I came across this poem in my reading this morning and want to share it with each of you here in this space.

Practice Hope

Look at the fig tree: when it sets out its tiniest green leaves you know – you can see for yourself – that summer is already near. Luke 21:29-30

Dare to practice hope.

Dare to let the assurance steal upon you

that something is coming,

something greater,

deeper, not merely more,

but more so.

This is not cheap optimism

that can be bought in any market,

nor a careful figuring of odds

that can always be beat,

nor mindless abandon.

I mean attentiveness to the

dense but dappled energy

that rises within. I mean willingness

to be taken up,

to be wielded deftly in this rough world

by an art that is beyond you.

You are a thread in a tapestry

too large for you ever to see,

a single leaf in springtime.

Practice hope:

let summer unfurl itself in you

and then, only afterward,

will you know that miracle of which

already you are a living sign.

By Steve Garnaas-Holmes, in Weavings, All Who Have This Hope

Have a great weekend!

We have to be so careful with how we navigate the daily news. I’ve been finding of late that some notices in particular make me very sad. Every headline citing yet another massacre in the borderlands of Mexico brings such sadness to my heart. I taught for seven years in a Mexican neighborhood. I lived among such amazing people with their rich cultures of family and spicy food, of parties with tables of handmade tortillas and delightful First Communion dresses. I still remember all the shining eyes and the delightful laughter of those times. And so, when the barbarians stalk the landscape, and I read of decapitation and mutilation, it brings such sadness. The world aches in the madness and pain of so many.

We must be diligent to look for signs of hope in the midst of darkness. Hope is a spiritual discipline, a daily practice. Hope springs eternal.

My states of gloom are shortsighted, based as they are on headlines that most often ignore creative innovators and pioneers, people shaping a better future. Print and electronic media highlight well the ignorance, folly and sin of this world’s self-serving denial of manifest problems, but they seldom report the redeeming and reparative work that God is inspiring through brave and creative people. Worse, the self-indulgence of despair takes energy away from the real call of Jesus, which is to look keenly and expectantly for signs of hope – signs of the inrushing energies of God’s kingdom. Self-imposed despair can even block the never-ending hope that flow from God, in whom hope has its origin. From “Hope Springs Eternal” by Robert Corin Morris, in Weavings, Volume XXVII, Number 2

I loved that phrase today – “the inrushing energies of God’s kingdom”.

Look for that energy today, it’s all around us.

No doubt about it, we’re in choppy waters. Our solutions for children in need are tossing about on the waves of change and we’re all a bit stressed and uncomfortable. I sensed it at our recent conference, I heard it in multiple conversations. Let’s be careful! I don’t think the answer is to retreat and continue on doing what we have always done. I think the answer is in the dialogue. We need to wrestle through this and come out stronger on the other side. A deep shift is taking place where we’re moving solutions back to the local churches and neighborhoods, and learning how to resource and encourage the care of children from that perspective. This inevitably means that we must redefine our roles in the process. There is a big difference between accompanying a solution and being that solution, and we have to find our way in and through that and it is not easy.

The word accompaniment, like the word companion, comes from the Latin words “cum pane”, which mean “with bread”. It implies sharing together, eating together, nourishing each other, walking together. The one who accompanies is like a midwife, helping us to come to life, to live more fully. Jean Vanier

We have a choice. We can build barriers up and around our solutions or we can open them up to change. We can choose to ride the turbulent waters with honor and grace. We can begin now to lessen the centrality of our presence, and learn how to accompany our local pastors and local friends as they grow in their capacity to care for children.

Good morning!

It truly is a beautiful morning here today. The afternoon rains are easing their way into our lives again, so the jungle is bright and clean against the morning sky. The view out my window is delightful.

So we’re working our way through a number of thoughts and ideas and musings from my CAFO conference presentation. It was simply impossible to unpack all those ideas in one hour, and it’s not much easier in a series of blog posts, but we’re going to give it a try.

Many years ago, a friend visiting our home shared that she believes most people are one of three “tenses”. She proposed the idea that most people orient their lives around the past, the present or the future. It’s an interesting thought. If you think about different people in your life, if you think about your own personal filters, most of us lean toward one over the other two.

Stay with me on this because I think it’s one of the bigger issues swirling around the care of children at risk these days. I have a lot of emails in my inbox from people who are seeing a present tense need and they want to meet that need. Today. Now. Right now. They are “doers” and they see something that needs to be done and their response is fully present tense.

I think we need to learn how to hold more than one tense at the same time and somehow avoid paralysis. We need to take great caution when we sail in on the present tense need without regard for what God already has brewing ( past tense ) and also without regard for where the solution is going. A dear friend said in a recent conference call, “We need to stop taking in babies if we do not have a solution for that child when she is twenty five.” That’s the dialogue of multiple tenses. Holding different tenses means that we spend time delving into the past – understanding the neighborhoods, the history, the culture, the tastes and sounds and life that is already in process in the locale we have chosen. Holding different tenses means that we get involved in the present – we meet needs and have conversations and bring resources and give encouragement. But there is more. Holding different tenses finally means that we think to the future. We think generationally and over decades, not two year short term stints.

I believe solid solutions hold the different tenses.

Is it easy? NO.

Is it important? I think yes.

I don’t often do this here in this space, but this morning I had a profound gut reaction to one of those internet snippets that fly by when you’re looking at the morning news.

“Intelligence is Overrated” was the headline, and as an educator, it caught my eye. And of course,  I clicked, which is exactly what Yahoo wanted me to do.

The article went on to discuss intelligence and its relation to success, concluding with this thought before launching into detailed descriptions of these three intelligences.

