Since at least 1948, the cultural answer for conflict in Colombia has been violence. The guerrillas want power, the cartels want power, the government wants power. The only way to achieve it is to kill anyone standing in your way. In similar stories to thousands of others in conflict countries – there are few other lives provided to the citizens of Colombia than to participate in the cycle. So the question – which I pose as a social worker and a person of faith – is where is hope? How can things ever change?

During my weeks in Colombia this summer, I had the privilege of spending time with inmates in two of the prisons in Medellin. After a morning in Bellavista, I scribbled down some thoughts that I haven’t known how to share. As we move towards the new year, I want to process the events of my year. The one which I have processed the least is my time in Colombia, so the trend should start there. After several failed attempts of crafting my scribbles into something larger, I am simply going to offer them in their entirety.

Upon entering Bellavista and after being fingerprinted and patted down, we walked past the soccer field. That field is where they used to play futbol with other inmate’s heads. Bellavista, you see, was once the most dangerous prison in the world. The stories I heard that day of its ‘heyday’ would turn anyone’s stomach. Now, however, it’s controlled. My friend Weimar tells me the most dangerous now is in Venezuela. Anyway, we walked through the courtyard and up the stairs, being jubilantly greeting by prisoners and guards alike. I was even invited to play chess! We were lead up a narrow flight of stairs to a room full of school chairs. Discarded clothes laid neatly upon them – the men had changed their for their upcoming baptisms.

I stood in a room reserved for reconciliation counseling and restorative justice and drank in the juxtapositions of healing, freedom and barbed wire.

After being offered coffee – yes, hospitality is holy even in prison – we were lead into the ‘temple’. Built and maintained by the prisoners, their church building is a bright room with plastic chairs and proclamations of their faith painted on the walls. I should explain here – the churhces in Bellavista are organized by patio (cell block). We met the pastor of this particular patio, a gentleman named Carlos. He was serving time for homicide, but like so many others found a new life while in prison. He explained that 15 men would be baptized that morning. Each had been led to faith by a fellow prisoner and each had been through a class before being allowed to make the confession.

The worship service was already happening – deeply off tune but achingly passionate singing filled the temple. I could actually feel their need to tell God how much they loved him and who he was to them; tangible joy overwhelmed me.

A baby pool was brought in filled with water. One by one the men were called forward. In white robes, they loudly confessed their faith in the living Christ. The pastor proclaimed that they were burried in Christ and raised by the Spirit as two staff members of the prison ministry dunked them under the water. And with that simple action, they demonstrated a change that had already begun.

We talk a lot in faith circles about change which must come with confession. I’ve rarely seen it demonstrated as strongly as I did that morning. Those men who were sentenced for heinous crimes stood up and rejected the plan for life their culture provided. They chose no to perpetual violence and yes to mercy and grace. They chose no to the cycle that runs through Colombia like a disease run amok and chose yes to reconciled life. It was possibly the holiest thing I’ve witnessed.

several years ago, my life shifted dramatically. in the midst of the emotional debris from that shift, mike stepped in and offered hope; that hope has since taken the form of the onion. mike and his sweet family are key parts of my life here in waco and i cannot imagine it without them. the only one of my close favorites who is in full-time vocational ministry, mike always offers valuable insights from that section of his life which i am grateful for. he doesn’t blog, but after reading this entry, i am sure you will join me in encouraging him to!

The scene is more lowly than idyllic.  A child has been born and wrapped in cloth.  He lies in a manger because no guest room can be found.  We’ve heard the story so many times that we can miss the stark backwardness of it all.  The Son of God should have come in trappings of greatness.  He should have been born to privilege.  Yet he spends the first night of his human life lying in a feeding trough.

There is a scandal of lowliness in the nativity.

But the scandal goes deeper than this.  The child is born in low estate, but the true wonder of the nativity is found in the birth itself.  The One through whom and for whom all things were made has become a part of his creation.  The Infinite has taken on finite existence.  The One who sustains all things by his powerful word has come completely dependent on the sustenance of another.  God the Son has taken on human flesh and become the Son of man.  And on this night and many to follow, he lies helpless and dependent in the frail existence of a newborn child.

