Walls and Borders
Volume 3, Number 1 // Winter 2011
Preview the listing of all articles and authors featured in this issue of Consp!re
Conspire Issue 8: Walls and Borders
Conspire Issue 7: Redemption in the Broken Places
Redemption in the Broken Places
Volume 2, Number 4 // Fall 2010
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Economy of God Promotional Materials
You asked for it, and now you have it…..
Want to let folks in your neighborhood know that CONSPIRE is out? Having a party? A potluck? A rocking worship gathering?
Use these promotional materials!
Your Own Money Toolkit
When we being putting together our special CONSP!RE: Economy of God: Your Money or Your Life, we realized something. A lot of our friends and coconspirators already had great tools for exploring our relationship with money. Many of them had been working through some of the spiritual issues around money for years. Some of them had neat testimonies of how they lived with a common purse. Others talked about how they budgeted, or tried to pay justly in their organizations.
The Twenty-First Century Common Purse
by Andy Loving
Flush Toilets and Forgotten Friendship
by Claudio Oliver
Economy of Love
by Shane Claiborne
God’s Quiet Conspiracy in a Post-Oil Future
by Tom Sine
Birds, Lilies, and Us
Spoils of the Poor
by Ched Myers
Reflection Questions on Conspire’s Summer 2010
Consp!re‘s Summer 2010 issue addresses our economy and our faith. What are the cornerstones of an economy rooted in the values of God? How might we reshape our personal economies within the larger economy to function with some of these values? The questions below are intended only as openings for deeper and more authentic conversations about money and how to live in healthy relationship with it
The Divine Commonwealth
by the Consp!re editors
Table of Contents; Issue 6
ECONOMY OF GOD: YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE
Volume 2, Number 3 // Summer 2010
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Notes from Scattered Pilgrims
CONSP!RE is sustained by communities and groups. Here our Co-conspirers share what’s happening—from new kids to a new world; from the mundane to the inspiring. Sharing our stories helps us know we are not alone in the joys and struggles of seeking God’s good dreams “on earth” as “in heaven.” Why don’t you join our conspiracy of goodness!
Table of Contents
PATH & PLACE
Volume 2, Number 1 // Spring 2010
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Integrity of Place: Actions to Dwell and Travel Well
How are we to be a good neighbor and local person? When we leave home, how do we travel well? We asked our network of communities for actual practices they engage in to be good locals or openhearted travelers. The questions deepen when we relocate to unfamiliar communities and are suddenly both pilgrim and rooted neighbor at once. We find them threaded into our days. Here you’ll find both our concrete gestures and our wonderings.
Wanderer, Nothing
My first thought every morning is the same. I am sick of this. Straight-up sick of it.
This is the worst part of the day: lying in bed and listening to the other pilgrims shuffling in the dark morning. I despise their eagerness to begin.
My husband is nudging me, already dressed and ready.
I hoist my lead body out of the top bunk and land hard on the floor. Ouch. The bottoms of my feet are so sore.
This is our daily ritual. I fumble in the dark for my shorts, jacket, hat. I rip off pieces of duct tape to cover the sore places on my feet, gently pulling out the thread I inserted into blisters to drain the fluid the night before.
My socks aren’t dry yet. I put them on anyway.
Radical Friendship
by Donna Jones
I used to know how to preach to my church during Black History Month. We’d dress in our finest garb and process to the beats of DNA-memory in our bones, singing the songs that have brought us through. It was the one time a year to celebrate being black; to remember ancestors gone by and saints still present. To move “up from slavery,” “to lift as we climb,” to “go back to the ol’ landmark,” to recount “what mean these stones.” These services were cultural icons for me.
Or at least they used to be. That was before my church’s pilgrimage from 100 percent African American, to now 70 percent African American and 30 percent other (white, asian, bi-racial). I can no longer assume any shared gut-DNA. Even my sermon themes are different.
Take a few weeks ago. I was preaching reconciliation, trying to make the experience of the church at Corinth—the struggles to build gospel koinonia across ethnic, class, and religious lines—real to my congregation. “What do you feel when folks of different races and classes move into this neighborhood?” I asked, almost innocently. “Do they become friends?”
Standing In Place
by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
I was raised in Christian churches by people who loved me well and who charged me to go out there and make a difference. I showed the Jesus film and helped build schools for AIDS orphans in the bush in Zimbabwe, dug latrines in the Dominican Republic, played with kids from the barrios of Venezuela, built houses in Honduras, and tutored kids in Philadelphia’s inner city. A citizen of God’s reign, I tried to put my American passport to work for good in the world. But racking up all those frequent flyer miles for Jesus, I felt lonely. I wanted to share God’s love with others, but wasn’t sure where to experience it myself.
