QUESTION: Why are we here doing what we are doing?

ANSWER:  We are here to bear witness to our Lord.

                                                                    

This answer came to me during devotions led by a member of the Jubilee community who was quoting Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement:

We are here to bear witness to our Lord. We are here to follow His lead. We are here to celebrate Him through

these works of mercy... to oppose war and the murder of our fellow human beings, to reach out to all we see and meet. We are not here to prove that our technique of working with the poor is useful, or to prove that we are able to be effective humanitarians... We are responding to a life, to Jesus and how He chose to live...

Day's statement of purpose provides me with a keen insight, one that clarifies and illuminates my life and time at Jubilee. Well now, wait a minute, not just at Jubilee; this insight clarifies and illuminates my life and time anywhere, doesn't it? This thought places wherever I am and whatever I'm doing in the Christian context—that I live to bear witness to God's unfailing love and mercy and choose to live as Jesus bids us live, however imperfectly.

So, on December 20, when I return to the Earlewood community in Columbia and to my faith community at Incarnation Lutheran, each with its set of joys and challenges, my purpose is not to prove how compassionate I am or wipe out the injustices of society or see how many individuals I can serve, but to bear witness to our Lord. Where such witness leads and what results it brings is an open question, a path untraveled.

Sometimes the efforts of those involved in the Catholic Worker Movement were labeled as impractical. I daresay that label is applied to many organizations seeking to alleviate the suffering of those who are hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick, and/or in prison. Again, I resonate with Dorothy Day's response:  “They are right. We are impractical, as one of us put it, as impractical as Calvary.” 

A bigger WE and who is YOU?

I've been musing on the significance of pronouns. In his sermon at the Comer United Methodist Church on World Communion Sunday, Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove used the phrase “a bigger WE.” The text was Jeremiah 29:4-7, where YHWH tells the people of Israel, exiled to Babylon, to settle in there and pray for the welfare of the place. Just like then, diverse groups of people are still coming together because of warfare and other horrendous conditions. As God's children, we are called to become a bigger WE than has previously existed.

And another pronoun. A few weeks ago, we Jubilee volunteers played a game called Win as Much as You Can. Participants play as a team, but within the team are decision-making pairs. The purpose of the game is to acquaint participants with the merits of competition and collaboration. I've seen this game played many times and competition tends to dominate, though collaboration is a clear choice. In debriefing the process, the primary question is who is YOU? The whole team or the pairs? The highest total score is attained by including everybody in the definition of YOU. Apply globally to get the lesson of the game.

And have you ever thought how easily attitudes and talk and actions can transform groups of people into US and THEM? Hmm... barriers identified, injected, oh, so subtly.

And then there's SHE-HE. As a young student learning grammar before the feminism of the 1960s, I wasn't particularly bothered by using HE generically when gender was unknown; I just thought it was weird. I appreciate inclusive language, though, using S/HE, or SHE OR HE, or alternating pronouns. To me, this inclusive approach is appropriate and refreshing. 

One more. IT in Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, is the villain, evil itself, and turns out to be a naked, disembodied brain. Though she hadn't consciously named it IT, Madeleine agreed with a reader's observation that IT “stands for Intellectual Truth as opposed to a truth which involves the whole of us, heart as well as mind... the intellect, when it is not informed by the heart, is evil.”

A bigger WE and who is YOU?  Fun with pronouns.

Slow down, you move too fast...even at Jubilee!

            Remember Paul Simon's free and easy tune Feelin' Groovy? (Also known as The 59^th Street Bridge Song, I just discovered)  Slow down, you move too fast. You got to make the morning last...and so on, lazily kicking cobble stones, talking to a lamppost, watching flowers grow. I have been invoking the opening line as an admonition to myself lately, invoking it in surprise, as I had expected the Jubilee life to move more slowly and be less busy. Nope, and now I'm wondering why I ever thought it would be. Because of the pastoral setting, perhaps, and the daily times for reflection and worship (which are helpful, but still), and the simpler life style minimizing errands and appointments. At any rate, I was wrong!

            One reason for my misconception is obvious. This is important work here, and there is great seriousness about doing it, in the spirit of  “God's work, our hands."* Our 40-hour work week is the beginning point. After hours—after the teaching and driving, cooking and cleaning, planting and harvesting—we have fun getting to know the refugee families better and gather for Bible study or work on projects.

            Another reason for this busyness has bushwhacked me. Somehow, I didn't expect it, even though it is common to any setting:  opportunities. Relevant events—movies and lectures— often associated with the University of Georgia in Athens. Jubilee friends and visitors telling about their adventures. Card games. Adorable children to play with. Scintillating conversations.

