TIME-SENSITIVE SOULISH FOOD: OPEN TODAY

What Can I Do?

In my mind, there is no excuse but one for isolating ourselves from the suffering and horrific abuse women experience around the world. That one excuse would be for the woman who has have suffered similarly and exposure decathects their past pain. They actually re-experience, live out again, and vividly remember all the pains and sorrows of and horrors of the past.

Apart from this, I simply do not accept the excuse—“I’m really an oversensitive person. I can’t bear the thought of other women going through those terrible things.”

Christ entered into our suffering and He calls us to enter into the pain of those who are suffering around us. Paul wrote: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings” (Philippians 3:10a). One of the ways we share in Christ’s sufferings is to suffer with Him over the brokenness of this world.

On October 1 and 2, Monday and Tuesday, PBS is telecasting a documentary Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. This is from the book by the same name written by two of our most fiercely moral voices, Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. 

I strongly suggest that you save these two evenings to watch this documentary.

Sensitivities aside, every Christian, man and woman, should read this book, which has been named as one of the 12 best books written in 2011. It certainly is a stunning and comprehensive handbook chronicling the battering and abuse and sex-trafficking of women around the world. The book has become a lightning rod for raising consciousness and a clarion call for both men and women to positive action.

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Nothing to Envy

Our Read & Intercede Book Group finished Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick. A National Book Award Finalist it is a study of six North Korean citizens over fifteen year. The journalist’s capacity is to take the reader into the lives of these people who slowly realize that the leaders of their country have betrayed them.

The San Francisco Chroniclereview writes, “Excellent...humanizes a downtrodden, long-suffering people whose individual lives, hopes and dreams are so little known abroad.”

John Delury remarks, “The narrow boundaries of our knowledge have expanded radically with the publication of Nothing to Envy...Elegantly structured and written, [it] is a groundbreaking work of literary nonfiction.”

“At times a page-turner, at others an intimate study in totalitarian psychology.”

–The Philadelphia Inquirer

This was a painful reading assignment, but the average American’s ignorance about most other countries, and particularly those enclosed behind the insane walls of repressive regimes, begs to be enlightened by excellent journalistic attempts such as this.

For next month we are reading, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galieano. Our discussion will be lead by Javier Camboni, economics professor at Wheaton College.

Torschlusspanik or not, it is good to be forced to think!

To Read more, click HERE.

Dancing Lessons

How do we get to that place where our covenants to each other are also something beyond our individuals selves, where there is a recognition that life is bigger than we know, that Christ is with us in the “breaking of the bread”? 

We start where the prophet Elisha started with his servant. We begin with a prayer: “Open my eyes, Lord, that I might see …” Then we go looking; we go into the world listening. We write down the moments when the veil of non-seeing parts; when our ears recognize the higher ranges not normally heard. We look at a world far greener that we knew it to be, the skies bluer than blue, the people sweeter and more lovely than we had ever recognized. The warriors in fiery chariots surround us. The wind carries descants; the world is in a chorale of continuous antiphonal call. We are in the holy.

And God bends low, whispers to our soul, Good job, kid. You’ve earned a screen credit: Karen Mains, Assistant to the Producer.

Read more, click HERE.

A Hungry Soul

A Hungry Soul is a person who asks:

How do I connect with God in a way that satisfies my soul?

How does the Bible, written so long ago, really feed the spirit?

How do I begin to live the spiritual life I've always longed for?

How do I heal from wounds that have closed me off from God?

How do I go deeper spiritually, and not just skim across the surface?

Does Christianity let me enjoy beauty, the aesthetic, the literary, or is it just serious and severe?

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Positive Deviants

   I spent all of last week above Colorado Springs in intense training sessions with some of the leaders of the CHE (Community Health Evangelism) movement, which is so effective it is spreading rapidly around the world as various denominations and missions groups adopt its methods. Saddleback Church with Rick Warren, for instance, is using the CHE development program in the Peace Initiative in Rwanda.

    CHE is a unique neighborhood (or village) approach that seamlessly integrates Scriptural stories with practical preventive healthcare (or microenterprise) lessons that are advanced by trained village nationals who relate (ideally) to 10-15 households. There may be other groups that are doing this kind of integration—I’ve witnessed all kinds of relief and development initiatives around the world in my travels as a journalist—but, generally they lean toward one pole or another, development and relief on the one hand, or church planting on the other. Click here to read more: http://goo.gl/KzrcC

Crisscross Double Dutch

"I don't play very well."

How frequently I hear this lament in the Listening Groups. Not only does this seem to be a common lament for contemporary Christians, it is also a problem with which I deeply identify. I either never learned to play, or, through the decades of ministry, I have forgotten how!

So, much of this year (since Hungry Souls conducted workshops on Lucia Capacchione's Recovery of Your Inner Child: The Highly Acclaimed Method for Liberating Your Inner Self), I've been working at learning how to play. (Notice the conundrum in that sentence--it's bad when you have to work at having fun!) I am learning that it is important for me to have days in which there are NOT lists of things that MUST-BE-DONE. Click here to read more: http://goo.gl/RU8P1