Last night I had this extensive dream about a live performance of a symphony Doug had written. The dream included the performance, different people who were there with us, and a host of things that happened immediately following the performance. Then, very clearly, I dreamt the blog post I wrote about the whole experience. I dreamt a blog post. That’s just weird.
I love poetry. Recently I have been reminded of this from a range of sources, and I am enjoying the recovery of this part of who I am.
A few weeks ago, Doug was sitting on the futon piecing together worship songs and powerpoint slides while I sat at my computer trying to find a way out of the slaughterhouse that was our Scrabulous game. I clicked over to my email and found a message from Doug waiting: “read this” was all it said. I scrolled down to find a poem written by a young woman at our church, and discovered a talent and voice I could not resist.
Anyone who has ever walked the streets of our neighborhood at this time of year knows about the purple blanket of Jacaranda flowers that covers June sidewalks. Here is a recent entry on her blog I love:
On Raymond Ave,
where teen shotandkilled
sparked retaliation gunfire and prayer,
The trees have not forgotten it is Spring.
But perhaps my favorite was her description of a man showing up on her bus with her stolen bike and how she bought it back from him for $20.
I am thankful for the artists I am fortunate to share life with here, and glad to know that the beautiful girl I see on Sundays has a gift like this to share with the world.
Missional: is it rocket science?
Last week a group of us from Servant Partners gathered for a workshop on Knowledge Management, ably led by a dear friend to our organization. When our executive director introduced Jason, she shared with us about his ministry involvements in Northwest Pasadena through an organization called Northwest Neighbors. And then, almost as an afterthought she said: “Oh, and he is a rocket scientist.” We all laughed.
As he led us through a great discussion about how knowledge transfer is happening in our organization, he would regularly use examples from his own workplace: JPL. To illustrate a point about distinguishing explicit knowledge from tacit knowledge he would say something like: “You know, like when we were receiving all of the data from the first images of Mars…” Or to make a point about key staff members who hold some specific piece of knowledge: “Like if there is one guy on the team who is just really exceptional at calculating orbits…”
Honestly, I couldn’t help laughing every time he did this. And while we could perhaps argue whether building a spacecraft or church-planting in the world’s slums is more difficult, I felt a sense of awe at what is for him another day at the office.
There was one example from his presentation that struck me and has pressed my imagination a bit the last few days. He said that, at JPL, one of the most successful ways they have fostered a culture of knowledge transfer is through a kind of story hour. Senior engineers are invited to simply tell the stories about designing this spacecraft or calculating that orbit or solving some problem, and the junior engineers bring their lunches and just sit and listen to the older guys tell their stories.
Jason said that part of what makes this effective is that people like to both tell and listen to stories (as opposed to being given some textbook-like document or a bunch of data), and there is an emotional impact that helps binds the knowledge being presented. And the emphasis isn’t as much on the actual results as it is the process of discovery and problem solving.
Bill Kinnon posted a challenge of sorts for those who would consider themselves “gurus” in what is called the Missional Church movement. He writes:
His question resonated with me a bit and I thought about how hearing someone discuss competing theories about rocket science would stack up against story hour at JPL. Scot McKnight recently highlighted a post by David Fitch on “picking out a house missionally”, and as I read it in the context of this larger discussion I thought it was a good example of someone sharing their story of process and discovery; of calculating a missional orbit of sorts.
I have thought before that maybe I should try to write more “theory” here, and there are any number of reasons why that is not what this blog has become. But I have sensed that, in the Christian blog world, theory is elevated. Strong opinions and arguments get readers, links and comments, and while I don’t blog to acquire those things, I have wondered about what unique contribution I am making here.
I think I’m pretty happy being a story hour kind of girl, though often enough I don’t feel very far along in the journey. But then I remember the kind words Rebecca spoke and I am reminded that stories that don’t have all the orbits calculated can useful too:
This is why I was glad to find The Margins. Because the story is being told while it happens, there is no over-arching thesis to be proven. Her brain has not had time to protect her from the memory of being scared for herself and her children. Because of this, her faith in the midst of all she is going through shines all the brighter. Read especially Erika’s post A Walk in the Park to see what I’m talking about. She doesn’t know yet that it will all turn out to be OK. But she does it anyway.”
It is not uncommon for certain details to get lost in the shuffle of our little life here, and just today I noted that two generous souls tagged me for different blogging awards and I have yet to respond in kind. So, thank you Suz and Jim for your kind words and your appreciation of what is offered here. Thank you.
