The Homeless: Part I

This April I wrote a paper on homelessness for one of my seminary classes. The recent anti-homeless laws passed in Berkeley (which I talked about in the last blog) prompted me to republish it here. This is part 1. 

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Yesterday I found myself in conversation with Christina.[1] These days she is fighting back against her slumlord apartment manager. Bad as that sounds, things have not always been this good. Christina grew up against significant odds, born within a highly dysfunctional, generationally impoverished family. Her husband has been in and out of prison (he gets out in a couple weeks), and she has too. Her lack of strong social ties, slim resume and alcoholic coping habits have made things pretty tough. Amidst these struggles, Christina found herself on and off the street. As she said, “Last time was about a year ago when I was homeless on the West Side.” All this has been particularly hard on her three kids.

As we talked, I found myself remembering other friends of mine who are all too familiar with concrete nights. I thought of the time I met Dale panhandling a downtown Houston off-ramp. He was a couple months out of prison, but with no identification papers of any kind he'd found it just about impossible to land a steady job or place to live, much less access the social safety net. Then I pictured Merl with a big, goofy grin on his face when he told us in absolute honesty, “I’m addicted to milk!” And he was. Sober as could be, but would never go a day without dairy. We grabbed him a gallon and a new bike tube that afternoon. Ed was under a different bridge on that same highway. A veteran who suffered from debilitating PTSD flashbacks, he was a highly intelligent, avid reader whose disability kept him from holding a job.

As far as I know, Rich and Larry are best buds to this day, sipping Wild Turkey between AA meetings. It took six months of friendship building before I got up the courage to ask if I could stay with them over Memorial Day weekend. Those three days were the closest I have ever been to seeing the world as a homeless person sees it. They make me think of Mary Anne and Robert, long-term partners who lived together on the creek south of downtown Colorado Springs. He was a huge, grizzled guy, kind as they come, who always looked out for his much smaller soulmate. I pray I never forget the choked up hug Rob gave me when she left him. It was not unlike the hug Jacob--AIDS patient, brilliant chef, gay, repeatedly rejected--gave before he left town for more secure housing with a distant family member.

Then there is Shannon, whom I loved and miss so dearly. But there aren't enough pages to tell her story here.

These old friends makes this a hard paper to write. It catches me red handed where cynicism has snuck in over the past several years. After all, at least two of these folks are dead, most are still homeless, and all struggle on in one way or another. The presentness of their pain is arresting. It rebels against overly clinical analyses of the homeless as though they are a “population,” and homelessness as though it were an issue or cause. My emotion is important; it rises out of relationship, and without relationship there will never be transformation. However, it is partially people’s emotional reactions to homelessness that are the problem. When emotions slip into emotionalism they soon terminate in unquestionable ideologies, stymieing critical thought. The homeless service “industry” is chronically devoid of innovation for exactly this reason. Therefore, in this paper I strive for criticality without negating the personal contexts my thought has emerged from. Since all thought is unavoidably contextual anyways, this seems like the right framework for the task at hand.[2]

The second reason this paper is difficult is because of the jarring dissonance I experience when my knowledge outpaces my obedience--or, less critically, when the source of my frustration does not line up with my present call. I do not know how directly or deeply I will be connected to homeless ministry in the future. I had fairly well walked away from this group until the past few months when God, I suppose, prompted me to include them as a research subject for this class. Re-engaging has felt a bit like rediscovering a missing piece of myself.

It is from this liminal position that I now turn to engage the fact of homelessness. Who are the homeless? I mostly skip over this broad question. They are too diverse a group to adequately capture, and I am not interested in narrowing down to subcategories like families, children or the “chronically” homeless. For my purposes, ‘homeless’ will simply represent its tautology: those without a home. My interest is this: Why is it that the wealthiest nation in the history of the world consistently has between 1 to 2% of its people sleeping on the street, in their cars or bumming on a family members couch every night? And what can we the Church do about it?



[1] - All names have been changed (except for Shannon's) to protect the persons' privacy.
[2] - See MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?; Dyrness, Learning About Theology from the Third World. I am also reminded of the fantastic introduction to Miroslav Volf’s Exclusion & Embrace where he wrestles with his unavoidably subjective memories of genocide while seeking to articulate an objectively meaningful theological response to the evil he experienced.

A Not-So-Advent Blog: In Memory of a Poor Kid Born Homeless a Couple Thousand Years Ago

Folks protesting the new anti-homeless law in front of Berkeley City Hall.

A bizarre thing happened in Berkeley this week. Shrugging off its reputation as the progressive capital of the world, this town's city counsel decided to pass a bill that criminalizes homelessness.

Here's an article from the "homeless newspaper" Street Spirit explaining what went down.

I guess if you can get past the city's reputation, it isn't really that strange after all. Just remember the famous 'ole Bill Clinton line: it's the economy, stupid.

The cost of housing is painfully high here in Berkeley, as it is around the Bay Area. The average home price--average--is hovering just under a million dollars. "One bedroom apartments in Berkeley rent for $2921 a month on average and two bedroom apartment rents average $3651" (source - thank goodness we found something for less than this but its still excruciating!).

With that kind of insane real estate market, the straightforward solution--providing homes--is impossible (not to mention the additional homelessness created by displacement, something that becomes epidemic when landlords hike the rent 30% in a year). Of course, the Bible's 15 year plan to end homelessness is still on the table: "bring the homeless poor into your house" (Isaiah 5:7). But there doesn't seem to be a lot of that going around (myself included).

In other startling news, Berkeley claims illustrious spot #10 on the list of cities with the highest inequality in the country (i.e. the wealth and income differentials of its residents), higher than any other city in California. And as inequality rises, a mind-numbing host of social maladies follow.

The economic El Niño conditions have converged to pour on the homeless. This climate, for a variety of reasons, breed an atmosphere of wealthy, profit minded people who know that it is only the sensible, good-for-business act to sanitize the environment so a person (aka: consumer) can walk to shops without being accosted by dirty panhandlers who subvert their portentous sense of the sublime. Thanks to the merchant members of the Downtown Berkeley Association and the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce (and to a public who went right along with it), we now have laws that make people's poverty and lack of shelter illegal. As much of an injustice as that appears at face value, it seems even more sinister once we come to terms with the truth: homelessness is a natural byproduct of the economic system we as a society have chosen.

