Living the questions... still.

Last Monday, I gathered with the group of student leaders who facilitate service-learning in the residence halls for our biweekly meeting and asked them a simple question: "What do you want to talk about this semester?" Our meetings happen late at night due to the obnoxious complexity of college student schedules, and I'd been feeling at a loss regarding what topics would be worth their time and attention. So I asked. (I'm a big believer in democracy.) And I was astounded by the response.

My CPCs wanted to know how to communicate a vision to people. How to encourage other people to care about the things they already are passionate about. How to integrate service and intentional lifestyles into a variety of different careers and lifestyles after they graduate. How to balance--or juggle--the tension between witness and service and evangelism. You know, small questions.

I was really proud of them, on the one hand--and terrified, on the other. I'm only two years older than they are, after all. How am I supposed to speak into any of those amazingly profound and wonderful questions?

But that's the wrong question too. Because the point isn't that I have the answers. The point is that they are asking the right questions, and we can ask them together. Together, we can look for faithful responses to those questions--because there aren't clear, simple answers, and we might never arrive at resolution. But that lack of resolution is no reason not to search for truth.

So my plan for the next meeting is to tell stories--parables, like Jesus did, that point us to the Truth of the Kingdom, and that leave room for the shades of gray that exist in our life now. I'm going to talk about immigration reform, and introduce them to the people I know and love whose lives have been messed up by a broken system, and I just might get all riled up and teary-eyed. But in the process, I hope and pray that they'll glimpse my passion and maybe develop a bit more of their own. And that's the best I can do, right? Because just like Jesus did when He spoke to the woman at the well, we're invited to "come and see." Just like God did when He put on humanity and became incarnate, we're invited to become more human by learning and knowing each other's stories--and in the process we see a bit more of the truth. Like Karl Barth writes, we only are truly human when we're in relationship--when we look into another's eyes and really see her, or listen to him speak and really hear him, and therefore know Another. Then, as we see the truth about this world, ourselves, and each other, we come to care, because all of a sudden this brokenness is personal. Then, all of a sudden, we realize that we've lived into the questions with passion and that there's still room for grace, and that God is faithful even in that chaotic search for truth, and that ultimately His Truth will set us free.


-Kelly

The Bride

Hi folks. I'm Jack. I'm a part of the Church.

I am not my own. I do not live in a vacuum. I cannot be governed simply by what I want. That won't work. Paul said, "I joyfully react to God's law in my head, but I see another law at work in my body, fighting God's law in my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin." A prisoner of a law that makes me miss God's desires. Wow. That sucks. Who will save me from this body of death?

Oh.

Jesus.

There's no condemnation for us now, who are in Jesus, because the law of the Holy Spirit set us free from sin and death. Not that we don't still feel it. But we're not prisoners to it.

What? How?

I'll dare to say: Church.

When we confess our desires that don't match up with God's desires, we can begin to be free of them. I cannot confess to myself. The devil could have me lying to myself all day. I need my brother or sister in Christ to join me, and in His name, there He is with us, and sin cannot stay where He is.

We need Church.

I live at an intersection of two worlds. At the corner of Wealthy Street and Diamond street stand contradictions. On one side is the Wealthy Street Market, a small, family-run food mart with enough high fructose corn syrup and salt to fill its customers up nicely, but wreck their heath in the long term. On the other side, the Electric Cheetah and Brick Road Pizza, two restaurants with delicious, healthy, beautiful, local, lovingly made and procured food. Who frequents these places? How much money do they make? How much money does their family have? What is the history of their people? How have they wounded each other? Do they even know that the other exists? Do they even care?

Who can rescue us from this ugly separation? Jesus. How? The Church. How about a potluck, where rich and poor, all races, both genders, share food, are equally sustained by one another's contributions to the table?

We need the Church. Our neighborhoods need the Church.

