hunger can lead to more life

you can listen to this 3 minute "this i believe" here on NPR:

Strangers Bring Us Closer to God - Sara Miles

As heard on NPR's All Things Considered, May 5, 2008.

Until recently, I thought being a Christian was all about belief. I didn’t know any Christians, but I considered them people who believed in the virgin birth, for example, the way I believed in photosynthesis or germs.

But then, in an experience I still can’t logically explain, I walked into a church and a stranger handed me a chunk of bread. Suddenly, I knew that it was made out of real flour and water and yeast––yet I also knew that God, named Jesus, was alive and in my mouth.

That first communion knocked me upside-down. Faith turned out not to be abstract at all, but material and physical. I’d thought Christianity meant angels and trinities and being good. Instead, I discovered a religion rooted in the most ordinary yet subversive practice: a dinner table where everyone is welcome, where the despised and outcasts are honored.

I came to believe that God is revealed not only in bread and wine during church services, but whenever we share food with others––particularly strangers. I came to believe that the fruits of creation are for everyone, without exception––not something to be doled out to insiders or the “deserving.”

So, over the objections of some of my fellow parishioners, I started a food pantry right in the church sanctuary, giving away literally tons of oranges and potatoes and Cheerios around the very same altar where I’d eaten the body of Christ. We gave food to anyone who showed up. I met thieves, child abusers, millionaires, day laborers, politicians, schizophrenics, gangsters, bishops—all blown into my life through the restless power of a call to feed people.

At the pantry, serving over 500 strangers a week, I confronted the same issues that had kept me from religion in the first place. Like church, the food pantry asked me to leave certainty behind, tangled me up with people I didn’t particularly want to know and scared me with its demand for more faith than I was ready to give.

Because my new vocation didn't turn out to be as simple as going to church on Sundays and declaring myself “saved.” I had to trudge in the rain through housing projects, sit on the curb wiping the runny nose of a psychotic man, take the firing pin out of a battered woman's Magnum and then stick the gun in a cookie tin in the trunk of my car. I had to struggle with my atheist family, my doubting friends, and the prejudices and traditions of my new-found church.

But I learned that hunger can lead to more life—that by sharing real food I’d find communion with the most unlikely people; that by eating a piece of bread I’d experience myself as part of one body. This I believe: that by opening ourselves to strangers, we will taste God.

Sara Miles is founder of The Food Pantry at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. A former restaurant cook, Miles is a journalist who writes about military affairs, politics and culture, and is author of the memoir Take This Bread.

again, thanks bob!

fathers and daughters

neatorama had a link to an unusual article for them, they're usually fun facts, funny videos and interesting stories - this is something i wouldn't have found on my own, but followed the link and read the full article. while not a father i fully appreciated the author's dilemma - how to raise his new daughter in a world where she is valued and honored for far more than the media tells women they should be:

Best Life Magazine: Family & Fatherhood - Bimbo Proof the Nursery: How to be sure your daughter doesn't turn out like Lindsay Lohan, by Steve Almond

It’s here that my old Dude Self and my brand-new Dad Self come to blows. Because as much as I want to check out Paris and Lindsay, I know I’m harming my daughter by doing so. For one thing, I’m sending her a very clear message: Daddy loves sluts. Be a slut and Daddy will love you. And if you don’t believe that a 1-year-old picks up on messages, you’ve never seen my daughter in action. She is intensely focused on everything in her environment, especially whatever I happen to be looking at.

But even if I ogled Paris in private, I would still be contributing to the Culture of Paris, helping to shape a world in which young women win adulation for making porn videos and getting arrested, rather than for, say, curing cancer or brokering peace in the Middle East or being a mom. If we all stopped consuming celebrity scandals, they would cease to exist. If a media slut goes to jail and no one’s there to film the perp walk, does it really matter?

...

I want Josephine to grow up in a world where her ambitions will be about what she wants, not what the panting men of the world want from her. My daughter is not a commodity. Her heart can be broken. Her spirit can be wounded. And there is no accessory that can rescue her from these dangers.

this reminds me a lot of a post i wrote four years ago that still seems to find it's way into a lot of google searches: daddy's girl - an open letter to fathers of daughters

seeing the size of the cloth

a reader of this blog and a new friend just sent me this poem - i thought it was so beautiful i should share it here:

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes any sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and send you out in the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shehab Nye

via - tikkun

don't miss this blog post

thank you sarah louise for linking to this. i laughed until i almost threw up - it hurt i laughed so much:

Strap in, Shut up and Hold on: We're going in

i laughed so hard i cried

do not read this with food or liquid in your mouth...

babies crush theories - entry 3

bread, not a stone

thoughtful christian has an amazing post that ties into much of what i've been thinking about these past couple of months and i didn't want to loose the link:

bread, not a stone

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!

i weigh 224 lbs.

this changes so much for me.



thank you jen

take vitamin d to cut cancer risk

heard on the cbc last night and found the article to link to here:

Boost vitamin D supplements: Canadian Cancer Society

"We're recommending 1,000 IUs daily because the current evidence suggests this amount will help reduce cancer risk with the least potential for harm," said Heather Logan, the society's director of cancer control policy.

