haan

...and whether our bread is toasted and buttered or rationed and stale, i hope for a heavenly sweet tooth that will always be satisfied. for sometimes the tastiest treasures of life are found in the most unsuspecting of places...
[ckh]

grout

the lights are off so as to not wake the neighbors, i am awkwardly sitting on the dimly moonlit tile of my mother's kitchen. the fan in the opposite room is frantically spinning such as to take flight with hopes of stirring up just the right medicine to rid the air of its overwhelming heat. i have removed a yellow candle from the closet that my mother has dedicated to all of the candles that she has received from my brother and i for the past ten christmas' but never burned. i strike a match from an anonymous match jacket found in my shirt pocket. i hold steady for a moment. as the oxygen is sucked in from the open window by the distant fan it is then pushed forth in my direction and subsequently providing increased life for the flame that remains balanced between my fingertips. i slowly guide the flame towards the yellow candle: "mr. flame, this is ms. yellow candle" i mumble softly as if i were introducing the two for the first time, "enjoy each other's company, and if you need anything at all, just contact the plastic circle up on the ceiling and, well, he will pass the message to me. " you see, i would be quite busy.

quite busy indeed as it happened to be. the grout between each porcelain tile piece had transformed from a pure and almost blinding white to a colour that bears the mark of two kids and a dog- that being dirty. over the years, you see, i have become quite accustom to this imperfection: ice cream, like on a playground slide wildly flailing out of my bowl and onto the ground. having my older brother teach me step by step how to make spaghetti and testing the readiness of the pasta via baseball pitching a strip of it towards the cabinets with hopes of an adhesive-like stick, but without prevail. brownie mix strategically making its way from the mixing bowl to floor. the nostalgia lasts a moment or two as i sit with cleaning brush in hand in anticipation of cleanliness. the past fades as i take the yellow candle (who is getting along just fine with mr. flame) up with my left hand and tilt it for increased visibility. i begin to scrub. the horribly off-white slowly begins to fade leaving a bleached white smile in between each tile.

i continue in my laborious task for hours.

black friday

my Christian Scriptures professor sent the class a little Thanksgiving/Black Friday email. i thought i would share it because he some explains some very important things more eloquently than i can. happy thanksgiving!

I wanted to share a little something with you yesterday before you left, but forgot to do so. Thanksgiving is a wonderful ritual of our culture, isn't it? A day set aside to give thanks, eat a wonderful meal and celebrate all the good things we have in our lives. Tomorrow, of course, confronts us with another powerful ritual of our culture: the mad-frenzy of consumerism to kick of the Christmas buying season. I'm sure you've seen and heard the ads: "Don't miss the biggest sale of the year! Stores open at 4am! Huge discounts in the first few hours! Run run run buy buy buy fast!!" It is really sad, isn't it? One day to give thanks for all that we have, followed by a month-long mad dash to spend money most of us don't have buying things most of us don't need.

It reminds me of a passage from Hosea: "Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider how you have fared. You have sown much, and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holes. Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider how you have fared. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honoured, says the Lord." What kind of houses are we building for ourselves? What kingdom do we serve? We pray that God's Kingdom will come, but when the marketers start ringing their bells most all of us go running to answer the call, investing in the things of this world.

So this year, I invite you all to do two things to demonstrate to yourselves and those around you that your primary allegiance is to a different kingdom. (1) Though tomorrow is mostly known as a day of consumer frenzy, it is also known as "Buy Nothing Day" (http://adbusters.org/metas/eco/bnd/). Take the day off. Resist the knee-jerk response to shop and spend. There is plenty of time to buy your Christmas gifts. (2) Consider buying alternative gifts this year that will spread our blessings across the world. Give Heifer Project gifts (www.heifer.org/site/c.edJRKQNiFiG/b.204586/k.9430/Gift_Catalog.htm?msource=kw1882), or pretend you're a mini-Bill Gates and make a microloan investment in someone's name (www.kiva.org/).

