Monks and Muslims, good times...

O. M. G.

Or maybe I should say, O.M.A. (Oh. My. Allah.)

I had the best weekend!!! And it happened just by chance... or should I say by a divine plan?

A few days ago Lousie Carr, one of the pastors at Great Horton UM, invited us to be a part of some seminar in a near by city. She wasn’t too clear on what it would entail... all we knew was it had something to do with Muslim-Christian relations. Even without the details we really wanted to join in.

Friday afternoon Paul Bilton drove us out to a place called “The Community of the Resurrection” - a retreat center, seminary and home to an Anglican monestary. It is BEAUTIFUL! It has a large grounds: (19 acres) ponds, gardens, the most magnificant old buildings you’ve ever seen. 

Turns out the seminar was about setting up an interfaith event for youth! For a year now they have been planning on having a fun get-to-know-one-another day in Bradford. 

I feel like this needs some context. Here’s the thing; In the 60’s lots of people from the Middle East (or Asians, as they call them here) immigrated to the UK. Over the years, Bradford became predominantly Asian and white. Trouble is, they never integrated. Which means today there are Asian people with Asian friends, and white people with white friends. Sure there are exceptions, but in general Muslims and white people (Christians in general) don’t know one another. This explains why there have been riots every so often in Bradford since the 90s. 

Anyway, this weekend we met with 3 female Christian youth workers and two female Muslim youth workers to sort out a “scheme” for Bradfords interfaith event for teens. After a quick ice breaker and faith discussion we ended for the night. But, instead of going staright to bed our team stayed up and spent time with the Muslim women, who I will refer to here as “Noor” and “Sheniqua.”

We had the best time! Mostly because we were poking fun at eachother’s foriegn ways of saying and doing things. 

You have to realize we not only had to bridge religions and ethnicities, we had to bridge three cultures - Asian culture, British culture, and American. We laughed SO hard when “Sheniqua” tried out her American accent, which was a “home girl” voice with major attitude, and hint of the Yorkshire accent... Infact, we laughed so hard we were afraid of disturbing the monks who spent the night in scilence.

I don’t know what your opinions are about Islam, or women in Islam, or if you have even formed an opinion. If you’re like me, you’ve probably never spent too much time with Muslims, so there isn’t really any room for sterotypes. Well Im here to tell you I haven’t met two smarter, nicer, outgoing, funny, devoted lovers of God in a long time! They were such a good laugh, so deeply in love with God, and dead-set on knowing Him. 

Don’t misread me; We acknowledged openly how different our beliefe systems are. Still, we decided we felt more at home with one another than with someone who wants nothing to do with God. 

We discussed everything from forgiveness, poetry, true love, and destiny... To sin, illness, fashion, the media and terrorism. 

Turns out Muslims are very positive! Noor said she likes Americans more than white British people, because all the American’s shes met are really positive people like her. For instance, she belives (and claims all Muslims belive) God can purify sins through illness. The Qur’an says if you only knew what a blessing being sick was, you would rejoice in your illness! Noor, being a young sickly person herself, found God through illness. She told me that a few years ago she found herself very sick in the hospital, and ended up questioning every single thing about herself. What she found, was God began to speak to her. He (or She if you like) began giving her vivid-prophetic dreams, asking her to pray for people she didn’t even know, but have since come to know. It’s as if, she says, she was so filled with love she could feel it pushing everything else in her body out. She was being purified, and she found it beautiful. 

We talked about destiny and free will. How God works things out and yet we have choices that redirect our fate. She says the lines in your hands will literally change and form new grooves when you have your life transformed, as she did. 

By Saturday afternoon, we had gotten on so well they even gave us a ride home! Turns out, “Sheniqua” (as we like to call her) loves to sing. In the car she sang us a song encouraging Muslims to keep at life even when it’s hard. In return we sang a two part harmony of “Come Thou Fount.” 

