SEATTLE, WA
mdiv student at
the seattle school of theology and psychology
http://theseattleschool.edu
I am:
kind — passionate — sassy — sarcastic — a christian — learning how to be more honest & open — creative — introverted. but also outgoing — sometimes snarky — intuitive and sensitive — a musician — sometimes moody — deep — loyal — horribly afraid of snakes — an avid reader — a grill master extraordinaire — rarely patient — often scared — artistic
visit my other site:
http://haiku-psalter.tumblr.com/
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
mourning: a disposition in which your heart and mind give in to the loss and consent to dwell in the trauma with as much attention as can be mustered. it requires acknowledging how much was lost, how deeply it matters, how unstable the world has become in the aftermath, and how difficult it feels to be ever moving forward…the gift of mourning is that fully awakening to the depth of loss enables you to at least learn, perhaps for the first time, that you can hold the loss: you can bear the terrors of heart and body and still see your way forward with eyes wide open.
serene jones, trauma + grace
KEXP’s John Richards says that “this is the year of The Lumineers, and this session is just the beginning.” Watch the energetic folk-rock band play the Seattle studios.
You’re there. You’ve arrived
At the one place all your drudgery was aimed for:
This common ground
Where you stretch out, pressing your cheek to sandstone.
To be? You’ll remember soon. You feel like tinder
Under a burning glass,
A luminous point of change. The sky is pulsing
Against the cracked horizon,
Holding it firm till the arrival of stars
In time with your heartbeats.
Like wind etching rock, you’ve made a lasting impression
On the self you were
By having come all this way through all this welter
Under your own power,
Though your traces on a map would make an unpromising
Meandering lifeline.
Telling it haltingly
Like a dream, that lost traveler’s dream
Under the last hill
Where through the night you’ll take your time out of mind
To unburden yourself
Of elements along elementary paths
By the break of morning.
Called Here and Now.
Now, what you make of it means everything,
Means starting over:
The life in your hands is neither here nor there
But getting there,
So you’re standing again and breathing, beginning another
Journey without regret
Forever, being your own unpeaceable kingdom,
The end of endings.
~ David Wagoner ~
1. Among Savages | Wanderings of an Illustrative Mind
fav track: Start at the Beginning
2. Bahamas | Barchords
fav track: Lost in the Light
3. The Chieftains | Voice of the Ages
fav track: Down in the Willow Garden (feat. Bon Iver)
4. Damien Jurado | Maraqopa
fav track: Working Titles
5. Kathleen Edwards | Voyageur
fav track: Soft Place to Land
6. Leonard Cohen | Old Ideas
fav track: Going Home
7. The Lumineers | Self-Titled
fav track: Stubborn Love
8. M. Ward | A Wasteland Companion
fav track: Wild Goose
to be released April 10, listen to the whole album on npr.
9. The Whisper Bellows | Self-Titled
fav track: On the Move
Disturb us, O Lord when we are too well-pleased with ourselves when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little, because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, O Lord when with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost our thirst for the water of life when, having fallen in love with time, we have ceased to dream of eternity and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of Heaven to grow dim. Stir us, O Lord to dare more boldly, to venture into wider seas where storms show Thy mastery, where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. In the name of Him who pushed back the horizons of our hopes and invited the brave to follow. Amen.
Desmond Tutu
What we would like to do is change the world—make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute—the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words—we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.
Dorothy Day
download my Lent playlist here: http://depositfiles.com/files/2vpnjkhir
Justin Vernon and Sean Carey playing tracks from Bon Iver and Blood Bank on piano.
Here is a sermon I preached in my Homiletics class this week:
Mark 7:24-20 — The Syrophoenician Woman’s Faith
The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology
February 7, 2012
From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ But she answered him, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’ Then he said to her, ‘For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.’ So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Over the last couple of weeks, a pretty consistent theme that I have heard
in our homilies has been that these stories about Jesus are just plain odd.
Today’s story is no different, no less odd.
A quick skim of the gospel of Mark, and we find out that to this point
Jesus has been a pretty busy man. In the first half of the book we hear story
after story about Jesus healing this person and that person, performing
miracles, and butting heads with the Pharisees every step of the way.
As we enter the story of the Syrophoenician woman, we begin to see that
the setting and mood has changed from the previous context. Mark goes to
great lengths to demonstrate that there are a lot of details in this story that
seem out of place for Jesus.
Jesus has been pursued by many, many people thus far. In chapter 6,
Mark observes that when Jesus arrived in Gennesaret the people “ran about the
whole region and began to bring the sick people wherever they heard he was.”
Can you imagine? Jesus leaves Gennesaret and enters the unfamiliar Gentile
territory of Tyre, perhaps expecting some reprieve. Mark notes, Jesus “entered
a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden.” Even
in this place where he maybe expected to be unknown, he is still unable to
retreat.
Enter the Syrophoenician woman. Mark writes, as Mark often does, that
the woman came “immediately” after Jesus got there. If you can imagine, Jesus
scarcely had a moment to himself when this woman arrives on the scene. Her
boldness and audacity in approaching Jesus is quite disorienting. She is a
Gentile AND a woman. If her approach wasn’t bold enough, she continues on
to ask Jesus for a healing. This leads to a rather disconcerting kind of
encounter between the two.
