we had plans to go spend the new year down in city center only to find out it had been cancelled. Earlier this month there was a riot during the tree lighting that they had to call in the military to break up. they since decided to cancel any other holiday events at the city hall. we are back at the flat and rung in the new year together. the sound of church bells and fireworks has been background noise to our conversations for the last hour... today i also took quite a few pictures...here are some of them...
city hall...the site of where the would be new years festivities were to take place...
an espresso macchiato from belfast coffee company.
donegall and royal from a double decker bus
the shankill (our neighborhood) from up above
the shankill graveyard is now a city park. there are graves there that date back to 455 AD. i love the stonework on this one...
belfast...it is strange mark certain holidays here in a city that seems like time stands still. this is a city where every pint comes with a history lesson, every brick paved road has a story, every piece of architecture is significant. here the passing of a decade seems unremarkable. decades come and go and much of life here looks the same. its hard to believe that we are coming up on another decade. it doesnt seem like it has been that long since the Y2k scare. i look forward to celebrating the new year in belfast and my prayer is that i will not only have dreams for the future, and learn and remember my past but also that i will learn to be utterly present. to be here now. and not to miss what is set in front of me everyday.
we have been here for a week now and there is already a lot to write about. this is the first night we have had internet in our house so i will write and catch everyone up but until then here are some photos
this is some of the team at the woodvale house. we are staying in two different houses in the Shankil area of Belfast. the rest of the girls and i have a flat down the street this is one of the hundreds of murals throughout Belfast. We are staying on the Protestant side of the peace wall. most murals are more propaganda than art, but they are everywhere.
today we walked the peace wall. there is a whole section that people have written there own wishes, prayers, or encouragement for peace.
the stretch of the wall by our flat. they built the cement wall, that wasnt enough to keep people out, so they added8 more feet of sheet metal. then they would throw things over the wall so they built 8 more feet of chain link. kelley's on christmas eve. this is the oldest pub in Belfast. It was built in 1728. the guys on the back wall are men who began the IRA back in the 1700's who frequented this place.
drew hanging out with a local guy. he was speaking english but i couldnt understand a word he said.
the sign outside the presbyterian church where the YWAM Belfast offices are.
more murals from the Shankil. this is the area during the Troubles that saw some of the worst violence.
so we leave tomorrow. im over at the base getting lunch ready for the team to pack tomorrow and thought id send this out to let everyone know whats going on. we head out tomorrow at 730 to DIA. Flying from here to Philly and Philly to Dublin. Once in Dublin we take a bus up to Belfast and will be there around 1030 Monday morning. Ill update as soon as we can once there. we have some open mike nights set up in area pubs for the week as well as a children's workers saftey class we are taking as a prerequisite to be working with the kids there. there are a few other things on the agenda that i'll hit on in the next update.
i am from white caddilacs with red interiors and orange trees in grandmas backyard.
i am from eight puppies andthe artist/poet/car part salesman living in our basement
i am from "cubba jubbies" and "bodysam".
i am from easter dresses under the crab apple tree and roller skating to "heart in motion" in the garage.
i am from hot summer afternoons in the above ground pool and dot-dog-mac-n-cheese lunches and playing rainbow brite before TGIF.
i am from road trips to akron and fishing with grandpa.
i am from oscar de la renta and motor oil.
i am from "leaving on a jet plane" and "sunshine on my shoulders".
i am from g.i. joes attack the barbie townhouse and weeping willow trees.
i am from twinkle lights and home made ornaments.
i am from race car drivers and folk singers.
i wonder if five years feels the same in heaven as does here on earth. it seems like it has been forever. the hole doesn't hurt as much as the years go on, but it is still there. it's days like today that remind me of that. dad, i love you and miss you.
this was an article done about our base last year. it has been two years today since the shooting here. Its amazing how much this is still a part of us.
i went home last week and did the whole family thanksgiving thing. since i will be in ireland over the holiday we tried to fit in some christmas tradition at the same time, putting up the tree and decorating the house. with that said i thought it was time to roll out a bit of a christmas tradition i started a few years ago known as the "christmas mix tape" . being far away from friends and family this year i decided to go digital with the mix. Here it is. Hope you like it.