I never thought five days into my stay in Bradford I would be singing hymns to a Muslim - God has a wicked sense of humor. 

They promised to take us around Bradford sometime soon. So, until then, we will be on a high from our successfull peacemaking night of fun with our Muslim sisters.

“Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy praise. Streams of mercy never ceasing ...”

Dear Diary...

I realize I have been updating alot, which is why I am even more overjoyed how consistently people are leaving me comments! I really appreciate your thoughts, on my thoughts, as it were... Today Bethany, Marie and I are visited our schools and soon we're leaving to attend a 24 hr seminar on Christian/Muslim relations... or something. We’re not quite sure what it entails. So, what Im thinking is, I wont be updating for a few days. And, since I’ll I’ve done in the past day or so is salt some slugs, I thought I might leave you with a reflection I wrote in my (personal) journal durring orientation in Chicago. 

Dear Diary, 

(I didn’t actually write “dear diary,” but I have inserted it here for dramatic affect...)

This has been my favorite week in Chicago so far. After talking to Jeff Konechzny the other night, I decided to take his advice and stop caring what other people think. All day long I re-run it through my mind, “It doesn’t matter what other people think, It doesn’t matter what other people think, It doesn’t matter what other people think...” It really seems to have made a difference, if just a small one.

Monday we did our day of hospitality; We sang at the nursing home and had dinner with Tarran and Candy. What an amazing experience!

Yesterday I washed walls in the “Hannah’s House” cafeteria. 

(One of JPUSA’s homeless shelters for single women with children)

As I washed, I imagined Jesus beside me. 

In one motion he took off his tunic and began using it to scrub the dirt. We talked for an hour about everything under the sun: travel, Chicago, the fear of growing old, true love, the Cubs, art, food... Jesus has an eclectic taste in almost everything, as it turns out. And in a strange way, I didn’t feel like I was doing most of the talking.

It made me smile as I remembered our old conversations...

Reading through some of my entries from orientation, this one stuck out to me. I suppose it’s because it was the closest I felt to Christ while I was there. It’s truly amazing how Jesus always shows up when you’re serving someone other than yourself. 

I also remember thinking when I wrote this how many converstions are yet to come. And they probably wont come by reading a “thoughtful” Christian book, or some other conventional way of tapping into wisdom.

They will probably happen as a result of silence, self sacrifice, fleeting moments of humilty... 

How will God reveal himself to me this year? What will our relationship look like at the end of this year? Because that’s what I want - a relationship. I don’t really want my questions answered (although it would be nice), and I don’t really want a huge revelation, or wisdom passed down from on high... I wan’t to be like a sheep in the gosple of Matthew, who recognizes the masters voice when He calls. 

I want to fall in love with God; the deep, world changing, sickening, giggly, annoying kind of love that causes people to turn their heads when they see you and wonder, what are you so damn happy about?

In the heat of the night...

From Marie's 365 Pictures and Hiakus

Although the title of this blog may be a commonly used saying, meaning something only in a metaphorical sense, our heat in the night was completely literal. It all started like this:  Apparently the day before we arrived the boiler stopped working. This meant we had no hot water OR working heater. Luckily, our wise-cracking neighbor Barry called Mr. Patel (cousin of the land lord, Mr. Patel) and got it all fixed up. Unfortunately, they failed to realize it had been turned on full blast. We, however, realized this at about 2 a.m. when we woke up sweating our ARSES off!  Blinded by the heat I slithered my way to the window. It was then I realized you need a key to open it. Yes. You need a key to open the window from the inside! 

