National Cohousing Conference

This past weekend I attended an outstanding conference, one at which over 350 intelligent optimists gathered to advance a movement that is at the forefront of transforming our world. The 2009 National Cohousing Conference is the national conference for those who already live in cohousing, who are currently seeking a community, and professionals serving cohousing communities to learn new ways to "grow community." I attended as a neophyte, a newcomer with a desire to learn about cohousing – exploring the idea of living in community.

Cohousing is a type of collaborative housing in which residents actively participate in the design and operation of their own neighborhoods. More importantly, active participation requires that people work together and working together is a key ingredient to ‘community glue’, an ingredient that binds individuals together and enables them to achieve a higher purpose. In many ways, the product of community glue is social capital. ‘Social capital’ makes communities better places to live. It is mutually respectful relationships, connectedness and trustworthiness among people. It’s also networks and involvement. The term social capital was coined by social scientist James Coleman to describe community ties, and Robert Putnam furthered popularized this research in his book, Bowling Alone.

My primary interest in cohousing can be summed up in two words; missional sustainability. I’m increasingly convinced that climate change is a health issue affecting billions of people, not just an environmental issue about polar bears and deforestation. The impacts will largely be on the poor and not in the distant future. We will experience the affects within my lifetime and extreme affects in the lifetimes of our children. Climate change will have its greatest effect on those who have the least access to the world’s resources and who have contributed least to its cause. Without mitigation and adaptation, it will increase health inequity especially through negative effects on the social determinants of health in the poorest communities. Couple climate change with ‘peak oil’ and I clearly see the need to get serious and ‘work’ to transform the consumption based and individualistic culture I have so easily become a part of. Since it is clear that I contribute to the cause and that I have the ability to take personal action, doing nothing creates a high degree of cognitive dissonance in my missionally shaped mind.

Besides, even if all this stuff isn't happening, we can make better choices anyway and live a different story, the story of the kingdom of God on earth. On with the journey...

The Kingdom of God on This Earth

I few years ago, I read This Beautiful Mess and it stoked an already smoldering fire to re-examine my understanding of the kingdom of God. In this book, Rick McKinley defines the kingdom of God as the “living, breathing presence and purpose and reign of God on our planet." His writings also make it clear that the "kingdom is already beautifully present in our flawed world and…Jesus invites us as His flawed people to respond.” For many years, I had thought that I was at least partly responsible to bring the kingdom of God to earth. Seeing the kingdom as already here was not something that I grasped. In fact, there seemed to be abundant evidence to the contrary. Since then, I've grown to believe that the way to make our world a better place is to believe in and be active participants in a different story, the story of the kingdom of God on earth. The difference may not be readily apparent, but this shift has profoundly altered my life.

McKinley writes about “two gospels” - the gospel of Jesus and the gospel about Jesus: "The gospel of Jesus is usually taken to mean His announcement of the kingdom and the life He embodied in His loving actions toward the world. The gospel about Jesus refers to His atoning work on the cross and His resurrection, through which we can receive the forgiveness of sin through our faith and repentance.”

As I reflect on my past, I would say that I had based much of my world view on the gospel about Jesus. I knew who Jesus was, I knew what Jesus did, I knew that because of Jesus - God loved me unconditionally, and I accepted Jesus into my heart. All of this, I still know and hold very dear. In no way would it be correct to say that I have left the gospel about Jesus behind.

Instead, I have come to more fully embrace the gospel of Jesus in combination with the gospel about Jesus. The simplest way that I can say this is that I understand Jesus to be the king of His kingdom and I worship Jesus as my king as I choose to live in His kingdom, the kingdom of God on this earth. Living in His kingdom, under His rule, has opened my eyes to the holistic nature of the place that I live. Things that I once saw as mundane, just resources, or just messes - I now see as beautiful aspects of God's kingdom to be valued, cherished, explored, and to be entered into.