(to download click on the link, it takes you to the site the music is uploaded to)
1. I Heard the Bells- Pedro the Lion - I love David Bazan. Anyone who knows me knows this is no secret. For years he has put out 7" vinyl singles of Christmas songs. This is one of my favorite. His extra verses turn what can be somewhat cheesy Christmas songs into something else entirely.
4. Silent Night- Over the Rhine- Being from Ohio it would seem almost necessary to include Over the Rhine. for years they have put on a Christmas show in Cincinnati that is one of the best parts of the Christmas season in Ohio.
5. Christmas Don't Be Late- Rosie Thomas- Rosie is one of those Seattle treasures. If you haven't heard her music go out and buy it now! She put this album out last year and it was by far the best Christmas album of the Season.
6. O Come O Come Emmanuel- Joshua James- Joshua put out a Christmas EP a few years ago called fields and flood. it is a really solid 4 songs. this was by far my favorite of his.
After seeing Shane speak last year with Jim Wallis at the Vineyard I have read some of his stuff. Although most of what I have read of his has been absolutely awesome, his first book "Irresistible Revolution" has really shaken some stuff in me of what it looks like to live simply, be a peacemaker, and love those around me. If you get a chance check it out.
Ok... it's been long overdue that i update you all on what is going on in my world. As most of you know I have been on staff with YWAM Denver for 10 months now. These have been some of the coolest and at times hardest months of my life. It is hard to believe it has been this long, but these experiences have been great.
This quarter is our busiest yet. We average somewhere around 20-30 students at our offices in any given quarter . This quarter we are facilitating 6 training schools with 111 students. I am working with the leadership training school. It has been really great working along side these students. These 35 guys and girls are some of the coolest most loving people I have seen.
At the end of this quarter I have been asked to assist one of our outreaches to Ireland. We will be gone December 19- February 19. Myself and another staff member will be taking 16 students to Dublin, Belfast, Wexford, and throughout Northern Ireland and the Republic. We will be teaming up with YWAM Ireland and working alongside them in programs they have started in this nation. YWAM Ireland's goal is to continue working towards reconciliation and forgiveness among people groups through a feed cafe, work with at risk youth, family life resources, as well as many other programs and ministries. To learn more about these programs feel free to check out YWAM Ireland's website and their partnership with the innercity faith community of Shanskill (Belfast). Although staff get their trips paid for in the students outreach cost I will still need to raise money to cover my expenses while I am in Ireland as well as covering my bills at home. As I have been unable to cover my monthly need while on staff at YWAM Denver I have been doing odd jobs around the city to pay my bills. Being gone I will not be able to do these.I will need to raise 200 dollars extra a month while gone to supplement my support as well as any needs I will have while in Ireland. I am looking to raise 1000$ by December 19th. If you are able to help out please send checks to
Laurie Granger
ATTN: Accouting
12750 W. 63rd Ave
Arvada, CO 80004
make the check out to YWAM Denver and put my name in the memo. You will receive a receipt for your taxes.
or
click on the donate button on this site and donate via paypal with your credit card. You will not be able to write this off your taxes as it goes to me directly.
anything you can do will help. Thank you all for your love and support. I would not be able to do any of this without your generosity.
Friday, October 23, 2009
here are a few resources for those interested in more ways they can get involved with the human trafficking fight at home...
1. betterworldshopper.com - this website takes 20 years worth of research and compiles it to grade some of the major corporations in the world by 5 standards. You'd be suprised what companys are failin in every day human rights.
2. slaverymap.org - this is a website run by everyday people. it spurred off of a San Fransisco University project that documented suspected local businesses that used forced labor or were contributing to human sex trafficking. It was a heavy dose of reality to see how many businesses and shops have been busted as fronts for sex trafficking or used and promoted forced labor.
3. Notforsalecampaign.org - a great resource to connect you with organizations in your area working to end modern day slavery. check it out. these guys are pretty amazing.
