'Am I Broken?'

T works at a school for kids with varying developmental disabilities known as CHILD, or, The Children's Institute.  This past year, right before T began working there, some movie-making people starting filming for a documentary about the school.  Filming is complete and now the film is set to be released in Sept. 2011.  I have posted the trailer for you to get an idea of what his day-to-day life entails.

It's interesting being on the other side of this school - just hearing the stories and having the husband come home from here everyday.  Most days, I can't really imagine the stories he has are real.  I can't imagine them actually happening and that these kids are struggling so badly.  T has proven himself to be unbelievably brave in going in to a field with so little training; not only that, but they freaking love him.  There's even talk of a possible promotion already.

We have an interesting dynamic in our household - I'm going to school for the work that he's actually out doing Monday through Friday.  I have only gotten a taste, through his experience, of what it will be like to carry the burdens of people on my shoulders when I come home from work.  It's a heavy load.  T's strength is only something I can hope to have half of once I am in the field.  He's a great role model.

Am I Broken? - Trailer from Paul Killebrew on Vimeo.

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.
Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.
Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.
Open your hands,
if you want to be held.
Sit down in the circle.
Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepard's love filling you.
At night, your beloved wanders.
Don't accept consolations.
Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover's mouth in yours.
You moan, "She left me." "He left me."
Twenty more will come.
Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.


:: Rumi ::

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
 then walks with us silently out of the night.
 
 These are words we dimly hear:
 
 You, sent out beyond your recall,
 go to the limits of your longing.
 Embody me.
 
 Flare up like flame
 and make big shadows I can move in.
 
 Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
 Just keep going.  No feeling is final.
 Don't let yourself lose me.
 
 Nearby is the country they call life.
 You will know it by its seriousnes.
 
 Give me your hand.


:: Rilke ::

 “We are to be for one another as God the Father is for us through Christ in the power of the Spirit...”

“Our good works…are not owed to God but they are to the world...”

 “A human community conforming to this idea would be a community of mutual fulfillment in which each effort to perfect oneself enriches others’ efforts at self-perfection. One perfects oneself by making one’s own the efforts of others to perfect themselves, their efforts too being furthered in the same way by one’s own.”

Catherine Tanner


[Illustrated by percussionist Evelyn Glennie.  This is unbelievably moving.]

Official Notice

Today we received an e-mail from our current MHGS President, Keith Anderson, about the recent decision to change the school name.  To give more clarity, context, and honor to the previous post, here is Keith's message about the decision:

"Dear Students of MHGS:

At their recent meeting, the Board of Trustees decided we will change the name of Mars Hill Graduate School.    The question has been under consideration for some time with faculty, staff, students, alumni, donors, and board members.  We have all lived with the coffee shop questions about where do you go to school or where do you work?   Our names matter to us.  We don’t come to this decision lightly.

We made this decision for several important reasons:

1.       We obviously have some confusion about the name in the Seattle area because of our neighbors at Mars Hill Church.  We also have confusion with other schools or organizations elsewhere in the country which also share the same name. We don’t seek to distance ourselves from our fellow followers of Christ as much as to bring increased clarity for our distinct mission and our unique Kingdom calling. 

2.       Secondly, we are committed to a “Seattle Strategy” that will take us forward in (re)introducing ourselves to Seattle as a place of story, transformation, and missional teaching.  Our mission guides us:  “MHGS trains people to be competent in the study of text.soul.culture. in order to serve God and neighbor through transforming relationships.”   We believe a new name will help us tell the story of MHGS to our city.

3.       Finally, we are moving forward with new programs and initiatives at many levels as a school which includes an additional embodiment of our mission through conferences, recovery weeks, and seminars.  We are also developing strategies for our work in North Carolina, Washington, DC, Texas, and St. Louis.  This is an opportunity for a fresh start at what some call positioning and branding.

In the next month, the board will receive serious suggestions and recommendations for a new name.  The proposals will be reviewed by an internal committee and an external organization and then presented to the board for their process. 

I want you to remember this:  Naming is a serious and holy activity.  Yahweh named and re-named  many people as we read in scriptural texts.  In the ancient world, to know the name of the other was also to know something of their identity, heart, and soul.  Names were taken seriously.  Our name, Mars Hill Graduate School, has a rich history in the biblical text of Acts 17 that speaks to our commitment to pedagogy of text.soul.culture.  Our name has also served us well in the past to tell the story of our mission.   At the same time, as many of you have experienced, it has and continues to create a confusion of identity and mission both in Seattle and around the country.