            Encompassed in the opportunities is the people factor. Always, people around, who, for this extrovert, present wonderful times of connection and enjoyment, and sometimes they need a little help, or give it. And encompassed in the people factor are family and friends at a distance, and that communication takes time, too.

            We are not like the groovy guy in the song. He's got no deeds to do, mo promises to keep. No, it is not like that here at all. Therefore, just like always, management is required. Set priorities, make choices. Doing so has never been my forté. I want it all. Nevertheless, even though busier than I wish, my soul sings along with the closing of the song, slightly altered:  Life, I love you. All is holy.

*credo of the ELCA

           

My First JP Retreat

 

I don't like the way I'm feeling right now. Funky, out of sorts, at loose ends. Until now, there have been few to none of these moments in the three weeks that I've been at Jubilee. This brief bout with ennui doesn't approach Kathleen Norris's acedia or the “dark agony” described by Henri Nouwen in a piece I read this morning about living in community.

The circumstances:  This Saturday morning (Sept. 5) has been my monthly half day of retreat, and I've slept it away. I am in the retreat shack, encircled by the verdant woods, in splendid isolation, in the silence of nature. My plan was to write reflectively—emails to family, friends, church; possible blog entries; whatever emerged.

After opening the shutters, I settled on the porch and prayed—and slept. I read the provided chapter excerpted from The Intentional Christian Community Handbook about A Spiritual Life for (and in Spite of) Community—and slept and dreamt. I ate a cheddar biscuit left over from last night's supper and sat back down in the chair on the porch and dozed some more. Then, I came inside and hooked up my computer and laid down on the bed for one last little nap--and slept for hours.

Unworthiness and guilt are flirting with me, though I am not much enticed because resting is obviously what I needed. And no wonder, with the hot, humid days of teaching and pulling weeds and picking in the garden and cooking and washing dishes and playing with the other volunteers and partners and on and on. Life is full and busy and nights are often restless, if not sleepless. Oh, and I'm 66 years old; there's that.

Even in this gracious, delightful community of like-minded believers, feeling odd and out of place is flirting with me, too—and I am enticed. I don't know what's happening back there and how I can fit in. There was a “Last Blast for Summer Almost Past” festival in Comer that I had thought I might get in on this afternoon, but I've missed that.  Other vols and I have talked of carrying a picnic to a nearby park later today. Maybe we will.

But I am here and where are they? Alone in a crowd is how I'm feeling. Odd man out. And yet I am confident that all I need to do when I'm done here is pack up my stuff and walk back up to K(oinoia)-House and this melancholy will vanish. Waking up from daytime slumber can be disorienting, and that's part of what's going on. Already, I've shaken the physical stupor and am feeling refreshed.

Thank you, God, for most this amazing day and whatever it may bring next. Now, I will trudge through the woods back to community, and see what's cookin'.

PLEASE NOTE: On the occasion of moving to Jubilee Partners as a volunteer in August 2014, I am taking up my blog again, after nearly two years of it lying fallow.

      All things new

      Paw paw is a fruit.

Baw Baw is a person.

Eritrea is a country.

Comer is a town.

Karen (Kah ren') is a group of people.

All this is new to me since coming to Jubilee Partners on August 16. These are facts I have learned, experiences that I am having. Paw paws grow here and are mango-like, though smaller and less juicy with multiple pits. Baw Baw is my student learning English as her third language, and we are fast friends, and she teaches me, too. Eritrea is in the Horn of Africa and our newest family is Kunama, a minority group marginalized there due, in part, to scarce resources. Comer, in outlying Athens, Georgia, is a mile away and seems a welcoming place with its village green, a couple gas stations, Food Lane grocery, Family Dollar, Chef Burger and Maggie's cafe. Karen people, as I get to know them, tell the story of fleeing persecution in Burma.

My mind expands with new information, for example that the U.S. accepts more refugees than all other countries combined, around 70,000 in 2013.  

My soul stretches with new relationships and heartfelt worship.

My body tries to keep up with it all, actually doing quite well, relishing even pulling invasive weeds in the heat and humidity and the heavy duty cleaning to get cabins ready for incoming families. Teaching Baw Baw is considered a work assignment but is pure joy. Preparing meals and washing dishes is fun, shoulder to shoulder with others.

Thank you, God, for this place and these people, who glorify you and witness to all things being made new through the power of your love. Amen!