I have learned, in my time at Calvin and at City Hope (my congregation), that the Church is a body of people. We are welcomed in at Baptism and sustained by the Lord's Supper. We are to be formed and re-formed into God's Image, as a community, not just one person. That formation happens in the congregation, and then the people are to go out, carry the light of Jesus out.

I want love for the Church and commitment to a congregation to be central to life at Calvin. Calvin College is not a church. But it forms us. Big time. And if we can be formed to love the Church and be committed to a congregation by our college, that would be wonderful.

Baptism used to be a pretty dangerous thing, because it meant the Roman Empire saw you as unstable and against the Empire. It's not that dangerous today, but it's still hard. It's a commitment. It's a sacrifice.

But it's worth it. Because God is Good. And the Church is His baby.

Love Her. Respect Her. She's not perfect. But she's our mother.


-Jack

Who We Are

I've been taught, though words and/or experience, that it's the pinnacle of naivete to believe that people are innately good, but for some reason, I've believe with all my heart in goodness of humanity. Sometimes I think that my belief stems from being surrounded by such wonderful people as my friends and co-workers at the S-LC. Whatever the reason, I think you, with all your idiosyncrasies and flaws, are good.

Core classes at Calvin are infamous for being a drag. I'm a junior, and I've been skipping around my religion core, but I'm finally taking Religion 121. Well, Calvin professors and classes will never cease to surprise me with their insightful tidbits of knowledge. We have been studying Genesis 1 and 2 this past week, and my professor was elaborating on the topic of the "image of God." He pointed out that all of the Bible after the fall says nothing of this image being damaged or taken away. In a way, we humans have retained our innate goodness that God proclaimed when he said, "It is very good." Now, I know Calvin is reformed and total depravity and all that jazz, but I don't mean for this post to be a theological statement in anyway. I also don't mean to disregard our need for God's grace. I only mean to say that perhaps we are meant to see in others the image of God and thus see also the goodness in my annoying sister, in your unlovable classmate or co-worker, in the poor and unwanted.

Let us not in our recognition of the brokenness of this world fail to see the goodness God created in the first place.


Peace,
Anna

Lists

Lists: Oh, how I love them. To-do lists especially. In the midst of my crazy, busy life they help me stay sane and semi-organized. I was going to post a sample of one of my infamous task lists or my penciled full planner, or my desk full of sticky notes, but I will spare you all the pain of this horrid sight – especially on this, the end of only the first week of the semester. I don’t know about you, but for me these first 5 days of class flew by – right in front of my face like a cheetah or racecar or a bullet or the speed of light maybe. Yet, it somehow feels like I’ve been in class for weeks. (Does anyone else ever feel like this, or is it just me?)
Anyways, while I would normally shrug my shoulders to this feeling that I have felt so many times before, it dawned upon me this week why it is I feel this way. I’ll give you a hint: it isn’t because of the large amount of work I actually got accomplished for once, or the ridiculous amount of time I spent in class, or the new go-go-go busyness of a new semester schedule. BUT because…Ready for this? I am amount to be very profound. Hold your breath. Drum roll please……..I have discovered time flew this week because I have learned so much. Really. It was a lot. I seriously had a list (surprised?) of topics and good quotes and life lessons and bible verses that all came up during my week – all of which would have made awesome discussion topics to comment on here in this blog. The problem was that I couldn’t choose just one. They were all just too good. And in combination, they brought me some great insight as a whole:

1) Calvin is a place that fosters learning. And I love it!

2) Sometimes God has something he wants to teach us. Even if we aren’t in a place of looking or searching for answers. He puts us in the right place, at the right time, with the right people for a reason so that we might learn and grow.

So I have started making a new list, a list of what I’m learning each day, and each week, and each month because these are ‘aha moments’, facts, lessons, self-realizations that are worth remembering.

