44/52 - An Ecumenical Experiment

A theme that seems to be developing in various aspects of my life, but especially within the commmunity house (now called The Harbour, by the way) has been the idea of the need for unity among Christians, despite our differing opinions and backgrounds.

Within this house and associated boyfriends, at least six different denominations are represented - Reformed, Baptist, Pentacostal, Mennonite and United.

Some of us have a more conservative way of viewing life and faith and how it should be lived out and some of us are more liberal. Yet all of us are committed to our one God, this community and to learning how to coexist and love each other.

I believe then, that a valuable mission this house could undertake would be in learning to listen to not just each other's voices, but the voices of various congregations within the city of Waterloo.

Online, there are forty-four churches that advertise on the City of Waterloo's website: http://www.city.waterloo.on.ca/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabID=260.

I think it would be an interesting experiment with Christian unity and mutual understanding to visit each of these churches on a typical Sunday morning, e-mailing each of them ahead of time explaining who we are and what we are doing, attaching a short survey asking their perspectives on what it means to follow Jesus, who in their congregation does an exemplary job of doing this and what about their denomination or congregation is most misunderstood by the Church of general public. Finally, we will invite each pastor and his/her family to come over to our house for lunch after the service.

The goal would be to gain a more thorough understanding of the Christian spectrum within Waterloo, gaining their perspectives on us and what we do as a house and to promote the importance of ecumenism in Waterloo.

I hypothesize that there is a wealth of untapped potential in various sincere Christian voices listening to and understanding each other, even if those voices may contradict at times.

I must admit that I found this quote off of someone's facebook profile page. I thought it was a thought-provoking quote.

"You’ve got to have good work to do together. You can’t just be community for the sake of community. You’ve got to have something to do. Work is liturgy. You need to worship together. But somebody’s also got to clean the damn house. Work requires everyday conversation and politics. It’s not accidental that the Benedictines are about work and prayer. Otherwise they’d kill one another."

- Stanley Hauerwas

Reasons I love this house

1. There is always someone around to talk to - No matter what time of the day you come home or when you wake up, someone is around to hear about your day or the weird dream you had.

2. You can be drawn into a theological conversation just by walking down the hall- I don't think a day goes by here without someone debating or discussing some meaningful type subject matter. I love that we engage in good conversation on a regular basis.

3. Studying/Reading together in the living room - Its easier to do your homework when 3 other people are sitting next to you doing theirs. This is also helpful when you need someone to edit your papers or keep you focused.

4. Pancake Fridays - Gloria gets up and makes pancakes for everyone every Friday morning. Its the best.

5. Sunday night dinner and devotions - I love when we all gather together and help prepare a meal. Everyone contributes whatever ingredients they have and we all eat and then do devotions together.

6. Hearing everyones story - Lately, instead of devotions we have been going through each member of the house and hearing their life story. I think its a great way to connect with each other more and I've loved hearing about everyones life and being able to share about mine.

7. Borrowing clothes - I love that when I am running low on clean laundry, I can step across the hall and grab something to throw on. Communal clothing is a huge plus to living with these girls.

8. Sharing food - Sometimes, people make too much of something or are just feeling generous and we get some tasty morsels that we didn't even cook ourselves!

9. Musicians - There are many musicians in this house. I love the sound of guitar and piano and singing wafting through the house and I love that we can use them for worship times as well.

10. Learning more about Jesus - Through the relationships here and through the way we are learning and growing, I am seeing more and more about what Jesus wants us to be and how to love more like He loves us. Everyone here is such a blessing and everyone reveals something else about the nature of God.

Winter 2011 Mission Statement

This semester, we as a house want to focus on developing shalom within the house and the world in order to glorify God by doing the following:

Caring for each other. We want to show each other that we care by being intentional about making time for each other and this house. We also want to hold each other accountable in ways that we have (or haven't, in some cases, perhaps)specified. Two specific examples are holding Trevor accountable in his time management and Katie accountable in her ability to leave for things on time. We love Katie and therefore will leave without her if she is running late.