Hung over from all that travel, I stumbled into a little intentional community of Christians who were trying to love one another and their neighbors. It wasn’t easy… and it showed. But I saw something compelling in that little group’s experiment with faith: They had given themselves to God and one another in a particular place.
The Geography of Belief
by the Consp!re editors
As believers, our seeking is shot through with paradox.
On the one hand, the foundational story of our Scriptures unfolds on a piece of earth, a garden, and points to a promised land where we live in convenant. Even the name given to the created human being, adam, is a pun on the Hebrew word for soil. Our metaphors of justice also embody rootedness: That each will sit under her vine or fig tree. That we will rebuild the city. That we will abide in God as branches abide in the vine. Arguably, we are to find our place and dwell in it.
Or are we? We also have a history marked by wandering. Abraham and Sarah left the known world to go into unsettled wilderness as nomads. The people of Israel stumbled forty years through desert land. Jesus said he had no place to lay his head, and sent his followers out with only the clothes on their back to preach and heal. Peter refers to us as sojourners and aliens (1 Peter 2:11).
Clearly, our search for faithfulness elicits the seemingly contradictory impulses of wandering the earth in pilgrimage or grounding ourselves locally in long-term commitment to a particular place and people.
Reflection Questions on Conspire’s Spring 2010
Consp!re’s Spring 2010 issue focuses on Roots and Pilgrimage. How do we live well and sustainably in a place? How do we travel with hearts open to God’s call?
Here are some questions that came up for us as we worked on the material. These are only openings encouraging people to share their real experiences.
L’Arche in Washington, DC
Prayer for the Forgotten
Against this sky growing gray,
Help me to bring light.
Today, God,
Help me get out of bed
Early and alone,
Just to listen.
Help me hear your good Spirit.
God, help me do
What I need to do
To be your hands,
Your smile,
Your feet,
To the other people here
In this hospital,
This jail,
This institution,
This house.
Please, God,
Purify my impatience
Make me go the extra mile
But not today.
Today,
I am struggling.
If it’s your will,
take my burden.
Lord, make it go away.
Heal this head, this heart, these hands.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Jack Legg, Mulberry House
A prayer for the Church
God, we praise you for the transnational body of Christ. We love the
church, your bride, and we are thrilled to be part of such a wild crowd.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Deliver us from
apathy, arrogance, and ignorance. Protect us from complacency. Grant
us audacity and resolve. Make us instruments of Your Peace.
We pray that we will know our world. Draw us out of our homes and into
the fray. Call us home to rest in You at the end of the day.
We pray that the world will know us. Teach us to love. Bind us
together with those inside and outside our local body. We, your
church, desire to be the true nation, under God, totally indivisible.
Unify us in the midst of distractions.
Lord, help us rediscover our prophetic voice in the world. May no
small injustice slip past unnoticed, and may no major injustice
intimidate us into silence.
Lord, teach us to reclaim the Gospel, not just the
teaching-of-spiritual truth part, but the resurrection part. Help us
to bring dead things to life, to heal the sick among us, and to
liberate people and societies from the powers of darkness.
The GAPS Community
Knower of my weaknesses, there is trouble everywhere.
Even my hours of pleasure are commingled with hardship and threats of despair.
Sustainer, as we exist in cultures of overindulgence,
give us a hankering for you.
Let our hearts partake of the succulent feast that is your
mysteriously mundane splendor.
Give us today our daily bread and crumbs of your kin(g)dom.
Revealer, help me in my watching and waiting,
to live in harmony with your Spirit.
Release me to proclaim love and mercy to all,
especially those who seem undeserving.
Help me to recognize your speech,
which is riddled throughout the universe.
Instruct our hearts and minds to mimic the love
and wide embrace of Jesus of Nazareth.
Let this love be a glimmer of hope amid the emptiness and ugliness
through which we so often trudge.
Creator of my heart, help me through the hindrances which keep me from
knowing the joy of kinship.
Help me to loosen my grip on the bounty you’ve provided to your creation,
so that my hands can be free to distribute your plentiful provisions
with equity and grace.
With much thanks for your beauty,
I rest forever loved and blessed in your ever-presence.
Amen.
Detroit Villages
Our Helper and Healer, what have you done? Did you know what these people were like when you called me to live with them? Did you know how they’d mess up my plans, my time, my life? Someone needs to fix this. Someone needs to fix me.