There is also a scandal of humanness to be found.

This is the force of the incarnation.  The great has become small.  The infinite finite.  The uncontainable contained.  The Apostle Paul put it like this: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich. (2 Cor. 8:9, NIV)

Augustine waxed poetic on the same theme: He lies in a manger, but contains the world. He feeds at the breast, but also feeds the angels. He is wrapped in swaddling clothes, but vests us with immortality. He found no place in the inn, but makes for Himself a temple in the hearts of believers. In order that weakness might become strong, strength became weak. (Sermon 190 3, 4)

The rich has become poor.  The strong has become weak.  And all this that we might become rich and strong through him.

We are used to speaking of the love that led Jesus to the cross.

Perhaps we should also speak of the love that led him to his birth.

In the nativity, God the Son has poured himself out and taken human form, and in this we see the nature of God on display.  Jesus, “Who being in very nature God, did not consider his equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” (Phil. 2:6-7, NIV)  It is in the nature of God to pour himself on behalf of others, and though it is scandalous to us, it is natural to him.  Such is the wonder of the God we serve.  Such is the splendor of a newborn baby who bears the weight of the world.  Such is the beauty of Christmas.

However, one day an event occurs which forces him to question. His daughter falls ill and the medical professionals inside the globe tell him nothing can be done. Her condition is mysterious and tragic and he is given no solutions. As a man, he was willing to put up with his discontent. As a father, however, he finds it impossible. So the man begins to ask questions, pushing boundaries of belief and supposition. As time passes and he becomes more desperate, the man finds his neighbors, friends and family members drifting away from him. He is, after all, questioning the very basis of their reality. He has come to believe that there must be something outside the globe. Even with little or no evidence, he believes there simply must be something more. Life inside the globe no longer provides the answers for his questions or the provisions for his life.

So he begins to take long walks, out past all of the houses and through the forests that line their community. He bumps up against the glass boundary and realizes he has been right all along. He races back into town to triumphantly announce his news only to discover his community has rallied against him. Instead of opening themselves to his questions, they have cemented themselves to their existing beliefs. He is no longer welcome within the community. The man spends countless hours trying to dialogue with his fellow citizens. Some agree with him, but are unable to imagine following him. Most, however, lambast him and accuse him of heresy and evil. Dejected and isolated, but still clinging to the knowledge he is correct, the man goes back to the glass boundary and begins to explore. Eventually, he finds a way out. The man quietly gathers his immediate family, sick daughter included, and sets out through the exit to a new life. The members of his former community continue to reject and discredit him, but are eventually forced to recognize there is something other than the globe.

The theme of testing boundaries and wondering if there is simply more to life than has been previously discovered, however, is a tale as old as humanity itself. With the advent of the discipline of scientific inquiry, the question has become more quantified. There are identified boundaries to knowledge and those must be respected. What happens, then, when someone is no longer content with those boundaries? What happens when someone is no longer satisfied with status quo and seeks answers to questions no one else wants to address? The answer, according to Thomas Kuhn, is that scientific revolution takes place.

I read a book this semester called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – which was intense, but incredibly brilliant. Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is essentially a treatise about what happens when one member of a community begins to disagree with other members of the community and consensus cannot be reached. He is not dealing with trivialities, however, like how to order pizza when people cannot agree on toppings. He is dealing with topics of the universe, like what happened when gravity was discovered or when genetics began to be studied. Kuhn contends that by studying the structure of those revolutions in thought and theory, one can ascertain how the structure of the world functions. The scenario put forth at the beginning of this review is an allegorical version of his answer.

Simply put, the world is full of paradigms and people content to exist within those paradigms. Through a crisis event, one person or a small group of persons are no longer willing to live within their existing paradigm. They begin to test boundaries and ask questions. The other persons in the paradigm tend to reject new ideas and strengthen their assurance their view is correct. Eventually, the persons testing the boundary will break through and create their own new paradigm. This process continues to repeat itself throughout history and society, with each new crisis event perpetuating the creation of a new paradigm.