In the classic tradition of empires everywhere, we have criminalized the victims of our own injustice.

Though this response falls dramatically short of what's needed, I feel prompted to post a paper I wrote this past spring for a class called Ministry Among the Marginalized. I'm going to chop it up into several chewable pieces to appear over the next couple of weeks. I hope it busts some myths, guides your imagination toward paths of action, and in some small way shines the light of the gospel on an issue of our day.

You can expect part one next week.

Blessings my friends, and may the spirit of our Lord who new what it meant to have no place to lay his head be with you.

Vote for Shalom!

With the holiday shopping season in full swing, I thought I'd share this little documentary.

I'm all for buying gifts for people, it's a beautiful way to love others (though making stuff is awesome too). But let's be conscious of our purchases this year, remembering that ever dollar spent is quite literally a vote for the kind of world we live in.

Vote for a world that reflects the God whose entrance into the world we celebrate this time of year.

Vote for shalom!

From the Thesis

Thought I'd pull a little excerpt from my slowly developing thesis for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!




When Thomas Jefferson arrived in Paris as the newest delegate from the United States, he moved through the city with confidence that belied the youth of his nation. Jefferson relocated to France with his eldest daughter Martha--whom they all called Patsy--in July 1785 bearing, primarily, the responsibility to broker trade deals with his hosts and other European nations. In two brief years since the Treaty of Paris was signed and the Revolutionary War came to a close, the United States had quickly emerged as a state with whom the world must reckon. Militarily the U.S. eked out a victory on home turf, much thanks due their French allies, but the late eighteenth century was an era when naval power defined true might. Everyone knew the U.S. fleet was a shadow of their counterparts across the Atlantic. 

Jefferson’s plomb drew from a new source, one that had already risen as the defining feature on the geopolitical scene: economic power. It was no secret that the New World was a treasure chest of sorely lacking commodities in Europe, and the American ability to exploit its ecological gifts was burgeoning. But this was not the primary mode of profit on the middling diplomat’s mind.

Two months before arriving in Paris, Jefferson was present as the Congressional Congress’s ratified the Land Ordinance of 1785. It was an adaptation of a plan he put forward as representative for Virginia the previous year. As the chief architect behind its elegantly simple, seemingly destined, though ultimately diabolical strategy, Jefferson knew the United States was about to be a very wealthy nation. 

The land claimed by the thirteen colonies more than doubled after the Revolution. To the Founding Fathers, this presented an enormous opportunity dilemma: millions of acres of ‘unsettled’ territory. Sprawling to their west all the way to the Mississippi River (the other side was claimed by Spain) the settlers saw vacant, open wilderness. For Jefferson it was the perfect moment to begin enacting his vision for a nation of yeoman farmers. He and others “devised a plan whereby all the vacant unclaimed land in the young republic could be divided into an almost infinite number of squares, each of them a square mile, or 640 acres--more than enough to satisfy the average would-be settler” (Jennings, 225, quoting Jackson, A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time). Each plot would then be sold off by the government as pure profit. The Public Land Survey System, as it was called, was used to reduce the complexities of thousands of bioregions and Native civilizations to abstract geometry available for purchase. Its methodology was extended with zeal under Jefferson’s presidency as massive new quantities of land entered U.S. control through the Louisiana purchase, and it continued to shape the parceling of nature into property until Manifest Destiny reached its westward terminus. “In this US system, unique among colonial powers, land became the most important exchange commodity for the accumulation of capital and building of the national treasury” (Dunbar-Ortiz, 124). Anyone looking out a plane window today can still see Jefferson’s vision stamped over ancient, disjunctive soil in the patchwork grid of fields and roads so familiar on the middle-American landscape.

Implications abound from the Land Ordinance of 1785, but for now we must simply note that our third president had no concept of America as place. He followed a storied tradition of treating land outside white-European control like space. Colonists saw the New World as a vacuum Domicilium, open and available to their ‘civilizing’ inhabitation. Just before departing with merchants of the Massachusetts Bay Company, Puritan minister John Cotton preached on the settler’s logic: “In a vacant soyle hee that taketh possession of it, and bestoweth culture and husbandry upon it, his Right it is.” The tragic irony is, of course, that many peoples did possess the soil, participated in a rich cultural world, and practiced a complex system of husbandry that, while opaque to most settlers, had cultivated the unprecedented ecological abundance on display for the earliest explorers. 

“Since the particular had no place in the hierarchy of values developed in the post-Enlightenment world, studies of place were often relegated to ‘mere description’ while space was given the role of developing scientific law-like generalizations. In order to make this work people had to be removed from the scene. Space was not embodied but empty” (Cresswell, 34). This philosophical turn to space was excellent at opening the possibility for totalizing projects like Thomas Jefferson’s. Empty space--quite opposite populated, storied place--can make no demands on you. As an ethical void, it can make no claims of truth, value, or morality and is thus free to be filled by whatever the newcomer brings. When space was married to (and eventually subsumed under) a unidirectionally posited theory of time, they collaborated in the minds of Euro-Americans to offer an abstract setting for “progress.” Spacetime became a ravenous, unexamined lie buried in the mind of the colonizer. With its categories the coordinates were charted toward fresh vistas of Manifest Destiny, racial and class segregation, ecological destruction, and globalization. 

Decolonizing ourselves to inhabit the co-creative rhythms of human vocation requires us to once again look upon the land as shared place.

Focal Points

The Colorado State Capitol Building lines up with
the city's downtown street grid. It's also a gathering
spot for many of the city's homeless. (pic circa 1950)

Cities designed thoughtfully are filled with focal points. 

Even careless city plans have them in some shape or form. Whether parks, monuments, or significant buildings (public, private and religious architecture all fulfill this function and are a strong indicator of value expression at different points in a city's history), these become the visual reference points that help people orient themselves within the complexities of urban space and hold an "image of the city" (to use Lynch's phrase) in their mind. Sometimes focal points show up as a cluster of skyscrapers. Other times they appear as a strategically placed building at the end of a major boulevard. Whatever they are, these focal points draw our eyes and our bodies to them self and professes to the world what we find most important.