Be with us, Jesus. Walk with us on roads of insecurity and anxiety. Reveal yourself to us in moments of locked doors. Send your Spirit to guide us when our own maps are inaccurate or misleading. Remind us of your call into the world, your instructions to love in ways that deconstruct evil, your comfort in times of turmoil. Help us and heal us, for each other, for our neighbors, and for your kingdom on Earth.
Solomon’s Porch Community
One: Sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, mothers, fathers, friends and loved ones—we come together this day.
All: We come together with common dreams, common hopes for the world, and common purpose.
One: We gather with great joy in one another’s presence
All: We gather with great sorrow and a heavy burden
One: We gather with great sorrow because there are sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, mothers, fathers, friends and loved ones who are suffering.
All: Suffering under the burden of slavery and oppression, even right now as we gather.
One: We stand now in acknowledgment of those slaves in our neighborhood and throughout the world.
All: We open our eyes to their truth, we open our ears to their plea, and we open our hearts to hope.
One: Let us now turn our hearts and minds to these sisters and brothers, because we seek to bring about God’s desires for them, for us, and for all the world.
All: Amen
The U.S. State Department estimates that there are twenty-seven million slaves worldwide. To find out more about the current issue of slavery and what you can do to help, visit: http://www.humantrafficking.org, .
ReImagine!
Spirit of the creator,
we surrender
to the reign of love,
in every currency of being:
Body, mind, feelings, time
in purpose, possessions and belonging
Make us alive to the power
that is making all things new
A prayer for awakening creativity:
Created to be creative
we enact our destiny
embracing the energy of the Spirit
to risk making beauty
with our whole lives.
Banner House
As a group, we frequently say together this traditional prayer, versions of which are in several denominational prayer books.
Almighty God, we confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves;
We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart.
We have not loved our neighbor as ourselves.
For the sake of your son Jesus Christ, have mercy,
forgive us, renew us, and lead us,
that we might walk in your way
and delight in your will
to the Glory of your Holy Name.
Rutba House
Our prayer at the end of each day:
Visit this place, O Lord, and drive far from it all snares of the enemy. Send your holy angels to dwell with us and preserve us in peace. And let your blessing be upon us, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Camden Houses
Almighty God,
We praise for all you have done.
Help us with all that you want us do to.
Come, holy creator,
and rebuild the city of Camden
so that we do not labor in vain without you.
Come, holy Savior,
and heal all that is broken in our lives and in our streets.
Come, Holy Spirit,
and inspire us with energy and willingness
to rebuild Camden city to your honor and glory.
David Hodges, Coral House Community
Jesus Is Lord
Jesus is Lord.
All that we have All that we are All of our hopes All of our scars
All of our shame All of our pride All that we want All that we hide We lay down at your feet
And we say Jesus is Lord of all
Every allegiance Every sword Every thought Every word
Every comfort Every care What we will eat What we will wear
All that we love All that we hate All that we cling to Before it’s too late We lay down at your feet
And we say Jesus is Lord of all
That Thing That Makes Us Human
Every few months here at CONSP!RE, we enact a strange form of community. Across the wire. Through the air. Connecting organic chemicals in our bodies via blips of zeroes and ones. To be sure, living on opposite coasts presents a challenge. But still we connect. We submit and surrender, discuss and arrange, ponder and rearrange to compose an artifact. Thoughts. Content. Image. Art.
You hold in your hands the end product. Stories sifted through, images to stir the soul.
This magazine is an exercise in community on several levels. First, there is the grand community of creation that we are all a part of. We try to draw in experiences and reflections from across the world. Second, there is a more self-selective community at play. We circle around a common faith tradition, sometimes dancing closer, sometimes spinning away, trying to make sense of it all. Doubting, hoping, praying, believing, and doubting again. We write in hope that someone out there will be moved, encouraged, helped along.
A Option To Use Things That Usually Are Considered Waste (or: Banana Peel Cake)
On a recent trip to Brazil, a friend of mine (Claudio) told me that he could make a banana cake out of what most of us throw away, the peel. Of course I told him that he was nuts. But sure enough, the day I was leaving, he presented me with a banana peel cake. As we ate the cake he told me a story. When he was in the Dominican Republic he was with a group of women that were low on resources and milk was hard to come by. He proceeded to tell the woman there was a way to make a cake that did not require milk but did require bananas. So one of the women went and got five bananas. He handed each of the the women the bananas and told them to peel and eat bananas. Then he said, “Now we’re ready to make banana cake out of the peels.” They began to laugh. To their amazement and mine, he did just as promised. Claudio showed us something that many of us have forgotten: What we usually consider waste offers us the possibility to create something very beautiful (extremely tasty).