"More research is needed to clearly define the amount of Vitamin D that will maximize health benefits."

As more evidence on vitamin D becomes available, the society plans to update its recommendations.

Also Friday, a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed a 60- to 77-per-cent drop in cancer rates among postmenopausal women who took vitamin D combined with calcium, compared with a placebo.

stephanie is making lace

my dear friend stephanie is making lace over at just etchings - i encourage you to go read her wonderful story:
Loose Threads - Exquisite Lace

counting to 12

Keeping Quiet

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Pablo Neruda - Source: translated by Alistair Reid in Extravagaria

via - inward/outward

sobrie-tees

found these while looking for some big-book quotes - and i thought they were too funny not to share:

sobrie-tees

sleeping with bread

i'm only on page 20 and i could quote 10 paragraphs here. you have GOT TO get this book! it is linking together so many areas of my life and my journey and giving me the tool that will change everything. i know that sounds like a wild claim - but i truly believe it.

if i never teach my children anything else this will be the one thing i want them to grasp. on page 19 they quote st. ignatius' the spiritual exercises where he writes:

It is wisely said, "Experience is the best teacher." ... The primary and most obvious reason for this is that revelation is not over, God is constantly revealing himself to us in our experience... Of course, the Bible is divine revelation -- no one denies that. But so is life! It is precisely because God is present to life and available to human experience that we have a divinely inspired story to tell, and that the story once told is revelation."

(emphasis mine)

the part i want to highlight here is where it all connected for me - my story, my recovery, my personality and my strengths and weaknesses. sheila fabricant linn writes on pages 14 & 15 a bit of her story - she is telling about a meaningful father-type relationship she had with a professor that meant everything to her and evaporated one day. she tried quite a few times to reconnect with him and he wasn't receptive. by working the examen and telling her experience of this pain to others she realizes the following:

Because my mother was mentally ill and unable to connect with her children, I learned as a small child to feel ashamed of my needs and desires, especially needs for connectedness with other human beings. It was this voice of shame that told me I should give up on trying to heal my relationship with Alex. When I considered giving into this voice, I felt desolation. When I got in touch with the consolation I felt each time I told the story of Alex, it showed me how to find healing: by asking to be heard.

The pattern I have described in myself, of feeling ashamed of my needs and desires, is an aspect of co-dependency. I behave like a co-dependent whenever I orient myself around the reality of others rather than living in my own reality and honoring my needs. Many people working in the field of addictions are saying that co-dependency and the core emotion of shame underlie all other addictions.

I need the examen to help me in my recovery. I her book, Co-Dependence, Anne Wilson Schaef says that for a recovering co-dependent "even the smallest lie can plunge us back into our disease." In other words, distorting the truth of who I am in any way (to please others, to meet my expectations of who I should be or what I should feel) is like an alcoholic taking that first drink. I need the examen each day because it helps me get better at telling the truth about who I am and what I need."

insert hallelujah chorus here.

here is the definition of consolation and desolation they give from st. ignatius:

"He expected that God would speak through our deepest feelings and yearnings, what he called "consolation" and "desolation." For us, consolation is whatever helps us connect with ourselves, others, God and the universe. Desolation is whatever disconnects us. Ignatius recommended returning to our deepest moments of consolation and desolation." - pg. 19

it's all starting to make sense! yippee!

have to get to the food bank as i'm helping out there again today! hope you're all well!

god laughs & plays - david james duncan

this review has been staring me in the face for months - i finished the book (which took far too long - but it was too rich to read quickly) back during march break, but because my kids were home i couldn't string two intelligent thoughts together to actually write it then. so today i will be writing this and giving it far less passion that i would have (unfortunately) written with at the close of the book - but i will do my best to give it the regard i think it is due.

david james duncan is mind-blowing for me - i don't agree with nearly everything he writes - but it was like sitting down to a celebration turkey dinner - eating the meat and leaving the bones - the meat was some of the most juicy, tender, rich meat that i have ever found. he writes with the passion of a man who has spent much time pondering and in tune with both god and nature and thinking big deep thoughts that spring from that time alone.