Focal places also function in a very interesting secondary role: they form the city's prime public spaces.

In the modern, capitalist city, public space is often inhabited by the poor. Private space outside the home is mostly geared toward consumption and profit generation in today's urban areas. Thus, the poor have limited private space available to them thanks to their limited purchasing and profit generating power. What's left are the public places available to anyone (though, increasingly, policies are being passed to oust unwanted folks from these places too). Imagine the parks and plaza's in your city's downtown. Who is seated and standing around capital buildings and courts, churches and office buildings? More often than not, this is where we find the homeless and those characters the dominant culture attempts to exclude.

I find it amazing that Jesus associated himself with exactly these people: the excluded, the disinherited, the barred from entry, the kept outside. Where you see the hungry and ignored, there, we are told, you see Jesus.

In the past, when I've thought about the focal design of our cities, the things we have centered our built environment and subsequently our lives around, I'm often saddened. At these center points we find the constructions of empire. The power of our government and financial institutions are set on full display. I have often worried that this leads us away from the true center, Jesus. And I have worried that this construction wordlessly teaches our imagination to value the wrong things.

But could it be that, ever so subtly, the presence of the poor in these places is subverting what the world has tried to place is the middle? That in the grimy faces of the poor, Jesus has planted himself at the center of our social worlds? Perhaps if we look down from the corner offices and emblems of power, if we can listen with humility, we will rediscover a more beautiful way to be human. We will find Jesus at the center, standing among the poor.

Seeing Systems: Resources

Posted this on FB, but thought I'd capture it over here too. Blessings yall!

Lots of political, economic, social, cultural type posts flying through my feed recently, lots more from my Christian friends than I'm used to seeing.

I'm feeling very grateful for that, actually. 

It implies that we as a people are beginning to see more clearly that belief systems (ours included) can never be isolated to individual piety -- the way we act in the world and the societies we create come out of the paradigms we hold. 

But reading the world is incredibly challenging. News outlets share and react to events, but rarely penetrate much deeper. So, even people who believe similarly often come out on different sides of issues. We're stuck asking, "What the heck is actually going on and what does being a follower of Jesus have to do with it?" The tendency is to focus in on these events and the individuals who are involved in them, pin blame somewhere, and try to solve problems that way. Unfortunately, most of us realize that isn't really making any progress...

With that in mind, I thought I'd share some resources on systems thinking that have been very helpful to me in attempting to think through what's going on in the world. The iceberg model below will get you started.

creds to the Donella Meadows Institute

If you are interested in learning more about how almost everything that matters in the world is composed of interrelated systems, here are a few helpful links:

1) Exceptional series of talks by systems guru Donella Meadows, this links to the first of four (she comes in around 6:00):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMmChiLZZHg

2) Article by Meadows on identifying leverage points in systems (i.e. how to we figure out how to create change on a systems level? the iceberg pic below is based on this article)
http://www.donellameadows.org/…/leverage-points-places-to-…/

3) The Center for Ecoliteracy has some helpful, straightforward systems explanations:
http://www.ecoliteracy.org/article/systems-thinkinghttp://www.ecoliteracy.org/…/seven-lessons-leaders-systems-…

4) Our minds are a system...here's how they work, and how to think more clearly about the world:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sfiReUu3o0

5) PBS partnered with some great folks to create a K-12 systems literacy program filled with videos and resource...tons of gold here
http://opb.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/systemsliteracy/

DISCLAIMER: The root word in radical--radic--means, you guessed it, "root." Systems thinking is a process for getting down to the root of things. When you do that, people will think you are a radical. And you might be, but if you do so in commitment to following Jesus yours will be a radicality of love, one that seeks the good of others, lifts up the marginalized and lays down self. 

Launch of Discipleship & Ethics website/newsletter!!!

What up LtoS readers!

I have a big announcement I'm very excited to make to you all.

Starting almost a year ago, I began dreaming and scheming with one of my favorite professors--Dr. Mark Baker--about creating new ways to grow the impact of his course called Discipleship & Ethics. Mark has been looking for ways to stay in touch with former students around the themes, challenges and growth that happens in this class, and I am passionate about getting his message out to more people.

After months of conversation, surveys, focus groups, strategizing, website design, mailchimp setup, writing, resource curating and on and on....we are officially launching DiscipleshipandEthics.com!!!

The site brings together a unique set of paradigms for what it means to follow Jesus at this moment in history, then explores how these paradigms play out across a diverse group of contemporary themes. It's set in an Anabaptist accent, which I believe gives the site a uniquely generative point of departure. Go here to read more about what that means.

As we say on the home page:

To follow Jesus is to move and press against the flow. This site seeks to point out the direction of the currents, provide you with a paddle, and link you with friends for the journey. Together, we are challenged to follow Jesus in living an ethic of freedom from the forces of death and alienation.

D&E.com is packed with videos, articles, blogs, book suggestions and will continue to grow in the months (and years!) to come. We hope this will become a place of dialogue, and a place where others we are journeying alongside can share their insights, ideas, resources, and requests as well.

Hope you can check it out and please share on social media to help get the word out!

Be Not Afraid: Theology of Liberation, Shalom and Structural Causes

I finally started reading Gustavo Gutierrez's classic, A Theology of Liberation, this week and was 

excited to see him framing "the praxis of liberation" as the task of shalom makers! At times I worry that my focus on shalom may be a point of departure located more within the ranks of white bible scholars that a perspective actually being voiced from the margins. Native American theologian Randy Woodley is a significant representative of someone speaking contextually from an oppressed people's point of view who has made shalom the organizing feature of his theology (his book Shalom in the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Perspective is phenomenal), but he has seemed more like an exception than the rule. 

But here I am reading one of the major pioneering works of non-North Atlantic theology, the father of Liberation Theology, speaking about shalom. It feels like a good affirmation. However, it's also clear that his thought cannot be reduced to what can be said through the lens of shalom by itself. Nor should we (I) fall into the trap of harmonizing the diverse voices of Majority World and US minority theologians into a single message. One of the favorite forms of neocolonialism practiced by us privileged folks today is acting as the all-seeing outsider who is able to articulate the core, unified message at the heart of what all those "other" people are saying. But this is both naive, dehumanizing, and flat out wrong. Their words are many and varying and should be held with an appropriate degree of dissonance that keeps us listening for notes of unity, harmony and divergence. And listening, particularly for us white folks, is one of the most Christian things we can do today.