As we move ahead with this holy process, we want to tell the story of who we are as opposed to who we are not.  We start this project with a heightened sense that this is a time to listen well and then to speak our story with clarity, grace, competence, and authenticity in an honorable and respectful way.  I am aware that we lose something precious in the story our Mars Hill name has told in the past.   I also want to say to you all---this is a time for respectful and honoring conversations with one another and with those outside our school, especially with those institutions which also bear the name “Mars Hill.”  We are a place that honors stories and other people---not in judgment but in engaged discourse.  This is a time for respectful discourse.  We don’t serve the kingdom of God well as we speak in ways that dishonor others. 

For the past year we’ve worked with a branding and marketing company to help us clarify and articulate our mission and our message. We are sometimes better at talking internally about who we are than we are at articulating our distinctive mission to those who don’t know MHGS.  Our friends at the Stone Agency identified five distinguishing characteristics about our mission.

1.       In our curriculum, we prioritize introspective examination of one’s own story:Where many seminaries emphasize doctrine and cognitive information, our pedagogy distinctly focuses on the formation and re (formation) of the person.  We are distinguished because we engage students with their own story as a means of transformation.    We have long insisted on incarnational theology based first in the redemptive incarnation of Jesus and then in the incarnation of truth in people’s stories. 

2.       MHGS is a community of conversation.  We have a missional commitment to relational conversation as essential to the pedagogy of the school.  We want to be a place which creates space for transformative discourse.

3.       The outcome of the MHGS mission is in practical application.  MHGS is practitioner-based. This includes preparation for the professions of therapist and minister, and more.  We have about 280 students in a given year in our three degree programs but over 2000 people annually participate in recovery weeks, conferences, workshops, and other extensions of MHGS faculty.  It is our stated mission that we train students to serve God and neighbor through transforming relationships.  We train people in the classroom and we train people for life through our many programs.

4.       MHGS distinctly prioritizes the intersection of theology and psychology, theology and ministry, theology and spirituality.   We practice the integration of theology in all of our programs.  That is our mission.  We are intentional about teaching therapists, ministers, artists, and all of us to think theologically as we become competent in the study of text.soul.culture.

5.       MHGS takes a Free Church non-affiliated stance, drawing from multiple traditions.   We acknowledge there is a large “tent” in Christianity and we are also a school with a unique history in the evangelical movement.  We draw many students, faculty, board, and supporters from traditional evangelical churches.   Missionally, we set a large table with many voices and traditions invited to the table.  That means we stand firmly in clarity about our essential convictions but remain a community open to engage the larger world of theology and culture and to respectfully engage those who don’t share a similar commitment to Christ and scripture. 

In the next month, we want you to invite you as students of MHGS, to continue to join us in this process.  As a result, if you have serious names to suggest, I invite you to write them up and email them to Kristen Houston, our registrar. Once the Board of Directors has made a decision regarding the future name of Mars Hill Graduate School, we will gather as a community and celebrate the new name together.     

Until then, as we search together, it is not only our identity but God’s future for us that awaits."

I'm a student of [insert name] Graduate School

It's official.  I found out at work today (for those that don't know, I have been working in the Mars Hill Graduate School Admissions Department).


Mars Hill Graduate School has decided to change it's name.


Many of you probably don't know about the ongoing struggle that we face with having the same name as one of the most talked-about, biggest churches on the West Coast - Mars Hill Church.  (Wow, I'm in the process of having major deja vu as I write this).  Also, home to one of today's most controversial pastors - Mark Driscoll.  Google him.  Google the church.  Find out for yourself.


So, it becomes tricky when a lot of Seattlites have a super negative view of the church and assume that it's affiliated with my school.  It also becomes tricky when I meet someone that really loves Mars Hill Church and/or Mark Driscoll, and assumes I'm being taught by him (where they got the idea that churches now hand out masters degrees is something I don't understand).


There have always been rumors that someone will change their name first.  There is a constant debate at my school as to what it means if we do or do not change our school's name.  I guess they decided it was worth it.


We don't have any official names yet, but the goal is to have one by April.


At any rate, this is kind of a big deal.  Our institution is only 12 years old - just getting our name on the map.  I'm sure they've thought through all of the pros and cons, but as someone working in the Admissions Department, talking with prospective students about possibly attending, it's a bit paradoxical to think that all of a sudden I won't be saying the same name.  


