inspiral blog

As part of the lectionary reading for this week was, “At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.” So we handed today over to Chelsea and Ella to decide how we’d explore God.

Chelsea decided on four questions:

1. What has Jesus said to you this week?
2. Who do you love?
3. How do you feel?
4. Draw prayers.

All of these were answered or explored using either coloured pencils and paper, or playdough, or both.

I think we did pretty well for a bunch of old people.

Started with the context of the passage – that of child sacrifice and the history of sacrifice in Jewish culture (this is the first sacrifice on Mt Moriah, which becomes the site of the temple). Discussion ranged over a whole lot of territory, from Girard’s mimetic violence theory to this speculative version of the story by William Loader where Abraham goes through with the sacrifice.

We finished by asking ourselves what sacrifices we make (both to false gods and the true God) and whether God actually requires them of us.

Discussion centred around the call to “not be ashamed”, with many of us expressing the misunderstandings inherent in terms such as “Christian” or “church” for the average punter, especially those of us whose circles are not friendly to such ideas. Finished with an acknowledgment of the potential relational costs of fidelity to Christ.

Thus Jesus sends his disciples out to go, not to “all the world” but only to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”. So we could get a sense of what this must have been like I sent everyone out (including myself) with the same instructions…what would we come up with?

Well, firstly it was like being thrown in the deep end when you can’t swim – I imagine not unlike how the disciples (or apostles actually) might have felt. Then it was just plain difficult to figure out what it meant for us, now, in suburban Brunswick.

So we wrestled for a while with the implications – is raising the dead really that simple? – but then came back to the context of the passage. Jesus sends them out to “proclaim the good news – the Kingdom of Heaven has come near!” and then asks them to be signs of that new Kingdom – a Kingdom where there is new life in that which seems dead, where the sick are healed, the outcasts restored, and demons flee. That may look a little different where we are, but they’re all things we can do right here and now.

Focussed on the lectionary readings this week, including the stories of Abram’s call and obedience, further expounded in the Romans passage, and then onto the call of Levi followed by the sandwiched stories of the synagogue leader’s daughter and the woman with the bleeding. Fantastic post on that stuff here. Mainly focussed on the fact that Abram, Levi, etc had lots of potential excuses for not obeying, but managed (by faith) to push past them…so what are our excuses for not being obedient to the call of God on our lives? We brainstormed a bunch of them and determined to find ways to push past them by starting small.

Started this week with a party to celebrate of Mark’s 6 months of sobriety. Great effort mate, and great to be able to celebrate the milestone as a mob. A ’6′ party complete with gifts of a ’6′ nature – from a 6 cake to my 6 (squared) reasons for celebrating 6, including:

Reason #8: It’s the maximum number of degrees of separation everyone in the world is from Kevin Bacon.
Reason #4: It’s the number of ways inside Robert Smith’s (of The Cure fame) heart.
Reason #20: It’s the number of geese a layin’.

Then we proceeded with the home blessing for Dunstan St, following a similar liturgy to the one we did for Chris and Jane’s house in August last year, including the giving of gifts.

Finally after dinner an intense, difficult, but great conversation ensued about community expectations and hopes and fears.

Since the lectionary reading this week was the famous “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink…” from the Sermon on the Mount, I decided it was time to introduce dumpster diving as a practical way we can enter the abundant economy of God (while helping reduce some of the waste of the world’s economy). More on dumpster diving can be found here, if you’re not familiar with it, and we used the article here to provoke discussion. Megan led most of it, which was great as dd isn’t something I’ve done a lot of (a bit, but not a lot), and her friend Karen chipped in too. But it looks like something we’ll be able to do a lot more often.

That was followed by some useful discussion about the economy of God – what is it like? How deep do we go into poverty before it’s “enough”? How much is too much to own? Is superannuation anathematic to the Kingdom? All these questions and more were batted around. Finally we were left with the fact that living into the Kingdom, particularly for we wealthy, privileged westerners, is a process that takes time. So we’d best be patient and gracious with ourselves, lest it become yet another form of legalism.

This week we explored the idea of the Trinity. It’s a tricky day, Trinity Sunday, the only feast day that celebrates a doctrine (and a fairly complex and mysterious one at that). So we decided we’d re-run the Arian controversy to explore some of the ideas that surround it.