All that said, here are Gutierrez's comments around shalom:

The praxis on which liberation theology reflects is a praxis of solidarity in the interests of liberation and is inspired by the gospel. It is the activity of "peacemakers"--that is, those who are forging shalom. Western languages translate this Hebrew word as "peace" but in doing so, diminish its meaning. Shalom in fact refers to the whole of life and, as part of this, to the need of establishing justice and peace. Consequently, a praxis motivated by evangelical values embraces to some extent every effort to bring about authentic fellowship and authentic justice. For faith shows us that in this commitment the grace of Christ plays its part, whether or not those who practice it are aware of this fact.

This liberating praxis endeavors to transform history int he light of the reign of God. It accepts the reign now, even though knowing that it will arrive in its fullness only at the end of time. In this practice of love, social aspects have an important place on a continent [Latin America] in which socio-economic structs are in the service of the powerful and work against the weak of society. But in my understanding of it, "praxis" is not reducible to "social aspects" in this narrow sense. The complexity of the world of the poor and lowly compels us to attend to other dimensions of the Christian practice if it is to meet the requirement of a total love of God.

Excellent thoughts, I'd say.

While I'm at it, I thought I'd share another quote from his introduction because it expresses so well the journey I have been on--one I would couch under the categories of Romans 12:2, "Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" and Romans 6:11, "count yourselves dead to sin [in my case: privilege, whiteness, the desire social acceptability, etc.] and alive to Christ."  

To these effects, Gutierrez says the following:

Structural analysis has thus played an important part in building up the picture of the world to which liberation theology addresses itself. The use of this analysis has had its price, for although the privileged of this world can accept the existence of human poverty on a massive scale and not be overawed by it (after all, it is something that cannot be hidden away in our time), problems begin when the causes of this poverty are pointed out to them. Once causes are determined, then there is talk of "social injustice," and the privileged begin to resist. This is especially true when to structural analysis there is added a concrete historical perspective in which personal responsibilities come to light. But it is the conscientization [the process by which the poor/marginalized gain a broader sense of the world, its oppressiveness toward them, and are inspired to act for liberation/transformation] and resultant organization of poor sectors that rouse the greatest fears and strongest resistance.

Boom! 

It gets scary for those of us who have always had a seat at the table to come face to face with Jesus' words that the first shall be last. But, as the angels always say, "do not be afraid." Shalom--when you look at it squarely--may seem like bad news to you, my fellow privileged friend, but be not afraid. For it is a tiding of great joy, if only you will lay down your nets and follow the King.

What is Justice?

I recently read this piece from Shalom: The Bible's Word for Salvation, Justice and Peace by Perry Yoder and was impressed by his clear articulation of a much muddied word. Misguided ideas of what constitutes justice is one of the Church's (many) big issues in terms of coalescing around a shared mission and making movement on it. The selection I'm offering hits stronger when built up to by first reading the exegesis he does on previous pages, but I thought it was still well worth sharing and reflection. Contrast this restorative, redemptive, reconciliatory, relational model to the retributive, punishment-centric model we see expressed through our criminal justice system, schools, and many of our homes.

"To sum up this material, we can say that God's justice is characterized in two basic ways. First, God is judge of all the nations, the whole earth (Ps. 9:7-8; 9:20; 67:4; 82:8; 94:2; 96:13). This we might describe as the range of God's justice, its quantity.

Second, this universal justice expresses itself through acts on behalf of the underclass who gain relief and liberation through the exercise of justice (Ps. 7:11; 9:8; 10:18; 37:9; 76:10; 103:6; 140:6; 140:13; 146:7). We might label this the quality of God's justice. 

We return now the questions with which we began: what is the nature of God's justice? what are the marks of God's justice? Two things seem obvious. First, in terms of its object, God's justice is shown to the poor, the disadvantaged, the weak. This was seen not only in the persons named as objects of God's justice, but also in the reversal of fortunes theme and in the plight of those praying for God's justice. 

Second, in terms of its results, God's justice helps the needy, it delivers people from bad circumstance, whether it be hunger, prison, or another case of suffering or form of oppresion. God's justice sets things right, it is a liberating justice. 

God's justice which sets things right takes two forms. First, God's justice delivers the underclass from their oppression and transforms their situation. Second, God's justice judges the oppressors; it shatters the power which enables them to oppress. In the psalms quoted above, oppressive power opposes God's rule--it is a sign of atheism, it is a sin. In short, God's justice as shown and sought in the psalms demolishes the oppressive status quo by acting for the disadvantaged and oppressed, and by crushing their oppressors.

Since material want, oppression, and lack of moral integrity are the opposites of shalom, God's acts of justice reverse a non-shalom situation. God's justice makes things right by transforming the status quo of need and oppression into a situation where things are as they should be. This transformation forms the basis for shalom. Given this connection between God's justice and shalom, we shall call this shalom justice. And where shalom justice is missing, there shalom is missing. Peacemaking means working for the realization of shalom justice which is necessary for the realization of shalom. 

Flowing from these two aspects of God's justice--the object (the underclass and needy) and the objective (shalom)--is another major characteristic of God's justice, perhaps its most basic aspect: God's action for justice is not based on the merit of individuals, but on their need. The fact of their oppression calls forth from God an act of justice. The fact that they are blind makes them an object of God's care. Nothing in Psalm 146 says that it was some special merit on the part of the needy that caused God to act for them. Shalom justice is not based on calculating what people deserve, but rather on making an unright situation a right one. God's justice is a response to the lack of shalom in order to create the conditions of shalom. 

While we are prone to assess blame--the plight of the poor and disadvantaged is their own fault--or to assign responsibility--someone else is responsible for their situation--Jesus acts to deal with the need. He performs an act of shalom justice. Regardless of all other consideration, people ought to see rather than to be blind! People ought to be liberated rather than be oppressed. As a result, shalom makers are more concerned with transforming situations rather than meting out what people deserve."

