“What does it mean to be human?”

Reflecting on this question makes me smile.  There are so many answers derived from so many perspectives.  There are so many social locations and so many formative experiences contributing to so many answers that narrowing down these answers seems an eternal exercise.  But it is good to pluck a few ideas from this stream and reflect upon them.  These ideas that I have chosen are not cumulative or absolute representations.  They are just ideas grown out of my social location and fed by my experience, education, culture, and community.

To be human is to be complicated and complex.  As humans, our actions and our behaviors are so rarely simple.  We are full of layers and those layers are shaped by our childhood, our culture, our experiences, our likes and dislikes, and our emotions and thoughts.  Additionally, our lives are shaped by belief systems and institutions of power and control.  These systems and institutions can be strong foundations or they can be destructive and oppressive.  Cumulatively, all of these contributing factors mean that no actions or decisions on our part are simple.

To be human is to have a story.  Each person is unique.  As a result each person should be treated with respect and honored for their uniqueness.  Each person should be given the opportunity to use their voice and to tell their story.  Each person should be free from stereotypes and generalizations.

To be human is to want to be happy.  This is hard because the word happy is not the most ideal word.  It lacks depth and dimension.  Happy is a very American word.  Moreover, it is a human characteristic to define our wants in terms of the desire to avoid what we do not want.  This can be confusing and, in the end, our inability to see outside our negative parameters can derail our search for happiness.  To expand on happiness in positive terms, I think that humans want satisfaction or contentment.  They want to be free from worry.  They want to have fun and to laugh.  They want to see their families grow and succeed.  They want to be at peace.

To be human is to do good and to do evil.  We all possess the capacity to do good and evil.  We bless and curse, we tell the truth and we lie.  We give and we steal.  We create life and we destroy it.  Over my life, perhaps naively and incorrectly, I have grown to doubt whether as humans we are good or are evil.  Those are labels that come too easily and forsake both the future and any cumulative capacity.  Those are labels that dehumanize us one to another.

To be human is to be lost and confused and to despair.  Sadly, loss, confusion, and despair are a part of our story.  We all experience some level of loss, confusion, and despair.  Hopefully, for those of us who suffer the worst, there is diagnosis and treatment.  For all of us, there should be compassion and gentleness.

To be human is to be in need of healing.  As much as I wish it were not so, we are all broken and in need of deep healing and repair.  We hurt ourselves and we hurt one another, we are destroyed and we destroy.  As such, we must return to heal ourselves and heal one another.

To be human is to want love and to want to give love.  I do not believe that love is a human creation.  In fact, I believe that love created humanity.  Love binds us and calls us to one another.  Love is our greatest capacity.

To be human is to hope for the better.  Just as love is our greatest capacity, hope is our strongest foundation.  Hope gives us the strength to keep going, to seek the betterment of our species and the unity of our kind one to another and to creation.  Hope gives the strength to keep going, even when it logically no longer makes sense.

To be human is to participate in our collective story.  All of us, all the time, are participating together in the writing of this great human story.  Through our actions of good and evil, our love, our hope, our despair, confusion, and loss, and our pursuit of healing and happiness, we are influencing and impacting one another.  We are shaping one another’s stories into the giant tapestry of humanity.

To be human is not an easy undertaking.  And more often than not, it is long into our lives before we realize our similarities and connections.  As such, we deserve patience and forgiveness.  We should treat one another with compassion and be slow to judge.  We should be quick to defend one another and sacrifice for one another.  And we should work for the wholeness of all of us.

Shane Claiborne’s 12 Hopes for 2012

12.  Do something really nice – that no one knows about.

11. Spend more money on other people than I spend on myself. Love my neighbor as I love myself. And love myself as I love my neighbor.

10. Laugh often… especially at advertisements that try to convince me that I must buy more stuff in order to be happy.

9. Learn a new life skill – like carpentry, pottery, or canning vegetables. Teach someone else I life skill I know how to do.

8.  Love a few people well, remembering that what is important is not how much we do but how much love we put into doing it.

