NOTICE!!!NOTICE!!!NOTICE!!!

Pastors, lay leaders, and others: Now that the waters have subsided (a bit), ENCM is in a unique place to connect people-power with need. If your church is in need of hard workers the rest of the week, please email me (ryan@encm.org) the following or reply to our appropriate Facebook page post

1. church name and location and

2. day and time you need people.

We'll help make the connection!

PLEASE PASS THIS ALONG TO YOUR CHURCH LEADERSHIP!

The Shared Life

When I was a kid, my parents had both sides of our family over for Christmas dinner. It was somewhat chaotic to have all those people under one roof. Between my brother and me and all my cousins and kids of my parents friends that would gather to celebrate with us, we would have about 10 or 12 kids, all playing together under one roof. I quickly learned that to give my Christmas toys the fighting chance to survive the year until next Christmas, I had to hide them away from my cousins. I was quick to take my most favorite Christmas presents to my room, stash them away in my dresser, under my bed, in the closet so that they wouldn't be destroyed in their shiny newness. I was always so torn between wanting to share with them all the new stuff I got, and wanting all the new stuff to stay in tact for the times I was playing with them by myself.

Sharing is such a child's lesson. A lot of my friends are parents and it's not uncommon to hear them pull their kids aside and tell them to share what they have, split their treat with their sibling, give one of their quarters to the offering plate. It's so contrary to human nature. I've heard my friends have to tell their kids to share, several times in one outing, but I've never heard a parent tell their child that they share too much.

I wish that, for as much as it was drilled into my brain as a kid, sharing was a more natural thing for me as an adult. It's still hard work to even remember to share what I have, and an even harder task to surrender when I remember that sharing is good, and right. Thanks to my parents, sharing my stuff isn't as big of a deal, although still hard at times. Sharing my life, now that's another story.

The shared life is one thing in the Gospel that is the most captivating and the most convicting all at the same time. To forfeit your life, your comfort, your things, your emotions, your safety is a confounding, ridiculous notion. Isn't there something that's just mine? Can't I have one thing all to myself? If I share my life, how will it last the year without breaking?

It's hard to open my life to the possibility of depletion. Sharing in someone's need without having the answer on how to fix or fill the need is like walking backwards blindfolded. If I can't fix it, how can I bare the brokenness? I can give a smile, but can I bare to love enough to shed a tear? I can give a meal, but can I be so bold as to share my fears? I can give a ride, but do I have the strength to walk with you? I can sit next to you in church on Sunday, but can I have coffee with you on Tuesday night?

This is where I'm at. I'm all too often convinced in my own ability to fill myself up with the courage, the strength, the benevolence to give. And when I run dry, I want to run away. I want to run away from the problems of others. I want to run away because I don't have any more to give and I am terrified of the responsibility of making this all work out right. Because if it doesn't work, people go hungry, they stay alone, they stay broken.

The story of the Gospel is the story of a God who shared His very life with His own creation. When I think of meeting a need, I tend to wonder what I can do to fix it while staying comfortable in my own day to day existence. How can I help without really getting involved... Not God though. He actually wore the skin of the broken humanity, confined himself, by his love, to our bodies, to our world, to our emotions, our pain, our suffering.

The shared life is, at times a needy life. It seems to always be a life that is poured out, that's given. It's full of compassion, which means to suffer with. It means whether or not I have an answer, I will climb into your suffering and join you there. This scares me. But this compels me. I pray that this changes me and makes me move and see the world differently.

- Melissa

Faith & Space

I've been avoiding writing this blog for a few days now. There are some things that are too hard to express in the tiny casings of words. The second you speak them, they seem small, irrelevant and fuzzy. I feel like this nearly every time I sit down to write about what I'm learning, or what I'm seeing. It's even more clear to me why we use all kinds of art to express ourselves. Words sometimes just don't seem to do enough. They need notes and colors and movement.

Anyway...

My friend Wesley died on Christmas Eve. He died from exposure.

This blog was birthed from the inspiration that came from watching Wesley's story in our short documentary. Ryan and I have both blogged about Wesley. And we would both tell you that of all the people that we've come across, and the deep chasms that seem to divide us, and despite the difficulties of making real friends at the co-op, Wesley was our friend.