Shalom in the Home

I tend to speak less about issues of personal relationships and instead address big topics of society, politics and economics on this blog. The main reason for that is that I believe Christians have, by and large, actually put a lot of good thought into how following Jesus should play out interpersonally. We have done a much weaker job (due to, among other things, some reductionistic modern/Western/post-Reformation thought) of parsing through the political (in the broad sense) implications of our faith.

But I'm about to get married in two weeks to that radiant woman in the picture there, so thought I would share a little reflection on how shalom matters in our relationship.

The last blog post was based on the study of Colossians I have been doing this past year. But the reason I have been in Colossians wasn't for all the big scale, anti-empire implications it holds--it was as preparation for marriage (which has a lot of those implications too, but that's for another day).

Libbey and I chose Colossians 3:12-17 as the verse to carry us through engagement and into matrimony, and have read/reflected on this passage a hundred times this year.

As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Right in the middle of these verses is Paul's most fervent hope for his readers...

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.

This is what we yearn for and yet find it can be so illusive, even between two people who love each other so passionately. If peace is not being made here, can we really expect much to be happening out there?

We have found that there are some big time nuggets of wisdom crammed into this short passage. Together, they point the way toward letting Christ's shalom rule over our marriage--and possibly beyond. I hope they bless you today for whatever relationships you find yourself in.

Identity 

This way of life flows from who we are "as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved," and out of our new identities in Christ (referenced earlier in Col). The beginning of wisdom is knowing who you are in relation to God--which is just another way of saying "the fear of the Lord." From this, we live in dependence on him and interdependence with each other plus the rest of humanity and creation. These are the roots for everything else!

Comprehensive Words

If we could hold fast to the words in these verses--gentleness, kindness, patience, compassion, humility, gratitude, forgiveness, love--I think that would pretty much cover things. It's easy for the eyes to skim over them, but there are miles of depth in each. Imagine actually taking these seriously, every day, in every interaction! It boggles the mind and proves how far beyond our brokenness are the ways of God. And for this, we return to the above--our identities in Christ--and pray to him for the grace and strength to bear such lovely fruit towards one another.

A Daily Choice

Tim Keller says he laughs when people come to him and say, but love shouldn't be this hard! "Why not?" he replies, "Does a major league baseball player expect it to be easy or natural to hit a fast ball?" Nothing of true worth or meaning is automatic. Neither is living out the rhythms of God's shalom toward one another.  By saying that we need to clothe ourselves in these virtues, Paul implies that they won't just become our natural self. It will have to be a continual, daily, minute by minute choice to express kindness, react in gentleness, listen with patience, suffer with one another compassionately, hold oneself with humility. 

Gratitude and Forgiveness

This coupling seems particularly key for acquiring a shalom-esque disposition. These words--including the particularly thought provoking phrase "bear with"--appear more times in this passage than any other. Just chew on the difficulty and magnitude of actually living in gratitude and forgiveness. It shuts me up!

Love

"Binds everything together in perfect harmony." An idea so big it penetrates to the center of the earth, passes straight through the soul, and takes in the whole cosmos. Love. There are fathomless depths in this word. It offers both a means and an end. Its complexity is made all the more bizarre and radical by a Savior who challenged his followers to extend its intimate embrace to their enemies, and who told us love was epitomized in God strung up bleeding on a Roman cross. 

Inwards and Outwards

Biblical peace just doesn't work as private property. Our home can't be a place of shalom unless its flowing out the doors, pipes and windows. We want this to be our way of life both with one another and with the rest of the world. Marriage, we think, is both a main event in and of itself, and a training ground for service in the world. It is a context of discipleship, an incubator in which to become more like Jesus so that when we walk out these doors we are people who love justice, do mercy, and walk humbly with our God. All of these principles hold as much weight between Libbey and I as they do when considering matters of city zoning policy or our disposition toward an ISIS militant. Such is the precipitous vocation of a Christian.

That's all I have to say on that. I've been married for negative fifteen days and am already failing at each of these daily. To those of you who have some years of marriage under your belt, please shower your wisdom on us! And to all of you, we would cherish your prayers as we embark on this glorious adventure.

Searching for Peace

This article originally appeared in Christian Leader magazine and can be viewed here. 

Peaceful protests in Baltimore.

At the climax of his message to the Colossians, you can almost feel Paul lift out of his seat to deliver his central charge, “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace!” (Col 3:15)

We still crave these words today. To be a people of peace. To just experience peace for ourselves. For Christ to rule. 

But what does it mean to be at peace? Can we have peace in our hearts if there is not peace in our world and our relationships? We must be careful here. Jeremiah once called his people to task for claiming such things carelessly. “‘Shalom, Shalom’ 'ayin shalom,” he wept. “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, Peace,’ they say, but there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14). 

The Apotheosis of Washington, painted on the underside of the US Capital dome.

Whose Peace Reigns in Colossea?

The Colossians weren’t foreigners to false claims and poorly attended wounds. They lived under the Pax Romana, an imperial peace imposed through military and economic domination. Rome declared that her rule marked a glorious new age, one upon which the blessings of the gods rested. All who lived within her sphere and bowed to Lord Caesar would find peace. 

Paul drops the letter of Colossians into this context with an alternative story that took off like a subversive virus. With Jeremiah, he rejects the empire's claims to peace when there is no peace. The story Rome has told is false! All have not found peace here. The wealth of a few is built on the backs of many. Some are privileged while others suffer as slaves. 

In a world where the image of Caesar was printed on everything from money to city gates to cutlery as a reminder of who was King and god, Paul declared a different Lord:

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Col 1:15-17)

Jesus--the one Rome tried to kill on a cross--is the resurrected King, the true image of God, the creator of all the world Caesar claims as his own. In place of a false peace, Jesus redefined the means of salvation. Instead of military conquest, he made peace through radical self-sacrifice.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Col 1:19-20)

militarized peacekeping

Be Reconciled...Justly

For Paul, the truth of Jesus has implications across every dimension of creation: individual, family, church, communal, societal, even ecological. All things are being made new, and we get to have a role in it! But once again, he doesn’t dumb down the difficulties of entering this new world. 