7.  Write a letter to someone I need to say thank you to. Write another letter to someone I need to ask to forgive me.

6.  Track down a critic or someone I disagree with and take them to lunch. Listen to them.

5.  Compliment someone I have a hard time complimenting… and mean it.

4.  Choose life. Do something regularly to interrupt the patterns of injustice – do something to end violence, bullying, war, capital punishment and other mean and ugly things.

3.  Pause before every crisis and ask “will this matter in 5 years?”

2.  Get outside often and marvel at things like fireflies and shooting stars. And regularly get my hands into the garden… so when I type on the computer I can see dirt under my fingernails.

1.  Believe in miracles. And live in a way that might necessitate one.

The problem with the Body of Christ in the US is not that we are too weak or that our power is in decline, it is that we have come to think of ourselves as “too big to fail.” We fear vulnerability and mutuality in our dealings, lest we be diluted by the “secular” or “profane.” We create barriers to God and spread the big lie of isolation and separation. And we demonstrate an absence of trust in our primary faith narrative – Death and Resurrection.

We have traded God’s vision of Jubilee and renewal in death and resurrection for the empire’s vision of “return on investment” and “exponential growth.” We can model something different at AEC. We can model the dynamic and life-renewing cycle of the Gospel in the way we do life together. But we must abandon the fear-based, scarcity-assuming tools of the status quo.

We have traded Jesus’ ministry of reconciliation for an anxiety-reducing discipline in self-righteousness and self-justification. We have chosen “good behavior and right belief now in return for heaven later” over Jesus ministry “to bring good news to the poor… to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor’” (Mark 4).

It is my conviction that the future of the Body of Christ is the prophetic and pastoral embrace of “justice and righteousness” and the restoration, forgiveness, and healing that must accompany it.

These are not just flowery sentiments to me, but the beginning of our collective transformation. If God in God’s nature is relational, then how we do life together is of divine importance. The AEC can change the way we look at relationships, from a passive and unimportant aspect of life to the central concern of religion in the public square. Our ministry of reconciliation is the entry point into the co-creation of the Beloved Community that God invites us into.

Specifically, this means facilitating the co-creation of new relationships at the grassroots level of our congregations. Ecumenical relationships can only be considered genuine if they reach beyond the formal and institutionally sanctioned relationships. You will find with me that I am very open to “what” we do together so long as “how” we do it remains central to our conversation.

In that spirit, the programmatic possibilities for AEC are as broad as the divine imagination. Our mission should not be like the pearl merchant who tries to sell Ecumenism to the broader church. Rather, it is my posture and inclination to act as “treasure seekers” who go looking for the buried treasure of ecumenical community and sell all that we have to participate in its glory. The most authentic and humanizing community is almost always discovered this way. Our mission is to seek with intentionality and urgency the hospitality of our neighbor and to extend that same God-infused love back.

My mom was showing me what it meant to have empathy. To understand and feel with the person I had hurt. This capacity to empathize helped foster a sense of compassion not only toward my brother, but toward anyone who I saw as suffering. This sense of compassion seemed to come relatively naturally. By that I mean, I didn’t understand that I was being conditioned or taught to feel something. But I did understand that empathy and compassion were something to be developed in myself and respected in others. Compassion has become the singular quality through which I understand God to be at work in the world.

Some of the most grounding stories in the Bible for me are those when God shows compassion on God’s people. When Jesus is said to have looked on someone in pain and is moved by compassion. Or when God heard the cry of God’s people in Egypt, God had compassion on them and did not forget them. And God’s call to Israel was always that they be a living testimony to the Mercy of God. In Exodus 22:21-22 God calls Israel to reminds them to act mercifully toward resident aliens because they “were aliens in the land of Egypt” (www.bible.oremus.org). Various communities and people in my life, none more so than the marginalized communities I have the honor to work with, have demonstrated this call to compassion for me.

I recently met a man who is a legal resident of the U.S. at the Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, WA. (I’ll call him Thomas.) He was there to visit a man whom he had met some time ago. His friend (I’ll call John) had been arrested the day before because an ex-wife in Texas had made a statement saying John abused her. Charges were not brought but law demanded he appear in court in order to avoid those charges and finalize his divorce. Having signed the papers, he had believed everything was in order. He had missed his court date in Texas because he had moved to Tacoma and didn’t know about the court date. John now faced deportation since his wife and he are no longer together.

