The Awakening of Hope: why we
practice a common faith, part three: Why It Matters Where We Live….Notes and video links and more resources for this Sunday's conversation at 9:30 am followed by a Thanksgiving Communion and a Common Meal at The Welcome Table missional community. All are welcome.
Video episode linked above focuses on the story of
Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis of North Carolina, she an African American woman and
he a former Klansman, a Klansman still when they met in the neighborhood they
lived in and began a relationship of antagonism but continued connection led
him to leaving the Klan and working together to improve a local school. Here is
an interview with Ann Atwater http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnVk20z7-aE.
And the documentary on them is An Unlikely Friendship http://filmakers.com/index.php?a=filmDetail&filmID=1152
and the book from which it is taken is The Best of Enemies http://www.amazon.com/Best-Enemies-Race-Redemption-South/dp/0807858692
Why It Matters Where We Live: Begins
by telling a story of the New Jerusalem Now community in one of the most
abandoned places of Philadelphia, where a couple of religious sisters live with
those in recovery. http://www.newjerusalemnow.org/home.htm
“though it has been overlooked by city government, red-lined by lenders,
avoided by real estate agents, and preyed on by hucksters, God is present.” …
they do not remove people from the neighborhood just from the practices and
contacts of their previous life in the neighborhood in order to aid their
recovery. Former residents now help run it. They often quote the passage in
Ezekiel where God brings life to dry bones in a dry abandoned valley. Those
recovering see their own recovery tied up with the recovery the reclaiming of their
place; just as they need newness in their lives, they need it in the
neighborhood. “We ascend by descending.” (into self, into God, into place).
When founder Sister Margaret turned 90 she was pleased to retire and turn the
responsibilities over to others, especially to one who was from the place and
had grown into leadership there; but he was tempted and ran off with the money
for operations. They almost had to close, but she came out of retirement and
they received new gifts of money and of new leadership from others, for her it
was evidence of the constant journey we make from Empire to God, and the
learning that “we have been caught up in God’s reconciliation of all things.”
Place matters, but Israel learns in
Babylon that God can hallow any ground…Still we live in a culture of
placelessness. We may know more about what is going on in Tokyo and New York
than we do our own watershed….yet we yearn for home, and marketers market it to
us all the time, but it cannot satisfy the longing, and doesn’t want to, for
the longing drives the constant attempt at seeking to purchase it. “A placeless
culture threatens to hold us captive in the cyberspace of endless desire.”…The
places we live matter because we are each called to participate in Christ’s incarnation,
making the material the holy, the dirty holy, but not in the model of franchises
where all is created to be the same no matter where you are; incarnation
celebrates diversity of place and people by lifting up the holiness of the
particular. “We are not a franchise with billions served. We are a body rooted
in Israel called to hallow every place.” Jesus the Jew doesn’t walk around
Samaria as was custom but walks through it, so meets the Samaritan woman at the
well, same with the Syro-Phoenician woman in her land.
“Gathering places are needed, and it
is a great gift to have a room or a building devoted to prayer. But church
buildings do not define holy ground for those “in Christ.” The ground we till
to plant, the streets connecting us one to another, the homes where we live,
the shops where we work, the “third spaces” where we meet neighbors, the
forests where nature’s rhythms are preserved, the abandoned lot we overlook—all
of these places are holy now. God wants to meet us here, and to meet our
neighborhoods through us.” Monasticism calls us to engage our places.
Church shopping is a contemporary
practice; used to be church wrapped up with where you could walk, to your
zipcode. Once upon a time one church for all, then divisions and battles ran
one church out of town, then modern technology allowed us to go across town or
from town to town for church. “Incarnation interrupts us.” It interrupts our
cultural norms and calls us back to place.
Questions: Does the Incarnation, that
God pitched a tent in a particular neighborhood, a particular people, a
particular person, especially where and who God was incarnated, change how you
see your place and how you live? What practices might make living sacredly in
your place more possible? Who are the elders like Ann Atwater in your community
whom you can learn from about living more deeply in your place?
Activities: Map your neighborhood and
name the people you know who live in it, and pray for them. Try to get to know
the names of those you don’t know….Learn more about a “local saint.”…Join a
group that will be working for the neighborhood even after you are gone.
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