This post has gotten long enough, so I’ll break it off now. Tomorrow I’ll post some questions I’ve got and implications for said questions. Yes, nerd posts will continue.

A little over two years ago, I belonged to a local institutional church. Through a series of more than unfortunate events, I had to leave that institution. Several of my friends chose to leave as well and we felt incredibly unmoored. We had lost our family, our community and the place which we had been dancing out our faith for the previous years. Another friend of ours who was outside that particular institution but who saw our grieving suggested we gather once a week over a meal and the reading of Scripture. He thought community could be healing and that, if nothing else, healing began with a safe place to heal. Over the past few years, we have grown together and created authentic community. We call it “The Onion,” after a passage in the Japanese novel Deep River.

There are elements of homogeneity; for instance, we all have a connection to Truett and we are all caucasian and from Christian backgrounds. Most of us have a connection to that one specific previous institution, but some of us do not. There are differences of opinion and faith and experience. We gather at least once per week in the living room of one of our members, gathering over a shared meal and a topic of discussion. We certainly do not always agree, but we always, in the words of E. Stanley Jones, resolve to love.

The Onion has become family for me. They have seen me through unspeakable trauma and pain over the past two years. We are, by every definition of the word, a community. We do life together, gathering for game nights or homework nights outside of our designated gathering time. We ‘circle the wagons,’ so to speak, in the event of trauma and buy the confetti in the event of celebrations. To be perfectly blunt, without these people, I would have left Truett and potentially the Christian faith after what happened to me at that previous institution. The Onion shows me Christ and has helped me redefine ‘church’ to be community and body and I treasure that redefinition.

As we are a community which seeks to live life together, boundaries have had to be set. We must be able to trust each member to carry the weight of our truths and to keep secrets shared within. For the first year and a half of our gatherings, the original members were not in emotional places to invite other persons. We guarded our meetings carefully and received some criticism for that. Our critics asked how we could call ourselves ‘church’ if we turned people away and we replied that we were not turning people away from church, we were simply setting boundaries on our community. Since January of this year, we have invited four individuals to join us, one on a temporary basis and three on a permanent one. These people were invited at the complete consensus of the group and our terms of membership were communicated explicitly to them. To be a member of The Onion, we asserted, meant joining a family and committing to do life with this group of people for the duration of your membership. All of the invitations have proven to be incredibly beneficial to the group and I, personally, cannot imagine my life without any of those individuals.

~*~

So there it is; my Waco family, my church, my community. I hope you have these kind of people and this kind of community, especially if you are someone who belongs to an organized faith.

I’ve spent a large majority of my life collecting quotes. I have journals and Word documents full of them – funny, inspirational, thought provoking. For the “favorite quote” prompt, I had a hard time narrowing it down. So, in typical fashion, I’ve chosen a few.

The above quote is from season one of The West Wing, which is one of the most brilliant things to happen on television, ever. I’m reminded of it all the time, however. I think we, as a society, have a problem with showing up. Not just with physically being present, but with being emotionally present. While Bartlet meant it as a challenge to college students to participate in the political process (being that you can’t govern if you don’t at least try to run), I think it has broader meanings. I quote it often in class, thinking of how participation in the Kingdom is not a spectator sport. Decisions are made by those who show up, folks.

We read to know we are not alone. – C.S. Lewis

I’ve written about this one before. I believe books and ideas and words are the connective tissue of society. We read to learn; to learn how to love, learn how to be, learn who to be. We read so we understand things beyond our world and to experience lands both factual and fictional.

Missions is people being transformed by people being transformed. – Mike Stroope

A large part of my concentration at Truett is discussing how people engage cross-culturally. While I am not a fan of “missions” in a typical mode (white people bringing their definition of both faith and civilization to those in other parts of the world), I am a fan of redeeming the concept. This quote speaks towards a holistic concept of cross-cultural relationship for the redemption of all of creation, which is, in my opinion, the whole point.