I'm thankful for my Malaysia experiences and the experiences traveling with Compassion. These experiences helped me see the gospel about Jesus as the "gospel for the offended against" and the gospel of Jesus as the “gospel for the offender.” I realized that I had been focused largely on what I needed - the “gospel for the offender” (the forgiveness of sins). This is because I had little experience with being offended against. As I came to be with and know more people who were offended against, my heart was opened to Jesus' loving actions for the larger world, the world of the we - not just the me.

So for me;

- the gospel about Jesus is the key that opens the door to the kingdom of God on earth. His atoning work on the cross and His resurrection, through which we can receive the forgiveness of sin through our faith and repentance, enables me to see that Jesus is lord. Wholehearted acceptance of the gospel about Jesus lifts my oppression and allows me to enter in.

- the gospel of Jesus is the key to seeing and participating in the kingdom of God on earth. The life He embodied in His loving actions toward the world are the same loving actions I can take. But, His kingdom can be seen and I can participate only when I place Jesus on the throne of my life and follow Him as King of the kingdom He brought to earth, as well as, the King of my life.

We become active and accountable citizens in His kingdom. We see His kingdom, we joyously bow down to Him as King of this kingdom. We become full participates and work as servants of the King to maintain and restore His Kingdom on earth. We see how precious His kingdom is, how connected we are to it, and we align our lives to His kingdom. At first, this seems altruistic - maybe even against our own interests, then we realize that we are one with His kingdom and His kingship is good news for all.

Cause and Effect

This graphic was published in the May 16 edition of The Lancet: Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change. One can clearly see who causes climate related health problems and who pays the price.

As someone with a missional worldview, it is hard to look at this chart without getting upset with myself and my community. How can I/we continue to say we care, if we don't take action.

Doubt & Faith (Fox or Hedgehog)

My friend and I recently had an interesting conversion about doubt and faith. We've come to the conclusion that without doubt, our faith can tend towards a know-it-all form of arrogance and without faith, we cannot truly participate in the story of the kingdom of God on earth.

Doubt stokes our internal wonderment, a desire for learning and growth - leading to change and development. The absent of doubt, leads to a feeling of superiority - a form of unteachable pride. Jesus teaches us to guard against this, we are to be humble and I think our humbleness helps to ensure we remain teachable. This humbleness enables us to be free to question our assumptions and is an antidote for our prejudices and predispositions.

Elton Trueblood said, "Faith is not belief without proof, but trust with reservations." I have faith because I see the proof of God's love towards his creation all around us, as Saint Paul states in Romans 1:20; "for since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made."

Faith coupled with doubt enables us to explore all of God's created world and continually realign ourselves with the story of the kingdom of God on earth. We can refuse to settle into the pattern of a hedgehog thinker as explained in Philip Tetlock's, Expert Political Judgment:

Hedgehog thinkers are thinkers who "know one big thing," aggressively extend the explanatory reach of that one big thing into new domains, display bristly impatience with those who "do not get it," and express considerable confidence that they are already pretty proficient forecasters, at least in the long term.

Enabled by faith, our freedom to doubt lets us take advantage of what Tetlock calls fox like thinking;

Being thinkers who know many small things (tricks of their trade), are skeptical of grand schemes, see explanation and prediction not as deductive exercises but rather as exercises in flexible "ad hocery" that require stitching together diverse sources of information, and are rather diffident about their own forecasting prowess.

Hospitality for Children in a Homeless Situation

Another great opportunity to show compassion to children is coming up soon. This will be the second time that our church community has had the privilege to volunteer with Interfaith Hospitality Network (IHN). It’s a great opportunity to live missionally and serve children who are in a homeless situation.

IHN provides homeless families with children a safe, homelike shelter where that family can stay together and share meals, as parents work with a case manager to acquire employment and affordable housing, regain independence and self-sufficiency.

There are five basic components to an IHN program:

• Hosts – Families are hosted by local congregations, who provide lodging, meals, and welcoming care.
  
