PARAKLETOS

We just got back from a northside 5k run. Erin and her friend Anne ran in the race and set a personal record for time. I think there where about 400 other runners this morning. Then after the run they had a finish line festival. At the festival there was free BBQ, a kids bouncy thing, pony rides, a talent show, and a great mix of people having fun and enjoying the beauty of their neighborhood. WHAT A GREAT DAY!!!

One of the reasons that I enjoyed the race so much (besides being proud of Erin) was because earlier this week a friend of ours witnessed a shooting at 2 in the afternoon. In the alley about 3 blocks from our house a man unloaded his gun on another person in broad daylight. I believe that one of the reasons he did it was because he felt like no one would see. There are a lot of people living very close to each other, but at the same time there is a lot of isolation because we fear each other.

Today was a day of seeing each other, hearing each other and becoming less afraid of each other.

To build on that June 14^th our block is going to have a block party. Then each Thursday night after that we are going to have weekly BBQ’s, in the hope that knowing each other will make us less fearful and help us to stand together against the violence in the neighborhood.

The other reason I wanted to write about go northside was because a few weeks ago we learned that Micah will be starting at Elizabeth Hall International Elementary school in the fall. The registration day was great and they gave us what they call a Student Profile “The foundation of the IB (international baccalaureate- that is the curriculum of the school) is comprised of 10 attributes that are embedded across the school culture. They are inquirer, thinker, communicator, risk-taker, knowledgeable, principled, caring, open-minded, balanced, reflective.” Wow what a great list of attributes for kids to be taught. And those attributes are taught with a global and holistic perspective. When they teach history is not just American history or from an American perspective, it covers history for other parts of the world and tries to understand how they see the world. They also talk about how we are to share the plant and use it in a way that is good for all.

Also if Micah follows this program all through High school when we graduates he will have 1 full semester of college completed.

All of this just a blocks away from us. So I am excited to see Micah become a student at Hall and I hope that the great things they are doing there will be replicated in other schools in the neighborhood. Because the fact remains that is Hall can only educate some many kids and there are currently a lot of kids if the education that they are getting today continues until they graduate high school they will be no where prepared to face the challenges of college curriculum.

If you are reading this blog praise God for the good on the Northside and pray that we will continue to be creative and have courage to join God in the work that God is doing here.

(Erin here)  Perhaps many of you have the same thoughts as the one who commented to Tanden’s earlier blog about Desmond Tutu and an impotent God.  The friend gently suggested that maybe the word Tanden meant to say was “OMNIpotent”. 

Though Tanden at times is NOT the best speller and often can’t be bothered with basic punctuation (that’s why he keeps me around) — this time he actually got it right.  Desmond Tutu DID say “God is impotent”.  First, he said that we all are taught that God is omnipotent — all-powerful — and he is, but He is also impotent — he chooses to limit Himself.  He does not often feed hungry people by making it rain hamburgers.  Instead, He tells US to go feed the hungry people.  And, if we turn a blind, or busy, or unaffected eye to that need, those people will stay hungry.

What do you think?  It felt a little scandalous to hear him say such a thing.  What are your thoughts?

And now, I really just want to go back to digging through my recipes to find a really decadant thing made out of chocolate.  Because, honestly, it is so much easier and more comfortable to keep those hungry people out of sight and out of mind. 

Does anyone else ever feel like that?  Will anyone else admit to it?  Sometimes I like feeling like I’m not alone in my ugliness.

The garden is coming along very nicely.  We have three plots that are 9 feet by 45 feet each.  There are 6 different household that will be gardening on those plots this summer.

Last Saturday we got together and tilled in 2 dump trucks loads of compost.  The ground that we are working has no top soil and is just this hard clay, but the compost is really going to make a difference.  We have most of it plotted out with what we want to plant, we just now need to put the seeds in the ground and then towards the end of this month put the starter plants in.

We have been talking pictures of things so once I get things figured out I will start posting those pictures. (If you know of a good solution let me know.  Also if you have a digital camera that you want to get rid of we are in need of one.)

It has been pretty cool to see how this effort has started to make some really cool connections on the neighborhood.  We have met two new neighbors and one of them has said that they want to garden with us this summer.  We have also had 5 neighborhood kids grab shovels and help out with the project.  And that is one of the big reasons we decided to do this project.

I was talking with the nuns the other morning.  In the last week they had gone to two different vigils for people that had been killed.  At each of those vigils one of the things that the community was calling for was a renewed commitment to know each other.  The belief is that in the knowing of each other we will be able to stand together against the evil forces and overcome those evil forces in the neighborhood.

Our prayer is that this community garden will help us know each other and help us to learn to love each other in a deeper way.

I am sorry but our blog does not work very well with pictures so getting the pictures that we took the other day when Desmond Tutu spoke at North High on the bog is not going to work at this time. Maybe in the near future we will figure out a better way to share photos with you.

Two things really stuck out when we heard him speak. The first was how he is this little old man who really loves life and loves to laugh. Several times as he was speaking, he told these silly jokes that really where not all that funny but boy did he ever think they where. As he laughed the rest of us joined in. Being a person who has seen and experienced all that pain that he has, it really surprised me that he could still laugh like that. And it is not like he is delusional and does not understand just how messed up the world is, as he spoke he was very aware of where things are at, but he just has such a belief that goodness is overcoming evil.

I have heard plenty of people who have on idea about the pain of the world talk about how God is working and how one day evil will be put to rest, but to hear someone like Tutu talk about it means something all together different. So after hearing him talk I am able to believe that the killing of a 15-year-old girl (that just happened around the corner a few weeks ago) will not always be part of life.

The other thing that he talked about was the fact that God is impotent. He did affirm that God is all-powerful, but in the same breath we have to say that there are things that God can not do. For whatever reason God requires us to join him.

