say something

so i just returned from a remarkable life changing weekend about four and a half hours ago, spent the rest of the evening with the love of my life, mostly smiling, and on top of that just watched garden state.

my emergent church class took a trip to houston to visit this church called ecclesia (translated as “church”) and immerse ourselves in the postmodern coffee consuming art gallery inhabiting culture of the art district in houston. i didnt even know houston had an art district. before this weekend basically all i knew about houston was that there are theatres and a hard rock cafe in walking distance from the hyatt with glass elevators, and that was enough to sell me on the idea already. so ecclesia is this church that people might call postmodern or emerging even though im sick of labels. basically they are a community of people who happen to have this building and they sell fairtrade coffee and literature and host a organic co-op farmers market and a swing dance class. they just love people. i always wonder why everyone, including me, makes that so complex. their just people who love Jesus and everyone created in the image of God. they’ve dropped everything about the church except for that–being like Jesus, loving people, preaching the gospel. theyre helping His kingdom come instead of only praying for it. he talked about this passage in mark 1 where Jesus is standing in the door way and they bring all of the dirtiest, sickest, most sinful people to Him and he steps out into the midst of all of that and touches them. we need to quit drawing a line between what parts of this world are “baptized” (claimed by Christ), and what’s broken. the longer i live the more i see it’s all baptized, and it’s all broken. he said a church building or worship gathering or whatever label you want to put on it, should be a place that as people leave they think ‘if the world were all like that, it would be a better place.” because the kingdom of God is a better place than where we are. not physically in space, but in our hearts, in people. andy was saying in class the other day that he knew this guy who when people asked him where he went to church he started listing off people. i made a note in my binder really big–i go to church with rj and chris and isaac and molly and rebekah and joanna, people who show me God in this broken world.

all this and im only warming up…so this guy, shane claiborne, that spoke at the gathering this morning is from a neo-monastic (communal) living experiment in philadelphia (www.thesimpleway.org) it’s crazy because he was just visiting, and all that he said spoke right to the passions of my heart, and he had so many amazing stories to tell i couldnt even start here and do them justice, but he gave me a glimpse of what the radical love of a homeless revolutionary can make you do. i was holding back tears as i prayed that my life would be a radical love. i cant really put into words what i felt and all a million trillion times amplified by the fact that i got to worship with rj, and we took communion together for the first time. i really dont know if anything we do in our lives could be more intimate than that. it was what dr hopp, and ralph waldo emerson would call the ravishment of intellect by coming nearer to the truth, and what lord henry would call touching the sacred.

then we get in our respective vans and make the six hour drive back. rj and i rode in a van with a really amazing girl named cassi. i met her before but was just even more impressed with her this weekend. she’s just really neat and fun to be with. we ate at the fambroughs when we got back and then sat on the couch talking for a while (not cassi, her husband picked her up when we got back, just me and rj) and i am amazed every second by how beautiful a person he is, and how much i cant wait to spend my life with him, and then even more amazed when like a dummy i wake up and realize, hey i am spending my life with him right now.

well when i got to my room i didnt feel so sleepy after all, so i ran down to borrow garden state from donna, since they played it this weekend but to quiet to hear and i was dying to find out what was going on. well its all just more Jesus sticking his fingers into my murky life. it was so the perfect ending to all of the things starting in this weekend. mostly this scene where the characters visit this family who lives in a boat at the edge of a natural chasm that they are trying to protect from developers, and the man goes into it at night exploring and says he likes to pretend it’s inifinte, and they jsut sell jewelry and stuff to get by and the main characters are asking them about their life and the guy just says, i guess i like the adventure of discovering something and i get to be here with this woman i love and our beautiful baby and i couldnt ask for more, (that was a paraphrase since it’s too late to turn it all back on and track downt the quote), and then as they are leaving the main guy andrew says “good luck exploring the infinite abyss”, and the guy says to andrew “you too” and its just like, all of these characters, their lives are so screwed upand weird, just like all of ours are, but thats life: an infinite abyss, you explore it and find beautiful things, and love, and you couldnt ask for more.

 -josephine