Despite only a casual friendship with John, Thomas was there to help John find a lawyer and be his communication with the outside. This was a significant act of compassion on the part of Thomas since it had only been a matter of months since he had been detained in this very center. I would have understood if he never wanted to be anywhere near this place of fear and isolation. But Thomas was filled with passion and empathy for his friend. He told us John’s story and asked us for help finding resources. He told us of his intention to visit John everyday and advocate for him for the entirety of his incarceration. Compassion allowed Thomas to transcend his own feelings of fear and discomfort and walk voluntarily into the prison that once threatened his own freedom in order that another human being would not feel alone and hopeless.

This story is illustrative to me of the Mercy of God in three ways. First, Thomas’ compassion for John showed a specific care for the lived experience of John. There was nothing abstract about the mercy that Thomas offered John. He didn’t offer prayer alone or a concern with John’s eternal soul. Rather, Thomas worked hard to make John as physically and mentally comfortable as he could be. This is an echo of God’s demonstrated concern for the physical bondage of the Hebrew people in Egypt. God is in fact concerned with the here and now (Lohfink, 1987). The goodness of creation that is proclaimed in Genesis is affirmed by God’s continued concern for the quality of life that the Hebrew people experienced.

So too, Thomas’ concern and compassion for John affirmed John’s humanity as “good” and worthy of care. Not only this, but Thomas’ concern for John was not evident simply of a lifelong friendship with John or because he was family or in some other way a special case. Thomas’ compassion for John came from empathy for anyone who found himself or herself alone in a strange land, in bondage and without an advocate. In a broader sense, God’s compassion for the Hebrew people was not directed at an individual, but to a “people” whose cry God had heard. God’s compassion is inclusive and communal and affirms a shared experience among the poor and marginalized (Lohfink, 1987). This is exactly what Thomas was demonstrating.

Thomas’ story illustrates the Mercy of God in a second way: God’s mercy is communal. When Thomas encountered John, everything in the US American culture would have told him to distance himself. His concern should have been with the maintenance of his personal freedom. Experience suggested that the best thing for Thomas would be to avoid contact with ICE at all costs. He had heard the stories of detainees being beaten, tortured and even killed at similar facilities. Because Thomas saw something of himself in John that told him that his own freedom was caught up in the treatment and destiny of John. Russell Daye (2004) documents Desmond Tutu’s description of this Ubuntu theology. Tutu said that the image of God is in all of us and therefore our humanity and our full being cannot be separated from that of any other person. For Tutu, this was evidence against South African apartheid (Daye, 2004).

For Thomas, this same image of God was apparent in his own experience and the life of John. He couldn’t walk away from John without walking a way from a part of himself. So too, God calls the Hebrew people to care for those who are “strangers” in their land. In Deuteronomy 10:17-19 and on many other occasions, God directs the Hebrew people to not see the world in terms of closed relationships (www.bible.oremus.org). This is the heart of Tutu’s Ubuntu and the demonstrated value of Thomas. God tells the Hebrew people that the way in which they treat “strangers” and others being oppressed by poverty will determine the fate that they will meet. Their concern should not be self-directed, but directed toward a larger, more inclusive community.

Finally, there is a third lesson on the Mercy of God within Thomas’ story. God takes sides in violent and unjust systems. I have shared Thomas’ story with people who cannot get past the question of what Thomas and John deserve under the law. They will render any lesson learned from Thomas as moot because of his status as “undocumented” or worse. The singular question for many US Americans today on the immigration debate as well as most areas of morality is a simple one: Is it legal? When it comes to the law, US Americans and Hebrews share a common practice. We mistake legalism for right-relationship. The shortsightedness of Americans to see the image of God in one another parallels the failure of the Hebrew people to understand the concern of God. While we strive to be righteous under the law, God “leads people out of the system” (Lohfink, 2004, p35).