Another way we will show that we care about each other is by helping each other exercise more by competing for who can exercise the most, making chores the consequence for those who lose each monthly competition.

We also commit to praying for each other and the world around us with set times on various days throughout the week where we will pray.

Another way we wish to care for each other and the world around us is by utilizing our creative abilities, especially through music.

Hospitality is something we wish to focus on as well. We wish to have others over for meals and host various events and parties at our house. These events and parties must have a purpose that points the world to a greater reality that reflects God's heart for humanity. One event in particular that we wish to host is a community BBQ.

Lastly, we are committing to establishing a relationship with the residents of SHOW, a local apartment building which houses those who used to be homeless. We want to build relationships with the individuals who live there by volunteering there as a house once a month.

I wrote this for the Waterloo Campus Ministries newsletter so I thought I would post it here as well! I think that hosting these community dinners has been a great opportunity for us as a house.

Walking into my house one Thursday night, I smell the strong scent of garlic and onions – the beginnings of a delicious chilli. Around a small table, a couple university students are busy chopping vegetables while discussing the proper way to cut garlic: do you use a knife or a garlic press? They spend about an hour and a half cooking together to prepare supper for about twenty of us who meet once a month to share a meal. These suppers are more than just simply eating together. They give us an opportunity to be the body of Christ. As we chop vegetables and wash dishes, we begin to grasp what it means to serve one another. As we eat dishes from India and China, we get a glimpse of a world bigger than exams and assignments. As we successfully have conversations with those who are just learning English, we gain patience, realizing that laughter surpasses language in bringing people together. We don’t always agree about controversial topics (such as the prevalence of racism or the practicality of pacifism). But in bringing people together from different disciplines and different parts of the world, we can learn how to listen to each other’s perspectives.

My time is NOT my own.

I'm reading The Screwtape Letters right now and am constantly having my perspective challenged by C.S. Lewis' wise words. For those of you who don't know, The Screwtape Letters are written from the perspective of a demon to his nephew, giving advice on the best ways to corrupt a Christian man. It provides a lot of interesting insight in the sin's and flaws of humanity. What I really find cool is that it was written over 50 years ago and its still so relevant today. Anyways, I was talking about a certain section with Kath the other day and she suggested I post it on our sorely underused blog.

"Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend's talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tête-à-tête with the friend), that throw him out of gear. Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption "My time is my own". Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.

You have here a delicate task. The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defence. The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon his chattels. He is also, in theory, committed a total service of the Enemy; and if the Enemy appeared to him in bodily form and demanded that total service for

even one day, he would not refuse. He would be greatly relieved if that one day involved nothing harder than listening to the conversation of a foolish woman; and he would be relieved almost to the pitch of disappointment if for one half-hour in that day the Enemy said "Now you may go and amuse yourself". Now if he thinks about his assumption for a moment, even he is bound to realise that he is actually in this situation every day. When I speak of preserving this assumption in his mind, therefore, the last thing I mean you to do is to furnish him with arguments in its defence. There aren't any. Your task is purely negative. Don't let his thoughts come anywhere near it. Wrap a darkness about it, and in the centre of that darkness let his sense of ownership-in-Time lie silent, uninspected, and operative."

I strongly recommend reading this book. Its not that long and it consistently hits the nail on the head.

A Reflection

I haven't written on this thing in awhile. I think its time I just plugged down and vomitted some thoughts, regardless of how unorganized they may be inside my head.

I think what I have learned from past experiences with community is that the first few months are for figuring out what's what. What are our strengths? What are our weaknesses? What is tolerable and what needs to change as soon as possible? Is this an endeavor that actually seeks to follow God first and foremost?

I think, for better or for worse, I try to go into new situations like these with low expectations but high hopes. My heart is guarded by the realization that people are wounded from their pasts, plagued with the diseases of apathy and self-centeredness, and they are just plain busy. Therefore, people WILL let me down inevitably. And I will do the same to them. It also doesn't help that all of us are playing it by ear and really don't know that the heck we are doing.