And another thing, if we change our name by April 2011, and I graduate in May of 2012, what will be on my diploma?  We started out as attending Mars Hill Graduate School - that's where our hearts lie.  But they'll be picked up, and placed with another name.  Another context.  Another identity.  


For so long, many students (and I'm sure staff and faculty) have wanted to change our name because of the complications it creates for us.  When someone asks if we're affiliated with the church, it really is tough to explain how we're not in a manner that's honoring to the church.  It would be so nice if we didn't have to even try to have the tactful conversation.  But now that it's definitely changing, I all of a sudden feel attached.


Kind of like when I went to the DMV and was all of a sudden faced with either losing my middle name or my last name.  I realized I couldn't decide.  How to choose?  Who to become?  What part of me to I let evaporate?  (Now, because of my indecisiveness, I'm stuck with four freaking names, which is almost just as bad as having to lose one).


To give you a little insight into the world of one Mars Hill Graduate School student, and possibly others, I am giving you a link to a friend's blog post on this topic.  We have been in most of the same classes together and were in Practicum my first year.  His name is John.  This may entertain some of you and entirely offend others of you.  Most of you might just be utterly confused because you have no idea about Mars Hill Graduate School or Mars Hill Church.  But, this may give you a clue as to what some of us experience as related to the church.


(P.S. I find it hilarious - and brilliant.)


Click here to read John's letter to Mars Hill Church.

MC hits three decades

My beautiful House of Love roomie, Michaela Colin (as we call her), turned the big thirty last week.  It was a week full of school-related busyness, so she didn't get to celebrate much on the day of.  Fortunately, however, we are schemers.  Dana and I planned a secret celebration for our dearest of friends at the giant mansion that T and I were house-sitting in (of course, approved by Ben and Lahlae first).  MC had no clue what we were scheming - all she was told was when I would pick her up, and to bring an overnight bag.  Here is what insued:

Shock and awe as MC discovers not one, but two HOL cohorts in the car!

 Our first desination: Trader Joe's.  Thrilling.  But Dana and I 

had to admit that we really had no clue how to shop for a

gluten-free diet.  So MC picked out lots of delectables.

She was curious as to why we were buying obscene amounts of 

food for only three people.  Little did she know...

 The cheese aisle is her favorite.

 Phase two: blindfolding MC.  She was not allowed to have 

any clue where we were taking her.

 Hat over the eyes, just to be safe.

 Then we gave her a honeycrisp apple to keep her

occupied on the way over.

Unfortunately, it was too dark to capture her face upon

arrival at the house.  Needless to say, she was GIDDY with

excitement when she saw where we were staying.

 Cooking up some comfort food: grilled cheeses and 

tomato soup.

 D making her famous guacamole. 

 MC grasping her delectable cider.

 Lovely friends showed up later in the evening: 

Jacquie and Ashlee.

 Upon moving down to the cabin where T had started

a fire for us, we sang happy birthday to MC.

 She blew out her non-existant thirty candles,

 

...and we relished in the homemade, flourless cake

that Ash made.  DE-lish!  

Such a great night of yummy food, lovely friends, and delightful conversation.  Here's to the next thirty years.

Last Minutes with ODEN

My good friend Ashlee shared this short documentary with me.  It's beautiful, but be prepared - it's rough.  (Blaire - especially you).

Click Here

The Farm

FYI: for those of you that don't already know, T and I have a new addition to the family.  His name is Jimmy.  He is a Canon Rebel DSLR camera.  Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday.  Photos on this blog will most certainly be taken from our loving Jimmy from here on out.

Today T and I went on a date to The Farm - about an hour from where we are staying on Mercer Island.  Our plan was to pick out a pumkin for Halloween and maybe find our way through a corn maze in the shape of Washington State.  Be prepared for cuteness.

Here is what we did:

We got four pumkins, five ears of corn, and two apples for $13!!  What a day.  What.a.day.

God Map/Body Map

Today I was supposed to turn in an assignment for my theology class called the God Map/Body Map.  The only instructions we were given were as follows:

The purpose of the project is to map your view of youself and to map your view of God.  In many ways this is a creative exploration of the connection/distinction between humanity and God.  Use your imagination.  Mediums may vary.  It can be anything frm a collage to music to flow charts, etc.

Em, ok.

