Shrewd Advice

Be wary of the shrewd advice that tells you how to get ahead in the world on your own. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity. Stinginess impoverishes.

- Mark 4 (The Message)

The poor tend to know this. Out of spirit, we share, knowing that we usually get back when it is necessary and when we least expect it. And often a hundred-fold. It's a communal, involuntary insurance.

And it leaves us being gracious for what we have in terms of not just property, but family.

But sometimes we give out of our poverty and we're hurt for it.

A fellow, a neighbor, a stranger, a cousin, burns us. Steals from us when we house him. Lies to us about her kid's hunger or medical needs. Jimmy bums loose squares, always promising to pay back and never delivering. Some real nice lady does a business transaction with us but she runs into some problems and in an effort to speed up the process, we end up losing thousands of dollars that we don't have. Roy comes over for dinner every other day but then starts mocking the food and service.

It's easy to forget. To become stingy at this point. To take on the work and personality of the world around us.

Let's not. Let's not succumb to use the tools of the mean-spirited. He is in solidarity with no one; he cannot even trust himself. He dies alone and miserable, and lives alone and miserable.

Let us be continuously generous, for then we live as free men and women. Our wages may be restricted, our generosity even trampled on, but when we abandon our sisters and brothers in their time of need, when we refuse to share in the bounty of our meager harvest, we break the bonds of humanity, of friendship, of family, of our own very selves.

Share. It will be given back to us. A thousand-fold.

Lazy Sunday Readings: Follow Me to Freedom, by Shane Claiborne and John M Perkins

I am currently enjoying reading several books at once (as per usual). A book that I've re-picked up (stole) from my wife. The two authors shared a few conversations and the book, Follow Me to Freedom: Leading and Following As an Ordinary Radical, is probably one of the more important books on leadership that a Christian should read. John M Perkins is one of the very few (sadly) civil rights figures in contemporary Evangelicalism, he is also a visionary who helped to set the stage for the CCDA (Christian Community Development Association) one of the leading bright spots unifying Evangelicals to strive for justice. Claiborne, a bit of a self-styled red-neck hippy Christian is also a bright spot in Evangelicalism.

Well, I should say they're bright spots for me. Perkins and Claiborne are also provocateurs. Claiborne was banned from speaking at my brother's alma mater - a conservative Christian college - by some concerned pencil pusher or another because of his outspokenness. One time I saw Perkins was the only time I went to Cornerstone Festival (a great music/arts/film/sessions week-long festival put out by Chicago's own Jesus-hippy commune, Jesus People USA, that is, well, like much of Evangelicalism, predominately White [I mean the fest, not necessarily the commune]). He was preaching about the need for racial reconciliation between music shows (maybe before The Choir?) and some of my friends were mocking the old man, and how he was always going about that business. The other time I saw him, he was speaking at a fundraiser gala for my brother's npo (which is decidedly focused on growing Christian leaders and disciples from within overlooked areas of Chicago) and spoke to the audience - much of whom are decidedly conservative - about the need to love our neighbors through voting for politicians that do not harm them. That helped to solidify my appreciation for him and my appreciation of being a leftist politics.

Some take-aways from early on in the book:

On the "Theology of Enough":

Shane: There are enough resources. God did not create an economy of scarcity. God did not make too many people or not enough stuff. Gandhi once said, "There is enough for everyone's need but not enough for everyone's greed." So why do a few have more than others, and so many feel that they do not have enough?... We have not trusted in "this day our daily bread." Instead, we stockpile our money in banks, like the guy Christ spoke about who stores all his stuff in barns, when God is leading us to give it away. Stashing away our resources is not how we are supposed to live.

On Leading Through Shared Pain:

John: The leader who can tap into our pain part right and walk through it with us - bearing our burdens like Jesus bears them - is going to be a real leader.


Shane: Too often, well-intentioned leaders are quick to stand up to be a voice for the voiceless rather than being a voice with the voiceless. We assume that because people's voices are not being heard, they're not speaking. And the truth often is that people on the margins are weeping, wailing, and crying out from the depths of their souls, but the rest of the world has hands over their ears. Leaders are folks who can remove the earplugs and the blinders so that we all can hear and see and feel the pain of others; so that the ache touches us and we cannot help but begin to carry the burdens and wipe the tears away... People most affected by the pain and closest to the injustices make the best leaders... Every leader who is not indigenous to struggle needs to take that pilgrimage into pain.


John: Today, Christians tend to put leaders on a pedestal. We have megachurch pastors, televangelists and Christian celebrities. It is hard for the leader to enter into the pain of the people when he only sees it from the other side of the camera or sitting at the boardroom table. We do leaders a disservice sometimes. We think we are protecting them, prioritizing their time and doing wonderful things for them, when in actuality, by shielding them or filtering what information they get, we distance them from real people and real needs. By always having a catchy slogan, a positive spin, a trendy campaign or a big reward, we end up not dealing with real issues or the heart of the matter. I am not saying we cannot have slogans, campaigns, or rewards. And I am not saying that megachurch pastors cannot be justice leaders. But some leaders are talking out of that place of pain and others are just talking.

