"Voluntary Simplicity"

I love Grand Rapids. I've become quite comfortable here. The hot summers filled with fireflies and beach visits make up for the spiteful, stinging winters. There's something about comfort, though, that allows me to start thinking, "Yeah, I'm pretty awesome." In places of comfort, I often fool myself into a kind of blissful complacency when it comes to evaluating my own character. However, I've found I'm never allowed to remain happily ignorant for long...

More than one person has told me that I don't deal with change very well. In all fairness, I've experienced more than my fair share of "big life changes" moving back and forth from Colorado to Japan to South Korea. I would say I adapt pretty well, but those people are right; change in my life is usually met by great resistance and a shocking volume of tears. I'm moving into my senior year at Calvin, and as though I weren't facing enough change, my nineteen-year-old sister has moved in with me. Suffice it to say we have never gotten along.

At the Service-Learning Center, we have a summer reader filled with insightful articles that introduce old and new staff to service-learning as pedagogy and life philosophy. This week's article was titled "Preparing the Way for Justice." Lofty, right? "Here we go..." I thought as I dove into the reading. After skimming my way through a discussion of Kant's Metaphysics and Morals, my eyes and mind slowed down to read about the application of these metaphysics and morals through the lens of Thomas Merton's Life and Holiness. The spiritual discipline of "voluntary simplicity" especially caught my eye. Bradford Hadaway, the author, was presenting spiritual disciplines like voluntary simplicity as a teaching method for introducing students to a deeper understanding of service-learning. As always, such practices just as useful outside the classroom as inside. The author writes that, "simplicity expressed as a spiritual discipline is first and foremost an attempt to clear away things that clutter both our inner and outer lives." My mother, ever-ready with her piercing insights of my character flaws, told me yesterday the reason I don't get along with my sister is because we have inherently different value systems. Over 20+ years, she noticed that I value materials, while my sister values relationships. Both have their benefits and pitfalls, she told me. I take good care of my possessions but cling to tightly to them sometimes. My sister takes good care of her friends but sometimes can't see when helping them is hurting them. Needless to say, the fullness of both our personalities clash when my stuff is scratched, broken, or otherwise carelessly strewn around. I'm person that likes explanations more than coincidences, so as much as it makes me cringe to admit it, sometimes articles, conversations, rainbows, or what-have-you catch me at just the right moment and make me think hard about the space between who I am and who I'm called to be.

With all this change happening, I've had plenty of opportunities to be reminded that I'm not nearly as good, patient, understanding, and generous as I sometimes think I am. Hadaway writes, "The practice of the spiritual disciplines in their thick sense can develop the moral imagination necessary to break out of our narrow and limited perspectives about how the world operates and what people are like." Service-learning is all about discomfort. It's about the life-value-changing, world-rocking, headache-generating activity of making ourselves vulnerable enough for our flaws to be exposed and to be reminded that things aren't always as they seem. I honestly may never get along swimmingly with my sister, but her presence reminds me that I'm called to "lay up treasures in heaven" and not cling to desperately to my "stuff." As for being a senior, I still dislike the prospect of leaving the comfort I've found in Grand Rapids in less than one year, but maybe I can welcome the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of God's work in other cities.

Peace,

Anna
StreetFest Coordinator

Brokenness, Fatigue

In my capstone class for Nursing, we have discussed the very real problem of burnout. It is an understandable issue when you consider that nurses are coming face to face with the sick, broken, and crisis-ridden every day. Their entire occupation centers on the fact that the body is fallible and weak, needing outside care from time to time. In my development courses, we discussed the fact that sustainable work involves trying to work yourself out of a job. The desire is that the work you do eventually brings enough stability and support, empowering those around you, that it can either a.) be resolved or b.) go on without your presence. I've done quite a bit of thinking about how development work overlaps with my understanding of nursing, but this is an area where I struggle. Clearly, the hope that nurses could work themselves out of a job is unrealistic. That will never happen in this lifetime.
There are a few questions in our covenant that address this frustration:

"For what are we hoping, as we understand that the kingdom is already but not yet?"
"How do we have hope for shalom in such a broken world? Especially when we will never get it right?"
"What will allow us to persevere?"

In facing future decisions, I've been asking myself this question a lot. How will I avoid the "brokenness fatigue" that can be plaguing for those who build a career based on service, while still allowing for appropriate amounts of lament? The reality is that this is a difficulty for everyone, since we are all functioning in a world that doesn't work the way it's meant to. Last night at staff meeting, I was reminded by the staff that it is through community and relationships that we can navigate the messiness of life. Lament is a healthy response, but can be mediated by a drive to do something about it with the support of people around you who are also motivated to bring justice and make changes.
What an encouragement. It is wonderful to be reminded that in your weakness, God's strength is manifested. The burden of the world does not lay on one person's shoulders alone, but collectively on all of us. Each of us has a very small part to play and while at times that insignificance is overwhelming, it is also liberating. The balance of these two extremes is important in allowing us to move forward.
I pray that our passion for justice and advocacy would not fade after leaving this immediate community (Calvin, the S-LC, the places we live), but that we would search out people and places that have a shared vision. I pray that our self-importance would be tempered with a sense of insignificance that encourages us to turn to those around us. Most of all, I pray that we would seek first the kingdom.

-Melanie Roorda, ABSL Coordinator

Somewhat relevant, but mainly a shameless plug:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJfiXhI5UiWGungor comes to Calvin March 31st.

Beautiful Brokenness

One of the themes of our staff covenant this past year was “beautiful brokenness,” the idea that God is present in even our deepest flaws and greatest weaknesses. This spring, I studied a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins in my Victorian Lit class that sums up “beautiful brokenness” better than anything I can think of. It’s dense, but I’ll unpack it a bit, just as my professor did in class.

