"What does practicing resurrection mean to you?"

"What does practicing resurrection mean to you?"...This is tricky. While writing our covenant we searched long and hard for something to counterbalance, “We practice resurrection,” looking carefully for a phrase that recognizes the uncertainty that comes implicit in faith. It isn’t that I don’t want to practice resurrection or am completely incapable of ever doing so; the issue is that I’m not sure what it even looks like. Hence, “we don’t know what will be.” I shuffle between the two on a daily basis, at times feeling absolutely rooted in the truth of Christ and his resurrection while at others feeling completely isolated and alone, stuck in a system that emphasizes doubt and uncertainty above all. But resurrection remains even when I can’t see it, and that’s the beauty of it all. Practicing resurrection is practicing a heartfelt and others-focused search for the Lord. Maybe some day I’ll be able to answer the question after having found and embraced Him with all that I have, but for now the search is all I’ve got. Practicing resurrection is looking for Jesus in the faces of peers, faculty, friends, family, and the woman who comes knocking on my back door at 2:00am looking for food. Practicing resurrection is looking for a beautiful, simple truth underneath the layers of muck that surround me. I might not find it all the time, but that’s why it’s a practice. Some day I’ll be better.

-Evans Lodge

ABSL Natural Sciences & Math

on beauty.

The English 395: Senior Seminar curriculum attempts to cover all the major questions of the discipline: the right use of language, ethical limits on writing, the nature of knowledge, what counts as literature, hermeneutics, the high brow. This week, we've been talking about beauty.

Elaine Scarry, professor of Aesthetics at Harvard, wrote our text: a short treatise called On Beauty and Being Just. Beauty, she argues, has ethical significance. It matters for how we live in the world. Beauty prompts us toward justice.

Beauty is preexistent; it is in the world without any action on the part of humankind. It does not rely on us for its being; we may create beauty, but we are "only collaborators in a much vaster project," which sounds a lot like shalom to me.

"Beauty is a call," available to our sensory perception in a way justice is not, characterized by symmetry, and generously present to all people at almost all times. When we experience it, we undergo what Scarry calls "radical de-centering." We are surprised into giving up our imaginary position at the center of the world and following the motion of beauty toward a presence beyond our own, which Scarry doesn't call Christ, but I do. Confronted with beauty, we are humbled. We are moved to create. And we are moved toward creating justice that mimics the equality and generosity of beauty. Beauty is a single mark that we are not entirely selfish creatures; we wish to protect even paintings we will never see and mountains we may never visit.

The book's philosophical underpinnings were widely debated in capstone this morning, but all of us were moved, and this in a class brimming with opinionated writers, linguists, philosophers, historians, marketers and poets. We approached the conversation with the strange, compelling reverence native to art museums and cathedrals. Beauty matters, and we had been reminded.

In gray days of paper-writing and coffee-drinking, on mornings when I am late for school or forget my lunch, on long evenings in a cold house, I am reminded to look for beauty and to practice it. I will be generous with myself and with others and the world, and I will create justice in response to loveliness that bids me "attend to the aliveness of our world." I am blessed to know a beautiful God, who calls me to this.

[katie van zanen]

Love the Lord. Love the world. Practice Ressurection

The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, by Wendell Berry, is one of the pieces that inspired this year's Service-Learning Center covenant. It is definitely worth reading and reflecting on.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
-Wendell Berry

"Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion – put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap

for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

a woman satisfied to bear a child?

Will this disturb the sleep

of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie down in the shade. Rest your head

in her lap. Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection."

Kelsey Stark

Communications Coordiantor

The Power of His Resurrection

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection..." Philippians 3:10

As of late I have been thinking more about heaven. What would it be like if everything was perfect?  Not the worldly definition of perfect, but God's definition of perfect.  In trying to practice resurrection, and live out our staff covenant, I've been thinking a lot about what it would be like if everything was resurrected. Philippians 3:10 starts, "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection..."  Think about it, the power that resurrected Christ is in us through his Holy Spirit. The power that resurrected his dead, still body back into heaven, and onto his throne lives in us.

Realizing this has led me many places.

This semester I have been realizing my weaknesses...things that, personally, I cannot see myself ever completely overcoming in this life.  However, understanding that the power of Christ's resurrection lives in me and works with me in my weakness is overwhelming.  This great power meets up with my weakness and completely takes over... so that each time I fall feels like a "mini resurrection."

In the context of community we can unite in this power, joining together to create one whole.
In the context of service we can wholeheartedly give, and realize that even our smallest steps towards justice matter.
In the context of learning we can fully open our hearts to others, the way that Christ did.
and in the context of...well...life, we can see and participate in resurrection and the coming of His Kingdom.

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection..." Philippians 3:10

Blessings,

Kelsey Stark

Communications Coordinator

To Walk In Faith

"Writing, for me, is an act of faith, a hope that I will discover what I mean by 'truth.' I also think of reading as an act of faith, a hope that I will discover something remarkable about ordinary life, about myself. And if the writer and the reader discover the same thing, if they have that connection, the act of faith has resulted in an act of magic. To me that's the mystery and the wonder of both life and fiction - the connection between two individuals who discover in the end that they are more the same than they are different."

from "In the Canon, For All The Wrong Reasons," by Amy Tan 

I’ve been thinking about faith recently, about belief in an intangible reality, hope in an invisible scene. Amy Tan’s quote about writing as an act of faith conveys exactly the confusion and outright weirdness of the conversation that I often find myself dwelling on; we’re waiting, all waiting, for a connection to be made while having to recognize on a daily basis the difficulties and fears that push us all apart. We struggle to move forward into the kingdom even though it often feels like we’re running in the wrong direction. Which way is up?

