The Spirituality Collective is on Summer Vacation until August.
Life is Change
Grace and Chaos
Grace is always good. Creating space for a pause is a healthy thing for a system to do. I believe more dissertations would be completed, for example, if the time constraints were removed. More art would be made if basic living needs were met first -it’s not about paint or clay. Counter-intuitive perhaps but nonetheless true.
Hope in a Time of Fear and Despair -A Fourth of July Call to Action
Lying to ourselves is the norm. Separation, deflection, caveats, behavioral excuses -running from the things about us we don’t like, the ways we have behaved is absolutely normal. But it’s also where most of the truth lies within us, where many of our lessons are buried, waiting for us to really see them. And once we deeply reckon what it is that moves our hearts -in antipathy or in attraction- we can respond to it. We can heal those wounds. We can find new ground that isn’t poisoned by all of that which we had named as the other when it really lived within us.
System Horizons
We are watching a slow take over of what it means to be American, and I don’t recognize the picture that is emerging. We have such a tenuous grasp on our prevalent systems that we are easily manipulated. This is true is many spheres, I am discovering. Take what I’d thought of as the most basic example from Civics: Checks and Balances between Congress, the Executive, and the Judiciary -how the interaction of three seats of power is supposed to work. But no. Few can lay these principles out, and it brings to mind CS Lewis’ Professor Digory Kirke of the Narnia Wardrobe home, “Bless me, what do they teach them in these schools?”
System Dreaming
Comprehensive planning, planning that is regenerative and community based, realistic and diverse in its modes and schemes, is possible. This happens not by re-creating new systems, nor by doubling down into any one existing system, but by uplifting and leveraging the relationships between the systems, by seeking out and dispersing the models and programs that develop through use, connection, and experience.
A Little Systems Backslide
It’s as if each system were a green one, various shades. It’s pieces and parts perhaps different greens, but always green nonetheless. It is upon closer inspection that we discover there is no green, only blue and yellow individual actors. No single person or factor or process is the green of the system itself, but in fact each is navy blue and spring yellow, goldenrod and cornflower. These pieces parts combine, separate, recombine, move about to make the green system work, and the momentum of green pathways whisk each yellow and blue whatsit along.
Reclaiming Our Humanity -Thoughts on Pause
We will be well served to more deeply understand the systems around us, how we encounter them, what we can do to affect them. We must engage the powers in order to transform them, we must engage the powers to recall them to their highest purposes. We must stand free of their control over us, the use of fear and momentum, expectation and convention, to dictate our behavior. For we have all we need to build generative and life-giving systems.
Just Another Blog Post, Just Another School Shooting
Systems & Choices
Safety Dance System Dance
I live in a state where a third of the electorate has no political affiliation. Within the City and County of Denver, that percentage hovers in the low 50% range. A dual system of direct petitioning onto a ballot and a closed caucus with open primary access means that party affiliation is not necessary to have a political voice. Your participation may ensure better choices and I absolutely believe that is possible. It even happens here sometimes.
Pro-Life, A Christian Perspective
I am at a total loss today. And yesterday, truthfully. And nothing is even official yet. The thing is, when reproductive rights are no longer protected in this country, it will only solidify a vicious campaign of lies, induced and created trauma, heresy and the abuse of faith, and outright violence against women and girls. The campaign isn’t new, and has already harmed countless women and girls in our more repressive and theocratic states.
Reclaiming Our Humanity, Reclaiming Our Systems
We can examine the patterns of systems, the factors they touch, and the internal momentum every system requires to exist -and this is manageable to do if we isolate a single system and focus in on it. I’d been thinking of commonly encountered systems like transportation or urban growth patterns, and recalled how deeply these affect each other, and about the other systems that each itself affects.
Earth Week: Addressing Climate Fear Through Local Action
I don’t know how much fear of that grief drives climate inaction -it’s a really messy and complicated topic. But honestly, I think many people don’t get more involved or more deeply active because they have no idea what’s happening around them. I don’t mean a general apathy or disengagement. I mean they simply do not get word, don’t know a group is cleaning up that creek, or have no idea that all you need for composting is to sign up. The planet needs a town crier staff.
Slow-Down Sabbath Spring Edition
Over the last few months, I have fallen prey to the panic of urgency and the paralysis of perfectionism. The intersection of these two is a painful and dangerous place to be stuck. And so I am stopping for a brief sabbath, a pause to reorient myself and gather resources.
Also, writing about the system work needed to reclaim our humanity has been daunting. It’s taking more prayer and time than I’d thought. Here is the beginning of the series from last week.
There won’t be a blog post this week, and next week, I’ll post a sermon I preached for Holy Week several years ago. I’ll return on April 21st, and will also have an Earth Day piece in The Resistance Prays, for whom I have been writing for a couple of years.
With gratitude,
-Rev. Jess
Reclaiming our Humanity: Systems are People, People are Systems
One of my most profound learnings as a youth minister was the realization -the revelation really- that my ministry was with the parents of the youth as well as the youth themselves. I needed relationships with the whole family system -or at least more of it than I had previously understood- in order to function well.
Our Deep Systems of Inhumanity
Most insidiously, these systems claim to assist us with our lives while in truth, they are the obstacles we must dismantle. These systems separate, sort, and ‘other’ people into constituencies, client bases, media markets, patient pools, consumer pods -all of which depend upon an enemy, a group so unlike you it must be isolated, or an ‘overthere’ place, a not-it status to function.
Failures of Imagination
Actions of Moving Inward
It occurs to me this kind of writing -journaling, purge letters, freeform- is internal communication. Even when our guesses at behavior and responses be pretty much on point, it’s all still projection, supposition. So why not lean into this? Why not use writing as a way to reach inward, connect with our own selves? Any one of those methods I mentioned earlier would be effective, each serving different needs.
Actions of Moving Outward
It is the small connections that anchor us not only to each other, but to our own lives and selves. I’m a fan of the four-way stop as a traffic intervention because it forces interaction between drivers. But all the small exchanges matter. Nodding to the stranger we pass on the street, or the neighbor. Taking the extra minute for the next question. It’s more than giving up a parking place.