Come together on October 25th at 7pm for a night of music by O'Holloran, Brothers O'Hair and Consider the Raven, fashion designs and show sponsored by Fashion Denver clothing and jewelry designers, and live screen printing of t-shirts by A Size Too Small.
Cost is $10/person and City Hall will be operating a full bar for the evening!
All proceeds will go toward Love146, an organization that prevents sex trafficking in the US and around the world. For more information check out www.love146.org.
For any questions about the event, write Nicole McAdoo-Popovich at nicole@arvadavineyard.org.
i have a strange respect for those who's lives are getting wrecked. whether it's a good wrecking or a bad one there is something so powerful about it that it almost demands your respect. it is the act of watching someone wipe the slate clean....a blank page. death, a lost job, a lost love, a dream that's died. it wakes us up a bit to realize that we are not the masters of our own universe... that we choose things in our life, but there is that part of life that happens to us and in us that has nothing to do with our choice. It chooses us. Getting wrecked (read: suffering) is aparadoxical gift, a sort of bloody, traumatic, awful, strange gift. the question presents itself when faced with this idea...what do you do with bad news? the really bad kind? what does it do to your heart? after the pain and tears what are you left with? when this subject comes up i tend to have more questions than answers...there is power in the questions, and if the answers came easy, the questions wouldn't be worth asking.
this is the time of year that always reminds you of how the earth is constantly changing around you. There is this tree right in front of my balcony that to me has been like hands on a clock. One morning i walk out and it is green and full and as the days go the green turns slowly golden. And then one day the golden leaves scatter the ground around the apartment, and the tree is bare. There is beauty in change , in watching things die. It holds the anticipation of the next season of life which is sometimes full and green and other times cold and bare, but spring is always around the corner...the new is always a breath away.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost
Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
a soundtrack to a snowy october saturday.(to download just click on the link for each song)
random shots around the apartment. yes we have a christmas tree. don't ask.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
exhausted is probably the best way to describe me right now. the past few weeks have been filled with the busy-ness of preparing for the new schools starting tomorrow. we are running 6 schools this quarter with something like 120 students. Needless to say our staff has been running around like chickens with their heads cut off. as things always seem to do around here my schedule for the quarter has changed. as of today i am no longer staffing the school of social justice and am now working with the Phase II Leadership school . this is quite a change of gears for me and am more or less kind of just winging it right now (is this a sign of good leadership or lack of preparation...who knows..) michele has also moved out here about two weeks ago. we are living in an apartment near the offices and she has a job at a salon down the street. it has been good having a bit of home out here and i am happy to have her out here. fall is deffinately in the air . the nights have become considerably colder and there are rumors of snow in the mountains this week. it is amazing how quick things change out here. as things start to slow down a bit for me i will update more often. hope life is treating you all well. many of you havent talked to in some months. know i miss you and think of you often. love you guys.
Shane Claiborne has an exciting new book out called Jesus for President, this one co-authored with co-conspirator Chris Haw. It's a beautifully designed, reframing of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation -- sort of an activist introduction to a thing called Narrative Theology, which is all the rage among Christian Revolutionaries.
Last year, Shane gave me my single best piece evidence for convincing skeptics that something absolutely incredible is going on inside the church. First, I show them this picture (Shane, the speaker, is one of those specs down on stage). Some kind of right-wing Christian rally, right? It's looks like they're all on their feet reading something together off those screens. How fascist.
Then I play the audio. All those people -- mostly white, Republican, Southern, born-again Christians -- were on their feet reciting a "Litany of Resistance". It was the end of a long sermon/lecture by Shane at at the Catalyst Conference in Georgia last year. The litany lasted about ten minutes (you can watch the whole thing here). Here's one very short clip from it:
click the play button above to listen
With governments that kill... ...we will not comply. With the theology of empire... ...we will not comply. With the business of militarism... ...we will not comply. With the hoarding of riches ...we will not comply. With the dissemination of fear ...we will not comply. But today we pledge our allegiance to the kingdom of God... ...we pledge allegiance. To the peace that is not like Rome's... ...we pledge allegiance. To the Gospel of enemy love ...we pledge allegiance. To the poor and the broken... ...we pledge allegiance....
