Earthquake

Last night we stayed up late playing one of the best games: "Ticket to Ride Europe" (you get to strategize and build train routs through Europe). At 12:04 AM, Matt, his dad, his mom, me, and one of our housemates Kate were gathered around the table when a low rumble and vibrations began to rumble. It was loud enough that we had a multitude of thoughts running through our mind:

"What the heck is our neighbor doing rolling a piano across his wood floors in the middle of the night?"

"Oh gosh, is our furnace about to blow up?!"

"Did a tractor trailer crash into a house?"

And it was long enough that we began vocalizing our speculations to each other. Fearful gazes darted around the table. As the rumbling died, we jumped up to check what had happened--Matt to the basement, his mom to check on the grandbaby, and me to the porch to see what I could see. There, I found neighbors our on porches all over our block, hollering back and forth to each other about what we had just experienced.

I was relieved to find that my house wasn't about to blow up, but I didn't feel like my heart was calm and my breath caught for a good 10 minutes after that.

Here's the news article, a siesmic graph, and the earthquake center reports.

The Spirit of the Season

Hey all, here's a great video that's been going around on AdventConspiracy.

La Paz Es Preciosa

I was surprised yesterday by a glimpse of the kingdom.

Driving through my city, my site rounded the corner of a building to rest on a small group of protesters on the steps of our courthouse. They were wearing hand-written, poster board and string signs around their necks. The first to catch my eye said, "La paz es peciosa."

I reached into the recesses of my semester of Spanish and began to piece it together: "paz=peace, I think. 'La' is 'the'. 'Preciosa' sounds a lot like precious. Oh, 'The peace is precious." Then my gaze scanned the others quietly standing on the steps, and, sure enough, the others were also declaring messages of peace in English.

Tears caught me as the gravity and truth of their message sunk in. "In a world of violence, there is another way of peace," they were reminding us. No matter what you think about war, I think we all could agree that they are prophets of God's kingdom in a way, pointing to another reality, another way of doing life. This is a way of doing life that will never be fully realized until Christ establishes his reign on earth, but it is also a way of doing life that He has already begun to establish, even in small ways, in the lives of His people.

May we be bearers of peace in our broken world this Christmas season.

Reflections on Light from the Christian East: Part 3

Here is the third of my reflections on Light from the Christian East by Payton...

10/8/08
Eastern Orthodox theology is boggling my mind.

I am struggling with their idea of God’s utter separateness from his creation. It confuses me in light of theologies on the divine image. I wonder though if they just hold the paradox of essence versus nature in equal tension rather than defaulting to the easier way: relying more on one side or the other. Truly ascribing to opposite truths at the same time is always the most difficult way.

I also struggle with their idea of the dynamism of creation. If creation was destined from the beginning to become more and more like God, doesn’t that imply it was not like God in some way? Would this not imply some initial brokenness?

Despite my questions, Eastern Orthodox theology also continues to draw me in—this time through their emphasis on the imminence of God with his creation and their views of the nature of humanity. First, their emphasis on the imminence of God with his creation reminds me of the intimacy we were designed for. It reminds me that, although God is utterly other, he is also intimately involved in our lives. It reminds me that I am sustained and transformed through this presence in my life. The second idea I find interesting is that our actual nature is not depraved, but rather that our gnomic, personal will (Payton, 114) tends to lead us to death because of the great tradition of sin passed down through the ages and cultures. This makes so much sense in light of the struggles I have had over the doctrine of “total depravity” from my tradition. This didn’t make sense to me that there was nothing good at all in us, especially in light of non-religious people who seem to do some very Godly things. The Eastern Orthodox view on this matter would allow for this because it allows for people to sometimes make right choices from our incorruptible Imago Dei (although we always end up also making choices that lead to death as well).

I wonder if perhaps our Western views and the Eastern views on human nature are really so different after all. As Payton mentioned in the conclusion, Western views also account for this ability for ungodly people to do godly things through their view of the enablement of common grace (118). But is this really so different from the Eastern view that we are able to do good out of our human nature, which is in itself an extension of God’s divine energy? What really is the difference between divine energy and divine grace? Both result in good in our world and in the restoration of humanity to our original design.

Homeless Tonight

"Where will Gil sleep tonight??"

This question haunted me, evoking many tears on a chilly car ride Friday night. I was driving home from meeting Matt for dinner on his break. When we had sat down to eat in the food court, a grizzled, homeless man had walked in, set his Save-a-Lot bags down, and sunk wearily into a chair at the table next to ours.

Our encounter with this man came as yet another one of those "sacred echoes" (Margaret Feinberg, Sacred Echoes) of God whispering to me and molding my heart toward consumption and toward the poor lately. Here are a few of these echoes I have been encountering:

1) A class I am taking right now that has required the completion of a several part project on the book of Amos--a book basically about the condemnation of God's people because of their oppression of the poor

2) A retreat a few weeks ago where I was challenged to live more in a pattern of rhythm and investment rather than purchase and consumption

3) A holiday season where I haven't been sure how bills are going to be paid, but we seem to keep spending anyway

So when this homeless man sat down near our table on Friday, we couldn't just look the other way as we so often do. We knew deep in our souls that it was not okay that this man was hungry and cold and that it was not okay for us to ignore him when we have so much, so we asked him if he would like some dinner. We were able to sit and eat with him, to learn his name was Gil, and hear some of his story.

When dinner was over, we said our good byes, and I drove home sheltered on the outside from the bitter elements but completely torn up on the inside by the question of how Gil would stay warm on this same night.

Now, I know that we all respond at this point with questions about empowering versus enabling and that we justify the fact that this problem exists by saying we can only do so much, but there is something terribly wrong here my friends.

There should not be Gils in this world sleeping in the cold.

We are the ones commissioned to do something about it by a God who has told us again and again not only that the poor and oppressed are those who are closest to his heart but also that those who allow oppression to continue will sit under his deepest, just wrath.

What can we do to make this right in our world? In Lancaster? What will we do today? Tomorrow? What will we put off for later and eventually relegate to never?

We have a God who has painted a beautiful picture of the restoration of all things in Christ to what they were intended to be, and we have opportunity, the responsibility to join in this process, to bring hope to our world again.

So I pray that we will be a people of action. That we will continue to be shaken from the individualistic, selfish worlds that we so easily dwell in, and that we will become the agents of restoration in our world. That we will be a people that co-create with God a world where no Gils will sleep in the cold tonight. In the name of Christ, may it be.

Reflections on Light from the Christian East: Part 2

Here is the second of my reflections on Light from the Christian East...

10/7/08
In this second reading, the Eastern Orthodox views on knowledge of God drew me in. They seem to have two principles that go hand-in-hand as they approach theology. The first is that intimacy with God informs theology, and the second is that we should start from a foundation of what we can not know about God (apophatic theology). Both paint a picture in stark contrast to our Western view that knowledge of God forms the basis for theology. The alternative to this Western view was very appealing to me though. It evoked feelings of simplicity, achievability, mystery, awe, and intimacy.

See, I feel conflicted right now about nurturing my relationship with God. On one hand, I feel like God is a part of everything in my life, a thread woven beneath the whole. But on the other hand, I don’t feel like I do enough intentionally to nurture my encounters with God. The idea of Scripture reading and study deter me while the ideas of meditation, prayer, and mysticism draw me in. Granted, both ends are necessary and require one to create space for them, but perhaps a more balanced view of the two would help me more readily enter into these encounters…