thoughts he wasn't churning from others - but from a furnace rooted within himself - i loved the originality of many of this thoughts - thoughts i had never been exposed to and introductions to concepts that are fuel for my own furnace. thank you.

my truly favorite part of the book i have already blogged on here:

benguines

i loved being introduced to duncan's inspiration - meister eckhart and his dear friends the benguines - women of incredible passion, love of god and the heart of being christ to their world. it is one of my life's goals to emulate them, learn more about them and one day begin a benguinage in their honor. duncan's honor of this mystical female touched something subterranean within me and gave a structure to the passion i have to create community and a sustainable, creative lifestyle that truly reaches to the heart of helping those most in need of this life. i truly had no idea that women like these had gone before without being nuns. it truly was life changing for me.

most of the time i read this book i found pencils far away - so i ended up dog-earing my copy of the book so much - the deeper the turn of a corner the more profound the affect the idea put forth resonated with me.

the deepest corner points to the time in the chapter entitled "De-bore-HA!" when this grade-school storyteller realized that loosing his life in the story he told was part of christ's very own words "He that loseth his life shall save it." He also quotes Flannery O'Connor "No art is sunk in the self, but rather, in art the self becomes self-forgetful in order to meet the demands of the thing seen and the thing being made." And W.H. Auden "To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention - on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol or the True God - that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying."

this gave me back something i had lost. i'm still furnacing what that is, but the beauty of being lost in creation as a prayer to the creator deeply moves me in at a level so deep i have rarely felt it's equal.

the other deep place i found in the book was when he spoke of trying to verbalize a deep spiritual moment of loss in his life and finds words strangely inadequate:

"When I later tried to write of the experience, I ran into a familiar wall: the event had not really been personal, it had been spiritual, and only the spirit has spiritual experiences. So when the limited "I" tries to write of such experiences that the soul and mystery of them vanish and what remains are what Merton calls "itsy-bitsy statues" of a spiritual experience.

I abandoned my attempt. Years passed. Then one day, while I was lost in the effort to create a long work of fiction, a character in my story unexpectedly, almost effortlessly underwent the very experience that I, as an "I" had been unable to capture at all."

this is why fiction is so important. this is why tolkein and lewis had to create another world to tell their stories - this is why we must keep reading and writing and watching the stories, because the truth dwells there in such a safe way that our hearts are able to find it when we are ready. this is why story finds such a sacred place in my soul. it gives voice to the "I" when I am unable to find it alone.

i think too that this is why it is so hard to blog on a trip to africa (mike) or my experience at "the path" at linwood house years ago - those deep places were spiritual, not personal - we find there truths that will filter into and out of our lives in ways that are not intentional. no personal words will do - they would only be 'itsy-bitsy statues' instead of the tribute we long to give them as they have played such monumental places in our lives.

i also blogged the last highlight i want to make here in a post for lisa samson - all of us who have the author buried deep in our souls need to know this truth. duncan understands this and verbalizes it so importantly here that i'm going to quote it again. i truly believe that one of the best ways to live out kingdom compassion and justice is by telling stories:

One of our greatest human traits is compassion, which means, literally "to suffer with another." But this high art is seldom born in an instant as a response to watching the TV "news," or even in response to firsthand experience. More often compassion's seeds are sewn via preliminary magic known as empathy. And empathy begins with a fictive act; What would it be like to be that black girl four rose in front of me? a little white girl wonders in school one morning. Her imagination sets to work, creating unwritten fiction.

In her mind she becomes the black girl, dons her clothes, accent, skin, joins her friends after school, goes home to her family, lives that life. No firsthand experience is taking place. Nothing "newsworthy" is happening. Yet a white-girl-turned-fictitiously-black is linking skin hue to life, skin hue to choice of friends and neighborhood, skin hue to opportunity and history. Words she used without thinking - African, color, white -- feel suddenly different. And when her imaginary game is over they still sound different. Via sheer fiction, empathy enters a human heart.

To be a Christian, a Buddhist, a Muslim, is to immerse oneself in unstinting fiction making. Jesus's words "Love they neighbor as thyself," to cite a famously ignored example, demand an arduous imaginative act. This deceptively simple line orders me, as I look at you, to imagine that I am seeing not you, but me, and then to treat this imaginative me, alias you, as if you are me. And for how long? Till the day I die!