In response, I am invited to tag ten blogs that are excellent and five that are subversive (originated by Jake Bouma)…I think I will do some variation and pick five blogs that are one or the other, or likely both!
Here goes…
Sisters are especially good for this…
I appreciate those people in my life who help keep me honest.
I got home after a long day of meetings for Servant Partners, and after picking my kids up and making our way back home, I met up with a dear friend for some prayer time in preparation for her wedding. When I finally sat down at my computer to check email late this afternoon, I found an email from my sister waiting for me that totally made me laugh.
You see, I wrote here about the evening we spent at her house on Monday. I spoke of the peaceful dinner we enjoyed in her backyard, and I painted an idyllic picture of my children at play. Anna’s email reminded me of how the night actually looked for my family:
Hey hermana,
I logged onto your blog this afternoon at a point when I just needed a break from Engine House #18 [a grant proposal she is working on for our Community Development Corporation]. Can you guess my favorite parts…?“Her yard felt like an oasis in the midst of all the sirens and commotion in the air and on our streets, and I was grateful for the feelings of peace we enjoyed there.”
So, the mental picture I have to go with this sentence is you and doug in folding chairs sitting next to mercy while she screamed through her timeout [one of MANY that night, most of which involved a great deal of screaming].“I was especially grateful watching Mercy and Aaron’s carefree play…”
…and now I’m seeing them run behind the barn [a storage shed that the kids call ‘the barn’ that they are NOT allowed to play behind]…oh, and Jordan and Mercy calling each other ’stupid pirates.’I don’t in any way question the truth of your account of the time, I’m just totally amused at what now passes as a peaceful, relaxing evening for us. =)
And the things is, her descriptions of the “peaceful evening” hardly do the true chaos and craziness of the night, and my children in particular, justice…
I will be taking a few days off from writing here, so please check back on Wednesday!
One of my favorite bloggers, More Than Stone, has honored me with the Thinking Blogger’s Award. Thanks, Jamie!
So, now I am to pass the honor on to 5 blogs that make me think. So here goes…
Your mission (if you are one of the tagged), should you choose to accept it, is to pay it forward as well … the rules are simple and they are three:
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is the gold version and the silver to better meet your needs for blogolicious decorating).
And enjoy the blogs……
I started blogging in 2005. Mercy was a few months old, I was in my final months of study at Fuller Seminary, and I remember that it was around the time that we began putting Mercy down for a regular morning nap. I would put her down in her crib, and on most days I would spend the next hour and a half studying furiously for John Thompson’s Church History class, but on others I would sit down and indulge in writing a blog post. Maybe it was the isolation that new motherhood can bring, maybe it was the stress of trying to balance tough academic work with sleepless nights, and maybe it was the need to carve out something that was just for me, but blogging helped me feel a bit more human.
I first got the idea to blog because a good friend of mine had started. I loved reading her thoughts, and she told me how easy it was to set one up. Around that same time, another good friend introduced me to Heather Armstrong’s blog, dooce.com, and I quickly became a regular reader there (along with hundreds of thousands of other people). She made me laugh and sometimes cry, and I was struck by the level of intimacy she revealed in her writing. These were my initial inspirations, and they were the extent of my blog reading.
I stopped blogging that May, the day that I found out I was pregnant with Aaron. Mercy was only six months old, I was terribly sick that first trimester, and life overall became pretty overwhelming. Oh, and I was in the midst of a difficult quarter of Hebrew that was sucking the life out of me. All that to say, blogging fell completely off the radar for that season.
I started blogging again three months after Aaron was born. I don’t remember why, but perhaps it is not coincidental that it was about the same amount of time after Aaron’s birth that I resumed as it had been after Mercy’s when I had started blogging in the first place.
Sometime in the spring of 2006, I started reading Scot McKnight’s blog regularly. I also added my blog to a website that features a collection of bloggers within my denomination, and also became a contributor at Meremission.org. At some point, Scot McKnight picked up my blog and added me to his blogroll, and started highlighting pieces that I wrote in his weekly “Meanderings” feature. I am pretty sure that Scot McKnight is single-handedly responsible for the majority of people who read this blog. Later that summer, Doug and his brother surprised me with a new domain that allowed for me to leave Blogger and switch to Wordpress. This made me very happy!
Somewhere along the way, people began to visit this site regularly and share wonderful comments and encouragement. I also began reading more blogs and I “met” some truly delightful individuals this way. Actually, that understates things. I have had new relationships form that I am intensely grateful for that likely would never have happened any other way. I now have a very dear friend on the other side of the country who ended up at this site because of a google search for someone else. It is amazing and humbling to consider how God works through any medium. If for no other reason than this, I am grateful for this blog.