I assure you, many of your loved ones do not actually need the gift you're preparing to buy them. What we all need is a new vision of the world as a place where no one has too much and no one has too little, a place where people are empowered by the Spirit to return thanksgiving to God by sharing what they have with those who are underprivileged. Invest in the Kingdom and inspire people to realize that it is possible to live differently in the world.

Thanks for listening. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! God bless you and your loved ones this year.


Dave Nienhuis

camara

when i fed the hungry, they called me a saint.
when i asked why people are hungry, they called me a communist.
[Dom Helder Camara]

psalm 37

consider the blameless, observe the upright;
there is a future for the man of peace.
[psalm 37:37]

de mello

look at your life and see how you have filled its emptiness with people. as a result they have a stranglehold on you. see how they control your behavior by their approval and disapproval. they hold the power to ease your loneliness with their company. to send your spirit soaring with their praise. to bring you down to the depths with their criticism and rejection. take a look at yourself spending almost every waking moment of your day placating and pleasing people, whether they are living or dead.
[anthony de mello, the way to love]

mann

horace mann 1796-1859

     during the praise portion of church last sunday there was a guy in front of me dancing. truth be told, this made me really uncomfortable and feel a bit awkward- being he was the only one acting this way. this uncomfortable feeling quickly generated the question of: why does this man's outward enthusiasm and excitement for his Creator make me uncomfortable?
    i looked around and noticed that everyone else was standing with both feet on the ground, hands in their pockets or crossed and phlegmatically mumbling along to the familiar tune. the dancing man was different from everyone else (myself included) and this made me uncomfortable. but why? generally, being around people who are different from me do not make me uneasy; but this did.
     tracing this feeling way back to america's beginnings, the government had a solution to this uncomfortable feeling when different cultures and thoughts on G-d began to mix in the colonies; this solution was public education. U.S. house representative Horace Mann became known as the father of the public education system, or the father of the solution to this uncomfortable feeling. as a product of the public education system i am very thankful to Mann's vision and desire to create an education system that would serve not just the wealthy, but i think that the theme of americanization, or assimilation had and has ill effects on the "american" culture. i am, obviously, attracted to what is familiar and similar to myself and there is nothing wrong with that, but when this attraction begins to create barriers and segregation (and i am not just referring to the big examples- i am talking about the subtle moments) is when this attraction becomes dangerous. have i (or dare i say, the church) become so attracted and reliant on what is familiar and similar to me that when someone acts different (in a way that i am unable to relate to at that moment) i instantly view that individual as strange or even far from "truth"? (i am by no means racist or intolerant of other cultures and i am not talking about having a disgust or hatred toward another culture, i am talking about that subtle uneasy feeling you get when someone makes you think about culture and consider faults in your own and truths in theirs.)
     Mann helped create an assimilation system so that the irish, germans, spaniards, etc. would no longer have conflicted views on religion, morals, and politics. to become like-minded. rather than learning and embracing the differences of those who were coming to america, we created a system to suppress differences and teach one single truth. when i explain what Mann did it sounds terrible. but when i live day to day subtly judging and creating barriers between myself and those who are different from me- it does not seem so bad. that is not okay. it can be difficult to honestly say that i do not have it all figured out. that i do not understand my religion sometimes, and that i do not comprehend the finer points of love (the one thing that i am called to abide in). it is difficult to try to explain, both to myself and others. but there is beauty in the other. there is beauty in that man dancing. and there is beauty in the woman standing with her arms crossed. i do not know if Mann was able to find the beauty in diversity. diversity of thought. diversity of action. dancing. standing. sitting. speaking. listening. yelling. whispering. sining.
     i understand that the statement of "there is beauty in diversity" is beyond cheesy. but there is a lot of truth in that statement. and although that lame slogan has been tossed around a lot i do not know if we really understand and embrace it; i know i don't. i am trying to challenge myself to fight my instinct to ignore and dispute thoughts and ideas that do not align with my own. and to respect how others find and experience G-d.
     i may have sounded like a bit of a jerk here, but i hope that you will be able to relate to some of these feelings and understand that differences do not always generate hate, but can generate question and uneasiness for a multitude of reasons and can eventually (with the right mindset) create growth, peace and love.