Team Arius argued that Jesus could not have been divine, and that the Trinity was therefore made up of a hierarchy of subordinates (Father, then Son, then Holy Spirit). Team Athanasius tried to argue for an equal, communal trinity.

Having thus butchered history and theology in one fell swoop, what we discovered is how difficult the Trinity is to argue for in any objective sense. It’s clearly about an experience of God, or a description of an experience, and thankfully one into which we’re all invited.

We spent some time looking at two readings, and what stood out for us was the practice of unity in diversity – that Pentecost was essentially the undoing of Babel, where everyone was separated and scattered, and the 1 Corinthians passage is about a bunch of different people all being part of the one body…so, the Spirit inspires unity not in a monoculture, but in diversity. And so as a small way of beginning a Pentecost here in our own community (which is remarkably ethnically diverse), we spent some time chalking our streets with the phrase “one in spirit” in the different languages of those who live around here. We had the phrase in English, Italian, Greek, Farsi, Arabic and Hebrew. So here are some of the results:

My friend Harry from Peace Tree in Perth asked me today how I’d describe our life together, and in doing so gave me an excuse to sit with the question for a minute and spend some time writing about it. So here’s what I told Harry – it’s my take, so others can feel free to differ!

Our ‘life together’ (ah, bonhoeffer)…is kind of just beginning in many ways, but still very much building on my experiences of the last three years. At present our official scheduled times of meeting together are Tuesday and Sunday, where we eat together. Sundays we explore/wrestle with the lectionary readings, and Tuesdays are generally devoted to someone telling their life story. A life story will mostly go for about 2 and a half hours and is perhaps one of the most sacred things we do because people are so brutally and vulnerably honest. We started doing them again recently so that (with some new people having jumped on board more recently) we could all get to know each other very deeply relatively quickly. We’ve almost got through everyone now, and once we have we’ll start focussing on hospitality specifically with our Tuesday dinners (though that’s happening anyway). The main idea is that we start developing some intentional nonviolent practices that will enable us to do conflict well and explore each others shadow sides and keep each other accountable. There’s been some good signs already in this respect, but it’s darn hard work just to undo a lot of deeply ingrained habits. The queries and advices stuff has been useful with that.

When I say we, I reckon about half of our mob are now living in proximity, the other half not too far away, but we’ve (loosely) defined the proximity thing as the distance you’d carry a ladder (we have a good ladder, and wanting to share possessions means carrying it between houses a lot!) So everyone’s welcome to be involved in everything, whether you live in proximity or not, but practically it’s going to be more difficult for others to be involved in the deeper shared life of those in close proximity. We’re pretty much just dropping around to each other’s houses whenever we feel like it.

We’re also a surprisingly diverse group – from 6 day literal creationists, to a Muslim, to very new Christians, to intellectually disabled people, to burnt out former church leaders, with one convicted criminal thrown in (me) – yikes! it’s all a bit much to hold together sometimes. But we’re managing, with a strong core group, to hold some of that diversity without needing to create rigid boundaries. It’s come down to Thoreau’s “If you think a man does wrong, do right; but do not care to convince him. Men believe what they see.” (same goes for women, I would venture ) Which sits well with the whole Gandhian notion of “experiments with truth” for me, which is about seeing what emerges when your truths clash while being aware of the power dynamics within the group. The main thing is being self-aware of our own power, which I’m pretty (insanely) paranoid about.

So mostly it’s things like sharing possessions like tools, gardening together, getting involved with our neighbours, providing hospitality for people visiting Melbourne or otherwise struggling for accommodation, and deepening relationships with each other so that real community (as opposed to pseudo community ala scott peck) is built. I’m starting to get involved half a day a week at a boarding house for people with mental illness and intellectual disabilities, which is about 300 metres down the road (already know lots of residents). So it’s mostly just doing gardening with the residents, and others of the mob may do the same. They have a greenhouse – woo hoo! – and lots of worm farms. I’m not sure who’s doing better out of that deal, me or them.

This week (with the third house now set up) we’re going to discuss what other spiritual disciplines we might be able to set up in a sustainable way (particularly prayer/liturgy together).

We also have lovely informal connections with similar groups (from the Seeds mobs that have emerged out of Urban Seed, to The Cave, Loam, Jahworks etc.) that form a broad network, which I find stimulating and inspiring.

So when I really stop and reflect on it, we’ve come a long way in three years. We’re very obviously imperfect, but I’m encouraged by the direction we’re taking.