This draws us back around to a central question: what exactly is the anatomy of peace? Steeped as he was in scripture, Paul’s thought clearly reflects that most freighted word of the Hebrew language: shalom. 

When Paul talks about the “peace of Christ,” he is talking about shalom.

While Rome’s peace was based on allegiance to the emperor, shalom begins with first commandment faithfulness: to have no other gods beside Yahweh (Ex 20:1-3). This is the main reason why Paul instructed the Colossians to turn from sexual immorality. These acts were associated with pagan worship practices, which, as Paul succinctly reminds his readers, “is idolatry” (Col 3:5). There is no peace without the worship of God.

While Rome’s peace only benefited a few, shalom is a fundamentally communal experience. If anyone in the community is excluded, shalom is broken for all. “Shalom is always tested on the margins of a society and revealed by how the poor, oppressed, disempowered, and needy are treated” (Randy Woodley, Shalom in the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision). In the words of Walter Brueggemann, “shalom is never the private property of the few.”

While Rome’s peace was based on social hierarchies and systems of oppression, shalom emerges where systems are just and relationships are reconciled. 

Colossae sat on a key trade route through the Lycus Valley in Asia Minor. Diverse peoples from all over the empire called it home. Cultural differences and power differentials made for a relationally fragmented society. Paul could not simply encourage them to cozy up next to one another and work things out. 

Rather, God’s shalom lifted them out of injustice, and reconciled them into Jesus where they discovered a new way of life with one another. Their former selves and social mores could not facilitate true community. “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). Instead, they would learn to be one Church through their shared identity in Jesus.

“Put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” (Col 3:10-11)

Jesus in the Breadline, Fitz Eichenberg

A Daily Vocation

The truest thing about our world is that Jesus Christ is Lord, firstborn from the dead, creator of all things, making ALL things new. Therefore, writes Paul, live like it!

Colossians 3:12-17 walks a well-worn Old Testament tradition. The most common Hebrew word pairing is mishpat and sadiqah (e.g., Jer 22:3-5; Isa 28:17-18). The first word relates to justice in society and the second to personal righteousness. The two are continually held together in the biblical imagination. Paul follows this vein in his instructions for Christian living. The Jesus-ethic he describes forges an intimate marriage between personal holiness and social justice. It is, therefore, a powerful weapon against the divisions and oppression which continually encroach on the people of God. 

What does it look like to have died to self and come alive to Christ in normal life? 

Paul says it is to have compassion, literally to “suffer with” one another. It is to commit to the Christ-like, self-sacrificing, listening postures of kindness, humility, meekness and patience (Col 3:12). When differences and difficulties flare up, Paul urges to “bear with one another,” and live not in perfection, but in forgiveness (v13). And finally, that glorious thing which cinches everything together, “put on love” (v14).

“Clothe yourself” in all of this, we are told (v12). The power of the Empire will keep trying to creep in. Each day you must re-dress yourself in these virtues, remembering that you are God’s beloved people.

In the following of Jesus there is a path for peace that does not make light of present pain. A peace that lets us join with the great Southern preacher William J Barber II, singing “to pain and problems and suffering and racism and injustice, ‘You may be real, but you are not the final reality. There is another hope! There is a resurrection!’”

Presidents and Poverty: Swapping Lenses

Well-bearded John and Leo say: "Thou must first look at the system to understand thyself."   

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."
    "What then should we do?" the crowd asked.
    John answered, "Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same."
    Even tax collectors came to be baptized. "Teacher," they asked, "What should we do?"
    "Don't collect any more than you are required to," he told them.
    Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?"
    He replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely--be content with your pay."
         - Luke 3:7-14

I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means--except by getting off his back.
         - Leo Tolstoy, What Then Must We Do? (1886)

(This blog is in a series discussing the responses made by presidential candidates on their plans to address poverty and hunger. For more on that background go here.)

Swapping Lenses

Every now and then, I open up my iPhone to try and take a picture of something amazing in front of me, and am terrified when instead my own ugly mug pops up staring back at me.

I think something similar has happened in our culture over the past several centuries. We've been trying to get a good picture of the world, to really understand how and why it works the way it does, by snapping increasingly detailed pictures of ourselves.

Rene Descartes is often trotted out as an original instigator of this curious mode of thought. Doubting the truth of anything in the external world, he crawled inside the sensory deprivation tank of his kitchen oven to block out everything but himself. In that moment, he arrived at the infamous maxim: "Cogito ergo sum" - I think therefore I am. Me. That is the first and ultimate truth. My "i"Phone agrees.

Perhaps it started much sooner. Perhaps it began in 1442 when Portugal had the first forced European encounter with Africans on European soil. Like a good Christian, the King made sure to tithe on his new property. He sent several of his black-bodied slaves to work for the Church, and congratulated himself for his faithfulness.

Surely they must not have been looked beyond themselves in such a moment. If they did, they would certainly have seen the tears and anguish flowing down human faces made in the image of God.

Galileo and Newton might be "blamed" for institutionalizing the individualistic, self-focused point of view with the holy seal of scientific methodology. The new physics said if you really want to understand something, you have to isolate it from everything else and quantify its characteristics. Only by being as individualistic and "objective" as possible can we truly comprehend the world. Unfortunately, individualism and so-called-objectivity were only able to lead us back into ourselves and construct a view of the world that agreed with who we saw ourselves to be.

These days, something incredible is happening behind the scenes, off-stage of our reality tv politics and consumer culture.

A new paradigm in thought is taking the place of this old worldview. People are calling it a "second Enlightenment," a new Copernican Revolution.

Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer summarized these as a series of shifts:

Simple --> Complex

Atomistic --> Networked

Equilibrium --> Disequilibrium

Linear --> Non-Linear

Mechanistic --> Behavioral

Efficient --> Effective

Predictive --> Adaptive

Independent --> Interdependent

Individual ability --> Group diversity

Rational calculator --> Irrational approximators

Selfish --> Strongly reciprocal

Win-lose --> Win-win and lose-lose

Competition --> Cooperation 

Why am I talking about this, and what does it have to do with addressing poverty?

Because they way we think about the world massively influences the way we create the world. And the way we assess the world completely determines the analysis we provide.

The old worldview taught us to look at individuals, to see things piecemeal, to think "mechanistically" and "atomistically." The new worldview draws us to examine the system.