So what I didn't realize (and that I am realizing more and more everyday), is how disconnected I am from my body.  What I have realized especially in this whole process so far is that I really don't connect my body to spirituality whatsoever.  Yet, as Christians believe, human beings were created in the image of God.  Therefore, it was no mistake that God would have put us in these fleshy bags of bones, only to later become incarnate in one of the bags of flesh himself.

And as my previous post implied, what we do to our bodies, what we put in them, what we do with them - it's all significant with regard to how we view ourselves, the world around us, and God.

Again, these are not things I normally think about.  I have grown up in the church hearing "your body is a temple" and "you are the hands and feet of Christ."  These were the only references to a physical spirituality that I ever got.  Two important notes: First, I never took it literally.  I figured that if so many other parts of the Bible were metaphors, then why would my body literally be a temple?  That was just absurd.  Second, these proclamations were never freeing or invigorating; instead, they boxed in my body.  They told me what I could and could not do with my body (mostly with regard to sexual promiscuity and tattoos).  While the lessons I learned were certainly valuable and kept me out of trouble, also embedded in my brain was that everything important about me was invisible - nothing physical had significance in the kingdom of God.  "Be in the earth, not of it."

Therefore, as I began to start thinking about this assignment for my theology class, I was literally dumbfounded.  I had nowhere to begin.  No direction in which to even take a first step.  Unfortunately, I waited long enough that I still had nothing the day before the assignment was due and sent an e-mail to my professor asking for advice; I told her that I wanted to take the assignment seriously since it was apparently a significant topic for me to address.  Graciously, without me even asking, she has given me an extension on the project.

So I was walking home from class today and suddenly the images of my face below came into my mind.  I'm not exactly sure what it all means just yet, but there is something significant about allowing myself to see with eyes open, and then what happens in the darkness of my closed eyes.  The first couple of pictures are of our dining room table as I was preparing for the project.  I'll let you know what comes of it.

FYI - the images that do not have a totally black background will be fixed.  It's tough taking self-portraits! 

"The Spirit of Food"

While Courtney was in town, we went to an event hosted by The Other Journal, "an online quarterly publication that promotes vibrant discourse at the intersections of theology and culture," called The Spirit of Food.  It was an evening dedicated to readings and conversations about how we interact with and think about food - something that I, and T, have been growing more and more conscious of.  I know, I know - we live in Seattle.  We're liberal, tree-hugging, hippie granola people.  I know.  But aside from going vegetarian just because it's hip (which neither of us have done), or eating organic because you'll be cursed for eternity in Seattle if you don't (which we also haven't done), there is something that I'm realizing is really significant about how I approach food and the ways that reflects how I think about myself, my community, and even God.

While the majority of the time I sit around wondering if God is even around, when I think about God as if he were around, I know that he would have something to say about how our culture deals with food.  Microwaves.  McDonald's.  Lean Cuisine.  Canned meat.  I list these things not because I can step back, point my finger, and berate you for using, purchasing, or consuming such things; I list them because I  know that I love them.  And they have sucked joy, savoring, and communal dining out of the way I eat.

I have never really thought much about food being a spiritual thing, but as I heard last Thursday at this event, Jesus chose a meal to be remembered by.  Not a hajj to Jerusalem, not lighting something on fire, not building an idol.  A meal.  He spent time with his disciples, prostitutes, and tax collectors; with sinners and Pharisees alike - eating.  Drinking.

Now I realize that this probably sounds like I have this tuned wavelength to God and Jesus - thinking about them all the time and other lofty theological ideas.  Wrong.  These are brand new thoughts to me.  My spirituality has been deadened over time.  Deserted.  Desolate.

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory

 I say this just to make the point that this is not normal thinking.  I don't know where this will lead or what the significance will be.  But I would like to share with you a passage from the introduction of The Spirit of Food.  Among other speakers that we heart at the event, we heard Leslie Leyland Fields, who compiled all 34 essays "on feasting and fasting toward God," read an excerpt of the introduction that she wrote for the book.  Leslie is an author, speaker, and professional editor who teaches Creative Non-Fiction at Seattle Pacific Univeristy.  I wish that you could hear and watch her read her own words - they are beautiful on paper, but even more rich coming from her lips.  I couldn't help but feel her passion and excitement over the completion of this project and what she hopes it will spark for its readers.

The season's first salmon hang headless in my daughter's hands, one fish in each, as she wlaks them up the hill to the house.  From the front steps, I can see their heft and length, the shine of their silvered scales, their shimmering backs.  I am anxious to hold them mystelf.  It is the first week of the commercial salmon fishery, a profession my children and husband have worked in nearly since birth.  For me, it's been thierty-three seasons here on this remonte Alaskan island. 

