A Pinch of Salt [SSL 278]

Sorting out the hungers and cleaning out the wounds

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Episode 17 Shane Claiborne on the hunger for community

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Evangelical Seminary is proud to host Shane’s talk. Click the image and learn more about a school that teaches and promotes incarnational servant leadership at a core level.


Shane’s Bio:

Shane Claiborne graduated from Eastern University and did graduate work at Princeton Seminary. In 2010, he received an Honorary Doctorate from Eastern. His adventures have taken him from the streets of Calcutta where he worked with Mother Teresa to the wealthy suburbs of Chicago where he served at the influential mega-church Willow Creek. As a peacemaker, his journeys have taken him to some of the most troubled regions of the world – from Rwanda to the West Bank – and he’s been on peace delegations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Shane is a founder and board member of The Simple Way, a faith community in inner city Philadelphia that has helped birth and connect radical faith communities around the world. He is married to Katie Jo, a North Carolina girl who also fell in love with the city (and with Shane). They were wed in St. Edwards church, the formerly abandoned cathedral into which homeless families relocated in 1995, launching the beginning of the Simple Way community and a new phase of faith-based justice making.

Shane writes and travels extensively speaking about peacemaking, social justice, and Jesus. Shane’s books include Jesus for PresidentRed Letter RevolutionCommon PrayerFollow Me to FreedomJesus, Bombs and Ice CreamBecoming the Answer to Our Prayers – and his classic The Irresistible Revolution. He has been featured in a number of films including “Another World Is Possible” and “Ordinary Radicals.” His books are translated into more than a dozen languages. Shane speaks over 100 times a year, nationally and internationally.

His work has appeared in Esquire, SPIN, Christianity Today, and The Wall Street Journal, and he has been on everything from Fox News and Al Jazeera to CNN and NPR. He’s given academic lectures at Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Liberty, Duke, and Notre Dame. Shane speaks regularly at denominational gatherings, festivals, and conferences around the globe. Follow him online at:

Facebook: ShaneClaiborne
Twitter: @ShaneClaiborne

 


Shownotes (with links) from my conversation with Shane Claiborne

MIN 4:00

About 15 years ago Shane Claiborne and a few friends founded The Simple Way in the poorest section of Philadelphia where drug and sex trafficking became the main “industries” when the factories closed. Ever since then, he and his friends have been living in a communally within the neighborhood and serving the residents there in many ways.

I ask Shane, How have they sustained their communal lifestyle for so long?

Shane shares some things that have helped:

1. We are not attached what it should look like in expression or form as much as we have chosen to love each other and Jesus well and allow community to flow out of that.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“If you are in love with your vision for community you will actually destroy it.”

2. Allowing it to change over the years, from a house with 12 people sleeping all over the place in one house with one bathroom to a village of 10 or 20 houses all in the same neighborhood.

3. Helpful wisdom from the outside from others who’ve been doing communal living for a long time (The Benedictine order, for instance: 1,600 years)

6:10

What is “new monasticism” anyway? Shane explains.

6:30

“Folks are really hungry for community.”

7:20

“In Western culture we’ve lost the art of community.”

In other parts of the world this is how people have survived.

7:40

Economically impoverished communities can be community-rich (places) because they need each other.

7:50

“It’s no coincidence that in some of the richest places in the world we have the highest rates of loneliness..and depression, and suicide.”

8:00

“We are made to love and be loved.”

8:20

Even the mega-churches put in a lot of effort into making small groups work well (because that’s how you find community).

8:40

New Monasticism (as lived out in the U.S. or other wealthy Western countries) connects us with an ancient practice that continues on (and is “life as normal”) in many places in the world.

9:20

What communal living in Christian communities looks like in different contexts…

“Sometimes it’s about renouncing materialism and the Kardashians.”

10:00

What happens when people pilgrimage to The Simple Way to learn what it’s about.

Click for resources from The Simple Way

10:30

On the romantic notions of The Simple Way…

Mother Teresa said, “Calcuttas are everywhere if we only have eyes to see. Find your Calcutta.”

11:00

There is a wisdom in learning from other communities. Shane and others set up a network called the community of communities on the web which lists other communities like his. Example: Reba Place Chicago.

11:35

MissionYear.org

This way can get rid of the romanticism and allow people to experience communal living first-hand.

Monthly open houses at A Simple Way are on ramps (to learn about community).

12:20

It’s about not just believing the doctrinal statements but about living differently and finding out what that looks like.

13:15

We are called to not be conformed to this world. God wants us to use our gifts and talents.

“Non conformity doesn’t mean uniformity.”

13;30

On the 2007 fire that destroyed his home and many other homes–leaving about 100 families with nowhere to sleep and live. Shane was left in need within the community he helped.

The very surprising statement the Red Cross relief worker told him.

14:00

There are 700 abandon factories and 20,00 abandon houses nearby.

15:30

Their community has built a park, a greenhouse, green spaces for gardens. See photos at TheSimpleWay.org

16:20

How the neighborhood pulled together after the devastating fire of 2007.

16:40

Shane:
As Jesus said, “Don’t worry about tomorrow. Don’t stock up your treasure that moths… and fires… can burn up and destroy.”

17:10

Ministry is mutual and if we don’t have needs we can’t be blessed. (Lisa)

18:30

One of Shane’s favorite quotes:

“If you’ve just come to help me, you’re wasting your time. But, if you’ve come because your survival and mine are bound up together, then let’s hold hands and we’ll work together.”

18:40

This quote comes in and corrects the posture by which we’ve often come on a mission to help people and thinking with a wrong perspective.

19:20

His friend says, “We are born on third base, but we think we’ve hit a triple.”

21:30

We don’t need has much as we think we do.