Thomas’ experience was one of marginalization and isolation by an unjust legal system. When he found his freedom, he did not turn and condemn those who found themselves bound, but sought their comfort and freedom. God calls for liberation and transformation from unjust economic and legal systems (Daye, 2004). To the Hebrew people God warned against forgetting how easy it is move from oppressed to oppressor. In Isaiah and throughout the prophets God’s side is made clear: care for the orphan, the widow and the stranger (www.bible.oremus.org).

These lessons from Thomas echo the lessons I was taught by my family. Compassion for those of us who are marginalized, oppressed and made vulnerable by those who are strong means a change in behavior and a working empathy. The Mercy of God is made manifest in our communities and relationships when we move toward right-relationship among all people.

References

Bible (NRSV). Retrieved from http://bible.oremus.org/.

Daye, R. (2004). Political forgiveness: Lessons from South Africa. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers.

Lohfink, N. (1987). Option for the poor. N. Richland Hills, TX: BIBAL Press.

For all my talk about being a Christian, for admonishing people to avoid alcohol and drugs, for waiting to have sex in marriage, I could be an absolute jerk to people. I know that there are friends that I said sexist and insensitive things to, thinking it was funny. I know I told and laughed at racist jokes, mostly for the shock value of saying something you knew was wrong. I made fun of people, and judged them like so many teenage boys do. I’d like to think that I reserved my insults and ignorance to a narrow group of people, but then don’t we all?

What I do remember clearly, is that I took special joy in embarrassing the bullies and “too cool for school” kids in my class. I was never at their level of popularity or coolness, but I could kind of hang out with them at times. I was just in enough to usually avoid their harassment. For the most part I could hang out with most groups at my school, or at least I believed I could, you’d have to ask them how it was on their side. At any rate, I was around enough to watch the popular guys tear down and make fun of the less popular people in my class. Sometimes I laughed along and sometimes I kept silent.

But at plenty of other times I took pride in being able to dish it back at the bullies with sarcasm and wit that they couldn’t keep up with. I saw myself as a protector of the “little guy.” I thought I was doing something Jesus would have done by standing up for “the least of these.” But in reality, I was just bullying the bullies. I was just funny enough and just quick enough that I could get away with it. I thought I was making the school more peaceful, and in one sense I suppose I was moving the target off of some of the more picked on classmates. But ultimately, I was “helping” by adding violence to an already violent setting.

Not understanding what it is to be just is something that I find characterizes much of the non-profit world. Many of us involved in works to alleviate the suffering or marginalization of people employ methods of organizing, leading, and communication that add violence to an already violent setting. Out of great love, we make decisions for others, bar marginalized and oppressed groups from the administration of resources, speak of those groups in terms that rob them of dignity and characterize the group as “them,” not just as a pro-noun, but as signifier of their categorical separation from “us.”

Out of great love, we do great violence.

And our use of scripture is often one of the places we rob marginalized groups of their name and value. For instance, the scripture that I paraphrased above that illustrated God’s concern for “the least of these,” is often used by middle class and rich white people to admonish one another to care for the black and brown poor through charity. The “least of these” are literally seen as less than us. All the while, no effort is made to understand the systemic and patterned injustice that keeps those groups separate and unequal. Our vision of how inequity is created is not challenged or expanded. Instead we maintain ideas that tie God’s blessing to the “have’s” and God’s curse to the “have not’s.”

And not only that, this is operationalized in the vision-process, leadership, program development, and administration of “justice organizations” who don’t do the necessary relationship building work to establish a just method of justice building. I have participated both consciously and unconsciously in this not changing. But as one of my friends, Dr. Jeanette Rodriguez says, “Nothing changes till it changes.”

The reality is that if marginalized or oppressed people do not co-create the new reality and take leadership in every aspect of it’s birthing, then injustice cannot be overcome. Power and access is at the heart of every justice issue. So it matters greatly how we do life together in our pursuit of peace and justice.

This is something that I know, but don’t claim to practice perfectly. In fact, the longer I work with these ideas, the more I realize that to make these claims is to invite harsh criticism and critique into everything I do as a leader. Sometimes I want to stop trying and just embrace my power and privilege for selfish splurging. And at times I suppose I have. But I also believe that my liberation is caught up in the liberation and wholeness of my “others.” Such a belief precedes a commitment to accompanying one another on the road to restored and reconciled relationship.