Clothes falling from the sky do not clothe the naked, they are clothed when people decided to join the work of God and clothe those that are naked. Those who are lonely are loved when people choose to enter into that loneness and extend the love of God.

Wow, when we think about God being impotent and in great need for us to be the hands, feet, and heart of God, it really changes the importance of our lives. We are not here to just pass time, to just get through, to just get by, but we are here to do the very work of God and if we don’t do it then we must ask ourselves how is it going to get done?

I am 31 years old and a seminary graduate and it was the first time in my life that a Christian in a public setting said things so direct. What he said was not shocking; I have believed God to be impotent for sometime. What I found it to be was freeing. Freeing to hear those words said out loud and from someone that I greatly respect. But as soon as I say that I find those words freeing I feel them taking inventory of my life. Am I really living that way? Am I really acting as though my life is to be lived in such a way as to be the action of God in this world? How do I start to live with at responsibility?

So I find a great freedom and a great challenge all at the same time.

If you are on facebook, you can go to my account and check out the video section to see the video of Tutu speaking.

Tanden was invited back to preach at North Heights this past weekend….this is a little bit of what he said…please, leave a comment, we’d love to hear from you.

Ben contacted us a while back about speaking on this topic of “I have a friend who thinks the Bible is just a vintage classic,” and  as I thought about that topic, I realized…its my fault. Its all of our fault. Somehow, in the last two thousand years, we have reduced this book into a nice, cheesy, out-of-touch thing. Many of us regard it either as a “Miss Manners guide to etiquette” – you know, a guidebook about how to get along politely with people and live a prim and proper life. Or, as maybe a “Chicken Soup for the Soul” — full of nice, uplifting, inspiring stories that comfort us as we fall asleep at night. No wonder most of the world regards our Holy Scripture as something that looks pretty siting on a doily on our Grandmother’s coffee table but is otherwise functionally useless.  In reality, the New Testament is really more like the manifesto of a radical, polarizing revolutionary. We don’t often think of it in those terms. Much less often, I think, do we really live in those terms. You see, I think if we were to take the book off of Grandma’s doily and actually start doing what it says, it would be impossible for anyone to confuse it with a vintage classic. People might reject it for all sorts of other reasons, but certainly, never because it seemed like out-of-touch sentimentality. I started to wonder what would happen if we who call ourselves the followers of Christ really started to live like He meant what He said. What would happen if we really did all the stuff he told us to do in the sermon on the mount, like “turn the other cheek” when someone insults us or wounds us? What if we really did “go the extra mile” with someone who we knew was exploiting us and using us? What if we really did “love our enemies and pray for those persecuting us” instead of retaliating? What would the world think of our Bible then?

And then, I started reading the Book of Luke – and that messed me up some more! I started wondering if he literally meant what he said in Luke 14:12-14, when he said “When you give a lunch or a dinner, don’t invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, otherwise, they might repay you. Instead…invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And then you will be blessed – since they have no means to repay you, your repayment will come at the resurrection of the righteous.” What did he mean when he said I should “love my neighbor as myself“? Of course, I had read all these verses before, but I am so good at rationalizing, contextualizing, explaining things away. What if I started reading the words of Jesus plainly, just as they were written?

Soren Kierkegaard, who was a nineteenth century Danish philosopher said,

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly.”

There are some radicals out there, people who have done just that – I even know some of them personally. I know a group of Catholic nuns who turned a couple of old houses around the corner from us in North Minneapolis into their monastary – they have committed their lives to having the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind over for dinner. I have a dear friend who was so transformed by Jesus’s teaching to “forgive others of their transgressions’ and to “turn the other cheek” that she not only forgave the Father who destroyed her family, she is seeking reconciliation with him. I have another friend who gave a stranded prostitute a ride on the back of his bike because he remembered that Jesus said, “whatever you do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Tanden’s parents rescued 5 children out of orphanages in India and Guatemala, because they know that Psalm 10:14 says that God is the helper of the orphan.

And then, there are the Christian saints whose names we all know – Mother Theresa who dedicated her life to caring for the dying and destitute in Calcutta. Martin Luther King, a prophet who was martyred because he knew the words of Amos 6:24, when the Lord commands, “let justice roll down like waters.” Dietrich Bonhoffer who was murdered in a concentration camp for trying to take down Hitler because Jesus said,”blessed are the peacemakers and blessed those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.”

What would people think of our Bible if we all started living like we believed it ourselves?

I don’t know about you, but I get fired up when I hear stories like these. But then I go home and I look around at the world and I feel so small and I get so overwhelmed I just want to turn on Survivor or something. I’ve found it helpful though, to try to think of just one thing. One radical thing I can do right now. Don’t tell me about that neat thing you did 20 years ago. Don’t even tell me about that mission trip you went on last summer. It has to be now. Maybe your radical thing is to call the sister that wounded you. Or to go volunteer at a soup kitchen. Or to educate yourself about painful things you’d rather ignore because you think they don’t concern you. Or to actually go put an arm around that stranger in church that is sobbing uncontrollably. And then, after you do that one radical thing, think of another one.  Two years ago on Tuesday, our “one radical thing” was to move into our home in North Minneapolis and to try to befriend the neighbors whose stories and skin color was different than our own. Today, our “one radical thing” is for Tanden to work outside the home just part time so that we can expand our ministry in the neighborhood God has called us to.  And we need some other radicals to come alongside us, supporting us with their finances, their prayers and their concern for our community so we can take this next scary step in our lives.

It is said that when people asked Gandhi if he was a Christian, he would reply by saying, “Ask the lepers, they know who the Christians are.” Let us all live a life that makes it impossible for people to think the Bible is just some “vintage classic” on Grandma’s doily.