I don’t usually get too introspective about why I blog. It is a habit for me now, something I just sit down and do, usually every day. I think that writing here helps me sift through and sort the events of my life, not necessarily understanding them but at least telling their story. And I find that if I do go a day or two without blogging, I begin to feel an itch, a small agitation in my spirit, and it is with relief that I return to this keyboard and pound something out.
This blog is at once a very personal exercise, yet it is done in a public venue. As a strong introvert, that is an interesting juxtaposition for me. And I cannot answer why I have never been able to maintain the spiritual discipline of journaling (private), yet have found success in the discipline of blogging (public) daily. Something to ponder.
I have been thinking about all of this because of something I read recently on someone else’s blog. A young woman in Chicago found my blog and describes what happens here this way:
“John Steinbeck writes a beautiful essay about “Why Soldiers Don’t Talk,” where he explains how men who go to war and women who give birth have a biological mechanism that causes them to be totally unable to re-live the pain and fear of those events because they will be required to repeat them in order for society to progress. All they can remember is that they were afraid and that is was painful. They cannot actually call up that pain and fear, the way most of us can do with tastes and music, they can only call up the memory. I believe that this is the other reason most memoirs and speeches of community development practitioners are a little blah. The immediacy is missing.
With the nostalgic tone that most people tell their stories with and the details that elapsed time and the need to summarize leave out, as an audience, we must use our imaginations to empathize with how hard it must be to live in under-resourced communities. Our imaginations aren’t enough, though, because we are limited by our own lack of experience. We imagine an extension of our suburban, middle-class experience and that does not do their lives justice. This is why I was glad to find The Margins. Because the story is being told while it happens, there is no over-arching thesis to be proven. Her brain has not had time to protect her from the memory of being scared for herself and her children. Because of this, her faith in the midst of all she is going through shines all the brighter. Read especially Erika’s post A Walk in the Park to see what I’m talking about. She doesn’t know yet that it will all turn out to be OK. But she does it anyway.”
I have always hoped for the privilige someday of writing books. But for now, I am grateful for this opportunity to “tell the story while it happens.” And I am grateful as well for those who have joined us in our story here. You are a daily blessing to me.
I realized in writing my last post that I have never explained the source for the name of my blog. Some have asked, so here it is…
I recently spent three years as a student at Fuller Seminary earning a Masters in Divinity. I have never been one of those students who sits though class busily typing away on their laptops (or playing solitaire, which I saw a LOT of in my classes). I have always been the old-fashioned pen and paper type. In every class I would take thorough notes, and as I was provoked by ideas or questions, as I was stirred emotionally, as I was troubled, I would scribble my musings in the margins of my paper. I have never been a talker in class. I was the student, in both undergrad and in seminary, that got notes from her professors on the papers she wrote that read: “You have great insight! We need to hear your voice in class.” But the shyness that marked my childhood actually does continue in many ways.
My husband used to go nuts sitting next to me in class at Fuller. Some discussion would be going on around us and I would scribble in the margins of my notebook my thoughts on the issue, and Doug would do everything short of actually lifting my hand in the air to get me to make my comments aloud. But I would opt for the anonymity, the silence, the privacy of my thinking instead.
So when I first considered starting a blog, I was motivated by the idea of having an outlet for the things relegated to the margins of my notebooks. And that is where the title originated, and I liked that it held a double meaning for me as well: I live in South Central, Los Angeles and I share my life with people considered by most around me to be “marginal” for a host of reasons: race, economics, nationality, citizenship status, culture. A lot of what I write about is my experience of life in this community, so the title seems a perfect fit.
So there it is…
I just stumbled across a collection of blogs from folks in my denomination. As I scrolled through the list looking for any familiar faces/voices I came across a blog named “Marginal Thoughts” . Intrigued by the similarity with my own blog name I clicked on the link. To my delight I found a blog belonging to a woman I have known since I was in college. She and I went on a mission trip to Mexico together when she was a youth intern in Mercer Island. I was a last-minute add-on to the trip, primarily because they needed someone who could speak Spanish to join them. I was on crutches at the time following foot surgery and one of my funniest memories is wearing this ridiculous sock on the tip of my open toed cast so that scorpions wouldn’t crawl into my cast at night.
I didn’t see this friend for a few years until she and I later overlapped at North Park Seminary in Chicago. It was great to be in touch once again.
Many more years have now gone by and so my heart is warmed to “see” her again through her blog, and to share a kindred spirit of blog names with her.
Blessings to you, Jo Ann.
