is no "us and them" in my life. we were one bad debt away from loosing everything. we probably wouldn't have been homeless as liam's family would have taken us in, but i know that the church we were killing ourselves for wouldn't have stood by us at all. they promised us when they hired him "part time" that we wouldn't starve. i think they invited us to their homes about 6 times in 30 months and like i said we were eating out of the foodbank. we starved in more ways than one.

this was where the seed was planted for this ministry dream. we had sold our house at a loss, moved away from family, had 2 kids under 4 and all we wanted to do was 'serve jesus'... in no time we were in a deep financial hole. as we slowly climbed out of it i remember being at the grocery store and seeing the donation boxes for the foodbank. a penny dropped and i began to ponder a better way.

at the same time i had begun reading henri nouwen. he wrote in one of his books (i think it might have been reaching out, but i can't be sure) about the idea that our western world is so full of people talking about doing things and never really getting things done. i knew i was one of those westerners. i hated that about myself. so i decided to take his advice. he called it 'furnacing' - allowing our ideas to be ours and god's and to spend time thinking about them instead of talking about them, and pouring the steam created by the excitement back into to project and allowing that to propel us farther on in the doing.

it was then that i decided to begin to furnace the idea of the foodbank. i worked on it in secrecy for 5 years. it became a wonderful dream, i designed logos, brainstormed contacts and prepared it all to the point of not having anything left to do except hand it away.

i told god that it was ready and i was willing to give it to anyone to do - (this is a HUGE project, not just a single foodbank, but a total revamp for feeding people with dignity and creativity). i told god i would wait until he told me who to hand it to.

it wasn't a month later that he did. he told me to give it to tony campolo. i laughed out loud. i knew i had misunderstood. i keep waiting and nothing else ever came. tony is one of my heroes. i literally would have followed him around the country with a little notepad writing down everything he said. i had never heard anyone speak so clearly about the heart of god, helping those in need and actually putting feet to the gospel.

i knew he would be at the national youth workers convention in pittsburgh that year, so i told god "fine, you won't give me any other names, then you have to work this out - you have to introduce me."

i went to every one of tony's seminars. after each session he is so kind and he stays to speak to anyone who will wait. i would stand to the side and so many pushy, male (sorry guys) youth workers just had to tell him something or other. i just couldn't get a word in edgewise. after the second seminar i looked at the front row and sitting there was peggy, tony's wife. she is a dear, sweet, spunky woman and i decided to make her acquaintance.

after introducing myself i asked if she could tell me how to get his attention. she told me that one page typed, no more, sent to his office at the school with an overview of what i wanted him to know would be the best way. i thanked her and left him to the swarms of pushy youth workers.

that same week tony's son bart's ministry, mission year had a booth in the exhibit hall. one of the goals of exhibitors is to get addresses for their mailing list. to do this a lot of the booths give away free ipods, laptops, gamecubes, etc. well mission year was having a 'free lunch with tony campolo'. i saw that and thought 'okay god, i'm calling your bluff, if this is real (and trust me i doubted it with nearly ever fiber of my being) i need to win that lunch.

you had to be on site during the draw to win. i found out when i got there there would be four winners. they picked the names and the final entry wasn't present. i was so disappointed. i really wanted it to be real. the girl reached into the bowl and pulled my name out.

i got to have lunch with tony and peggy, and three other very pushy youthworkers (i know you all aren't, but how could someone sit at lunch with tony campolo and decide that what they had to say was more important than what he or peggy had to say?? they commandeered the whole conversation) but i didn't care. i knew the lunch wasn't the time to get his attention, i just wanted confirmation. and i got it. i knew that when i said "i am the red haired woman you had lunch with in pittsburgh" he would know who i was.

i got home, typed up my one page, put it in a big, official envelope and mailed it away. i dusted off my hands and thought "good, now that is DONE". about 10 days later i had a letter from tony telling me that he loved my idea, i was to put together my board and enroll at eastern for their module masters degree in microbusiness where we would make this the project for the year and get it off the ground.

i shook, i cried, i called those who were in my tribe. i was dumbfounded. now i had to talk to my husband. in his defense (which by the way, he has repented of all of this, but at the time it was dastardly indeed) we had just moved to a new, huge church and had two pre-school aged children. he nay-sayed and bemoaned the possibilities that this could be real, that this could be god and that this could be for me. with my background i had two HUGE hurdles to overcome, patriarchy and the silent god. if the 'head of the household said no it meant no' and who was i to think that god really spoke to me?

i folded. i had no idea how to tell him i wasn't who he thought i was. it must have all been a mistake. the door slammed shut and i never even wrote him back to at least say thank you. it is the biggest regret of my life.

but i know that god is the god of second chances, and this idea really has legs. i don't know if it is for now, and looking back it probably wasn't for 'then' either - but it is really good and god did speak to me, and one of my heroes spoke truth into my life in a way i will never forget.