• Day Center – During the day, guests use the day center – where a specially trained employee provides case management services. All the day center guests are encouraged to pursue employment and affordable housing, tend to preschool children, shower, and do laundry. The day center provides guests with a mailing address and a base for housing and employment searches. Some guests are employed during the day, while older children attend school.
  
• Volunteers – This is where we play a vital role:
  o Cooking and serving meals
  o Playing with children or helping them with homework
  o Interacting with guests, with respect and compassion
  
• Social Service Agencies – Local social service agencies refer families to IHN and also nay help guests find housing, jobs, and benefits.
  
• Transportation – The IHN van is available to transport guests to and from the day center.

The benefits to volunteers, congregations, and the community are numerous. As I see it, the benefits can all be summed up by one word compassion; "to bear with" or "to suffer with” - actively. Watch this short video and I think you’ll get an idea why I think IHN is a good opportunity to Live Missionally.

Trading Down is Trading Up

During the last two weeks, I've listened to two distinctly different articles on NPR. One that I believe reflects the behaviors of the past and one that gives me the audacity to hope for a better future.

The first piece was authored by the Cato Institute, and was heard on Marketplace Morning Report. In Don't Be Frugal To Follow Recession Chic; Commentator Will Wilkinson says that if you can, you should keep spending. Essentially, the folks at the Cato Institute want us to believe that by not consuming all we can, we are actually hurting others. So the best thing to do is live it up to help get the economy going. Help your neighbor by purchasing all the stuff you can afford — just like you've were doing before the economic crisis. No need to worry, just take care of your wants and the free market will take care of the rest.

The second piece aired on the Christmas Morning Edition Show. For Junky Car Club, Charity Begins In The Garage; Mike Foster — a former sports car owner who now sponsors four children through Compassion International, speaks about car owners who have traded down from pricey cars to junkers and use the extra cash for charity. Mike didn't suggest that we give up driving, he simply strives to live a life based more on the common good and less on conspicuous consumption.

Clearly we need more of the type of actions modeled by Mr. Foster and less of the ideas espoused by the Cato Institute. On Christmas, it was good to hear a hoped filled example of how making little changes to our lifestyle can help bring grace and justice to our hurting world.

A Prayer for a New President and a New America

I just finished reading one of the best magazines that Sojourners has ever published. If you don't currently read Sojourners, you're really missing out on magazine that is a great guide for those who seek to discover the intersection of faith, politics, and culture.

The Cover Story for the January 2009 issue, is entitled Dear President Obama; Memos to the new president from political, cultural, and religious leaders. All of these memos are sincere and thought provoking. Of all the memos I read, Shane Claiborne's prayer entry was the most thought provoking. While I would have preferred to have Jesus for President, Barrack Obama was my second choice, so I'll commit to pray for our New President and use this prayer as a guide.

A Prayer for a New President and a New America

God of love, grace, and hope, thank you for creating a perfect world. Forgive us for the mess we have made of it. Forgive us for the groaning of creation, for the millions who die of hunger and curable diseases, for warehousing people in prisons and using them for labor, for the scandal of billions wasted in war, for an economy that mirrors the seven deadly sins, for the violence and greed in our own hearts. Save us from ourselves.

Give us the courage to bless the poor in a world that blesses the middle class, to bless the meek in a world that admires aggression, to bless the hungry in a world that feeds the already fed, to bless the merciful in a world that shows no mercy on evildoers, to bless the pure in heart in a world of clutter and noise, to bless the peacemakers in a world that baptizes bombs.

Give us imagination that we might not conform to the patterns of this world, that we might shatter indifference and interrupt injustice with grace, that we might choose the cross over the sword, that we might be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves, that we might consider the lilies and sparrows as they shame Wall Street's splendor, that we might choose the dream of God over the dreams of nations, that we might cling to the God who so loved the world, not just America, that we might allow our Jesus to change America rather than America to change our Jesus.

Shane Claiborne is a founding partner of The Simple Way, a radical faith community in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. He is the co-author, with Chris Haw, of Jesus for President.