Instinct told me downstairs must be cooler, so I crept out my door to go downstairs only to realize Marie was not in her room either. She also woke up in the sauna and headed for cooler ground. It felt like a reverse migration, animals in heat heading for cool temperatures. Quickly we realized our lovely hosts had forgotten to give us the key to the windows. Because this is a dodgy neighborhood (as I said in the last post), we were scared to open a door incase we fell asleep. Instead, we decided to appreciate the 10 degree cooler atmosphere downstairs and sleep on the couches. I shifted around on the cushions; You see, the two couches we have are both a good 2 ft shorter than our actual bodies. With our feet sticking up in the air, we began to loose circulation. The only flat surface, then, was the floor. After about 5 seconds on the floor I realized I had made a terrible mistake and climbed back onto my mini-couch. As we laid there, legs in the air, arms fand ace turning blue, Marie and I lost it. 

Hysterical laughter ensued. 

We thought to ourselves, “here we are, our first night in England, sweating bullets, locked into our house, can’t even open our windows, loosing feeling in our limbs at 3 a.m..” Jet lag and heat, we learned later, can make one delirious. 

Bethany, who was braving her bedroom oven, woke up to us in a fit of uncontrollable laughter. So, what did we do with the rest of our night? Well, we turned off the boiler for one, which was not an easy task. It included using a key to get out, opening a locked boiler room door, fighting our way through lawn equipment in the dark to reach the heat controls, and braving the cold weather until we got back inside. It still took 3 hours for it to stop putting out heat. And we ate cereal and watched “My Best Friend’s Wedding.”

Oh, one last thing. We got the key to the windows, and we’re never letting it out of our sight.

England!

We’re in England!!  Have been for a whole day now! Incase I didn’t mention before, two days ago we had a lay over in Atlanta, then left for England the next night. Kellie met us in Atlanta and we spent the day watching TLC wedding shows, and food shopping for our long flight. We barely survived our lunch at Sonic because a bee was all up in our business. We moved tables 3 times before eventually eating in the car. 

Bee: 1

Team England: 0

(taken on the plane)

THANK GOD for the South! The morning we left for England our Georgia-brothers helped us get through the luggage check-in and security line in well under 15 minutes! I’ve never been more impressed with an airport. On our way through security we saw a group of Muslim men and women saying goodbye to two of their sons. Their entire party was dressed very traditionally, guaranteeing them a good 40 extra mins at security. 

The plane ride was shorter than we thought. Our only disappointment with the whole travel episode, was the lack on monitors in front of our seats. Instead we had one big screen 10 rows ahead of us playing every overrated movie produced in the last 6 months.

But we made it! Paul (minister at Anglican) and his friend Barry picked us up at Manchester airport. Our luggage took up most of the car space, so I rode with Paul into Bradford, where as Marie and Bethany joined Barry. Paul told me all about our neighbors, each of which are supposedly “lovely” (Luv-lay!). There’s Ruth our next door neighbor who moved to Bradford from Germany sometime during WWII. On the other side of us, across a small street, is Frank and Hillary. Frank stopped by our flat today, unfortunately we were sleeping - I’ll come back to this later.

When we arrived at our flat we were greeted with tea and “biscuits” (cookies) by Ruth (Paul’s wife) and Val. Our flat is in a rather “dodgy” area. It has two floors, with three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Marie took the tiny room right up the stair. Bethany grabbed the larger room with the sunlight, and I took the middle room which has three large dressers. The living room is cozy. The previous team painted cute little leaves on the walls - it looks very indie. Looking out, the front lawn is a peace sign made out of flowers. In the book their team left behind it asks us to take car  of their peace sing, we intend to. In fact, we plan on taking care of the back yard as well. Right now the back is a jungle of weeds and thick bushes. Soon we will put mow and put down weed killer to get down to the soil. We hope this will be our contribution to St. Wilfrid’s Crescent. 

So here we are, in our flat, just getting to know a few neighbors. Right now they know us as the “3 Mennonite girls.” Tomorrow I’ll fill you in on our first night here. It was - in a word- unforgettable. =)

Hello to everyone back in the states! Praying for you all in the love of our Savior Christ.

p.s. Thank you all for helping me get here. Remember that you’re here with me. The Spirit lives in us all, spreading grace and joy where ever we’re found. 

