Thank you for your honesty and openness and for not taking it the wrong way!

Lots of love!

Pops

mark – cover…beautiful.

keith – i am still catching up but i really look forward to reading your story.

emily – thanks for sharing such a beautiful story & no need to apologize for long comments, the more the better! i love your prayer.

jeff – thanks for sharing. i think of you & your ministry often & really respect what you are doing over there to join hearts and reach out in the community. if you ever want to just process and yell and scream and dream or scheme or whatever else might help, you know my email address meanwhile, lots of prayers to you…

jeromy – it was so great hanging out with you, too. i love what you all are up to and that somehow our hearts can all be connected out here in blogland. best to you and your family on this wild and crazy adventure!

pops – oh you always are the pot stirrer aren’t you? it’s good because i love your heart and i think you ask a great question. of course, i don’t have any big huge answer that somehow would make it all a-okay, but i will tell you my perspective and make of it what you will. of course, you have a great point in terms of $ and waste and where people put their energy. at the same time, i will say that it’s dangerous to assume that there’s not exponential good things that might come out of such a gathering that in the end may help a lot more people than the $250 it cost people to go there (i am sure some paid more than me, but we drove and split gas 5 ways, got a cheap registration, and stayed at a cheap hotel down the road, and ate pretty dirt cheap, but that is how much it cost me–in the olden days my church would have paid, hahaha). there were almost 1,000 folks there, beautiful and dear and sincere christ-followers across catholic and protestant lines longing to “be the church.” there was no hype or rah-rah or cool factor compared to what i have experienced at many conferences in my time. now, could the $250 i spent fed some of my friends? sure. did listening to the speakers i listened to change my life? no. but that wasn’t why i went. i went to get away, laugh & hang out with some friends, see what God was up to in the greater church, and get a little reminder of how big and wonderful and beautiful the body of Christ really is. i will readily admit my inconsistencies in terms of the whole money things. i make choices all the time to serve myself and i make choices all the time to serve others. they both exist. i know they really can’t fully be justified in light of so many of Jesus’ teachings, and for the moment, i just have to live in that tension & give it my best shot. i actually have a lot less trouble with a conference like that which potentially could net a much bigger infusion of Christ’s tangible food & shelter & love & justice & peace in the world than the amount of money spent week after week after week at so many mega-churches to feed people inspirational messages & a lot of electronic flash that i don’t think will ever translate into food for the hungry. well i could ramble on and on, and i am sure that probably didn’t really do much, did it? i so get the frustration and tension and while i can try to justify it all i want, of course i think almost all money out there in our little grubby hands could be so much better spent…

I hope this comes across right as I do not want to sound judgemental.

What confuses me greatly, (and I see this in the ‘Christian famiy’ here in South Africa too, it is just that a lot of them do not have blogs and so one does not read about it like with you guys.) is, what seems to me, to be a splitting up of lives into compartments.

Take your last couple of posts and more specificaly the one on hunger and of course, this one.

Whilst bemoaning the issues and then undertaking to live on just $2 a week, which I thought was quite noble, I then see most of the people who’s blogs I read, all travelling off to a conference to go listen to what other people have to say.

So what is the use of saving money on food, but then paying out money to go listen to man? Something just grates in my spirit when I hear of this sort of thing.
How much money could have gone to help the homeless and the hungry, if the conference had been ignored; How much more would relationships with God and man been improved on if God had been sought for answers instead of man; How much more money could have been put back into effective work amongst the homeless and the hungry with the savings of travel costs, accomodation, cost of attending etc?

I have no idea how many people actually went to this conference and of course no idea about the costs over there – but do a rough calculation Kathy and let us know what you think the total expenditure was for this past weekends conference?
(Let us leave aside how much was spent buying books, tapes etc.)
And it all flies in the face of so much of what I see Emerging standing for; We need to find out what God is saying to us. We are tired of man dictating to us. etc. etc.

But now there are a group of people who are ‘Leaders’ and whose voices are heard by many, running off to hear man! I am really perplexed with this!

It is one thing to take a stand against certain inequalities and wrong teachings, but then it needs to impact all areas of our lives, not just that one area for a small space in time.

I don’t want to take up too much space here and I hope, as I said earlier, I do not sound judgemental, but I am really struggling to reconcile these sort of issues.

Lots of love!

Pops

I have been absent from commenting but have been following along. The last two posts are hitting a little too close to home at the present time for me to comment. Part of it is not sure what/how much I should share and some of it is wether I sure push the accelerator or hit the break.

Thanks for the words.

home – is what God finds in us.

I remember very cold and dark January night when I first started looking for a place to move to in the Denver area. I wasn’t moving TO something, so much as I trying to start over, or at least get a break from what I was moving from. I was exhausted, feeling really alone, and desperate to find a place to rest.

I drove by a neighborhood full of homes with their front porch lights on and I became almost overwhelmed with homesickness. No one was keeping any light on for me, no one was waiting for me anywhere, there were no hugs from friends, no places in my life where my heart could really just rest and be. There was no place I would call home, no place I felt safe in any way.

I felt far away from God, far away from friends or family, far away from anything that felt like home in any way and it hung heavy on my heart and soul.

I drove by a church and noticed they had a Sunday night service. Sick of The Church, and yet craving something – anything – that was warm and familiar, I walked in. They were talking about how God finds home in us. In me. With all my brokenness and ick, God finds home in me. It broke me in a way I needed to be broken. God could reside in all kinds of places and show up in all kinds of ways, but of all places God could find a home, he chooses to find home in us. In me.

I pray:
God provide homes, roofs over heads and safe places for hearts to rest.
God help us see, really see, those who are homeless and come alongside them as fellow humans.
God find home in us, just as we are, with all the ick inside. Move and live and reside in us.
God thank you for being a place for my heart to rest when the nights are cold, dark, and lonely.

(sorry to post so long.)

Those who grow up in abusive situations do not have a home – a refuge – a place to lay their head and rest. The places I would fall asleep the most soundly were places like under the couch or in the back of the closet. Hidden. Safe.

You touched, too, on the idea of spiritual homelessness. Hmm… I think that some of the people you interviewed last month understand that. The feeling that even when you are involved in a faith community, you are on the outside looking in. You don’t belong. It is not safe. Hmm….