so while it might not ever look like i dreamed, the seed to feed the hungry has been placed deep within my soul and i know that it is a call on my life. thank you kristen for your question and encouragement. i need it. it's a lonely call and not immediately gratifying. you can see from above that i get easily discouraged. i need stamina and steam and a tribe. if you are the praying type please pray for me. i truly long to fulfill this and put it into the hands of those who can take this dream and make it a reality.

dreaming

time has a beautiful (and horrible) photo essay of mlk jr's last days here

can anyone say intervention?

will's connections from last night's speech ring my bell this morning:

willzhead: Reaction to Bush Speech

can anyone say intervention?

will's connections from last night's speech ring my bell this morning:

willzhead: Reaction to Bush Speech

i thought god grew tired of us

sundance film award winner about the lost boys of sudan, 'god grew tired of us' is about to be released, you can see the incredibly moving trailer here:

god grew tired of us

make affluence history!

oh this is brilliant. bart campolo just blogged on geez magazine's new 'sponsor a child' program for rich kids.

seriously. it's brilliant culture jamming.

make affluence history.

cross cultural contact between your child and a family living in poverty. open up the world. change everything.

i've already signed up pink and buck.

i'm stealing this manifesto

RWK is so generous i don't think he'll mind:

The 'Following Jesus' Manifesto

1. Stop talking about Jesus. Just stop. If we loved the people around us half as much as we say we love Jesus the rest of this manifesto would be entirely redundant.
2. Live a secret life. Invest the time, effort and vulnerability necessary to delve deeply into the scripture and prayer. Spend long periods of time in stillness. There is no shortcut to this, there is no other way. Without a deep and secret life we soon find ourselves talking about Jesus instead of being like Jesus.
3. Stop pretending. I'm a Christian, and I suck. So do you. Let's get that out of the way, shall we?
4. Give more than you get. There will always be more than enough.
5. Be present for those around you. Following Jesus has nothing to do with your work, your resume or your income. In fact, nothing that matters does.
6. Treasure broken-ness. Our broken places are sacred spaces in our heart. Honour them. Value them. In doing so you love the unlovely, publicly declaring the beauty of God's image in everyone. Greet the broken with comfort and cool water.
7. Throw a party.
8. Know Jesus well enough to recognize him on the street. This is rather important, because he can always be found on the street - and he usually looks more like a pan-handler than a preacher.
9. Accept ingratitude and abuse as a fixed cost. Embrace them, and then go the extra mile.
10. If you follow Jesus, you will anger religious people. This is how you will know.

new way to help out (red)emption

while looking up a recipe at the simply recipes blog for carnitas and i saw an ad for 'the find.com' and clicked on it because they said they'd donate $1.00 per person who searches for something RED on their site.

always one to want to help out (especially if it's for a great cause - doctors without borders) i clicked and searched. now you can too:

thefind.com - red search donates $1.00 to doctors without borders

and don't forget - if you haven't donated your $10.00 CDN to (red)emption you can do so today!! you've got only 20 more days until it closes up shop!

(red)emption

world aids day 2006

in case you've missed it, today is world aids day. That used to be something that made me roll my eyes, sit in judgment and assume i'm better than the rest of the world. i'm so glad that isn't true of me today. it's about the only thing to be glad of in regard to aids though. there is some good news on the horizon, but too much is depressing and disheartening. the commitments made by countries, while not being large enough to begin with aren't even being fulfilled as promised.

who will hold them to their promises? fiddling while rome burns. so, instead of focusing on the things that aren't happening i want to draw your attention to the things that are.

as i type saddleback church is holding a global aids summit. incredible what a little pillow talk can do. thank you kay!

the other amazing news is that bill clinton has been working tirelessly with drug companies in india to create meds that are less expensive and easier to take and will prolong life of those who have access to it.

so, not all bad news today - but we can make it better next year. really - WE ARE THE PEOPLE WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!

agree? help. please - just $10.00 CDN - donate here:

(red)emption

seattle protest - dec 3rd

great thoughts from shari mac donald on the upcoming seattle protest of the "wee-man woman haters club" here:

they thinks we doest protest too much

if you are in the northwest i encourage you to join. information here:

people against fundamentalism

UPDATE: rose madrid-swetman has blogged of the sit-down, face to face meeting held nov. 30th, so has mark driscoll. i must say that this turn of events makes my heart glad. i hope the protest continues as planned as they are using his own words to remind those in his pews of the damage they have had. i pray the future of the woman haters club and that it also grows into maturity to see the true potential that the other half of the kingdom of god truly has.