Our last night in Chicago

"Destiny, I feel, is a relationship - a play between divine 

grace and willful self-effort."

 — Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)

Tomorrow we leave for England. It snuck up on me. Here I was living in Chicago, going to church, getting deep dish pizzas, making friends from all over the country, etc... I forgot what I was actually here to do: prepare for a year of service in a foreign country. Tomorrow at 9 the China team will be off for a 12 hour flight to Seoul South Korea, finally reaching China by Sunday. They'll spend the next 10 months working at a University in Nanchong teaching english. Bolivia is leaving at the same time as us for Miami, then straight onto Santa Cruz, Bolivia. They'll spend the next 10 months working at a orphanage and day care. They also might do something concerning health care for people in Bolivia... maybe with AIDS patients... Both of those teams will be living with host families. I can't wait to see how much of the languages they've learned in that time. 

As for my team, we leave tomorrow for Atlanta, stay the night and leave the next night for Manchester. My best friend Kellie is making the long drive up to visit us!! I'm so excited to see her!!! She's the closest thing I have to a sister and I will miss her so much this year =(

Tonight is our last time together as a whole group. To celebrate the end of our orientation, we went to a restaurant down the street from us called "Cafe' Too" - Homeless folks work here as paid interns, learning how to cook and navigate their way into the culinary profession. We each had a three course meal, with a dessert that was out of this world! At the end of our meal our directors Lyz and Darrell handed out glow-in-the-dark bracelets. As we tied each one around our neighbors wrist we said in unison, "May God light your path and may you be a light to others."  It started as a chant, rose to a prayer and settled into a mantra. Before I went to sleep last night, I was thinking about this as I read from "Eat Pray Love." The author, Elizabeth Gilbert, says something about life similar to our blessing, which I quoted at the top of this post. "Destiny," she says, "...is a relationship - a play between divine grace and will-full self effort."  She describes fate like a dance between us and God - each one of us stepping forward and back, swaying and dipping... The question is: if destiny is a dance, whose leading? 

Ultimately, God gives us free will to choose as we wish. But when we come into a relationship with Jesus, His will begins to shape ours. In the bible Paul says "It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). So depending on how in tune I am with the kingdom of heaven, the more fluid the dance will look (a.k.a. the more I resemble who I was created to be). Right now I feel like a nervous beginner - awkwardly maneuvering my two left feet across the floor. Other people make it look so easy - gliding effortlessly, perfectly instep with one another so you can't tell whose guiding and whose following, they've become one. 

Devout people know this fluidity doesn't come easily; It takes practice. You'll probably get some blisters, and at one point or another YOU ARE going to look stupid and fall on your ass. And yet, for thousands of years religious people have decided the cost of loving this God is worth it. When they decided this, God stepped in and made something beautiful out of their lives. I pray Bolivia, China and England will all take part in the ongoing creation of God's will on earth, becoming in time, something truly beautiful.  

Life is a dance toward God." -Donald Miller

Love actually...

Watch this.

"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. 

General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere.

Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. 

If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion you'll find that love actually is all around."

(Photos taken by Marie)

Guess who's coming to dinner

Hospitality, pt. 2

Two days ago we were given an assignment to do random acts of hospitality anywhere in Chicago. During the day a few of us sang hymns at a nursing home, others gave out flowers and played chess on the street with homeless folks. One guy (Mark) from Canada in our group struck up a conversation on the L with a man and ended up having lunch with him. He found out during lunch this man was a gay Lutheran, in a long-term committed releationship lasting 13 years. Over a subway sandwhich, two men from very different backgrounds (who according to the world are supposed to be enemies), shared their lives with oneanother in mutual love and respect

Filled with the spirit of the days activities, I decided to skip dinner at JPUSA and instead ask someone on the street to join me for dinner at McDonalds. My friend Marie decided to join me, and just like that we set out. When we first arrived at JPUSA, our group was warned not to walk down the alley between our house (Eastwood) and the main building. For two weeks now we have been cutting through JPUSA to avoid this alley, but two nights ago we decided to make the “perilous” trip and find ourselves a guest for dinner. Marie told me there was a woman sleeping on the steps of a Baptist church across the street so we planned to invite her. However, as we emerged onto the street I saw a man sitting on his sleeping bag. I smiled and he smiled back. It was only later I learned as we passed him Marie and I were both thinking the same thing, “so here you are Jesus.” 

There we stood on the street corner, unsure if we should find the woman on the steps, or turn around and talk to this smiling man in the alley. An answer came easily when I realized I was stuck on this spot. I wasn’t able to take even one step forward, something was pulling me to this man; it was like gravity. I turned around suddenly and said, 

“What are you doing right now?”

“Nothing.”

“Would you like to have dinner with us? Our treat.”

“Sure”

“Great, let’s eat!”

So the three of us sat down and began getting to know one another. We learned Tarran (or TJ) is only 23! He has been livingin uptown for two years and is currently waiting to find out if he got the job he applied for with a cleaning crew. About 5 mins into our dinner, he excused himself and stepped outside. Actually what happened was that he ran across the street into a store and then came back over and sat down. 

“What was that?”

“I had to tell my fiance’ I was over here eating dinner with you.”

“You have a fiance’??? Bring her over!!”

Candy is 20 yrs old and together she and Tarran have 3 kids. They talked about them all through dinner; how beautiful they are, how the girls love the swim, how old they are, etc, etc, etc.... They had pictures so we actually got to see them. Unfortunately they live in Kansas right now with Candys sister because she and Tarran lost their apartment two years ago. I won’t go into unesscessary detail about the rest of our conversation, only to say we talked about EVERYTHING! Chicago, true love, God, life and how surprising it can be. We even talked about Tamars multiple-personality disorder. He has three personalities that come out when different emotions rise up in him, and they all have different names. The whole evening felt like 3 old friends getting together after a long seperation. Not once did they ask us for more food, or money or anything. Infact, we asked them for dinner so they didn’t even ask us for that. Oppositely, they told us all the places we could go for a meal or shelter, all over the city. I realize now we're all rich and poor in different ways. Tarran and Candy are rich in love and family... I hope you're lucky enough to meet someone like them today.

 "Remember, our Message is not about ourselves; we're proclaiming Jesus Christ, the Master. All we are is messengers, errand runners from Jesus for you. It started when God said, "Light up the darkness!" and our lives filled up with light as we saw and understood God in the face of Christ, all bright and beautiful." 

-2 Corinthians 4:5-6

Hospitality

Our task today, was to do random acts of hospitality. A few days ago we had thrown the idea around about singing hymns in public. So, today we decided to sing hymns in four part harmonies at a hospital. As we looked through the Mennonite hymnal, I quickly realized how sparing my liturgical music education was. The only songs we ever sang at mass were “Here I am Lord”, and “Happy Birthday Jesus” screeched out by some whiny 9 year old, who’s deaf grand parents (lucky bastards) had lobbied for three months to get the front pew. Then we stumbled across “Come Thou Fount”, and “Be Thou my Vision”, some United Methodist standards and I felt OK. Later, I realized I wasn’t so much a singing Methodist as I am a smile-and-nod kinda Methodist... We tried the hospital down the road on Wilson first. Although they were very appreciative of our offer, we were supposed to go through the chaplain who was not in; so, they kindly directed us to a nearby nursing home. As soon as the nurse led us into a large patio area filled with nurses, residents and their loved ones with video cameras, we knew we had made a terrible mistake. We nervously got through our first two hymns, only nearly fainting from nerves. But on the final song, after Gloria had trusted me with the melody (her first mistake), I somehow completely forgot was I was doing and just stopped singing. I'm not sure if I was trying to listen to the other three, or if my brain had just stopped and zoned out on the page... In any event, there was a sudden lack of words coming out. It was now a very obvious three part harmony, with no soprano. 

But like most elderly people, they smiled, said we sang beautifully and served us our second lunch of the day. We were all full from JPUSA, but not wanting to be rude, we shoveled cold chicken and corn down our throats, smiling and thanking God we had Sierra Mist to wash it down. Next, full of anxiety and Sierra Mist, we started at the fourth floor and worked our way down singing to all the seniors who were unable to make it outside for their labor day BBQ. For me each song was like a new surprise, as in, “oh, we go down here instead of up? I wish I hadn’t just hit that high note...” And, “Oh, we pause here, why am I still singing?... and the wrong words too. Perfect!”

(found on google)

However, no matter how bad I thought I was doing, there was always someone on each floor who was very glad we were there. I asked one man, Carl, what he was doing today and he said nothing, maybe going out to smoke later, but that's it. I realized that most of these people must feel like they’re living without a purpose. Their children are all grown up and independent. Their jobs have long since been filled by a younger generation. Now they have been reduced to watching day time soap operas and hoping a Michael Jackson look-alike will stop by again (readers note: this is not an arbitrary reference, we saw pictures of the seniors with a black M.J.) Suddenly I cared less about my singing and more about God’s own heart for His people. 

This morning we were asked to contemplate what hospitality means to us. For me, hospitality reminds me of a deeply meaningful line from an otherwise stupid movie; it says, “Love is the only shocking act left on the planet.” I find this to be true. Jesus please continue to love through us, and in doing so shock the hell out of this world. 

rain, personailty types and prostitution

It’s raining in Chicago. Wow, that sounds like an opening line for what is sure to be a whiny ballad by some inner-city singer-song-writer. But it’s true, it’s raining in Chicago. I know because this morning I woke up early and took a shower so I could walk over to Starbucks and get some coffee for breakfast, only to realize mother nature would not allow this. Still, God is good! Instead, I decided to update my blog. 

The past two days have brought a lot of wonderful and unsettling insights. Monday night we had an open forum about faith. We talked about hell, homosexuality, the holy spirit, etc... (And that’s all before 10:30!) Then we played some team building games and went over our ennegram. An ennegram -for those wondering if I just made up a word- is a tool for figuring out your personailty type. Once you know how you process things, you can better figure out how to communicate with others. It also helps you realize why certain things bother you, or, why others dont. I found out I’m really most of the personality types, but bascially I’m a nine, “The Peacemaker.” Peacemakers are usually the mediators between their friends, which is good. However, they are also forgetful, indecisive and stubborn. Not good.

Tuesday night we were invited to a dramatic monologue performance about living and working on the streets. I wasn’t entirely sure what this meant and none of us knew where it would take place. Come to find out, all we had to do was cross the street to a place called “Emmaus Ministries.” We approached the building, where a man who looked exactly like every picture of Jesus I’ve ever seen, came bounding to open up the gate. Turns out his name is Al and he and his wife work at Emmaus. We went down into the building’s basement where they have a community house. I’m not sure what I expected, but the basement was warm and inviting. It had a long dinning room table and a cozy living room area. We gathered in the living room where we were joined by the new staff memebers of DOOR Chicago. We intorduced ourselves to Al and he to us, then he went on to explain that Emmaus Ministries helps men in prostitution start new lives, free of addictions so they no longer feel the need to sell their bodies. Not your every day run-of-the-mill ministry, huh? It was certainly the most interesting Tuesday Night I've ever had. Both great singers and actors, Al and his wife (Andi) sang and recited some of their clients personal reflections on being a male prostitute in Chicago. They were unbelieveably moving. It strikes me now how none of their stories placed blame on their families, society or even those who first introduced them to drugs or alchohale (although arguably they are entitled too).  Instead, they took complete ownership of their lives and cast their burdens onto this Jesus, the only person whose ever loved them without wanting anything in return. Freedom. Freedom is the heartbeat of Emmaus Ministries. Please keep them in your prayers.