We cease to exist when we become silent about things that matter. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

One of the driving mantras of my life. I believe genocide prevention matters and education matters and other things matter. I cannot exist within the world as it is without being vocal. While I may not be part of every solution, I refuse to be a silent minority. This is why I sign petitions and attend rallies and write my congresspeople and write blogs. I attempt, every day and in my own little way, to contribute to things that matter.

I am not the same for having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.

I have no idea who wrote this quote – my friend Suzanne told it to me years ago. I painted it on a sign in my bathroom, to remind me of how I have been shaped by the stamps in my passport. To know what a ghat feels like in Varanassi or how rains smells in Belfast, to have dear friends who do not speak the same language I do and many who do; I am better for these facts.

…but the greatest of these is love…

Love, my friends, wins. Always and unceasingly, love always wins.

Birthday always serve as markers for me. While the favorites gleefully bestowed their birthday week gifts upon me over this past week, I spent a lot of time wondering how my twenty-seventh year should be different than my twenty-sixth.

To be honest, twenty-six was pretty fantastic. I celebrated New Year’s in the middle of the Caribbean, danced at an Indian wedding, ate dim sum in Hong Kong and witnessed baptisms in Medellin. I found new and beautiful definitions of family, strength and community. I had the privilege of sitting around the table at Truett and discussing deep wisdom with some fellow travelers and took huge steps towards defining my life calling. There were some serious bumps along the way, complete with scars and bruises, but I would never trade (most of) this past year for anything.

I have ruminated about it on this blog before, but I wonder what my adolescent self would think of my adult self. On my seventeenth birthday, I was living in Yardley and dealing with my senior year at Pennsbury. I was juggling work, school, theater, music, friends, youth group and stuffing them all into my hopes and dreams for the future. I thought I knew exactly what life would look like, how I would get where I want to go, so on and so forth. Very little of that life came to pass. While I have no idea what 17-year-old Kristen would have thought of 27-year-old Kristen, I can honestly say that 27-year-old Kristen is pretty proud of herself. Growth, maturity, hope and change have been themes of my time in Waco and I am sure they will not cease to be in this last year.

Over the past ten years, there are some detours I never thought I would take. Some have turned out to be not detours at all, but re-directions. Wonderful, life-giving, re-directions. It’s taken me several years to realize that most of the strands of passions in my life really can work together towards a viable profession. Amazing.

So, here’s to year twenty-seven. Hopefully, it’ll include a graduation, a few more international trips and a student visa. I know it will also include laughter and seasons of love, tears and mourning, grace and hope.

Here’s to road trips with favorites and coffee dates with new friends. Here’s to leaning into Waco for one final year and checking things off my Texas Bucket List. Here’s to ridiculous pictures and Glee sing-alongs. Here’s to theme parties, game nights and merriment. Here’s to the Bloomin’ Onion. Here’s to grace, hope and love. Here’s to twenty-seven.

The said child is onto a new stage of her recovery and her wise and beautiful mother has posted something on her blog about it. There is simply no way I can do the summary justice, and so I simply encourage you to read Chris’ blog on grace.

Today, on this Monday in the end of September, may you find the rhythms of grace swirling all around you and may you choose to live in hope towards a redeemed world.

(this is a bit of a long post, so I’m putting in a break here for those who could not care less.)

We read several books and articles before we left, but if I said that I understood Hinduism, I’d be lying. In order for me to feel like I’ve really blogged about India, I clearly need to address this beast which is interwoven with every moment of life there, but I am not super qualified to be explanatory. Because I am a full service blogger, I googled around and found these sources for anyone looking for a deeper explanation.

• Hinduism Today is a magazine available online. The site includes editorials and other such insight, including their “What is Hinduism” PDF which seems well done.
• I feel like About.Com is always a fairly reliable place to start and it appears that their article on Hinduism is no exception.
• From a religious tolerance website out of Canada, this also is a decent explanation.

