We are all sacramentalists
Yearning for a symbol
Of the vitality and centrality
Of the genteel and affable
The perception of access
The illusion of the elite

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Is there a sense in which limitations become invitations?

Some thoughts from my week in the form of a riff on “A Few of My (Least) Favorite Things”…

(first verse) This morning I listened to a 40-year-old interview with Cannonball Adderley, alto saxophonist from the famous Miles Davis Sextet. Adderley recalled the way Davis, one of jazz’s great masters in the recording studio, got his bands to take chances and discover new sounds. When they were recording “Milestones” (the album that preceded the classic “Kind of Blue”), Davis was searching for a new sound. But instead of telling members of the band what he wanted them to play, he went around to each musician and told them what not to play.

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I was watching an interview the other day with a man who just wrote a book (the name of which I can’t recall) in which the basic premise was that we are all journalists in this age of media access; particularly around the issue of blogging and the democratization of video production.

In his book, Crossing to Safety, one of Wallace Stegner’s characters says, “A poet is someone who has written a poem”. A simple statement but profound in the subtle way that I think it highlights the unique genre that poetry is and how it can be seen as a very accessible form of writing, although it usually is not.

Anyone and everyone can write a poem.

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Shame is a complicated form of self-hatred that always ends in violence. It is also ground zero of the Gospel.

In his book, Facing The Extreme: Moral Life In The Concentration Camps, Tzvetan Todorov explores humanity’s capacity for moral life in the face of horrendous evil. Towards the end of his book, Todorov briefly reflects on the shame that marks the lives of those victims that survived the atrocities. He mentions three levels of shame.

1. The Shame of Remembering. This form of shame is not primarily about the pain of recalling the events themselves. It has to do with the particular way victims remember the atrocities they survived. Victims often remember their victimization in a way that rains down judgment upon themselves for being a victim in the first place. The act of remembering only deepens their sense of shame. Shame does violence to the way we remember and tell the story of our lives.

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Soul of the watchman
waiting for the morning
soul of the watchman
waiting for me.

Oh my soul,
waiting for the watchman,
watchman of the morning
hanging on a tree.

My soul is waiting
For the morning
dawn of the new earth,
beating swords to dig
with plowshares
dig into new birth.

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I live at the boundary of two communities on the edge of one of Africa’s great cities, Nairobi, Kenya: To one side of my home lies Karen, one of Nairobi’s wealthiest suburbs, named for Karen Blixen, the colonial aristocrat whose story many westerners know. To the other side lies Dagoretti, an indigenous community where almost everyone is very poor, where there is no proper shelter and few sustainable jobs. Not many westerners know their stories.

For the last six years I have worked with street children in Dagoretti. Our organization meets children on the streets of Dagoretti, helps them get an education or a job, which in many cases means getting free from addictions (such as glue) that control their lives.

One of the most important words in my life is “patience.” So often I have come close to running out of patience, and giving up on a young person.

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By Tom Llewellyn and Lance Kagey

Beautiful Angle is a guerilla arts project that pastes and staples 80 hand-printed, Tacoma-themed art posters a month in public places around the city of Tacoma, Washington. It’s not intended to make money, but the project does sell posters. It’s not intended as a ministry, but it does minister to people, through the often-uplifting words and images, through successful fundraisers for non-profits and through artwork donated to charity auctions.

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I am moved to pause for reflection and praise as I recount the story of El Pueblito.

The town of El Pueblito, located just 30 minutes from the core of Guatemala City, was one of the places our Arts N’ The Hood team were privileged to visit. Actually, it was the place where we went to gather for Sunday service. As mentioned in my previous post, our guides had been inviting us to see the work God had been doing on the margins. However, when we got to this city, we found ourselves in a church that appeared to be anything but. To our surprise, about an hour later we were asked to leave the main building and gather with street youth in an old dingy facility where they had been allowed to claim it for themselves. And indeed they did so by redecorating it into a full-out hip-hop church.

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Confession: I have an inferiority complex about the organization that I lead – Mile High Ministries (MHM), in Denver, Colorado. My problem goes all the way back to our founding nineteen years ago, and is rooted in our mission statement. Let me explain.

Leadership gurus teach that the mission of NGO’s (known as “non-profits” in the US) should be focused as narrowly as possible: do one thing, and do it better than anyone else. One author calls this the “hedgehog principle.”

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I’ve dreamt of a young boy
My son
Swaddled in a soft blue cloth
He’d have my eyes
And his mothers disposition

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