Narcissistic Stockholm Syndrome III: Rising Above Meism

Third in a series of three.

Part 1 on Broken Telegraph. Part 2 here.

We often believe that things are more equitable than they are and that the things that are really wrong will be fixed soon. We believe that one extraordinary person can and should rise up to the challenges of the day. And we often believe that - with just the proper opportunities in just the right time - that person may be me.

Alas, it's all merely a socio-psychological trick.

A very small percentage of the population controls the vast majority of currency and holds the vast majority of wealth. And then they tell us that we are individuals who fully control our destinies while filling our airwaves and imagination with anecdotal evidence – stories of courageous individuals who have risen from the mud to the tops of wealth by clinging and clawing with their very own bootstraps.

Generally speaking, most people around the world know where their place is on the totem pole. It's at the bottom. In the United States, however, things that should be clear are haze-like. We know things aren't right, but we're induced to believe that it will all change soon enough. And some of us do make it. Most of us get by - or seem to get by. Just enough to the point where we're not so concerned to make revolutionary action.

Meanwhile, quite a few of us drown.

photo © 2011 Aimanness Photography | more info (via: Wylio)

The following was a comment on a New York Times article quoted the other day here. It's a perfect encapsulation of the ego-centricism of the American Dream.

Social Mobility remains possible, but only if one has knowledge of their position and is willing to make sacrafices. This usually means giving up most of your friends and sidelining your family go to a fairly high end college for a marketable degree, and moving to an area where you can make good connections. You have to set high goals and fight to achieve them, and leave behind negative influences in your life, which in this case would be anyone making less than you want to earn.

Most people who grow up in a poor background tend to be risk adverse and want to stay with familiar things. They feel that family connections and approval are more important that success, and are not willing to sacrafice everything to climb the social and economic ladder. So they work a so-so job and don't set their goals high, and remain in the poverty trap.

That's the key to happiness, apparently. Get rid of meaningful relationships. Want your daughters to have the finest clothes and doctors money can possibly buy? Say goodbye; you won't have time for them, you'll be too important and busy being busy and important so that your absence shows that you care - or so that they can even get food on their tables. They're worth only what you're worth. And so relationships, others, communities, don't mean a thing.

That's how we save relationships - by destroying them?

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As many Americans did, I grew up daydreaming to the intoxicating rhythms and melody of the American Dream. And in this dream, I'm wealthy. I'm wealthy enough to be able to run my own little empire.

It's a shared dream - this essence of the American mythos. The idea that, with enough talent and/or hard work, you can achieve much wealth and happiness, you can make it in this land of opportunity.

It seems that only now are typical Americans starting to realize that something is wrong with the Dream. That it's not working for them like it should be.

But it never really worked for them in the first place. It's not just broke - it was never meant to work for us. If Divide and Conquer is the first rule of elitist success, certainly the second rule is Give them False Hope. The false hope here is that *we* can be like *them*. More specifically, that *I* can be like *them*.

The most entrancing part of the lie is that you can do it all on your own. The biggest, most effective lie is that we are all individuals, fully capable of making our own destinies by ourselves.

But we don't live nor act alone or separate. We cannot make an action without in some way affecting our environment - which invariably includes other people. The counter is true. What others do, affects us. When an individual has more power, he also has more impact on the environment and on others.

The wealthy know that the common individual cannot affect tremendous change on her own (at least not without significant aid and luck); the wealthy do not buy their own myth -that's what we do. So here's where we are stuck, running this mythology in our heads - believing it, breathing it to such an extent that we can't rise above.

But that's exactly what we need to do. Realize that separate and alone and divided and distracted on our rich dreams, we are weak. We're like the ants in A Bug's Life trying to ward off the thugocracy on our own or allowing others to attempt it for us, not aware that we have the power among us. That we need to combine all our resources, courage, and creativity to work to make a place that fits all of us.

That means Republicans, Green Partiers, Tea Partiers, Democrats, immigrants, lesbians, Muslims, Buddhists, Fundamentalists, queers, Quakers, homophobes, criminals, cops, racists, judges, preachers, retailers, ditch diggers, feminists, anti-racists, African Americans, Latinos, Latin Americans, clerks, beauticians, morticians, anarchists, teens, seniors, teachers, the illiterate, single mothers, Boomers, hip hop heads, Elvis groupies ... We are all in this together, even though we've been unconsciously persuaded to believe we're not.

We must bury our tribalism and reach across borders. We must connect to any willing to connect and rise above the I's of tribalism and individualism. (Of course that would mean that racists, xenophobes, and homophobes would begin changing into something fully different. But grace and listening and learning tends to do that.)

That would be the primary method of revolution - to come together and recognize our own shared humanity.

Chicago Tuesdays: We Can Get Good Things I: Incarnational Ministry and the Firehouse

When I was a youth leader with my church, I got to hang out with a lot of really cool, smart, fearless and passionate adult men and women who felt it was/is their life's mission to come alongside disadvantaged, marginalized and targeted young men and women throughout the city. I could write much about my love for this way underpaid (if paid at all) crazy career and the folks who lovingly risk it all to give a thug a hug.