21:40

On Shane’s take of the story of “the rich young ruler”:
He wants to inherit the kingdom (entitlement thinking).

(QUICK LINK: Read the short Bible story HERE.)

22:10

“For folks that are independent and self-sustaining it’s hard for us to know that we need God and other people.”

22:30

Independence is not a gospel value. We need interdependence. It’s good to need other people and to need God.”

23:30

Besides people wondering what happened to his dreadlocks, people ask Shane this question the most.

24:20

Sometimes we have to challenge our location. (The places) where we (live) end up or are built around (that which) counters (opposes) gospel values. Like “suburban sprawl” which was created to get away from the urban problems (we should work to fix) and keep us from doing good for others who need it most.

It’s about living a life, not where we do great things, but where we do small things with great love (Mother Teresa). It’s not how much we do, but how much love we put into every act (of serving God).

25:00

We must ask:

What are my skills and passions and how might they connect to this world’s pain and injustice?

Whether it’s being a doctor, lawyer, plumber, or whatever, simply do your part.

26:00

What REALLY happens to the “dreds”.


 

Thank you, Shane! Blessings to you and your work. May we find our place to do good too.


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Want to answer the Question of the Day?

QOTD: What is the “Calcutta” near you and what gift might you bring to it ?

(okay, that WAS technically two questions.)

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient

AofHippoLate have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

-Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 CE

 

This quote is a lovely reflection of the pursuing God, the God that brings peace and wholeness. And in tasting that wholeness and love we long to be ever-filled by such goodness

What touched you about it?

 

image from here: truthworks.org

Protected: Discernment Series: Lent, Fasting, and Discernment, part 1

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Post-election Teachable-moments

Some people are relieved today. I see a lot of joy on Twitter, “You are wonderful. We love you Obama!”

White males took a shellacking and there’ll be gun sales to prove it.

But the victory is a short and really a bitter-sweet one, if anything. The troubles the mire this country are severe.

We must look for ways to love each other no matter how we voted.

I’ve talked to people who are hurting. I live in PA Coal Country. Largely white and low income. A great many get government assistance. The local Walmart is a mad house the days government checks are distributed. Companies are laying off and shutting down, too. For good. So many can’t find work that’s better that we they get with government checks. Some want to expand their little businesses but have low profits, no way to borrow money, and no way to provide what the government mandates if they expand.

Will people be too squeezed to give to charity? I worry about that. Will white people resent black people more and vice versa? That is not okay. Will hatred and divisions increase? We need to heal these rifts. How do we do this?

For my family, it’s the unstoppable incremental demise of making a few hundred dollars too much to be poor, and never really having the chance to make enough to be better off. It’s very precarious for my family. I didn’t have that much confidence in Romney, but I’d hoped the last four years wouldn’t lay waste to the area in which I live. Maybe it’s different for you, but. I see people begging for positive change and improvement, but none is in sight. That’s why people are so ramped up. No matter who’s President, when wages freeze, and food and fuel prices go up, the middle class suffers and deteriorates.

America spent 2.6 billion on the status quo. I shutter at that maddening thought. I can’t even clearly picture in my mind 1 billion dollars, can you? Just a portion of that would alleviate poverty for most.

16 Trillion dollars is out-of-balance. Again, this number is so large as to be meaningless. But what it means in a way that matters is that the interest to pay the debt back to China and others propping us up will ascend, and then the banks will tighten and investing will make little sense. Thus, prices will spike on everything.

I think there is a dear consequence to this path. The path both parties have been party to. Our national priorities aren’t sane. What a strange time and place we live in.

When people talk smack of God’s judgement they think in terms of demise. Maybe fire, or storms, or flood, or nuclear war. But, that isn’t how it works. God doesn’t get in our way.

We suffer not so much for the come-and-go leaders we pick, but for the way we’ve made our way.  That is, natural and obvious consequences: Go into debt, lose your credibility. That sort of thing.

I mourn that times will be tougher, and not really for me, but for those who are already poor. Kids lose out. I’ve see it already for several years. Around here, their parents buy alcohol, or lottery tickets, or cigarettes or other items (TVs, clothes, phones, guns, “toys”) to cope and they don’t keep enough money for food and essentials. Well, the assistance money isn’t food stamps in books (like it was when my mom needed for us, mid-1980s, when my dad ditched us for a while), it’s just a credit card looking thing. I’ve seen it used at McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts. That makes the money run out very quickly. Most run out in a week or two. They tell their kids to wait for school to eat. I’ve seen kids run, not walk, but run to get their free meal at school on a Monday morning, because they’ve hardly eaten all weekend. And these parents need not change their habits. It’s heartbreaking.

People who’ve helped others before will no doubt hunker down and use their energy and resources for self-preservation. Others with means will leave it to the government to remedy, and fail to care. It’s messed up.

And also I know, for sure I know, that struggles produce character.

Those who grew up in the Great Depression were made of stronger stuff. (see photo. Look at the girl’s eyes.) They tried harder and accomplished more, more for their children than themselves usually. They had a revived spirituality, that we’ve now replaced with entertainment consumption.

We’ve had great abundance in America. And, if we don’t have it, we’ll learn from that.  It’s not just about the economy. It’s not about a political party. We’ll learn to be good in deeper ways and give when it hurts. Isn’t that when love is made more manifest? We’ll keep trying. We are resilient.

And remember this too:

Perfect love casts out fear.

O’ God,

Give us your peace. 

If our hope be dimmed, light it with your Presence.

Create in us the stuff that you are made of,

Love, Grace, Hope, Peace

Relieve us from our bitterness and fear.

Heal us, deeply. Inside.

Comfort us who are downcast and weary.

Give us joy in your salvation

And eternal and internal peace that only you provide.

Amen.