What have you learned lately? I challenge you to reflect on your week and see what God is trying to teach you.
Peace and Blessings in this endeavor,
Emily

O Come, O Come, Immanuel

It's my turn to blog this week, and I'm sitting in an empty office trying to come up with a topic. Ordinarily I don't mind writing, but in the midst of this chaotic time of year (my foreign policy class is currently taking over my life, for example), it seems almost impossible to step back, take a deep breath, and look around for the signs of peace and holiness and goodness around us. I'm too busy frantically researching Clinton-era intervention in the Balkans, thank you very much.

But it strikes me as ironic that I'm behaving this way at the beginning of Advent. After all, Advent is the time of year where we pause to notice signs of hope--where we wait in eager expectation for the coming promise, our anticipation growing with each passing day on the Advent calendar and each week's newly-lighted candle in the Advent wreath. Unlike Lent, we don't fast during Advent. We carry on in our daily routines, busily finishing homework and papers, decorating for Christmas and baking cookies, watching the snow start to fall and the world gradually turn to winter. We carry on, busy and bustling, in eager anticipation of the coming gift.

Last year at this time I was in Romania. My Advent celebration was different there--the anticipation of Christmas was mixed with excitement about returning to the States and the relationships I had left there. It was a season of building anticipation mingled with deep sadness--a reluctance to leave behind new relationships, a sorrow over leaving the mountains, tastes, smells, and sounds that had grown so dear over four months. Bubbling anticipation and joy mixed with the weight of sorrow, bustling attention to the little details of daily life amidst preparation for a monumental shift in my world--this seems to always be the paradox of Advent.

I suppose I could make the obvious tie-in to our work at the Service-Learning Center here, and I might do that in a moment. But I think the first thing I need to remind myself of is Advent itself, this beautiful time of waiting and anticipation. Life doesn't stop as we wait for the coming of the Messiah. It continues on, buoyed by this hope, this welling-up of excitement, that the promise will be fulfilled! The Kingdom of God is coming, and all will be made well. Jesus will save and the world will be restored! Whoa.

Advent gives me goosebumps. It gives me this thrilled assurance and peace that amidst the chaos, there is hope. And the promise extends to everything--to our work at the Service-Learning Center, to our prayers for peace in places of war, to our hopes of reconciliation in neighborhoods and families full of brokenness. The Messiah has come, and is coming again. He will make everything new! What a wonderful promise. May He come again soon.

So may you live this Advent fully--with this anticipation and assurance amidst the busyness that Immanuel is coming, and coming soon.

~Kelly

Second Chances

As a staff, we have been reading from Common Prayer: A book for Ordinary Radicals for our devotions at weekly meetings. I recently was flipping through the book when I came across part of the reading for November 17. The passage comes from Forgotten among the Lilies by Ronald Rolheiser, and it states, “If the Catholicism that I was raised in had a fault, and it did, it was precisely that it did not allow for mistakes. It demanded that you get it right the first time. There was supposed to be no need for a second chance. If you made a mistake, you lived with it and, like the rich young man, were doomed to be sad, at least for the rest of your life. A serious mistake was a permanent stigmatization, a mark that you wore like Cain. I have seen that mark on all kinds of people: divorcees, ex-priests, ex-religious, people who have had abortions, married people who have had affairs, people who have had children outside of marriage, parents who have made serious mistakes with their children, and countless others who have made serious mistakes. There is too little around to help them. We need a theology of brokenness. We need a theology which teaches us that even though we cannot unscramble an egg. God’s grace lets us live happily and with renewed innocence far beyond any egg we may have scrambled. We need a theology that teaches us that God does not just give us one chance, but that every time we close a door, he opens another one for us.”

I think that the covenant that our staff wrote this past September fits really well with this.

S-LC Staff Covenant 2011

“I beg you... to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer..."

- Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

Love

- What does it mean to live out love, in faith, through service?

- What made it so easy for Jesus to love the wicked, outcasts, poor, and sinners? How do we adopt this feature for ourselves?

- Are we willing to love beyond reason? What does this mean?

- How do we allow ourselves to experience 2-way love in our service-learning?