One of the leaders of this group (in a rather organic matter) is Phil Jackson (not that one) of Lawndale Community Church, and The House. LCC is one of the models for the Christian Community Development model (in which a church or church-based org works within the community to serve and uplift its people as one of them) and its head pastor helped to found the CCDA along with Civil Rights icon John Perkins. Fittingly, the church and its community centers (which include a fitness and health clinic as well as many social agencies---) are located in the neighborhood that Martin Luther King, Jr. used as his base for the Northern Civil Rights movement in the sixties. The House is a youth-led church that practices the gospel through the cultural context of hip hop. All of this fits under the rubric that I've noticed with the most successful Christian ministries - not just in the cities, but in any place. To be intentionally incarnational. To walk with the walkers and suffer with those that suffer, but with the hope of a redemption and the work that hints and grows toward that.

In other words, they don't believe in waiting for the Kingdom Come - until after we die or are raptured up - to answer the problems of today. Consider the work of Phil Jackson and his team in North Lawndale. " and that, according to the 1980 census, 58 percent of men and women 17 and older had no jobs. And The Firehouse Community Arts Center is an emblem of this, an abandoned firehouse in the middle of one of the nation's poorest neighborhoods (from Wikipedia: Jonathan Kozol devotes a chapter of Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools to North Lawndale, which he says a local resident called it "an industrial slum without the industry." At the time, it had "one bank, one supermarket, 48 state lottery agents ... and 99 licensed bars.) that is being turned into a multi-use site for arts and community-building. Programs include a recording studio, music, photography and dance classes, video editing, and culinary arts training with an emphasis on entrepreneurship throughout the classes.

The site is within an African American community called North Lawndale (an area that is 94% Black) and next to a Mexican American neighborhood called Little Village (Latinos - mostly Mexican and Mexican American - account for roughly 80% of the population). Recently, a group of young Afro and Mexican Americans traveled to Veracruz, Mexico for an eye opening experience that Phil and his crew was able to be a part of. According to Phil (via his fb pix), this was the first time for many in the group traveled not just out of the US or out of their region, but out of their neighborhood. Many of these guys spent little time off their block. But not only was this a time to travel to pyramid sites, but to check out the history of the African diaspora in Latin America, in an effort to build bridges of reconciliation between these members of the African American and Latino cultures in the hopes that they would be ambassadors.

Check out what's going on at The Firehouse here. But only if you want to be encouraged.

WLS Channel 7 report:

GOOD Deeds Film Club

As miserable poke as I can be about national politics (and it can be pretty danged miserable - cf, here, here, here, or here), I'm having a lot of fun talking to diverse friends from diverse backgrounds and political identities thinking about real solutions to real problems (such as food, housing, immigration).*

I also love art. Or, Art. Whoever, whichever. My Christian theology allows that I find hope in creation, and that when people - who are themselves created in God's image - engage in creation, we are engaging with God in his work. Just as when we engage in finding truth, or in loving acts, we engage and work with God in these redemptive acts.

In an effort to combine these ideas of community, collaboration, idea-sharing, earnest communication, breaking of bread, creativity and art, I thought to start up a film club to look for beauty and inspiration from movies (some popular, as this month's Wall*E. Others not as well-known, even by me), to gather together and converse about the themes, the beauty, the good, the lovely, the worthwhile-ness of the film in question together and to bring about different perspectives in the problems that the films address, but also possible ways to contact and wrestle with those same problems in post-partisan ways.

This would require a bit of learning how to listen. And formulating and expressing complete thoughts. And involving complete participation. So, hopefully I can get the ball rolling (some trial and error and patience from wonderful friends might be needed. But hopefully not much, right?) and then others can spread these wings.

From the information page:

You'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies. - Phil 4:8-9

Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. - Hebrews 10:24-25

This is a film club that explores how we may spur one another on to love and good deeds.

For that purpose, we plan on meeting once a month to host a conversation on good films. These films will be selected to be both of high quality and able to involve us in thinking of how to create a better world - how to bring the Kingdom of God crashing to earth, so to speak.

Screenings of the movies to discuss will be held the week before - locations to be disclosed.

Since the focus of this film club is to spur one another on to see, dwell on, and engage with and in good works, the film club itself will be non-partisan. We will keep politicians and pundits out of the fray and discussion as much as humanly possible. We have in mind more fundamental things than the bickering, talking points, and endless debate of our local and national capitols.

Topics we *will* discuss, however, include (but are not limited to):
Conspicuous consumption
Modern slavery
Women's rights
Immigrant voices
The dispossessed and marginalized
Creation care

If you want more info (and *who* wouldn't), ask me in the comments or just shoot an email. Tonight's the first night, btw, and these are some of the topics we may cover on, from Wall*E:

Objective (as distraction?)

Love and transformation

Purpose

Consumerist thought

The representation of Auto-Pilot

Music and dance.

hope with purpose and creation/nature as signifier of hope

*I should add that I am becoming more and more convinced that the real problem doesn't lie at the feet of the Glenn Beck fearmonger types. They may exacerbate the problem with a small but vocal minority, but the problem is lack of activity by the vast majority of the population. That's where they need to no longer just be entertained but engaged to do Good Deeds.