As far as I can tell from readings, conversations and attending a few worship services, Hinduism is largely about practice, devotion (bhakti) and the way one orders their lives more than it is about having a particular belief system. A person will often worship the god(s) worshipped by their family, perhaps praying to some others for special occasions. The god worshipped may also be attached to the physical location where one lives. So, remember, Key to Hinduism #1: How you behave is more important than who you believe in. Especially because who you believe in is allowed to change. Not kidding.

This is key because of the concept of Dharma. Dharma is above diety and above sin, a completely separate thing. The chief concern is respecting others and giving them the freedom to grow in their own space and time. While sin breaks relationship with god (yes, there is a concept of sin), dharma breaks relationship with the universe. It is FAR MORE IMPORTANT to respect the universe than to be right in a conversation.

To put it another way – most Hindus are completely comfortable with theological dissonance. If I believe in Jesus, they’re thrilled for me, but that doesn’t mean they need to. I can be right and they can be right and those aren’t mutually exclusive concepts. This idea begs the question of the contributions of culture to psychological development, but that’s a different conversation. So, Key to Hinduism #2: Being in community is more important than being right.

Once we get past these two points, it gets murky. Even within these two points, it gets murky. Because for as many books as I read that convinced me of the community point, I can’t really understand how caste doesn’t violate that. India is both deeply communal and highly individual and I’m not positive how to articulate that.

However, as one of our tour guides told us, Hinduism is impossible to understand and easy to practice. Most Hindus have never read the basic Scriptures or have any idea of how many gods there are in the pantheon (3.3 million, give or take). They’re unaware of dissonance and frustration. They simply live their lives in the rhythms of the faith passed down to them from their ancestors. If Grandma worshipped Shiva, likelihood is that you do as well. Beyond that point, most people I met don’t analyze their faith. This, of course, is a stark contrast to our own faith system.

There is clearly more to talk about: karma and caste being the two chief. I have myraids of questions about the origins of the pantheon and the general treatment of women under Hinduism. And as I stated above: you’ll meet people who deeply disagree with me about all of the above. I am simply reporting it as I understand it and reserve the right to amend this observations. However, in the midst of the questions, there are points of respect. One cannot help – especially when traveling through Varanassi or attending a worship service anywhere in the country – but be impressed by the level of devotion and the way spiritually has wrapped through their lives. I do not have the same story and have much to learn in that area from persons who follow this system.

Up next? Cramming thousands of years of history into a blog post. Get excited.

There are many points to be made from this article, but the one I’d like to focus on is his point that healthy focus on ancestors can help people fulfill the biblical commandment of honoring parents. In the West, we have often let kinship ties die unnecessarily in favor of other ties and bonds. The idea of honoring parents and ancestors is one that we find antiquated, or just a lesson for unruly children. If we could incorporate this idea – connection to those that have gone before us – perhaps we would have deeper senses of community and connectedness.

We often have this misguided idea that following faith means abandoning your entire existing life. While at times that may be necessary, more often than not, it isn’t. A question that we raise in class is around whether true conversion – to any faith system – can happen without community. If you are converted outside the context of your community, will your faith ever be truly contextualized to your culture? Or will you abandon your culture for the one you’re entering into? What is that balance? If we ask people from deeply familial cultures to convert away from their family – how is that respecting their personhood and helping them become the best versions of themselves?

Anyway, these are just questions I throw out into the void. If I ever arrive at answers, I’ll let you know.

disclaimer: I know this is going to seem like brown-nosing, but I’m fairly sure Dr. Stroope has never seen my blog and don’t expect that to change any time soon.

I have many people and places in my life that offer me hope, as I am explaining over the course of this month. One voice, however, which has become increasingly prominent over the past months is that of Dr. Michael Stroope, professor of Global Christianity at Truett.

In the midst of several personal traumas over the past few seasons, Dr. Stroope has been a consistent voice of hope for me and others regarding both the created order and the Bride and Body of Christ. I offer his blog as a voice into this month-long meditation on hope.