EMC authors focused on urban themes in Denver, Colorado, but we soon found that our conversation about faith, action, and imagination stirred a hunger much broader in scope. So, as our new banner suggests, you'll be hearing here from all over the world. Our aim remains, however, depth more than breadth. We explore big themes in small places; we listen to people others ignore.
We've stashed archives from the old website here, and while some posts are dated, others are definitely worth revisiting. For instance, Sarah Brown's watercolor "I Am," which appeared here first but has made the rounds on the internet since, has been our most searched-for piece. Spend a few quiet moments with this image, and you'll see why.
Everything is broken here, it's a bit of an inside joke. The middle window in the living room doesn't open without falling all the way off. It's broken. The door to the bedroom won’t stay shut. It's broken. Sometimes you get tiny electric shocks when you have your hands under the tap in the bathroom sink. It’s not technically broken, but seems potentially hazardous. We hang clothes out to dry on the line strung between the tree and the shed in the back yard because the dryer is technically, and in every other fashion, broken.
There is a girl here whom I am beginning to love like the way you love the future, in the way you can love the possible and embrace what cannot yet be seen.
I hadn't seen this video until Kris Rocke mentioned it in commenting on Sarah Thompson's post, below. It certainly stirred my spirit in deep ways today.
Last summer Sarah and I were together at "Camp Joy" with the young people she mentions, who live with daily abuse in a government orphange. Our theme that week was Immanuel - God With Us. Though that is often celebrated as a Christmas theme, our image for the week was the cross... that ancient and enduring symbol of God as abandoned, weak, and shamed with humanity. Sarah, I couldn't help remembering that time with our dear young friends as I saw the images of Christ in the JC video. Though it is a haunting piece (originally by Nine Inch Nails), it hints at the deepest power of the cross: that in God's humanity we might be embraced, healed, and honored.
I made my way atop of the ravine battling the overgrown grass on the edge of the cliff. The unbearable stench of the world below came upon me like nothing I had ever felt before. Perhaps it was the heat mingled so seamlessly with the scent, or the force of the wind that overpowered my large frame as if God himself were blowing from his lips. Or it may have been the simple fact that I wasn’t prepared to encounter God’s visible absence on that day. Whatever it was, as I laid my eyes on the dumpsite, unable to distinguish people from trash, I could have easily collapsed there, wept for hours, and then rolled over into the abyss of garbage to my death in honor of those suffering below.
Confession: I have an inferiority complex about the organization that I lead – Mile High Ministries (MHM), in Denver, Colorado. My problem goes all the way back to our founding nineteen years ago, and is rooted in our mission statement. Let me explain.
Leadership gurus teach that the mission of NGO’s (known as “non-profits” in the US) should be focused as narrowly as possible: do one thing, and do it better than anyone else. One author calls this the “hedgehog principle.”
I am moved to pause for reflection and praise as I recount the story of El Pueblito.
The town of El Pueblito, located just 30 minutes from the core of Guatemala City, was one of the places our Arts N’ The Hood team were privileged to visit. Actually, it was the place where we went to gather for Sunday service. As mentioned in my previous post, our guides had been inviting us to see the work God had been doing on the margins. However, when we got to this city, we found ourselves in a church that appeared to be anything but. To our surprise, about an hour later we were asked to leave the main building and gather with street youth in an old dingy facility where they had been allowed to claim it for themselves. And indeed they did so by redecorating it into a full-out hip-hop church.
Beautiful Angle is a guerilla arts project that pastes and staples 80 hand-printed, Tacoma-themed art posters a month in public places around the city of Tacoma, Washington. It’s not intended to make money, but the project does sell posters. It’s not intended as a ministry, but it does minister to people, through the often-uplifting words and images, through successful fundraisers for non-profits and through artwork donated to charity auctions.
Fumbling Towards Ecstasy: A Visual Journey into the Geography of Grace
Augustine used the phrase “faith in search of understanding” when describing the way he experienced the Good News of Jesus. I like Augustine’s approach. It relaxes me into a faith that doesn’t always “get it.”
The above video, produced by Center for Transforming Mission, is just that – a visual journey into something we don’t fully understand. We are trying to make sense of what we believe – that the grace of Jesus is like water that flows downhill and pools up in the lowest places. Enjoy this very homemade video, which is really just a compilation of short slideshows. They're nothing fancy, but they represent our effort to serve grassroots leaders who teach and preach Good News in hard places. We are, as Sarah McLachlan sang, “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy.” Enjoy!
Kris Rocke
Serves as director of Center for Transforming Mission
Bumps into Reality by accident, most of the time
Heard God laugh once
I live at the boundary of two communities on the edge of one of Africa’s great cities, Nairobi, Kenya: To one side of my home lies Karen, one of Nairobi’s wealthiest suburbs, named for Karen Blixen, the colonial aristocrat whose story many westerners know. To the other side lies Dagoretti, an indigenous community where almost everyone is very poor, where there is no proper shelter and few sustainable jobs. Not many westerners know their stories.
For the last six years I have worked with street children in Dagoretti. Our organization meets children on the streets of Dagoretti, helps them get an education or a job, which in many cases means getting free from addictions (such as glue) that control their lives.
One of the most important words in my life is “patience.” So often I have come close to running out of patience, and giving up on a young person.
Shame is a complicated form of self-hatred that always ends in violence. It is also ground zero of the Gospel.
In his book, Facing The Extreme: Moral Life In The Concentration Camps, Tzvetan Todorov explores humanity’s capacity for moral life in the face of horrendous evil. Towards the end of his book, Todorov briefly reflects on the shame that marks the lives of those victims that survived the atrocities. He mentions three levels of shame.
1. The Shame of Remembering. This form of shame is not primarily about the pain of recalling the events themselves. It has to do with the particular way victims remember the atrocities they survived. Victims often remember their victimization in a way that rains down judgment upon themselves for being a victim in the first place. The act of remembering only deepens their sense of shame. Shame does violence to the way we remember and tell the story of our lives.
I was watching an interview the other day with a man who just wrote a book (the name of which I can't recall) in which the basic premise was that we are all journalists in this age of media access; particularly around the issue of blogging and the democratization of video production.
In his book, Crossing to Safety, one of Wallace Stegner's characters says, "A poet is someone who has written a poem". A simple statement but profound in the subtle way that I think it highlights the unique genre that poetry is and how it can be seen as a very accessible form of writing, although it usually is not.
Is there a sense in which limitations become invitations?
Some thoughts from my week in the form of a riff on “A Few of My (Least) Favorite Things”...
(first verse) This morning I listened to a 40-year-old interview with Cannonball Adderley, alto saxophonist from the famous Miles Davis Sextet. Adderley recalled the way Davis, one of jazz’s great masters in the recording studio, got his bands to take chances and discover new sounds. When they were recording “Milestones” (the album that preceded the classic “Kind of Blue”), Davis was searching for a new sound. But instead of telling members of the band what he wanted them to play, he went around to each musician and told them what not to play.
We are all sacramentalists
Yearning for a symbol
Of the vitality and centrality
Of the genteel and affable
The perception of access
The illusion of the elite
