Danielle Shroyer

If people like Pete Rollins, Chris Haw, Karen Sloan and a bunch of neo-monastics are your kind of people, you need to go to the Peace by Piece conference in two weeks.  It’s incredibly affordable, and you can find cheap fares on Southwest if you’re anywhere nearby.  I’m really looking forward to my time there, eager to hear from small communities doing the kind of quietly noble things that get few headlines but churn out a remarkable amount of justice, peace, grace, and other such gifts.   I’m also really excited about experiencing VOID, an experimental faith collective (similar to Pete’s IKON community in Ireland) located in Waco and facilitated by my friend Adam.

I’ll be offering up some thoughts of my own in two sessions- one on managing conflict and practicing peace in community, and another on doing sustainable justice in small faith communities.  Otherwise I’ll be scribbling notes and soaking up some fresh perspectives on how to go about the daily work of guiding a group of Jesus followers- and trying to live like one.

So what are you waiting for?  Go register, come meet new people, and come hear stories of hope from the front lines.

We’ve been discussing the Didache at Journey, and last night we had an interesting conversation about the verse “Abstain from fleshly and bodily lusts” (1:4).  I know-  you think you can guess what follows this.  But you’d be wrong.  Here’s what the Didache says immediately following that verse:  ”If someone strikes your right cheek, turn the other also, and be perfect.  If someone forces you to go one mile, go two.  If someone takes your cloak, give also your coat.  If someone takes from you what is yours, don’t ask for it back.  You really cannot.”

Leave it to the early church to remind us that retaliation, violence, hoarding and greed are “fleshly and bodily lusts” unbecoming to Jesus followers.

Another strand of our conversation came around the idea of these “forces” of discord, conflict, ungraciousness being described in a way that one of our community members, Misty, called “primal.”  We are like tigers crouching, eager to pounce in our attempt to gain power or control over any number of things.  One look through the headlines and in our own mirrors and this sounds about right.

Just to balance that sobering reality with a little hope (you know me, I’m in the hope business), here’s another thing about us that is primal:  altruism.  My husband forwarded this NY Times article to me and I found it quite fascinating.  Here’s a snippet:

Brain scans by neuroscientists confirm that altruism carries its own rewards. A team including Dr. Jorge Moll of the National Institutes of Health found that when a research subject was encouraged to think of giving money to a charity, parts of the brain lit up that are normally associated with selfish pleasures like eating or sex.

The implication is that we are hard-wired to be altruistic.

Of course, I attribute this to being created in the image of an altruistic God.  This doesn’t mean that we still don’t have struggles with the crouching power-hungry tiger that often lives inside of us, but it does mean that we are absolutely capable of choosing, in the Didache’s words, the way of life.  And wouldn’t you know it- we are even happier when we do so.

Every once in a while, when I’m doing something I do regularly, I’ll have this moment where I realize how strange and odd it is that I am doing it.  This morning it happened in yoga class.  I go there every week.  I’ve practiced yoga for years.  But today, for whatever reason, I was sitting there exhaling (you know, when you make the noise that shows you are exhaling properly and it sounds a little like ghosts screaming at a low pitch), in a group of forty people I don’t know, wearing minimalist clothing, and I thought, “This is absolutely the craziest thing.”  And yet, that is what makes yoga class worthwhile.  I might do sun salutations at home by myself, but no home exercise routine will ever match the one I have when I sweat alongside strangers for ninety minutes once a week.  There is something categorically different in the way I practice just by choosing to do this very weird thing of practicing in front of mirrors with other people.

Sometimes, my husband will be sitting on the couch in the evening and he will look at my dog and then look at me and say, “Seriously- we have a small furry animal who lives in our house.”  That has nothing to do with yoga, or church.  But isn’t it true?  Who thought of such a thing?!  And yet, we love having strange animals creeping around our house.  We think nothing of it.  You may let your pet sleep in your bed- your BED!  Furry animal who used to live in the wild long ago- snuggled up against you and shedding their furry hair onto your sheets.  And you don’t even bat an eye.

I feel this weirdness sometimes while singing at Journey on Sunday nights.  Think about it- you are sitting in a room with people singing songs about faith and God and other important things about life.  Together.  Out loud.  Even if you have a bad voice.  And nobody thinks it’s weird.  People don’t normally sing together like that from day to day.  Aside from concerts or the occasional flash mob, we don’t find it normal for people to just start singing aloud together en masse.

And when do we ever go around reciting the same words together like we do when we pray together? (Maybe taking the Pledge of Allegiance as a child? Or that oath of sportsmanship my son says before he plays soccer?)  At any rate, these are weird things people do in groups- things that otherwise would be noticeably strange, but have become routine and ordinary for our communal life together.