I've never had a friend die. I've never had a friend freeze to death. I have no idea what to do with that. I usually spend my time writing on this blog about what God is teaching me, or how I'm seeing him move in particular ways through the lives of the folks I've come across. This last month though, it's almost as though each thing that happens just serves to kick down one wall after another. The news of Wesley's death has left me feeling like all the walls that were built with the bricks of definitions of grace, God, safety, goodness, mercy have all crumbled and I am just surrounded by space. This is not a feeling of safety. All of the sudden I have friends that could potentially die from freezing to death. What in the world does it mean now to call someone my friend? Space. Nothing. No where to grab, no answer to formulate and make me feel safe.

In C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia, Mr. Beaver is explaining to the children who Azlan the lion is. They ask him if Azlan is safe. Mr. Beaver tells them that Azlan is not safe but he is good. Safety, walls, bricks, these are all things that I'm realizing have very little to do with faith and more to do with what justifies my unwillingness to allow my life to truly be shaped by a God whosuffers. All of the sudden having faith really seems as though I am left to believe the impossible.

I don't want to blog about Wesley dying because I'm not sure what kind of a friend that makes me. I would NEVER let my best friend die from freezing to death. I would fight hell itself to keep that from happening. And in the end if I couldn't keep it from happening, I would probably just grab a coat and blanket and sit right down and endure the cold with her, no matter the outcome. I'm not suggesting that Wesley's death is my fault or that I even could have done anything about it. I'm just saying it's hard for me to talk about it because I don't know what to do with it. I don't know how to hold it or what it says about him or me or God or friendship or choices or community. I just don't know. Space. Too much space and when I start to think about it, I feel like I'm floating or falling through all that space. And I want to grab a hold of some doctrine or some philosophy that makes it all make sense, but I'm just having a hard time finding something to stick to, something strong enough to help close in this space.

I hate ending a blog with out wrapping it up neatly. But this time I have nothing neat and conclusive to say. I'm sad that I didn't get to talk to Wesley, to offer him my roof, to hold him or keep him warm. I'm sad that he died all by himself, whether or not it was his choice to do so. I'm sad that he didn't call me or ask for help. I'm sad that I won't see him again. And I don't know what to do about all of it. And I'm praying that I will see God's face in this somehow, because right now it's blending in with the shadows and all this space.

Grace & Peace

and hope...

Melis

You Are Not Alone

"I'd sing Hallelujah if I could recall what it means and just who I am praising..."

These are lyrics to a song I can't get out of my head. The song is haunting and sad and hopeful and this line is sung over and over again.

I connect with these words. In some ways I'm sad to admit this. And in some ways I'm free in admitting this. Whenever I'm faced with pain, or sadness or injustice or brokenness, I find myself right back in the hollows if this song, my visions of God challenged by the hurt and chaos I see around me. At ENCM, I often feel ill equipped to do more than sweep up the pieces of the broken lives I'm confronted with, then bandage up the small scrapes I get in return. Very rarely do I get to the place where I can put these pieces back together, and even now I'm not so sure that's even why I'm there.

About a year ago, I sat down at Ministry of Hope and introduced myself to a man I'd never met. I asked him how he was doing, to which he promptly replied that it didn't matter how he was doing. He proceeded to tell me the story of how he was sexually abused as a child and how his parents were killed by his abuser.

I'd sing Hallelujah if I could recall what it means and just who I am praising...

Later I befriended a lady battling mental illness. She never talks much about her past, but she loves just hanging out with me, and in our casual time together, somethings about her past will mistakenly slip out, as if she were simply asking me to pass the butter. Like the time she told me she wouldn't get on an elevator with me because elevators have scared ever since her father would lock her and her siblings in the basement for days at a time.

I'd sing Hallelujah if I could recall what it means and just who I am praising...

Then there's the man, that just days ago died on the streets of Nashville from exposure to the cold. He quite literally froze to death.

I'd sing Hallelujah if I could recall what it means and just who I am praising...

These stories have the power to stop me, mid stride of my comfortably etched out existence. And because I know these people, they aren't just stories on an after school special, or the movie of the week, and my heart actually aches and my stomach turns under their weight. All too often, my circumstances are what lay the foundation of who God is, and what his character is. And when I say things like, "you're never alone" what it means is, if you're sad or if you've had a bad day, God is there to help you. The problem with this is that my experiences are not big enough, or hard enough to create a God that is brave enough to deal with the pains of this world. I can not, in the same voice, say to the man freezing on the streets of Nashville, "you're never alone."