I don’t know.

But then there’s this quote, this idea of faith. Faith as hopeful anticipation. Faith as expectant perseverance. Faith as confidence in the beautiful things yet to come. When I first read Tan’s essay, I was struck by the idea that her “faith” is based on connections that she might never get to see. How often, when I read a good book, do I write the author to share the connections that were made? How often, when art of any kind impacts my life, do I track down the artist and share my thoughts?

I don’t, really, but that’s not necessarily the problem. The problem is that I value those connections less because I don’t get to see both sides; the issue is that I’m too prideful to recognize that those two sides aren’t always mine to see. Pride, in so many ways, is antithetical to the call to live faithfully. It inhibits true service, forces us to quantify our productivity and put numbers to our love. Faith does neither. Faith, true faith, allows us to act and live and work for peace without any expectations outside of the truth of Christ.

Jesus, walking among us, changes things.

My hope for the Service-Learning Center, for Calvin College, for Grand Rapids, for [insert ever expanding circle here] is that we, we humans, will recognize the deep roots of service that extend from such a faith, a faith that recognizes how humble Christ truly calls us to be. Maybe we will work, struggle, and walk towards the kingdom of God for the rest of our lives and never see any progress. Maybe we will find out that we took a wrong turn from the start. But should this deter us from trying?

No, because such a faith dictates that we simply carry on, recognizing the choices we make as imperfect and the changes we bring as, at best, approximations of justice and peace. Faith demands trust that the intangible reality we wait for, this hope for a future, will actually arrive. The timeline is unimportant. The truth is the point.

In the midst of the Westgate attack in Kenya, of continued warfare in Syria, of earthquakes and hunger and famine and disease throughout the world, let us not forget the power of simple, humble faith. Faith that connections will be made and, whether it’s now or later, true change will come.

In Christ,

Evans Lodge

ABSL, Natural Sciences and Mathematics

Staff Covenant 2013-2014

This year our staff's covenant has the theme of "practicing resurrection." The beautiful thing about our covenant is that what "practicing resurrection" means, is different for each and every one of us on staff at the Service-Learning Center.  We don't know, exactly, what will be...but I hope that as the year goes on we will receive glimpses of what it means to "practice resurrection." I pray that as we further reflect and act on the words in this covenant, that they will lead us individually, and as a community. 

Service-Learning Center 2013-2014 Staff Covenant:

We practice resurrection, we don't know what will be

with joy, we commit to:

Fostering a community that values 

individuality

cultivating conversation and

imagination

Honoring the progress of

small steps and unhistoric acts.

Seeking justice within God's

improbable grace.

We don't know what will be; we practice resurrection.

  This year I hope our staff is able to foster imagination, participate joyfully in unhistoric acts, seek justice, and overall be a group of individuals who "practice resurrection" in all of its knowns... and unknowns.

-Kelsey Stark, Communications Coordinator

Anniversary Story-Seeking

This summer and school year, I’m the Service-Learning Center's 50^th Anniversary Research & Project Coordinator, a title more or less made up, like my position, like a lot of my work. I’m figuring out how to honor the Service-Learning Center’s first fifty years. So far, that’s involved organizing old files, perusing historical documents, books about service-learning, and articles about Christian education; googling alumni, digging through archives, interviewing former staff members, writing web copy, sending out surveys, pestering people to complete them, and transcribing hours of recordings. 

I’m a lover of structure and clarity in a very open-ended job, which has frustrated and challenged me, humbled and empowered me. I've had to ask for help and advice frequently. I've had to trust my instincts and follow through on ideas. I've been gutsy and also wildly inefficient, and I've generally felt somewhat intimidated by the tasks before me, undefined as they may be.

The Service-Learning Center has a powerful legacy. It’s been a community, a resource, a family, a home, a launch pad, a safe place, a starting point, and so many other things to so many people I respect and admire. Articulating that legacy, honoring it, feels like a fairly weighty task. It’s already hard to talk about the ideas that drive this place: justice, peace, presence, community, sustainability, shalom. We use those names to frame phenomena we don’t know how to describe, to talk about the often so intangible acts of kingdom-building that comprise our purpose in this life. Language is just a container for the dynamic, collaborative soul of this place that is not a place at all—it’s not the Commons Annex that forms the S-LC. It’s the people who are there and who have been there and who have built and absorbed a culture that changes with them.

I, as the 50^th Anniversary Research & Project Coordinator, have to find some way to articulate that culture, to ask good questions about that culture, and to do it all with some semblance of grace and concision.

But to do that well, I have to find the stories of people to whom the S-LC has mattered. I have to tell those stories with the same honesty and feeling they show, which means I have to really listen, and follow the threads of narrative backward and forward. The anniversary is about our history, but it’s also about the future, and the kind of chapters that have already been foreshadowed. So I’ll spend the next ten months or so teasing out the story, as faithfully as I can.

Any assistance is appreciated.

Shalom,

Katie Van Zanen.