This is an excerpt from a forthcoming book from Bjorn Peterson, “Rich Young Ruler”

If I want to, I can quickly name a dozen reasons why this legacy of destruction is not mine. But, deny it or not, it is my legacy. Sadly, we as a species are so far along this legacy of destruction that we have lost control of our ability to not do evil to one another. The food I ate for dinner, were the workers exploited in its harvest? So that I might write, were indigenous peoples in far away countries torn from their homes, subjected to contaminated water, and massive amounts of cancerous, toxic fumes so that the magnesium and aluminum that build this laptop’s processors could be mined? Or you, as you sit reading this with your coffee in hand, are the wages and healthcare coverage of the barista who served you kept so inadequately low that she is forced below the poverty line so that you might enjoy a latte made with beans harvested in the jungles of Sumatra? We are all doing it. Unconscious, unintended, uncontrollable evil is so wrapped up in who we are and what we do that we can literally not separate ourselves from it.

This is the reality of our lives.

But, this is not the only reality of our lives.

Each day, I bear witness to the subtle, unmistakable curve of the moral arc of the universe. Slowly, ever so slowly, we, you and I, are waking up to the light that burns in our cores. We are slowly but steadily owning our capacity to do good because we be good. And slowly we, as a collective species, are moving along the curve of the moral arc of the universe towards wholeness. Those who have been denied a voice are receiving their voice. Those who have suffered are receiving healing. Doors that have been closed are being opened and those that have been denied access are making their way in. Those who have been beaten down because of their skin color, beliefs, gender, and sexual orientation are being lifted up. And the beauty is that all of this is happening together through our collective actions. We are doing this together. We are choosing this path and we are walking this path.

To do good because we be good is to seek the fullest for each other. This can be a pretty lofty, difficult idea to understand. And it is an immensely more difficult idea to actually put into practice in our daily lives. It is much easier to strike out in anger, to destroy in vengeance, and to dehumanize each other. But anger and rage, destruction and anarchy are but the quick flash of gasoline exploding. They provide only a quick flame and no warmth. They burn quickly and they burn entirely and they leave us cold and empty on the other side. That is not the future we seek. The future we seek is built upon our commitment to the fullest for each other. As difficult as it may be, it is possible and it starts with one small act each day. We must commit that we will do our best to be good to one another as much as we can. And we have to mean it. I repeat, we must mean it. The goal is not to rush out and undo all violence and oppression today. The goal is to make small choices that impact those we talk with, walk with, interact with, and meet with throughout the day. How can we be better towards them? How can we seek their fullest?

This is the starting point and it is a completely unglamorous, boring, humble beginning. But it must be. This is the call of every new morning and every closing nightfall. This is the call that we, you and I, must answer from now through every moment until we leave this earth. This is the call that unravels evil and gives value to our lifetimes of work for justice, love, and wholeness. This is the call that guides us on the moral arc of the universe away from our legacy of destruction.

Be brave and stand together. Be humble and be committed to the daily work of light and goodness.

Luke Black is a graduate student at Seattle University.

The fact is Joseph Kony is a proven war criminal and has abducted, mutilated, raped, and killed more children then I can wrap my mind around. Even typing those words in the same sentence as the word “children” is devastating for me. I think back to my high school history class where I would read about Hitler and think, “who were the people of the world who let him get away with that.” And now I stop and think, it is me.

I am letting Joseph Kony get away with it.

And then I think about the children I hope to have someday and think of the day when they will ask, “mommy why did the world let that man hurt all those kids?” But I am determined to never answer,” because the problem was too big,” or “I was too young,” or “what could I really do.” As a friend of a friend so poignantly has said, “why not me and why not now?” If you can think of an excuse not to do anything you must be working on the formula for total world peace because that may be the only thing more important.

I am not asking you to endorse the Invisible Children Organization, I am asking you to MOVE. There is no proven formula for catching a war criminal and war is never black and white, and but if we do what we’ve always done we’ll get what we’ve always got. So far almost nothing has been done and so he continues his reign of terror. So now you need to MOVE. Decide what to do and then do it. It really is as simple as that.

