On Not Being Dorothy Day
I have never liked New York til now. I hate standing close to people I don’t know. Or, I thought I did. During this visit, I loved the feeling of being a ghost, floating through the busy streets unnoticed and blurred, a swift blue brush stroke among many with no real definition.
I love the importance given to art and architecture and beauty in a place of crowds and terrible smells—the feeling of beauty belonging to all, beauty meant to lighten and lift our heavy earth, beauty as respite.
We live in a fairly rural Florida town, very typically suburban. Our parish church could not be arrived at on foot by anyone other than the priest; it’s not near any homes. Life doesn’t circle around it. We show up by white SUVs and park in a lot five times the size of the building. I haven’t spent a lot of time in cities. I had not noticed before how in a city, the parish is in the middle of the people, and the people of the neighborhood belong to the parish, Catholic or not, members or not. The parish in the city is a halfway house of hospitality and a help for the area and neighborhood. Where I live, in suburbia, a parish is a choice made by the upscale based on the relevance of the music and the children’s programming offered. In the city, it seems less of a choice and more a place that belongs to all, like a local urgent care for the soul or a community center for those near.
Read MoreAbby Wheeler, Creator of Heartworks
Heartworks is a brand new, up-and-coming organization dedicated to serving the refugee and resettled population in Knoxville through art therapy classes, painting lessons, conversation, and relationships. Abby Wheeler is currently working closely with Knoxville Internationals Network.
ADAM WHIPPLE: So tell me how you got started. What was the impetus behind creating Heartworks?
ABBY WHEELER: Well, I have wanted to be a missionary since I was six years old. I went to college for intercultural studies at Johnson, and I met my husband, Matt. He has Crohn’s disease, so he cannot live overseas, because he gets infusions every six weeks. It’s like a $20,000 medicine every six weeks, if we didn’t have insurance…
ADAM: Yeah, and if you’re overseas, you’re dealing with whatever their government feels like healthcare should look like.
ABBY: Exactly, and just exposure to different things. So I thought, ‘Now I have no idea what I want to do,’ since this is literally since I was six years old. So, Kenny [Woodhull] was my professor at Johnson, and he helped me kind of explore what’s at the heart of my dream. I discovered that I really just wanted people of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, especially Middle-Eastern refugees, to experience healing and wholeness. And with my personal experience with art, I thought it was a great way to promote healing and wholeness.
ADAM: Is that where you wanted to go?
ABBY: Yeah, I went to Jordan for a summer, and I loved it. And then, I grew up taking art lessons since I was in third grade. All growing up it was my safe space.
Read MoreCanticle of Christmas – In Defense of the Church Choir
After a lovely family Christmas gathering this year my father decided he wanted to watch a video of an old Christmas cantata from the church he ministered at for 29 years. I must admit there was a split second when I couldn’t believe we were going to put in an old VHS tape of a choir from years ago but we were all missing my mother and welcomed the opportunity to watch the joy on her face as she sang praises during her favorite time of year. I was immediately transported back to another time. A time where my mother was still with us lifting up her lovely voice to God. A time where my father could still walk as he jumped up on the platform to address his church. A time where a group of believers came together and embodied community. Where trusted friends stood near my mother, ready to help her if she lost her place due to her mind being effected from the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s. A time where a stool had been pulled up for a dear friend, waif thin and weak from cancer but still wanting to be part of the choir. A simpler and perhaps more joyous time. A time where community seemed to ring more true than what we call community today.
Read MoreWounded Healer, A Divorce Observed – Part 3
Introductions matter.
In the exuberant craze to dive into a book or novel, we tend to negate Authorial intent and blow past a book’s Introduction and Foreword. Especially in more recent publications, they can be tedious and self reverential – thanking Jesus, the author’s Mother, and the myriad behind the scenes contributors who deserve enumeration and praise from the Author’s research. They can be the literary versions of Academy Award speeches.
However, in the best written Introductions and Forewords, Seminary taught me that the author’s narrative arc of the book is usually contained in the Introduction. Skip the Intro and you miss the Author’s whole line of thought. In the Introduction to Henri Nouwen’s The Wounded Healer, he explains:
Read MoreFacing Truth
The Mirror by Frank Dicksee
Life is messy. When we are willing to get our hands dirty then we begin to become true vessels of God. The willingness of our hearts to get messy is to start to walk out what it means to become the hands and feet of Christ. But messy isn’t just a physical posture. It is the willingness to come face to face with our messy emotional state so that healing can come. Weeds must be pulled up from the deep dark soil of our hearts and expose what remains to the light.
Messy is not often in a literal sense. Often it is in the trudging through truth and being willing to own our part in it. Sometimes the pain of that truth burns us like a cattle brand. But once we own truth it becomes our key to freedom and hope.
Our humility honors God.
God honors our humility.
Read MoreThe Late Onset of Gravity
Miss Eloise’s signature
was scrawled upon the check beneath
Her dead husband’s printed name:
Seventy-five dollars, given
For someone to run the microphones
For the eulogy.
The Contours of God’s Face
Sometimes,
God turns off the light
so that you will learn
your way back
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