Jesus orders anyone who's serious about Him to commit the "Neighbor = Me" fiction until they forget for good which of the two of themselves to cheat in a business deal or abandon in a crisis or smart-bomb in a war -- at which point their imaginative act, their fiction making, will have turned Christ's bizarre words into a reality and they'll be saying with Mother Teresa, "I see Christ in every woman and man."

True, the ability to love neighbor as self is beyond the reach of most people. But the attempt to imagine thy neighbor as thyself is the daily work of every literary writer and reader I know. Literature's sometimes troubling, sometimes hilarious depictions of those annoying buffoons, our neighbors, may be the greatest gift we writers give the world when they become warm-up exercises for the leap toward actually loving our neighbors. Ernest Hemingway's is the definitive statement about this. "Make it up so truly," he said, "that later it will happen that way." This, I dare say, is Christ-like advice, not just to those practicing the art form known as fiction writing, but to anyone trying to live a faith, defend the weak, or sustain this world through love.

as you can tell, this book moved me deeply. i look forward to reading duncan's fiction. while i can't recommend every thought or premise he ponders and writes on i will highly recommend this book for anyone who longs to write, think deeply on spiritual truth and enjoys the natural beauty of a trout stream from the eyes of one who i imagine finds god there.

disclosure: i was provided this book through adam walker cleaveland's blog pomomusings and triad institutes generosity.

thinking blogger meme

sarah louise of the many pink sneakers was kind enough to nominate me as one of her 5 thinking bloggers - it's a meme you've probably seen floating around the blogosphere.

the part i play is following up by naming 5 blogs that make me think - far too many have already been nominated, but i think i have 5 on a list that i at least haven't seen post their 5 - so hopefully i don't overlap.

willzhead - i emailed will about 2 months ago because i had an 'ah-ha' - i had been grieving how frail tony campolo seemed at the last NYWC (he looked FANTASTIC on the hour last month, so i'm not so freaked out anymore) but i was telling god that he had better get on the stick and raise up another prophet quickly to fill tony's shoes - i had a sense after that prayer that god said 'it will take many to fill those shoes" - and will samson was one of those people i know god is going to use to speak into these deep places that tony has always proclaimed. i have yet to meet will and his amazing wife - but hope to one day!

waving or drowning - mike todd is another prophet whose voice i adore. he is so passionate and gifted and i can't wait to see the platform god is going to give him. i have had the opportunity to meet mike a few years ago at linwood house, an incredible ministry he and his wife work very closely with.

the corner - bob carlton is a most gracious man -with a sense of humor and the ability to tie together spirit, truth, concept and life in a beautiful way. he regularly makes me think and i can't count how many times he's given word to thoughts that have been hovering on the edges of my mind that haven't found words yet.

best and worst - my anj - oh my anj - she has a perspective on life and love that i've never found in anyone else before. she makes me think and feel and understand and fathom thoughts and ideas that i have to reach on my tippy, tippy toes and can only brush with my fingertips. like that ripe piece of fruit just teasing me on the tree branch over my head. she is strong, she is opinionated and she is woman - i love to hear her roar!

ianua.org - renee, iphy - she's the reason i'm here. reading her words gave me hope that my own story had value. her's has touched my life in the deepest places. places i had blocked out, long ago forgotten, places that i didn't even ever want to know existed. renee lives in those places with integrity and honesty that is so brutal and beautiful - she's like the deepest color of purple that exists - so dark and rich are her words.

too busy cleaning to blog

i'm ridding the house of all virus/cold/infestation germs today - loads and loads of laundry and bleaching everything in sight.

i leave you with my absolutely favorite slice of british comedy - mitchell and webb - this is the one "fit to link to" here on my blog - but if you are brave and have a strong stomach for edgy humor search you tube for "mitchell webb green clarinet" - their scooby doo sketch is also really funny too!

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

max wax

one of my favorite people i've never yet met is max hsu of superchic(k) fame. he's so talented, funny and generous. i remember a couple of years ago opening my inbox to an email from him that said 'thanks for all the nice things you write about superchick" or something like that - totally unsolicited, so incredibly validating.

max has a blog that i read whenever he posts, about 3-4 times a month and today he shows that he's as masterful at storytelling as he is a producing music and photography.

you can find it here:

Life after happily ever after. The true story of a fairy tale ending.

oh, and you have to look at his photos.

and here's a picture of his puppy dog, brynn, that is just too cute for words:

another world is possible

Vol. III Rooftop Introduction

Add to My Profile | More Videos

shane claiborne's myspace

lions, tigers and orangutans oh my!

this story was just what i needed today:

CNN - Tiger, Orangutan babies bond as inseparable playmates