Kony will continue doing what he’s doing if we let him. That’s right if WE let him. Right now you and me and everyone else who is not MOVING is letting him. So find something and do it, now is the time.

What I arrived at the actual performance with my English sister, I was both impressed and excited as I learned what this “homeless choir” was really all about. Ironically, the official name of this choir is “The Choir With No Name” and it was originally started in London about five years ago. The idea was to do a new type of ministry that provided a time for fellowship and confidence building. On the program, the The Choir with No Name explained who they are.

“We form choirs made up of people who’ve been affected by homelessness. We’ll sing anything and everything that gets us fired up. We rehearse once a week in the very church you’re standing in, and we have a home-cooked dinner together after each rehearsal. We sing because it makes you feel good. It distracts you from all the nonsense in life and helps build confidence and make friends.”

The idea proved so successful in London that this fall The Choir With No Name started a second group in England’s second biggest city, Birmingham. While still in its beginning stages, this time of fellowship and singing has gotten off to a great start. The performance I was attending was the first time the London group had travelled to Birmingham to perform together. The performance was truly brilliant and included a variety of song united under the theme, “One Nation Under a Groove.”

Two parts of this experience especially struck me. The first was the enormous courage it took the choir members (some of whom have personally faced or are facing homelessness, some who have had family members face homelessness, and some who simply wanted to join this incredible group of people in singing once a week) to get up on the stage and sing. I personally would find it terrifying to get up and sing on stage, and I’ve never been part of a group that faces social isolation and stigmatization that homeless individuals have. It was also a breathtakingly beautiful thing to see these incredible people in the limelight and to hear them cheered on and applauded like there was no tomorrow. The crowd loved this choir, and for good reason: they were brilliant.  My respect for the courage each of those choir members demonstrated by getting on stage and performing is tremendous.

The second part of this experience that particularly struck me was what a fantastic example of accompaniment The Choir with No Name is. It was a ministry of affirmation of the gifts God has given each of the choir members and a place for them to develop community and share their stories. It’s a decision to walk with people and to become a part of their story.  When I think about the entire concept of The Choir with No Name, my first thought is “wow”. I’ll admit that when I think about ministry to individuals facing homelessness, my first thought is of soup kitchens and handing blankets and those are both good things to do. However, this is an example of a ministry that looked “outside the box” and sought not just to provide for basic needs of food and water but to provide for the human need for fellowship and affirmation. It is just such a creative and inspired way to be the hands and feet of Christ in our world, and friends it leaves me feeling excited. Friends, as we seek to accompany our brothers and sisters, let us not fall into simply continuing what has always been done. Let’s continue to do those things, but let’s also think outside the box and continually seek creative new ways to allow the holy spirit to break into our world today.

To learn more about the choir with no name go to http://www.choirwithnoname.org/

And see a video of the choir here…

With a mother who was a respected school social worker in a small town that hadn’t before enjoyed such expertise, and a father whose charisma and communication skills as a pastor helped heal and grow a mid-sized Lutheran church, I was a favored son in our southeastern Minnesota bedroom community. I learned moderation and personal responsibility. I learned that violence was bad and had compassion demonstrated for me by my family and community. I learned that God loved me, Jesus saved me, and that all blessings came from heaven. I considered myself a Christian, was baptized and confirmed, and was called into leadership in my school, city, region and church by God through my friends, family and communities.

Spirituality for me has always been a mash up of ideas, emotions, bodily feelings, and suspicion that God is. As a young man I felt God in the emotion-filled songs of dimly lit rooms, proclaiming forgiveness from sin and shame. The word of grace spoken over me from a charismatic worship leader gave me goose bumps and often led me to tears. As I went through adolescence and was diagnosed with clinical depression and learning disabilities, these moments of deep feeling and sense of being loved were welcome reprieve from the self-loathing and loneliness that I felt most days. But the questions that I had about God’s forgiveness, grace, and compassion for the world and for me were not answered sufficiently by these charismatic leaders or their earnest collaborators.