In the old worldview, we (and by we I mean white people--particularly white, male Christians like myself) looked at ourselves as the starting place for truth and morality. We looked at those who weren't like us as the problem.

The great systems theorist Donella Meadows explained that if a person can make the shift, when something goes awry, "You'll stop looking for who's to blame; instead you'll start asking, 'What's the system?'"

It's time to turn the camera around.

It's the System, Stupid

In the US, something has gone unequivocally wrong. Inequality is soaring to the highest levels it's every reached. Millions of children go to bed hungry in the richest nation the world has ever seen. Simply affording a place to live is increasingly out of reach for a fast growing portion of the population.

Why is all this?

Meadows gives the example of a slinky.

If you put the two ends of a slinky on your hands and move them up and down, it bounces around and sends ripples from one end to another.

Why does it do this? Because you moved your hands up and down?

If you placed a book on your hands and moved them you would find the book react quite different, so that can't be the whole answer.

Rather, Meadows explains, "The answer clearly lies within the slinky itself. The hands that manipulate it suppress or release some behavior that is latent within the structure of the spring. That is a central insight of systems theory. Once we see the relationship between structure and behavior, we can begin to understand how systems work, what makes them produce poor results, and how to shift them into better behavior patterns."

So, why do we have poverty and hunger in this nation?

The first answer I want to suggest in this little blog series, as a direct challenge to the answers provided by almost every candidate for presidency, is that the causes of poverty and hunger lay within the structure of our system. And this structure lies far deeper than the difference between free-market capitalism aimed toward unrestrained growth prized by conservatives since Reagan and more government managed capitalism aimed toward unrestrained growth of liberals. Both operate within the same basic paradigms, and neither delves deeply enough to see the root causes. The roots lies in our histories, in the stories that guide us, and in the structures that often stay hidden behind the surface even while they form the rules and boundaries of our lives.

Consciously or not, the system is designed to produce the results we've gotten.

As a student of equitability and sustainability, I believe these outcomes are severely damaging to the health of every aspect of our nation: the rich, the poor, the middle class, the environment, our farmlands, and our cities. As a Christian, I find these outcomes morally reprehensible. We stand at a pivotal moment in history, one that requires us to begin to imagine and work toward a different system.

When we stop looking in the mirror for answers--when we start to listen to the voices of the suffering and allow their cries to lead us--we may return asking that same old question: what then must we do? And we might find ourselves wrestling with answers quite similar to John's and to Tolstoy's.

Moving forward, this systems lens will be a primary starting point for me in examining the candidate responses.

More on that to come.

Presidents and Poverty

You might of caught the first GOP candidate debate last week, but have you heard their thoughts on poverty?

The request was simple: as Christians, the fate of the vulnerable matters to us a great deal. In this nation and around the world, a plurality of our neighbors are suffering from poverty and hunger. If you--Mr. or Mrs. Presidential Candidate--were elected, what would you do to put an end to these social injustices?

Great question!

It came from a group called the Circle of Protection composed of over 100 prominent Christian leaders from across ever major branch of our faith.

They asked each Presidential candidate to reply with a 3 minute video explaining their platform on the issue. To my great pleasure, eight of the prospective Commander-in-Chiefs responded and four more have promised to do so. At the moment, we have videos from Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Martin O'Malley, and Bernie Sanders. Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio plan to send there's in soon.

The Sojourners website has the best spot to watch them. Go here to check 'em out:

the videos

No surprise, but I'm all for the effort to make poverty reduction a central issue for assuming political leadership of this nation. As their document says, the biblical concept of governing is steeped in the assumption that a ruler's job is to safeguard the vulnerable. The Circle of Protection website quotes Psalm 31:8-9:

Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute. Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy. 

Bear in mind that this Psalm was not written as a charge for the Church, it was written by and for a king. Obviously there are significant differences between a theocracy like Israel with its anointed ruler and a modern democracy like ours, but the point stands: if you go looking for the bible's central expectation for government leadership, it consistently returns to safe-guarding the poor and marginalized.

Since I dabble in this world, I thought it would be fun to post reviews of each video and provide my assessment of the candidates' theories and plans.

I don't write as an expert on the policy histories of any of these folks. I am not an economist, and I certainly don't claim to have figured out how to "solve poverty." But I have been engaged in life and ministry with the poor for about a decade now, am one thesis paper short of a Masters degree in Urban Ministry, have read piles of books, and I have enough of a radical angle on this stuff to make things interesting.

Some things to look for:

• What diagnosis does the candidate offer (explicitly or implicitly) for the cause(s) of poverty? Said another way, what is the candidate's theory of poverty?
• How do they seem to view the poor? As people to be pitied? As charity cases? As criminals? As the 'noble poor'? As responsible for their own fates? As victims of broken systems? As homogenous or heterogenous?
• What connections does the candidate make between poverty and other issues?
• Does their plan do anything to address issues of power imbalance?
• What exactly IS their plan? Do they actually offer one?
• How does the candidate relate to the poor? Do they show any signs of listening to the poor and allowing their perspectives to shape or lead the candidates platform?
• Do they lean toward a focus on individuals or systems/structures?
• Do they explain how their plan will practically serve to eliminate poverty? 
• How central is this issue to their presidency?
• Do you see genuine, action and relationship oriented compassion in them?
• What political, ideological, cultural, economic, philosophical, or theological precommitments might be shaping the candidate's position?

What other questions should we be asking?

Excited to dig in over the next couple weeks!

Reboot!

3 months since the last blog post?! Time to get back in the saddle.

The past few months have been packed with finishing my final courses for seminary, travels around the country, a week at Duke Divinity School's Summer Institute in Reconciliation, moving to Berkeley, CA and an 11 day backpacking trip in the Sierras.

It has been a full yet surprisingly refilling time. God has been hard at work rejuvenating my spirit. After two years of seminary, two years in a strange city/state, and two years of long distance from my fiancee Libbey, it was some much needed rejuvenation. My heart feels lighter and my passion is restoked for the work of the Kingdom!