BUT. God is bigger than our wounds, our apathy, our selfishness, our busy-ness and our lack of experience. And we love God and try to follow Him. Therefore, there is hope.

I love this house. I especially love certain moments when a spirit about this house quiets my soul and puts a tingle of joy in my spine. Its when Abram plays his guitar and sings in the living room. Or Kathleen practices piano downstairs for her volunteer position. Or Trevor makes curry and shares it. Or we all dip a spoon in my Nutella. Or Katie leads a devotion on meditation and it inspires the rest of us to get involved as a house in reaching out to others. Or Calida cleans, decorates and organizes the whole house in a weekend. Or Rebecca and Katie buy me groceries, fair trade stuff, and write me amazingly thoughtful and affirming cards for my birthday - just because they know that that's exactly what I would love.

I love that I can walk around braless and blurry eyed with tangled hair and stale, smudged mascara, in my sweats, well into the afternoon and not even think about whether or not my housemates will care.

This house has SO MANY amazing moments and undertones of love and acceptance. I believe that God is in them.

At the same time, we are nowhere near our original vision. Our house is perpetually untidy and borderline gross(which drives me nuts), we have far more ideas and good intentions than actual follow-up action, and we've been too busy, and perhaps apathetic in many cases, to bond as much as we should have in order to really build a community that can love and support eachother as a whole house and then in turn love and support our greater community as a house as well.

We have a lot to work on, which this semester has revealed to us. But we are growing, slowly but surely, and I'm so excited to see what next semester brings!

"Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it."
— Henri J.M. Nouwen

Loving someone, showing compassion, is recognizing that we are one. We are not simply a part of one body, we are one body.

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

-C.S. Lewis

Lord, teach us to pray.

Help us spread the love of Jesus like madness and wildfire.

Exerpt from Community and Growth by Jean Vanier

Gloria is reading this book right now and posted this on facebook. I thought it was lovely, thus I am posting it here.

"Some communities start by serving the poor. When they begin, their members are full of generosity - though sometimes a bit aggressive in respect of the rich - and have a rather utopian ideal. Gradually, they discover the need for prayer and an inner life; they realise that their generosity is being burned up and that they are in danger of becoming a collection of hyperactives who put all their energy into external things.

Other communities start with prayer - like many of the communities of the charismatic renewal. But graduallly they discover the need to serve the poor and to develop real commitment to them. Opening to God in adoration and opening to the poor in welcome and service are the two poles of a community's growth, and signs of its health. And the community itself must grow toward a stronger sense of identity, like a body in which every member can exercise its gift and be recognised for it.

If those communities that started by serving the poor do not discover the deepening of prayer and the bonds of love flowing into celebration, they risk becoming a militant group struggling for justice. If those communities that started with prayer and adoration do not discover the waters of compassion flowing from them upon those in pain, they risk becoming legalistic and sterile.

The three elements of community - prayer, or communion with the Father through and in Jesus, presence and service to the poor, and the consciousness of being bonded in a single body - are always necessary for a community to be healthy and to grow.

Jesus called each apostle into a personal relationship of love with him, then he bonded them together in community and then he sent them out to annouce the good news to the poor.

Communities which start by serving the poor must gradually discover the gifts brought by those they serve. The communities start in generosity; they must grow in the ability to listen. In the end, the most important thing is not to do things for people who are poor and in distress, but to enter into relationship with them, and to be with them and help them find confidence in themselves and discover their own gifts...

The promise of Jesus is to help us discover that the poor are a source of life and not just objects of our charity. If we are close to them we will be renewed in love and in faith."

p. 141-142

Community Quotes

The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne is chalked full of quotes related to community and Christian living. Here is an assortment of particularly nice ones:

Saying, 'Father forgive them for they know not what they do.' is an action that is not based on logic; it is based on a love that does not make sense, a scandalous grace.