- What does it mean to love our enemy? Our community? Our work? God?

- How can we precede tempered impatience with love?

Justice

- How does mercy envelop justice? How does mercy shape justice in light of the coming kingdom?

- What risks must we take to pursue justice? What will we give up?

- How do we perpetuate injustice, willingly/knowingly or not?

- What would a just world look like?

- What is our responsibility as people of privilege in pursuing justice?

Hope

- What will allow us to persevere?

- How do we persevere toward peace?

- What does it mean to have Christian hope? Why is our trust in God and not in other things?

- For what are we hoping, as we understand that the kingdom is already but not yet?

- Is it necessary to hope beyond what is realistic?

- How do we have hope for shalom in such a broken world? Especially when we will never get it right?

Humility

- Do I see Christ in them? Do they see Christ in me?

- Acknowledging our privilege, how can we live with integrity?

- Are we using people for our own purposes?

- How do we do our work humbly, remembering from where our power comes?

Presence

- Do we choose our place or does our place choose us?

- What does it mean to be fully present in a place? What does it look like?

- Is there an important difference between living intentionally and just being present in our place?

- How can we become more incarnate in the work that we do?

As an outpouring of our faith, and with the desire to better understand love, justice, hope, humility, and presence, we as the Service-Learning Center staff of 2011-2012 commit to live these questions now and continually pursue faithful responses in our work and lives.

We are stating that we don’t have it all figured out. We have lots of questions about life, and about living a life of true discipleship. We acknowledge how hard it is to get it right. So then why does it seem so hard for us to see that in other people, especially when what they do affects our lives? I have been struggling with this particular question for years. How do we recognize that the faults of others, whether it be family, friends, churches, or organizations, may mean that they don’t have it all together either, and how do we work past that? I don’t suggest letting it go by and just saying things like that happen and moving on. I don’t think that is what the passage, stated in the first paragraph, means to say either when it talks about giving second chances. Problems and faults should be addressed, but then second chances should be given. Faults should not be held against others, as we wouldn’t want that for ourselves. So what then does that look like? Is it different in different situations and for different people? When is the right time to address the fault and give a second chance? Is it different if you were personally affected by it?

I guess what I am trying to say is that I don’t have it all figured out when it comes to this topic, but I am living and learning. I am learning to live in the questions and learning to trust God that someday I may catch of glimpse of His kingdom through true forgiveness and second chances.

Allie

Blessed to Be a Blessing

‘Blessed to be a blessing’ is a quote that I love. I heard it at church over the summer and continue to find it more and more true in my life. And even though StreetFest 2011 wrap-up is officially complete as of October, 1, I will not soon forget this summer and how amazingly blessed I am to have had the opportunity to be a blessing to others in just a small way. For a short time following StreetFest, it was hard to see the positive outcomes. The evaluations that
flooded in were encouraging at times, but also discouraging at others- seeing what went bad, what didn’t run smoothly, what could have gone better, and so on.


BUT, Just a few days ago, a transfer student stopped in the office and asked me how he could get involved with StreetFest next year!! A transfer student! Who liked StreetFest! Who now wants to get involved! Ahh!!! This just about made my day. Ok not even just about, it DID make my day. Some days, the awesomeness of what was StreetFest 2011 still catches me off guard.

Anyways… this run-in was just one more reminder for me of how the work we do isn’t really about us and what we get from it, but rather it’s about inspiring other people to get involved – and that THAT is the best outcome. In the big picture things won't always go perfectly, and there will always be people who don’t enjoy StreetFest, but what’s more important and trumps all of that is that some people actually DO like it, or maybe even love it! Those stories are the ones that make all the work worth it, because in the long run it’s about helping people find the ‘on-ramp’ to the highway of living as a lifelong service-learner. That's what we do here at the Service-Learning Center and I will forever be glad to do so.

Now and always I am be blessed to be a blessing.

What about you?

Emily