Looking Forward

From now until I graduate next May, I will be working on my grad school thesis. The working title at the moment is Urban, Rural, Wild: Place and the Mission of God. At the very least, that subtitle will change. Some alternatives I'm playing were are "Landscapes of Life and Imagination"; "Landscapes of Oppression, Landscapes of Justice"; "Cultivating the Shalom Imagination"; "Shalom and the Community of Creation." We'll see :)

It is a wide ranging, interdisciplinary project that is attempting to situation cities in their geographic, ecological, historical, structural, and philosophical contexts. The basic point is that you can't understand a city by just thinking about the city. You have to see it in its relationship to the other primary "placial regions" (as I refer to them): rural/agrarian areas and the wilderness. Systems thinking and the science of ecology (as well as biblical/Hebraic thought, I might add) emphasize that you understand something best not by studying it in isolation, but by observing its relationships with the surrounding environment. Furthermore, we have to see the way that these distinctions are all things humans create. We impose a landscape of civilization on top of the Land: the ecological world of soil, water, plants, animals, and atmosphere. The way we humans make the world emerges from our worldviews.

My goal is to try to understand the underlying philosophies behind the way urban, rural and wild places have been formed through American history and assess to what degree this construction aligns with the ways of God. The trick to a good analysis, however, is not just looking at how the system has worked but paying close attention to the glitches, the casualties of our history and our present. This has led me to prioritize two primary perspectives in my research: 1) the marginalized and 2) the ecological. Indisputably, many people have been oppressed--enslaved, impoverished, displaced, dismissed, and even killed--through the manner the US pursues its corporate life. Their perspectives on our history and on the problematic elements of our worldview are therefore essential for uncovering our base problems. Secondly, creation has been altered and destroyed more rapaciously in the history of this country than anywhere else in the world. So, strange though it may sound to most modern ears, I will also be listening to what the land has to say.

In the end, I hope to be able to offer some theological convictions and fairly concrete political and missional advice for Christians in this country whose allegiance is more to Jesus than any economic theory or political party.

Since these are the things I will be thinking about, these are the things I plan to write about. Hopefully I can use this blog to hash through the ideas I want to unpack in my thesis. I'm told that it's bad blog etiquette to not stick to a niche, but too bad. If you are following along over the next year, expect to read posts on stuff like:

• the history of urban development in the US
• alternatives in farming, agricultural life and food systems
• the idea of wilderness and its function in American life
• a theology of creation far more related to its present than its origin
• the nature of "whiteness" and how it jacks up everything/everybody
• theories of modernity and postmodernity
• economics as if the poor and the planet mattered
• and a lot more!

My commitment is to make a post every two weeks at a minimum. That said, God is up to remarkable things and my brain is on fire, so it could be a lot more! To keep from pinning myself down, I won't necessarily proceed in any logical order, but will wander through subjects as they flow.

My prayer is that as you read, you find your imagination whipped up around topics you've never thought about before, that you discover God cares immensely about those things, and that through the "transforming of your mind" you find your self gradually caught up in a new, more beautiful, more Christlike way of being-in-the-world. Let us turn a blind eye toward the victims of our world no more. Instead, let us begin to dream and enact together a world designed for shalom.

Looking Back

For the two people who have been reading along from the beginning (thanks Mom and Libbey), I thought I would also briefly look back to tie up some loose ends.

In the very first post, I claimed that I was going to focus on leadership, and I even introduced something with a silly title called "12 Non-Exhaustive Principles for Leading to Shalom." When I started this blog, I had just finished a class called Leading Multicultural Communities. My mind was all wrapped up in the thoughts of my final paper, and I thought this blog would be a place to keep exploring them. Well, it was for the first couple months, but we all have to move on. I never came back to the "12 Principles," and honestly at this point I don't think they're that great, so I never will. And that's that.

Tied to those thought processes back at the genesis of this thing, there's another problem that's been chewing at me about this blog: the name. Since leadership was on my brain, I called this blog "Leading to Shalom." What nags at me are how many connotations--many starkly unChristian--the language of leadership dredges up. This blog is not supposed to be about how great a leader I am, or even about forming really amazing people into leaders for the Kingdom. Those images are too self-focused, too top down, too individualistic, too powerful in the ways of the world, too lacking the servant-hearted, sacrificial spirit of Jesus on the cross. 

If there is an aspect of "leading" I hope to conjure, I would rather it be that God is leading all of history toward shalom. That is the central reality behind everything. And as the followers of God, we get to come alongside him in this effort. It is not we who will make his Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven, but our Father. So, that said, I might change the name/address of this blog down the road.

The other unfinished mini-series started back at the beginning of March and flowed out of this model for shalom-oriented life I tried to draw up. Content wise there's a lot I still like about it. However, as I kept thinking about it over the past few months, problems kept cropping up.

First, it was too static. I knew there were things that weren't explicitly represented and I couldn't figure out an elegant way to solve that problem. Second, even though it wasn't meant to, the diagram felt to linear. Each layer was only connected to the pieces right above and below it. There was no room for circling around through the different elements, for moving back and forth, for all the nonlinear complexities of real life. On this side of eternity, seeking shalom is always a process and a journey of approximations--there is no one formula. That was obscured by my straight edged drawing. Third, though following Jesus was the bedrock, it still didn't feel Christocentric/Theocentric enough for me. While God was everywhere in all of it, that didn't seem to permeate the picture enough. Finally, any image carries with it symbolic, metaphoric meaning. My fairly happenstance choice of classic Greek architecture really had nothing to do with the deeper meanings I wanted to convey, and so was a distraction and detraction from my goal. Christian thought has been entangled with Platonic and Aristotelian ideas quite enough without me bringing in their subliminal messaging, thank you very much!

As I've fiddled with ecological thought, I see a lot of potential there to rework my model. Organic systems have the ability to intake and discharge elements while maintaining the equilibrium and health of the whole (something that wouldn't work so well if you yanked one of my pillars out of the old version). I think some kind of network, web or flow-diagram might be a better way to arrange my ideas (picture charts of a food web or the water cycle). But we'll see. If I come up with anything, I'll post it here. So, while I thought was going to unpack all the different elements and subelements of that picture for quite some time, I'm going to leave it to behind for the moment.

Thanks for engaging, and looking forward to wrestling through a lot more with you in the days ahead! Shalom, friends.