We are trying to raise up an army of lovers - a community of people who've fallen desperately in love with God and with suffering people and who allow those relationships to disturb and transform them.

We must never fall in love with our vision or our five year plan. We must never fall in love with "the revolution" or "the movement"

The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community but the person who loves those around them will create community.

We will hurt no one. We will love evil doers, even if it costs us our lives. And then we will see evildoers become extremists for grace. This is the story of our faith.

Community can be built around a common self righteousness or around a common brokenness. Both are magnetic. Christianity can be built around isolating ourselves from evil doers and sinners, creating a community of religious piety and moral purity. Christianity can also be built around joining with the broken sinner and evil doers of our world, crying out to God, groaning for grace.

The ghettos may have their share of violence and crime, but the suburbs are the home of more subtle demonic forces - numbness, complacency, comfort - and it is these that can eat away at our souls.

Christians should be troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents of a dimension incompatible with society.

Drum roll pleeease!

Ladies and Gentlemen...

After many months of toil, fall through, and stress, we have finally just signed a lease for our community house!!!!!

We would like to praise God for delivering this house to us, as finding the specific house we needed was an extremely complicated process! With so many people we had a lot of very specific requirements for what was needed in the house and so finding this house and signing the lease is an incredible blessing and we're incredibly thankful! It's a big relief.
It was a very long haul. We've been searching for a house since the beginning of February, and it took 2 full months of consistant effort. We had multiple housing appointments almost every week and came close to signing quite a few other places.
We've been praying consistantly and have had our greater community praying for us too all along.
Thank you for your prayers, we really appreciate them. Please continue to pray for us as we've gotten this huge concrete block of a logistic out of the way and now can move onto the more fun and exciting phase: the dreaming!
We'll be meeting after exams to hang out, build relationships, and do some hardcore dreaming and planning for the community.

God Bless!

-Katie

"Is he safe?"
"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver, "who said anything about safe? 'course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the king, I tell you."
- C.S. Lewis

Some Bulgarian Poetry in Honour of the Feast of Sts. Cyril and Methodius

This author, Blaga Dimitrova, was recommended to me by a friend. She is Bulgarian and the feast celebrating the patron saints of Bulgaria is RIGHT around the corner! Therefore, given the current name of this community, I felt the need to spread around three peices of Bulgarian beauty.

- Gloria

IMPERCEPTIBLY

I will go.
And the space I used to take
will be filled with air—
a liberation—
invisible and spacious.
A silent presence,
from which someone else,
unconsciously,
will take a big breath



5.

The silhouette of a love,
refracted in my memory—
rootless seaweed
carried from far away
on a warm current.

How much bargaining with circumstance,
how many devious moves,
how much struggle with ourselves
and risk and recklessness
for just one meeting.

So close—the sea, jumping out of itself,
and again subsiding to its own element.
Around us—tourists,
shrieking cutouts
on the boiling background.

Only the two of us are quiet—
a small island amid the chaos,
so stormless, almost a mirage,
set against reality,
against your ticket home,
against tomorrow.


Cassandra With A Tail

A cat stretches from one end
of my childhood to the other.
Those winters, by the hearth,
it spun a yarn of smoke into a ball.
At night, it flickered half-moon eyes
into the dark corners of the house.
By day, its tail twirled a signature
on the sky and pawed the air with grace,
gathering in its coat
the electricity of the storm
and smoothing it into gloss fur.
Wise With cottony steps.

Self possessed.
Just once she jumped out of her skin,
One peaceful evening
her tail shot up like a bottle brush
and she lept onto the chandelier
wailing like an ambulance
as if all the voltage in her fur
exploded out in flashing rage.
None of us understood the cat’s prophesy.
We hissed at her to calm down…And
the earthquake nearly flattened the house.
The oracular cat disappeared
with my childhood, forever.