I have friends who believe these things are strange enough as to not be worth their time any longer.  One time a friend said to me, “I don’t need to sing with people I don’t know to follow God.”  I can see her point.  But I can also see the point of doing weird things in groups.  Whatever dynamic it creates is powerful enough to pull me to yoga class and our community gatherings every Sunday.  Being together changes the way I practice my yoga as well as my faith.  Something happens when I join the chorus of ghost-hums with strangers around me while in a pose.  I get stronger, I can hold the pose longer, I can push a little more.  Something happens when we cobble our voices together into the air on Sunday nights and dip our little bits of bread into the same cup and place our hands on people while closing our eyes and talking out loud to a God we can’t see.  Something happens when we all grab hands (weird!) and stick our chins up in the air and hear words that send us out to be bearers of love in the world.  We are breathing together, pulling our lives together with the lives of the people around us, gazing in the same direction, even if just for a brief moment.  I get stronger, and a little more hopeful, and I feel this embodied sense of support as I try to walk the way of life.  I enjoy looking around the room and knowing that, for this moment, we are all holding each other together, even though we will spend much of the week apart.

I’m sure I’ll still have moments when I find it weird (because it is)- but I hope they are followed by moments where I remember it is also mysteriously wonderful.  Like having a small furry creature wandering the halls of our house.

This weekend my husband and I went to go see the movie Avatar.  Neither of us had high expectations, other than that it was to be a virtual feast (literally) of cinematic tricks.  On that expectation it delivered far beyond what I could have imagined; the world of Pandora was absolutely breathtaking.  I distinctly recognized a feeling of delightfulness and awe very similar to the one I remembered feeling when watching The Neverending Story as a child.  (Remember that scene where Bastian is riding through the sky on Falcor?)  And yes, I realize this only proves what many of us heard on NPR- that Avatar is a conglomerate of pieces from stories and movies we’ve heard before- but what isn’t?  The genius of the movie is that Cameron combines these elements in such compelling fashion.

This morning I saw this article reporting that some people have suffered depression after watching the movie.  As it turns out, Pandora is a compelling place to want to move, and the fact that it cannot be accessed in reality has created tension and depression for people who feel discontent with the life they do have.  Of course, in the article (and in the subsequent Tweets and FB posts about it) this is spoken of in such a way as to be considered either ludicrous or silly.  I’m not convinced.

I could probably write a number of posts about my theological musings during this movie (and yes, I am geeky enough to watch movies and dissect them theologically, all the time, ad nauseum).  The story of a struggle to find one’s rightful identity, even when it’s among people who could not be more foreign to you, sounds rather akin to Epiphany, for starters.  It’s always shocking to find your home somewhere that seems so very far from where you came- and to risk so much to travel there without knowing how it will turn out.

Part of what those people in the movie theater experienced was tension with parts of the world they didn’t want to be part of anymore.  And though none of them were specific, I’d guess the list would be things like greed and imperialism and a total lack of humility.  Why would it ever be bad to feel a deep, almost depressing desire to move away from that and toward something more life-giving?  Isn’t this why each of us has taken up the path of faith?  Isn’t this what “conversion” means- to turn from one way of life towards another way of life?

Granted, I don’t find the idea of running away from the reality of our world helpful.  I don’t think playing hours of the Avatar video game is going to do anything helpful for anyone.  And I certainly refuse to say that this world, despite its flaws, is beyond changing.  If we feel that tension, it is our responsibility to resolve it not by walking away but by engaging and pushing and trying.  But I want to affirm that these inclinations, this desire for a better kind of world, even and maybe because it looks so different from the one in which we live, sounds a lot like the quest for that place where the Realm of God is made complete among us.  It sounds like the first step in conversion, where it dawns on you that a better way is possible, and you may not be currently walking that better way, and you may be ready to start trying.  I wouldn’t want to relieve that tension for anyone.  That’s holy tension, and without it, the world would never change.

The idea of a place where we seek to live as those connected with God and with all that God has created is not exactly a new idea, James Cameron.  But thank you for igniting our imaginations with strange, tall, blue people who remind us that it’s beautiful enough and compelling enough to actually try to make real.

Three cheers for Epiphany!  Today is the day we remember the story of the wise men/magi/camel-riding, gift-bearing mystery men from the East who traveled halfway across the known world to visit the Christ Child.  I love the day so much I devoted an entire chapter to it in my book.  Here’s a snippet:

“Most people who know this story [of Epiphany] zoom right past it, as if it’s a window display they have seen before.  They have not stopped to peer inside, to notice the details, and to consider what it indicates about where the story of God might be heading.  For most, these men and their camels are simply pieces people use to populate their nativity scenes, making the Jesus-in-the-manger barn scene look more crowded and important.  Very few realize what a grandiose political statement it is to place ceramic painted figurines of pagan men holding gifts in front of this Jewish king.  It is not simply holiday cheer; it is a prophetic statement about the kind of world God is creating.  …Epiphany is the declaration that God is not just God of the Israelites but God of foreign pagan astrologers, too.  Though God’s activity in the world began with one family, Jesus’ kingship begins with one world.”

W.H. Auden’s poem “For the Time Being” is quite long, but part of it chronicles the story of these strange travelers from the East.  The last line of that section says, ”To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.”  Despite all that separates us- time, geography, culture, even in this case religion- we all find a common home under our quest to live wholly human lives.  This Epiphany eve, I’m giving thanks for the Child who brings us together in such beautifully unexpected ways, and who shows us the way home to true humanity.