To Turn The World
From The Editors
Revolution is at the heart of the biblical story. Scripture tells of the liberating God Yahweh who overturns the power of Egypt to accompany a ragged bunch of disbelieving slaves into a barren desert and work with them to build a new social order rooted in covenant and shalom.
This same God inspires prophets whose visions of justice pour down like a terrible wind through chasms of rock – the relentless hope of Isaiah, springing water in deserts; that lamentation of Jeremiah, weeping for the children of Rachel; the amazing dreams of the praying Daniel; and Ezekiel’s heartrending cry for a faithfulness that reweaves dry bones.
Mary’s song heralding her coming child is a manifesto more encompassing and revolutionary than anything penned by Marx – and more immediate, insisting as it does on present tense. It ushers in a Jesus who talks about the reign of God among us this very moment. His passionate stories and teachings evoke a social order which in mustard-seed fashion erodes the powerful rule of Imperial Caesar.
This Conspiracy of Hope
An Introduction to Conspire
Now is a time to rejoice, for God is still good. Resurrection still happens, every day. The lilies and the sparrows still shame Wall Street’s splendor. God is still calling people who do not conform to the patterns of this world or the empire out of Babylon to create a new society in the shell of the old.
We want to connect those outposts. You are holding our first issue of Conspire!—a conversation in words and image designed to connect the dots between all these amazing witnesses. Dozens of communities and organizations have become co-conspirators, each one kicking in support (prayer, money, vision, time) to bring this off. On these pages, we hope to create an open canvas for the imagination and to plot goodness together. We want to share stories, art, and holy mischief. We’re here to remind you that you are not crazy—or at least not alone. As old Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, said, “If we are crazy, it is because we refuse to be crazy in the same way that the world has been crazy.”
We are bucking the grain by distributing this little “literary co-op” through communities. Our readers have to connect with someone nearby to get it. It’s our way of pulling together all those dots on the margins of empire.
History and its future are not determined by God from this perspective, but in a sense, the future is doomed by God – not doomed to failure and destruction, but doomed to eventual healing and joy, doomed to resurrection, because the living God will never give up and abandon creation.
The hope of the Resurrection does not rest in the promise of eventual escape to heaven. The Resurrection shows us that Jesus has broken into this world, crippling the powers of darkness and making it possible for us to live, yes live, as unshackled citizens of His Kingdom. Jesus doesn’t merely make bad people good. He doesn’t merely make sick people well. He raises the dead to life. He is outrageous and inventive, subversive and ingenious, wild and creative. He liberates us from the powers of darkness and calls us into marvelous light. He raids our hospitals, turning bedpans into flowerpots and syringes into knitting needles. He converts our wheelchairs into go-carts and our sick-beds into trampolines. He trades our handcuffs for bracelets and paints frescoes on our bodies with prison tattoos. He teaches us to shake off our chains and use them as jump ropes. He springs kids out of jail and sends them partying with their probation officers. The Resurrection reminds us it is here, it has started, it is always but coming. Our groaning creation can begin to laugh again. Jesus lives, and so can we, and it begins right now.
The church that I served as pastor was in the midst of a heated conflict about the new attendance of a gay couple. One woman, vehemently opposed to the church opening the doors to homosexuals, marched into the senior pastor’s office screaming, yelling, hollering, and threatening my colleague. She was so loud that I wondered, from my office next door, if I should call the authorities to ensure our safety. She left in a rage. Shortly thereafter, another couple was scheduled to visit the senior pastor about the same issue. He was quite nervous, for he loved this family dearly, yet he new that they were quite conservative about the issue and feared they might leave if a gay couple became active members of the congregation. When the couple came to the door, they had in hand a pitcher and a basin. My colleague looked at them with a question. They said, “Before we begin this conversation, we wanted to wash each other’s feet to remind us all that we are to love and serve each other.” It was another sacred moment, bursting with the Divine.
So the resurrection of Jesus was simply God’s unwillingness to take our No for an answer. He raised Jesus, not as an invitation to us to come to heaven when we die, but as a declaration that He Himself has now established permanent, eternal residence on earth. . . . He is standing beside us, strengthening us in this life. The good news of the resurrection of Jesus is not that we shall die and go home with him, but that he has risen and comes home with us, bringing all his hungry, naked, thirsty, sick, prisoner brothers with him.
I live on a ridge top in a Christian intentional community in rural Kentucky. Together we have bought land, shared prayer and built resource conserving houses. I moved here to answer a call to become a steward of our eight acres, to live responsibly and lovingly among it. What I have learned is that I am not a mere observer, a custodian in a watch house. As I peel away layers of modern conveniences, I have found that I am a part of a holy, circular cycle.