I grasp their tails from my daughter on the porch, slide their arm-length boies onto the counter-sized cutting board.  With one hand firm on the skin-thein armor, I begin to steak out the fish with the other.  The first cut almost makes me gasp as though I have cut my own finger - the flesh is deep carmine, so bright - is this my own blood?  I know this coor, can see it, even taste it in the sleep of memory.  How many slamon have I gutted and cleaned and portioned on the shore of my island, on this very cutting board these thrity-three years?  I keep slicking, the dissection so enlivening my senses I do not measure or make any attempt at uniformity.  How shall I cook it, this fish we have been waiting for all winter?  Shall I grill it with melted butter, minced garlic, and white wine, my favorite flavors?  No, for the first fish, something new, something untried and spontaneous, fitting this exact moment and these precise two fish.  I bgin with melted butter and minced garlic then riffle through my cupboard pulling down borwn sugar, a spicy pepper blend, parsley...formulating as my hands consider each potential spice, a slow idea of what I would aim for, yes, this time a sweet and spicy crust.

Even now, I couldn't say how many minutes to grill the fish.  I don't follow a clock when grilling.  I am not interest in creating a numerical formula for the safe and simplified replication of my attempts at perfection.  I stand and watch, testing the juices, whisking each piece off when the flesh begins to turn translucent.  Each piece on its own schedule.

...

While the food steams on the table, eight faces look at me expectantly, waiting for the signal for prayer.  "I'm going to do something a little different today," I say hesitant, knowing that multiple appetites are rumbling under the table and knowing how puny the spirit can feel before such need.

"This is the first salmon of the season.  You all know the tradition that fishermen kiss the first fish.  Anyone do that today?"  My oldest son rolls his eyes, wanting only to eat.  I hurry on.

"I'm going to read something before we start."

I pull my Bible onto the table, and before anyone can resist, I begin: "This is from the book of Job:

'But ask the animals and they will teach you,
     Or the bird of the air, and they will tell you;
     Or speak to the earth and it will teach you,
     Or let the fish of the sea inform you.
     Which of all these does not know
That the hand of the Lord has done this?
     In his hand is the life of every creature
     And the breath of all mankind.'"

Everyone listens, watching the food.  Then I pray aloud of all of us, that this season we will not forget this.  I want to say far more, to deliver a sermon, but I stop, knowing the wafers of fish on our tongues will deliver its own message.

We eat.  Faces are too close to the plates, forks are shoveling, heads lift with butter smeared on cheeks and crumbs lodged in beards.  Everyone talks with their mouth full; we tease each other; someone will have to yell to get the salad; at least one cup of iced tea will be spilled, and we'll run out of bread.  These are glorious, blessed feasts.

Leslie Leyland Fields, The Spirit of Food, xix - xxi.

I have yet to actually start this book, but I am excited for when I get the chance.  I think there are beautiful stories to be told about the honor that eating can hold in our lives - bringing us closer to one another and possibly to God.  

All this to say: eat, drink, and be merry.  Maybe we can, together, attempt to slow down, taste, savor, and enjoy the richness and fullness of food as it was intended to give us.

Courtney hits Seattle

So, the Wednesday after Mom and Chipper flew out of Seattle, one of my best friends from high school, Courtney,  flew in.  I was so so excited for her to visit because, as I have said many times, she is the one friend I have that I think would love Seattle the most.  

Man was I right.  I love that.  I feel like a matchmaker.  Here are some photos of our first couple of days together.

 I took her to the SAM Sculpture Park

 Hooray eyeballs at the sculpture park!

I also took her by my school which she flipped out over.  It was so great to have her finally visit and understand a bit more about why I love this place and what's the big deal about Mars Hill Graduate School.

 Then we went for happy hour at the Edgewater Hotel.

 ...and a sailboat greeted us at the window!

 T took this photo of us overlooking Elliott Bay.

 Snuggle buddies: T and Cort.

 Mt. Rainier on a most beautiful evening.

 

T and Cort, yackin it up.

 Cort and I found the most beautiful bookstore in all of Seattle:

Arundel Books.

 Floor-to-ceiling shelving; complete with ladders.

My feet!  On that beautiful staircase!

Courtney flies out Monday - so we still have a few days of sunny delight.  So wonderful to share this life with an old friend.