So when I hear these stories, I'm newly challenged to allow who God is to shape my experiences, rather than my experiences to somehow shape who I think God is. And when I hear these stories, I check my shallow ideas of God at the door and ask Him to help me see Him as he really is. And I ask him the hard questions, like where exactly was He when that man lay freezing to death on the streets, or when that woman and her sisters cry at the bottom of the basement stairs wondering if they'd ever get out.

Then, all of the sudden, to say "you are not alone" means I have to believe in a God that suffers. And instead of characterizing God based on whether or not I get a Christmas bonus, I begin to see his character as it's revealed in something as harsh as a baby, being born in a dirty stable because there was no where else for his mother to deliver him. A baby that was weak, and small and needy and dependent. Or a common man enduring shame he did not deserve, dying a death no man deserves to die, or rather all men but him deserve to die. To believe in this God is a hard thing, but it honestly means you are not alone. You're not alone because Jesus came and visited us here, because he wore our broken flesh and lived our life and died our death.

I'm not saying that you have to have these terrible stories in order to believe in God. What I'm saying is that the God we serve is not absent in these stories just because we are too afraid to read them, or to face them or suffer with those who suffer through them. And that if we are brave enough to wonder where God is in all of this, and to ask him where He is and to suffer with those who are broken, we find a God much deeper, much more vast, much bigger than the God molded and shaped by our circumstances. We find a God who can help mold and shape our circumstances, whatever they are, because he endures them with us.

So I do sing Hallelujah and Advent helps me remember what it means and who I am praising. And I can even praise Him while I sweep up the brokenness and bandage the cuts and weep and scream and embrace and love, hopefully the very same way He did and does today.

Grace and Peace

And Merry, Merry Christmas,

Melissa

Things Linda Teaches Me About Jesus: John 10:37-38

This is the closest shot we could get of Linda Finnegan, our volunteer extraordinaire, master of all things food bank related. Why? Well, she never stops. Our Co-op Cafe, which is simply an effort on Wednesday mornings starting at 7am to offer coffee shop casualness without the steep cost, for volunteers, neighbors, and friends, is the only time we can get Linda to actually sit still for a few minutes. As a matter of fact, I literally had to make a pact with her: before she gets to situating the food bank on Wednesday morning, she has to sit for a minimum of 5 minutes just to, well, sit and be still. She agreed, and if we're lucky we can squeak 10 or 15 minutes out of her. The point, though, is that she doesn't stop moving. She doesn't stop tidying her space. She doesn't stop doing exactly what she wouldn't stop doing for this picture: packing boxes in the East Nashville Cooperative Ministry, Main Street site food bank.

In John 10, specifically the narrative just before the titled verses, Jesus is at the same time displaying his mastery of the Hebrew Scriptures, refuting the claims of blasphemy, and putting a twist on the adage "you are what you eat": he says, instead, "You are what you do!" Specifically, in this case recorded by John, "I am what I do!" I like to think that Jesus, unlike most of us, did exactly what his convictions dictated. Or differently said: there was no disparity between what he believed, felt, and followed through on! Imagine living this kind of coherency, consistency. What peace we would have with ourselves, with those we encounter, with our Creator.

Linda shows me how this looks (notice I didn't say, "Linda teaches me how to do this," both because "teaching" has a verbal connotation and she has little time to talk, and, really, I don't do what I'm learning very well). So, Linda shows me how this looks, how Jesus taught and lived WHO he was. She's busy. She's busy because she comes to he Co-op to give back to the community and help folks that remind her of herself when she and her children were struggling. She's convicted that giving back the kind of help that she could have so desperately used years ago is how she can thank God for her current blessings. So what does she do? Well, she does the works of the Father--believe the works, so that you understand and believe the Father is in her (v. 38).

I hope I can learn to busy myself with the God that is in me, and my works show who I really am.