When my family adopted a little girl who had grown up in an abusive home, I turned to these emotion-driven churches for answers as to how a six year-old girl could be allowed by a loving God to be hurt so deeply. I was told that it was for God’s glory, or part of His mysterious plan. I was warned not to question God like Job did in the Bible when he lost everything. I was rebuked for a lack of faith. But at my core I knew that I couldn’t have more compassion for my sister than God. If I cared so deeply, how much more sad and angry must God be over this injustice?

About the same time, the towers in Manhattan came down. I watched Christian leaders attack Islam and call for retribution and war. I was deeply confused by this reaction, not so much by the direct victims and families of that day, but by the justification of more violence by church leaders and from pulpits. I searched for the call for forgiveness. Where was the call for patience and investigation of what pain had caused such a violent lashing out? I remember a profound sadness and frustration with the Church.

It’s taken a lot of searching for a spirituality and theology that articulates my experience of God. I am someone who deeply internalizes ideas. I become profoundly oriented and deeply convicted once I am convinced of a truth. Studying communication named the power of narrative that I had seen in my life. The writings of bell hooks and Tim Wise helped me face my privilege and power in ways I had been oblivious to. Eboo Patel’s call to pluralistic collaboration and celebration liberated me from narrow dogma. Sarah Miles painted a picture of the communion table as the great inclusive feast of God. John Dominic Crossan’s articulation of God’s condemnation of empire and position with the marginalized and vulnerable grounded a theology that I hadn’t been able to concisely communicate. Kelly Brown Douglas and Mayra Rivera named for me the oppressive nature of substitutionary atonement and violence against women, bodies, and non-dominant ways of being. John Paul Lederach affirmed my conviction that the impossible and unknown be passionately pursued. Marcus Borg helped me to affirm my cultural stream of Christianity while deeply respecting and drawing upon the profound Truth of God found in so many of the great religions. And Desmond Tutu captured for me the truth of life in that “we are because we belong.”

All of these people and many more have accompanied me on a journey of blurring the lines of sacred and secular, belief and theology, spirituality and religion, flesh and spirit, science and philosophy. All of life has become a movement of the spirit and moment of grace. The head and the heart are not a duality, but have become for me a marriage of the energy of God as simultaneously embodied and immeasurable.

The heart of this journey has been a desire to know God and know my community wholly. As I face my privilege and power, my complicity in systems of oppression and inequity, my collaboration with violence, I find myself before Jesus as the Rich Young Ruler. I present myself as self-righteous to a God whose concern is more for right-relationship than the rule of law. And when Jesus tells me that I lack one thing, that I go and sell all that I have and give it to the poor, I am as shocked as that young man 2000 years ago. I too am tempted to go away sad as he did. And yet the God-infused compassion that I find in my core will not allow me. I am frozen. I can neither run away and escape my complicity nor present myself as better than anyone else for simply admitting that I have a problem. As wonderfully created as I am, I can be so selfish, so ignorant, so delusional as to believe that I am separate from the hurt and hunger present in this world. But I also bring many gifts to the journey of reconciliation. I am a thinker with strong intuition. And I have an ever expanding capacity for love and compassion. I am being profoundly transformed by the reality that I am one with all the Universe, Mystery and Life. I can do nothing but seek authentic, loving, peace-building relationship with and among creation. It is beyond me, but it is within Us. This is my way forward from and with Jesus, into Us and into me.

Communion might be one of my favorite aspects of the Christian faith. There is something so moving and powerful about coming to the table together to be forgiven and renewed in God’s love. In recent years it has come to mean even more to me as my home congregation has made it habit to bring food for the hungry to the alter as we prepare to be fed with the bread of life. To me this is the ultimate act of communion, of sharing.

Jesus says, “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.” Luke 14:13. I have been to no greater banquet than the feast that is set before me on Sunday for the Holy Meal. By bringing our food forward in our act of communion I believe we are inviting those to the banquet with us. We are feeding as we are being fed and loving as we are being loved.

God’s alter is a place for all of his children. So now as I partake in Holy Communion I am consciously inviting others to share in God’s love and abundance. Our gifts and blessings are not our own but belong to our loving God who implores us to share them with his children.