UPDATE #2 - wow - that was fast, as soon as i posted the above i checked my email and the link for people against fundamentalism cancellation of the protest because their objectives had been met.

wow! this was a beautiful way of drawing attention to this ugliness - i am so glad paul's courage and foresight has brought about such progress. thank you for standing up against this!

a bully culture

david byrne of talking heads fame has a fascinating blog. he posted his election day thoughts here and said something that resonated deeply with me:

I sense that the balance of power in the house and senate and the rollback of the neocon agenda is only part of the job ahead, as the country has been inundated with bully culture, the culture of greed, for at least a dozen years. For many young professionals, that’s all they know in their working lives — the attitude of winner takes all, bigger smashes smaller and do it if you can get away with it. It might take a while to allow another more humane culture of getting along and nurturing each other and benefiting from each other’s skills and knowledge to rise from the ashes. At present ashes are pretty much all there is. Social animals know better than this — they seem to instinctively know that there are limits to what the bosses and the alpha males can get away with, and that cooperation within the group is how the group survives. Checks and balances — something that’s been missing for a while.

I sense this culture every day, on the streets and in the media. Every time a cop car from my local precinct runs a red light or speeds down a one way street the wrong way (just because they can, no other reason) and every time an SUV with darkened windows muscles other cars, bikers, old ladies and kids out of way — sometimes narrowly missing pedestrians as they run a red light — well, it’s all been sanctioned by Bush and Cheney and the senators and congressmen who allied themselves with these bastards. They reflect and encourage one another. Push in line, build your building right in front of someone else’s, destroy a neighborhood, be a winner, a survivor. To me, those reality shows “teach” bully culture — that’s the lesson that is imparted — and that includes ones like Laguna Beach, which seems to promote backstabbing, lying, duplicitous behavior and entitlement — all in a world where no one works.

what are we teaching our children?

thank you ted haggard!

i know, strange title, but i am so grateful that what is spilling out over this mess is a dialog about pastors, christians, evangelicals and their views on sex, power and sexual addictions. we are all talking about it now.

i am horrified at some of the responses i am reading though. i am learning so much about people's theology and what they believe about sex, god and women. i think you can learn more about people when they talk about sex and money than when they talk about church and jesus.

i think that's why the bible spends so much time on these issues. they show the heart and soul of a person more clearly than hiding behind flowery church-talk.

if i can introduce anything into the dialog it would be this:

SEXUAL ADDICTION ISN'T ABOUT SEX

please understand this people.

alcoholics aren't really thirsty people.

alcoholism isn't about alcohol.

drug addiction isn't about drugs.

and sexual addiction isn't about sex.

hotel rooms and fat preachers wives aren't the reason that pastors stumble into sin.

addiction, especially the sexual type happens when there are broken parts of the past that have injured the body, soul and spirit of the addict. masturbation, pornography and acting out sexually feeds those broken areas in a counterfeit way that masks what we truly want and can't seem to find a way to achieve.

true intimacy and wholeness sexually would fill and replace the need for this acting out behavior, but because so very few of us have the ability or help to navigate this, we settle for the counterfeit and it becomes the fix.

blaming other things and people for our brokenness is NO WAY to find healing. owning our junk, confessing to god, to ourselves and another human being is THE ONLY WAY we can break through the shame we carry so that we can find the healing and wholeness we all long to have in our lives.

i have a precious son (i also have a precious daughter, we're just not navigating this area right now in her life yet) who has awakened to the opposite sex. he was shown pornography a couple of months ago by a friend and since that time we have been dialogging about it.

this morning he awoke and found me at the computer, reading about the ted haggard story, and said "mom, i'm having a hard time when i see someone not thinking about them without any clothes on" (he is so honest and real, i respect this child-like innocence he brings to this so much).

first i prayed for wisdom. and then i reminded him about what we have been talking about for the past couple of months. this is about building muscles. spiritual muscles, that will help him navigate this journey called growing up. we talked about 'taking every thought captive', and that temptation isn't a sin. those pictures will pop into his head for the rest of his life. learning to set them aside and see that person as real and an image-bearer, instead of reducing them to a 2 dimensional picture or image. this is what will help him navigate this.

i reminded him that i must do this. daddy must do this. and pink must do this. all for ourselves. it's not something we can do for each other. it is our responsibility to learn, stretch and grow.

it is a very sad thing to hear of someone, with much influence, reducing women to ornaments and add-ons to their lives. it makes me weep. i would ask that we would each use what influence we are given to speak out loudly against this. it is theology like this that feeds the broken kingdom that cannot truly minister the love of god.

"There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life," Haggard wrote.

how much more powerful would it have been to his congregation if he had started HERE and not ended HERE?

how much light and life could have been brought into the life of his congregation if he had admitted how hard it was to live his life? love his wife? parent his children? how much more could people have learned from him if he lived transparently - free of the shame and owning his junk instead of the portrayal of the shiny plastic christian with no problems and free of struggle?

if we confess our sins one to another, pray for each other, we will be healed.

james 5:16