With this in mind, instead of exclusively focusing on your conventional intelligence quotient, you should make an investment in strengthening your EQ (Emotional Intelligence), MQ (Moral Intelligence), and BQ (Body Intelligence). These concepts may be elusive and difficult to measure, but their significance is far greater than IQ.

I’m actually not in disagreement with the list, I think we could all stand to up our “intelligences” in each of those areas, what hit me hard was the critical absence of spiritual intelligence, or perhaps better said, GOD intelligence.

And I was immediately reminded of this passage in Luke 12 from The Message.

People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep yourself in God-reality. God-initiative, God-provisions. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Don’t be afraid of missing out. You’re my dearest friends! The Father wants to give you the very kingdom itself.

Oh may God come to the center and may we grow in our knowledge of Him. All the other intelligences are spin offs to the one true Reality.

Let’s steep ourselves in this.

I looked up “steep” by the way, check this out! Steep when used as a verb means to immerse in or saturate or imbue with some pervading, absorbing, or stupefying influence or agency as in “an incident steeped in mystery”. Loving all those textured words this morning!

Jump in.

I would love for ministries and organizations to be evaluated more on their margins than their outputs. It is so very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that I must DO, DO, and DO some more.

Read this thought from Eugene Peterson’s Living the Message. It was a splash of cold water this morning, may it be so for you as well.

Busyness is an illness of spirit, a rush from one thing to another because there is no ballast of vocational integrity and no confidence in the primacy of grace. In order for there to be conversation and prayer that do the pastoral work of meeting the intimacy needs among people, there must be a wide margin of quiet leisure that defies the functional, technological, dehumanizing definitions that are imposed upon people by others in the community.

These are sharp, clarifying words. Our work in and among children and families is primarily conversation and prayer. It is intimate work. We must be solidly anchored in our vocations and fully confident in grace, and that takes time and wide margins.

We’re jumping in here on a new series that I’ve entitled “Cafecito con Julia”, which means it is a gathering of thoughts and ideas that I often find myself discussing over coffee or via email.

It truly is so much better when it’s possible to sit on the back porch and enjoy a hot cup of coffee, and really engage in a dialogue, but many of these conversations work themselves out via written correspondence as well. When I spoke at the conference last week, I tried to pull many of these ideas into one place, and it was remotely successful. One hour is so limited.

So let’s discuss this all a bit more.

What are some of the “action steps” associated with caring for children in local families and local churches and local neighborhoods. Hmmmmm.

Jumping in this morning I want to share with you a quote from Robert Benson’s book The Echo Within. Delightful book by the way, one of those that I’ve read more than once.

Your Eden is your Eden; it is your starting point and only yours. Any resemblance to someone else’s starting point is purely coincidental. You wander through your Eden; you listen as fiercely as you can; you watch yourself to see what you love and what you do not. You look for signs of your own wonder. You look for the things that make your spirit quicken and your pulse race.

You look for the thing that appears to be light in the midst of your dark. You venture forth; you answer the bell; you take the call; you try something new on for size. You claim you are being called to do so. And you are right, every time.

Where it all takes you is where you have been meant to go all along. The details have been up to you all along as well.

I’m continually amazed at how many people are out working with children that don’t delve into this topic. My sense is that we chase after the needs of the world without grounding ourselves in God and what He has specifically called us to do. We sometimes work from a desperate place, not a confident, peaceful one. We simply must pay attention to our journeys. We must lean into a God who is past, present and future tense all at the same time. We need to wrestle with calling and how it relates to the best interests of children. Calling is all about tracing back to our starting points and getting comfortable there.

Good morning!

So very good to be home. We’ve enjoyed a busy season of travel this spring, two of our boys are still in route home after a visit to their grandparents. So tonight the familia will finally be back together once again. How fun that will be.

I had the opportunity last week to present at a conference in southern California. As I was sitting on my back porch again this morning, I thought about how much time I had spent preparing for that hour, and now it is gone. But this blog is still here!

We’ll see how it goes, but I’m going to try and take some of those presentation thoughts and expand them here. An hour hardly does justice to all that is swirling in and around care based in local families and local churches and local neighborhoods.

Cafecito con Julia translates to sharing a cup of coffee with me on my back porch, talking about these issues and entering into a dialogue. It is also about testifying and being a witness to what God is doing out on the edges. I’ll end today with some thoughts from a previous post in March of 2011.

My visiting friend brought Eugene Peterson’s memoir - The Pastor - in her suitcase. This man has been so pivotal in my spiritual formation. It’s a book that I want to last for a long time, so I’m reading in small parcels. What a treasure! Something he said in the introduction nudged me. He’s looking for the language to describe “pastor”, and he lands on the word “witness”.

Witness, I think, is the right word. A witness is never the center but only the person who points to or names what is going on at the center – in this case, the action and revelation of God in all the operations of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I have neither authority nor inclination to tell anyone else how to do this. Those of us who enter into this way of life, this vocation, this calling, face formidable difficulties both inside and outside congregations – idolatrous expectations from insiders, a consignment to irrelevancy by outsiders. So: in light of the widespread misapprehensions thrown into this melting-pot postmodern culture that is North America, there may be a place for honest reporting from the field. A society as thoroughly secularized as ours hardly knows what to do with a life that develops out of a call from God and is lived out within the conditions of God’s revelation. But a witness might be useful.

As I’ve mused on that this weekend, I think that is where I’ve landed. Cafecito con Julia. A series of posts highlighting different ideas and thoughts that always seem to rise up from within me when in conversation on my back porch, or in written correspondence, or over lunch. I’m most definitely not at the center of what God is doing on behalf of children, but I am a witness to it in this little corner of the world. And a witness might be useful.