But her miracle stayed with me.
Tonight, to my surprise,
she crept inside me.
Bristling with shock, I shook
and bounding back from wall to wall
yammering up a piercing cry
to call you wherever you are:
Listen. You have so little time.
Grab what you can,
whatever is dear, whatever you love.

Deep in the belly of the earth
an atomic blast is swelling up,
nurtured by electronic brains,
and produced by pulsating robots.
The green careening planet
spins blindly in the dark
so close to annihilation.
Listen. No one listens. Meow.

The Benediction

This is a video my cousin showed me a few months ago. Its not directly related to our house...but I like it :)

Prayer

A few of us are currently reading Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster. I'm in the midst of the prayer chapter, which is a really nice coincidence because last night we had some realizations about the great need to pray for this project.
Within the past couple days a few things have been going wrong. Katie pointed out that we have not been praying for this as much as we should be. This has been weighing on my mind for the past 24 hours and a few parts of the prayer chapter in the book stuck out to me.

'All who have walked with God have viewed prayer as the main business of their lives.'

'In our efforts to pray it is easy for us to be defeated right at the outset because we have been taught that everything in the universe is already set, and so things cannot be changed. And if things cannot be changed, why pray? We may gloomily feel this way, but the Bible does not teach that. The Bible pray-ers prayed as if their prayers could and would make an objective difference. The apostle Paul gladly announces that we are "co-labourers with God"; that is, we are working with God to determine the outcome of events (1 Cor. 3:9)...This comes as a genuine liberation to many of us, but it also sets tremendous responsibility before us. We are working with God to determine the future! Certain things will happen in history if we pray rightly. We are to change the world by prayer.'

I just wanted to share this because it emphasizes how powerful prayer can be and I've always know that somewhere in the back of my mind, but this really brought it to the fore front. So we just wanted to ask that everyone would keep us in their prayers as we search for a place to live and begin this crazy and huge task of creating a community house.

Thanks :)

-Rebecca

I read this yesterday and I found it interesting for thought especially considering what we're doing. When you're reading it though, do note that it's speaking against the very church it's describing -- the Modern church.

From Modern Christianity to a Postmodern Church

"If I am opposed to the epistemology, or theory of knowledge, that plagues modern Christianity, then I am also opposed to ecclesiology (or lack thereof) that accompanies this modernist version of the faith. Within the matrix of a modern Christianity, the base 'ingredient' is the individual; the church, then, is simply a collection of individuals. Conceiving of Christian faith as a private affair between the individual and God -- a matter of my asking Jesus 'to come into my heart'-- modern evangelicalism finds it hard to articulate just how or why the church has any role to play other than providing a place to fellowship with other individuals who have a private relationship with God. With this model in place, what matters is Christianity as a system of truth or ideas, not the church as a living community embodying its head. Modern Christianity tends to think of the church either as a place where individuals come to find answers to their questions or as one more stop where individuals can try to satisfy their consumerist desires. As such, Christianity becomes intellectualized rather than incarnate, commodified rather than the site of genuine community."

(A couple of paragraphs later...)

"The church does not exist for me; my salvation is not primarily a matter of intellectual mastery or emotional satisfaction. The church is the site where God renews and transforms us -- a place where the practices of being the body of Christ form us into the image of the Son. What I, a sinner saved by grace, need is not so much answers as reformation of my will and heart."

- Who's Afraid of Postmodernism by Jamie Smith

Prayer Request

If you are following this blog, we can only assume that you care. Therefore, we'd really appreciate your prayers. Please pray that we find a house - a duplex, or 2 apartments side by side, that fit our needs and stay under budget.

We would like to have two living spaces - one for men and one for women - which are clean, under $400 per person per month, located close to uptown and the university, with large living room spaces and lots of counter and cupboard space in the kitchens. And to avoid conflict, it would be fabulous if we didn't have to pay utilities extra. Lots of natural light would also be good. With a law-abiding, respectful, non-swindeling landlord.

Thanks!

Gloria

This is beautiful.