Usually the reaction I get is something like: "Huh... [long pause] How did that happen?"
In this case, it happened because Shane has been fearlessly, creatively and lovingly preaching that gospel of resistance from inside of mainstream Christianity. He doesn't stand on the outside criticizing and condemning. As a result, people listen. Almost all the speakers at that three-day conference preached on social justice issues, but usually they remained just inside of the audience's comfort zone. Shane crossed that line and kept on going, and going, and going. But he has a magical ability to keep people with him as he goes. After his talk, I heard kids clustered in the hallways grappling together with all the ideas he had introduced. It was an incredible thing.
But the truth is that same thing is happening all the time, all over the country, every day -- at big Christian conferences, in living room Bible studies, in Bible college classrooms, in little churches and in mega churches. (Check out my blog Revolution in Jesusland to dig deeper.) Shane has become one of the most famous and effective voices in this continuation and transformation of the church. But this was all happening long before Shane uneasily consented to glamour shots at Christian mega-publisher Zondervan.
Claiborne's first and best-selling book, Irresistible Revolution, tells the story of his own journey from church youth group jock to radical follower of "the God of the oppressed." It begins with trembling first outings to the midnight streets of Philadelphia with his Bible college buddies. (They asked "What Would Jesus Do?" and, after studying the Bible, concluded: Hang out with homeless people, drug addicts and prostitutes.) He takes detours to work with Mother Teresa and intern at a "seeker sensitive" mega church in Chicago. Eventually, he returns to Philadelphia to co-found a Christian commune that humbly attempts to live in solidarity with and support of the poor and oppressed of a broken neighborhood.
Shane's story comes out of an organic and spontaneous movement. When I was telling activist theologian Brian Walsh about all the different places I was seeing this movement sprout up, he said, "So it's a movement of the spirit." That means something that God is making happen all over the place at the same time -- and that sure is what it feels like.
Irresistible Revolution is still making its way deeper and deeper into the heart of mainstream Christianity. I have seen it discussed in several Bible study groups and Sunday school classes -- even in conservative and rural churches. Some say it changed the course of their life. Others say it "challenged" them to think differently about God. Reading the book communally has spurred some churches to reach "outside of the four walls" to get involved more deeply in their community.
And then there are the young Christians who were already living out stories very similar to Shane's. They're usually thrilled to realize that they are in fact part of a large movement. But they're also made uneasy by the possibility that their own radical choices are just part of a passing fad to be commoditized by the very "Christian Industrial Complex" that Shane rants against the first chapter of the book. In Irresistible Revolution, Shane gives voice to a generation of young Christians who aspire to live wildly and dangerously selfless lives. But one of the ethics of that life is that you don't go seeking credit. Shane himself wrestles with the contradiction in an author's note at the beginning of the book. Sensing he is about to become one, he argues the last thing the world needs is another Christian subculture superstar.
In that respect, Jesus for President is the perfect companion to Irresistible Revolution. Having unexpectedly captured the attention of mainstream Christianity, Shane and Chris don't water down their politics or theology one bit. Instead, they deepen and broaden their radicalism. In Irresistible Revolution, it still sounded romantic when Shane said, "Jesus didn't fix my life, he wrecked it." It seems to be possible for some to read that book and conclude the Gospel is just about helping others. In Jesus for President, Shane and Chris unambiguously take aim at capitalism and empire; and they are much more explicit that Jesus calls upon his followers to actively resist systems and structures of oppression in ways that will ultimately put you in danger.
Since Irresistible Revolution, Shane has been speaking at tons of Christian conferences and mega churches. The more sharply he delivers his message, the more invitations he seems to get. I imagine he probably gets scolded by his hosts from time to time, but there are many in the audience electrified by what they hear. Christians recognize him as a prophet. And even the crankiest of conservative preachers knows that a prophet's job is to say things people don't want to hear. In that way, a certain kind of radicalism is built into Christianity. And Shane is taking it about as far as it goes.
OK, so that's an introduction to the Shane Claiborne phenomenon. In part two of this review I'll focus on Jesus for President itself.
an espresso macchiato from belfast coffee company.