Jesus’ initial response to her is to say, “Let the children be fed first, for it
is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” Her reply,
“Yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And with this
her daughter has been healed. What in the world has just happened?
I have spent the last few weeks stewing over this story. At first I felt rage
over Jesus’ treatment of the woman. I tried to soften the blow by finding a way
to get Jesus off the hook. Perhaps the words weren’t for the woman, perhaps
they were meant for the prejudiced people who would regard this woman as
being an outsider. Maybe this was simply a teaching moment. !
The problem with this is that Mark does not make clear whether anyone
was even present in this scene to witness the encounter. I’m not sure how to
resolve this tension that exists here. Mark is careful to point out that Jesus is
exhausted, perhaps disoriented, maybe experiencing culture shock, possibly
overwhelmed by the masses who have sought him out, begging for healing and
begging for wholeness. He is seeking retreat and solitude, and instead is met
with another person who is in need. Could it be that his uncharacteristic
response to her was out of this place?
And the woman is such an interesting character. Despite Jesus’ initial
refusal of her request, she persists and cleverly uses Jesus’ own words to her
advantage. Jesus is moved by the woman’s words and faith in response. Jesus
shifts from refusing her request to providing the healing she so desperately
calls for. Maybe what we see in this encounter is the repentance of Christ on
behalf of this woman. Not a I-have-sinned-and-now-I-don’t-anymore kind of
repentance. Instead, a repentance in which Jesus comes to reaffirm the woman
in the image of God, in an act of humility, bringing her comfort and increasing
her faith through the healing of her daughter.
This story, despite my initial aversion to it, began to jump off of the page
for me as I was in Haiti recently. For a few days my team was working at a
school where we were doing a Vacation Bible School for 400 students. The
school building and property was close quarters, especially with 400 kids
hanging around! Our time there was rather chaotic and the kids swarmed us,
wanting to play with us and talk to us. I cannot even begin to count how many
times the kids asked me for money or my camera or my hat or my water bottle.
It was overwhelming. It isn’t hard to find people in need in Haiti. Everywhere
you look you are smacked in the face with poverty that is incomprehensible to
many of us. It is wearing and tiresome and it didn’t take me long to become a
bit desensitized or numb to it.
So, on the second day, when this one little boy in particular arrived at the
school, I didn’t even notice him at first. I had seen kids allllllll day, and here
was another little kid curious to see what our team was up to. After glossing
over him a few times, my eyes finally stopped and really caught an image of
this boy. He was different than the other children that had been hanging
around us. This boy had on a shirt that was dirty and worn down to the
threads. There was an oval shaped worn spot on the front of his shirt from
carrying this big burlap bag half his size around with him. He had tattered
shorts, and shoes worn down til they were hardly even holding together on his
feet.
After watching our team work for awhile, the boy grabbed his burlap bag,
dragged it over to the missionary Evelyn who he had heard speak Creole and
politely asked, “May I have your empty water bottle?” Evelyn gave him the
bottle and then began to ask him questions. “Where do you live? Where are
your mama and papa? What are you doing with the bottles you are collecting?”
He responded that his mama died. He lives with his papa. And he collects the bottles because there is a merchant in town who will give him 1 goude, the equivalent of 3/10ths of a penny, for every bottle he collects. After hearing this, our group collected all of our water bottles that we had been just carelessly throwing on the ground and filled the boy’s bag to the brim. His eyes lit up and he smiled the most beautiful smile and replied with a very humble, “Mesi.” Thank you.
I found my own story with this boy located in the story of Christ with the
Syrophoenician woman. My own exhaustion and feelings of being
overwhelmed led me to be almost blind to this boy’s presence. And through
his humility and boldness in asking for what might have been our equivalent to
crumbs in that moment, I was brought face to face with a kind of grace and
humility that I have yet to really put words to or understand. What I do know is
that that boy brought me to a kind of repentance, a kind of reaffirmation of the
image of God in someone I had previously ignored.
This passage is incredibly important for all of us as we seek to enter
various helping professions. There will be times when we are smacked in the
face with the needs in our homes, our congregations, or communities. And
sometimes it will be incredibly overwhelming. There will be those days where
you’ve just spent hours and hours visiting people in the hospital, nights at
committee meetings defusing the latest conflict, meeting with the couple who
is on the verge of ending their marriage. There will be weeks where you’ll do
too many funerals, struggle to make time for your family, and cringe every
time the phone rings. It is easy to become desensitized, impatient and angry.
In this story of Christ we do not find an example of love that shows us how to
act perfectly or respond perfectly in every situation with grace and kindness.
Instead, what I think we learn here from Christ fully human, and from the
Syrophoenician woman, and from that sweet little boy, is that we are invited
into a perfect love which has an openness that allows repentance to move in us
and change our hearts. To help us begin anew to affirm the image of God in
those around us. To act with humility in the face of our acts of arrogance and
numbness. An openness and vulnerability which paves the way for grace to
enter in, and to enter in deep and transformative ways. I find this incredibly
hopeful; we join with Jesus in our capacity to be changed, to become new
people who learn to love better, see better, and find compassion for our
brothers and sisters. Amen.
photo credit:
Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn
Dutch, Amsterdam, about 1650
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, corrected with white bodycolor
7 7/8 x 11 in
(image source)
the fray - be still
