Series of important questions

What is community? If community is who you run into naturally, is the fom your community? Is it mine? I don't know. Perhaps, this is an important question.

Blessing One Another

To bless means to say good things. We have to bless one another constantly. Parents need to bless their children, children their parents, husbands their wives, wives their husbands, friends their friends. In our society, so full of curses, we must fill each place we enter with our blessings. We forget so quickly that we are God's beloved children and allow the many curses of our world to darken our hearts. Therefore we have to be reminded of our belovedness and remind others of theirs. Whether the blessing is given in words or with gestures, in a solemn or an informal way, our lives need to be blessed lives.

These reflections are taken from Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey.

Reflections from El Salvador 01

I'd like to share some reflections from my time in El Salvador, these are personal reflections I wrote in my journal while there. There's a consistent theme I found in my life during that week, and in know way do I imply that this is relevant to everyone, just thought I'd share a few spiritual happenings from the trip.

12 August 2009

And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

“Worthy are you, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they existed and were created.”

- Revelation 4.9-11, ESV

So many crowns.

So many pursuits, so many things that I must lay at the feet of Jesus.

Some pure and good, some noble and just.

But all fall short of a deep love with Jesus. A communion of divine proportions.

This is what we are made for.

To love Him.

To love him deeply, passionatly, foolishly, recklessly, and dangerously.

Out of this love, from this love comes loving our neighbors, loving each other, out of this love is a fountain of Life, a living water that will quench all thirst.

We will be satisfied.

Today is a great day, so early and beautiful.

Happiness is carried on the morning breeze, joy splashing against the shores with the waves.

Amidst this moment, I feel as if my heart, not even weeks ago, was as hard as stone. Cold and dark.

Yet now, the dark cold winters night retreats from my soul in the warm glow of a sunrise. A new day.

May Jesus be with us today, may his love go with us. Peace, love, and joy in our hearts, gifts to the beautiful people we go out to.

Words That Create Community

The word is always a word for others. Words need to be heard. When we give words to what we are living, these words need to be received and responded to. A speaker needs a listener. A writer needs a reader.

When the flesh - the lived human experience - becomes word, community can develop. When we say, "Let me tell you what we saw. Come and listen to what we did. Sit down and let me explain to you what happened to us. Wait until you hear whom we met," we call people together and make our lives into lives for others. The word brings us together and calls us into community. When the flesh becomes word, our bodies become part of a body of people.

These reflections are taken from Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey.

Wake up, finally

In the past month my life has been flipped upside down in the most wonderful way possible. No matter how many classes we went to, books we read, or advice we got from anyone and everyone...nothing fully prepared me for the moment standing in the delivery room, when one second there were five of us in the room, and the next there were six. I still can't get over it. The best part is, I thought I had a plan. What a fool I am.

For the better part of the last 13 years I have worked with kids...large groups, small groups, one on one, kindergartners to college aged, affluent to needy. In all of that experience I had developed at least a few ideas of what I wanted to be as a parent. Some of ideas came from watching great parents do great things, some from watching kids who couldn't get an adult to give them the time of day, some from child development courses in graduate school, some from sitting next to kids at Wendy's. But in a single moment, all of that experience and time with kids seemed to fade into a mass of nothingness. When everything in me seemed to scream "JASON, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE DOING!!!"

The truth is there are a whole lot of things out of my control. Ellery will grow up to be who she will, and she will experience so many things I can't even begin to imagine for her, both good and bad. But laying heavy on my heart is how to expose her to things that I hope will build compassion, love, honor and responsibility in her. How to let her taste God's love for other people in a way that breaks her heart and molds her spirit. One overwhelming thought has struck me as I have tried to think about how to be intentional about exposing her to a life of compassion...the thing that will make the biggest difference, where she will most see God's heart for his world, is not in special trips or rare events, but in how we choose to live every day, what we talk about when we are together, what becomes common place, not what is extraordinary. Suddenly the Shema means so much more to me.

Even more challenging to me is this deep sense that I want to figure out how to display compassion and love more in the everyday fabric of my life. I am excited for what it can mean for my family, for me, and for my daughter. But to be honest, I am a little saddened. Because I know that my daughter is not the only one that my life should be communicating God's love to. Why is it that it has taken me being father before I decided it was time to get intentional about things God has entrusted to me my whole life? So in the joy there is a sense of regret. I am thankful to wake up, but know God has been calling me to wake up for some time, and it took the lifeshattering joy of my daughter's birth for me to finally respond.

The Cupid Shuffle

I've been in Mt. Ida Arkansas for the last week working with Camp Ozark on launching a camp blog, and various video and creative projects. 

Each night there is a camp wide special activity. Last night the activity was 'Pump it Up", which includes several large inflatable obstacle courses, games, loud music all wrapped up with some group dancing. 

At some point they began to play the song the cupid shuffle, and Scott Torn turns to me and says, "Asher, its time for you to Cupid Shuffle." 

So Cupid shuffle I did. 

There I am, out in the middle of a field with several hundred young people, in the cool summer evening, dancing. 

At Camp Ozark there is freedom to do the cupid shuffle. 

I'm not usually one to dance, but this was a LOT of fun, and to be honest, for me it was the peak of the experience you get when you are at Camp Ozark. 

The experience that you can come to Camp Ozark and you are free be who you are, and that is a lot of fun. 

Free to be yourself.

You're not the athlete. 

You're not the star. 

You're not the bully. 

You're not the bullied.

You are you and you can experience joy and excitement. In this you experience a freedom, a joy, a connectedness to a deep part of us that I think God created and put in us. 

Later that night, heading to bed, I began to think about the world outside of Camp Ozark and the freedom we may or may not experience in it, and I began to think about how can I make the world around me, a place of joy. 

A world free to dance. 

A world connected deeply to its Maker.

Jesus' Compassion

Jesus is called Emmanuel which means "God-with-us" (see Matthew 1: 22-23). The great paradox of Jesus' life is that he, whose words and actions are in no way influenced by human blame or praise but are completely dependent on God's will, is more "with" us than any other human being.

Jesus' compassion, his deep feeling-with us, is possible because his life is guided not by human respect but only by the love of his heavenly Father. Indeed, Jesus is free to love us because he is not dependent on our love.

These reflections are taken from Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey.