Community
During my travels connecting with communities as part of an extended listening tour for Jesus Died for This?: A Satirist's Search for the Risen Christ, I hung about a bit with Mark Van Steenwyk, co-founder of Missio Dei, an anabaptist intentional community in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I was intrigued to learn about their work with the Christian Peacemakers Team (CPT), so I decided to shoot him an email to see what's in store for them during spring 2011.
During my last year of college, my pastor lent me the book Living Gently in a Violent World, co-authored by Jean Vanier and Stanley Hauerwas. This book is an exploration on how followers of Christ ought to live in broken world.
The introduction of the book recounts the story of Jean Vanier teaching a course on pastoral care. During one class, Vanier asked the students to share some of their spiritual experiences. One of the students, Angela (who was deaf) began to share a dream she had where she met Jesus in heaven. She recalled talking with Jesus for some time and never experiencing so much joy and peace. "Jesus was everything I had hoped he would be," she said, "And his signing was amazing!" Vanier explains to the reader that "for Angela, heaven's perfection did not involve being 'healed' of her deafness. Rather, it was a place where the social, relational, and communication barriers that restricted her life in the present no longer existed."
It is reported that Congressman Paul Ryan makes every member of his staff read philosopher Ayn Rand, the shame
Since our fast began this past Monday, I've been re-reading one of the classic books on spirituality by my friend Richard Foster,
Across the United States, there is a new movement emerging to dramatize the immorality of corporate tax dodging in the face of drastic budget cuts.
The U.S. just started another war. We're good at starting wars. We're not good at ending them, but we start them really well. They say this is for "humanitarian" reasons. Aren't they all?
When I announced my plans to go to Jordan several weeks ago for a press trip, my son replied, "You are the only person wanting to go to the Middle East right now." That was several weeks ago when people were fleeing from Egypt and Tunisia. And he was right, my plane to Jordan was less than half full.
[Editors' note: During the season of Lent we will be posting excerpts from the Rediscovering Values Lenten Study Guide. We invite you to study God's word with us through these posts.]