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

The poem begins with two images for how God’s greatness is present in brokenness: God’s grandeur is like an electric charge in shaken metal foil, and it’s also like oil, which is produced by the action of crushing. Something to ponder: what does it mean that God shines through things that are “shaken” and “crushed”?

“Why do men then now not reck his rod?” means “why do men not regard or obey God?” The following lines give a description of our broken world and our separation from society. Linger a bit over these words. Hear how their sounds echo their meaning, try to see the images they describe, feel how their rhythm gives the sense of trudging through a devastated landscape.

“And for all this, nature is never spent.” God’s presence and hope wells up from the things that are broken. The sun sets in the west, but it rises with the morning in the east. God is present in our brokenness.

One reason I love this poem is that it offers hope, but this hope doesn’t come cheap. Hopkins was intimately acquainted with both personal and communal brokenness. When he converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, he became estranged from his family. For years, he suffered from depression and doubt. It could not have been easy to see God in his brokenness.

The temptation is strong to avoid pain, to try not to see how broken our world is. As I leave this community and move into the unknown, I am facing the fact that my life will become less comfortable, that I will face challenges that will force me to confront the brokenness in society and in myself. What this poem communicates to me is that we can acknowledge brokenness for what it is and still possess a rebellious hope that God is restoring what is fallen. We will all feel “shaken” and “crushed” in life, but it is my prayer that we will be able to see, or at least trust, that God’s beauty is made manifest in our brokenness.

--Maria

A Quote to Ponder

“The poor who walk on the roads and through the deserts and rough places of this world call me to humility – derived from the Latin word “humus,” which means earth or soil. I have to remain close to the soil, the earth. Often I look up into the clouds and daydream about a better world. But my dreams will never bear fruit unless I keep turning my eyes again and again back to the earth and to all those people walking their long, fatiguing walks and inviting me to accompany them. But what does it mean to walk with the poor? It means to recognize my own poverty: my deep inner brokenness, my fatigue, my powerlessness, my mortality. It is there that I am connected with the earth; there that I am truly humble. Yes, it is there that I enter into solidarity with all who walk the earth and discover that I, too, am loved as a very fragile, precious person.”

-Henri Nouwen

This Square Inch

"[T]here is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!'" -Abraham Kuyper

This oft-quoted phrase around Calvin College has been ringing in my head this summer. We (Megan and I) have invested deeply in our neighborhood for the past seven years or so, because we saw a place for which Christ was crying, "Mine!" There have been days when I've seen Christ's ownership manifest, and times when I've wondered if the tenants are paying rent to a different landlord.

This Summer, with bemused joy, I watched as young women and men with hearts beating strong for God's Kingdom came out of the woodwork to set up residence on these streets. This place that for several years has felt so lonely, so barren, to us is now trod by new feet who want to garden empty plots, renovate neglected homes, share lawn and kitchen equipment, speak the gospel. And I say with confidence, "This square inc, is yours, Christ. You are claiming what is rightfully yours!"

Then I see a family from church vacate their home because of the raucous nightly noise from across the street. My neighbor's hand is broken in several places after intercepting a trespasser's jaw. I witness a half dozen drug deals go down from the stoop of the church. A girl my daughter's age pushes a wagon down the middle of the street with no parent in sight. A rock intended for someone else shatters my friend's windshield. And I say with disappointment, "This square inch is yours, Christ. Why don't you claim what is rightfully yours?"

We live in this in between. Every square inch does belong to Christ. He is claiming it. He is claiming the vacant lot, the broken metacarpals, the renewed home, the newly empty one, the drug dealer and the pusher, the little girl and me.

Themes, Beauty, and Brokenness.

And so it begins again, that reoccurring summer Service-Learning Center angst around what this year’s StreetFest theme will be. After much deliberation on the part of Rebecca, our StreetFest coordinator, and a brainstorming session or two, we seem to be circling in on a few possibilities.

Interestingly, as we have been discussing the possibilities for this year’s theme, one of the topics that has come up a number of times is the beauty of/in brokenness.

Is there something beautiful about brokenness, brokenness experienced on both individual and societal levels? If so, what is it that makes brokenness beautiful? Is it the “stuff” born of brokenness that is beautiful or is beauty inherent to brokenness itself? What does the relationship between beauty and brokenness have to do with service-learning or, more specifically, StreetFest?

We are hoping to start a discussion about the relationship between beauty and brokenness in the comments section below; please feel free to join in the discussion with your own thoughts, comments, or questions.

Committed to Broken Communities

"Nothing is perfect" is perhaps a statement that we bandy about too easily, not really giving it due consideration. Indeed, though, nothing is perfect, and that means our families, neighborhoods, schools, clubs, businesses, churches, and governments are all broken and wounded communities of people. So often we retreat from these communities having been wounded ourselves by the community's brokenness. We become disillusioned by the church, by our school, by our government, family, and the list goes on. However, if we are going to take the realization that nothing is perfect seriously, then we must also realize that we ourselves are not perfect, and we do our part to contribute to the wrongdoing of our communities. Still more we will never find a perfect community. Instead, we find ourselves facing the radical challenge to be committed to communities of brokenness. Imaginably, these communities will disappoint and wound us, as we will disappoint and wound them as well, but so it goes in this "nothing is perfect world." As broken individuals we daily set to renewing and rebuilding our communities, realizing that the solution is not merely to stand on the sidelines, or retreat, but rather to stay committed. It is easy, even cowardly, I think, to criticize from afar, but it is something remarkable when we acknowledge the shortcomings of ourselves as part of these broken communities, and then set about to helping to heal some of the brokenness. I confess my own shortcomings in too often taking the route of criticizing from afar, but it is my hope and goal to diligently seek to be committed to my communities.