I'm sitting at my desk, drinking a dangerously good cup of coffee (by dangerous I mean so good I could be addicted) and thinking of the whirlwind that has been the last few weeks/months at ENCM. Every corner I turn at the co-op leads me to another adventure in either relationships or responsibility, making my life at the very least exciting, and most often deeply rewarding. I've said it about a million times, but I'm always amazed at how revealing the simplest moments are. How a trade of smiles or a handshake can make you feel like you just crossed a border of what is allowed or expected into the territory of dangerous, scary, exciting and amazing shared life.

Several months ago I had a crazy idea pop into my head. What if we planned a huge benefit concert? What if we threw a big artistic party with performers and musicians and artists and food and ferris wheels and clowns and okay, maybe not the clowns, but what if we told one amazing story in an event and people came and they were moved and donated a million dollars? Wouldn't that be AMAZING! These are the times that my ideas become brightly colored helium balloons soaring in sky to heights unmanageable and inside the balloon is a super hero that saves the world.

The problem with sharing my enormous ideas with Ryan, director of a non-profit, is that those ideas inspire him and excite him and then he says YES, go do it! Usually, I throw my ideas out so that someone else will be inspired to take them and run with it. I'm always content to own the idea, but a lot more leery of trying to make it happen. I get away with that by calling myself the idea person and surrounding myself with the movers and shakers that make the ideas happen. Unfortunately, Ryan is so overworked that he shines the mirror of my ideas right back at me and then does something terrible.... expects me to make them happen.

So, with the feeling that maybe I should have kept my idea to myself, I started doing what all people with great ideas do at first... organize meetings with smart people. This allows you to share your idea and get feedback that may inform your next step. And for me, this big idea was going to have to be a step by step sort of thing. I transformed my big picture superhero idea into something slightly more manageable. And then I really did surround myself with smart people like Jeremy Lee and Jonathan Moore to help me get one step further, then one more step further. Than I did the unthinkable, I asked my best friend to be the main performer the night of the event... deplorable, I know. I'm realizing that the longer you work at a non-profit, the more comfortable you become calling in favors and asking for help.

So, fast forward to a few months later (longer than a few months because I procrastinate when I don't know what to do) and here we are, a week away from an event that somehow, with the help of my friends, is planned and happening and I'm about as nervous about it as one person can get. Standing By: A Benefit For East Nashville Cooperative Ministry will be at Nashville's historic Belcourt Theatre on October 28th at 8pm. The event is being sponsored by all kinds of local organizations and we have 3 local acts playing and even a local taco truck serving tacos for dinner before hand. And I've even had a bunch of people say that they are coming. I have no idea what to expect. I just hope that we get a lot of people in one room so we can accurately tell the story of the crazy things that God does with a bunch of slightly incapable but willing people.

The lessons are still piling up faster than I can share them. This time I learn that if your courageous enough to follow through with a crazy idea, and ask for help in the process, one step turns into ten steps then fifty and somehow things get done and then you feel courageous and like God somehow did an amazing thing with your small hands and your tiny brain. He turned a few fish and a loaf of bread into a benefit concert. How does he do that? I don't know, but being caught in the middle of those kinds of miracles is like stepping out of your house on the first cold day of fall without a jacket on. You're taken by surprise by the way the cold feels on your skin, the way you can see your breathe, somehow acknowledging that you are in fact breathing in and out, that you are in fact alive, awake.

The Shared Life

When I was a kid, my parents had both sides of our family over for Christmas dinner. It was somewhat chaotic to have all those people under one roof. Between my brother and me and all my cousins and kids of my parents friends that would gather to celebrate with us, we would have about 10 or 12 kids, all playing together under one roof. I quickly learned that to give my Christmas toys the fighting chance to survive the year until next Christmas, I had to hide them away from my cousins. I was quick to take my most favorite Christmas presents to my room, stash them away in my dresser, under my bed, in the closet so that they wouldn't be destroyed in their shiny newness. I was always so torn between wanting to share with them all the new stuff I got, and wanting all the new stuff to stay in tact for the times I was playing with them by myself.

Sharing is such a child's lesson. A lot of my friends are parents and it's not uncommon to hear them pull their kids aside and tell them to share what they have, split their treat with their sibling, give one of their quarters to the offering plate. It's so contrary to human nature. I've heard my friends have to tell their kids to share, several times in one outing, but I've never heard a parent tell their child that they share too much.

I wish that, for as much as it was drilled into my brain as a kid, sharing was a more natural thing for me as an adult. It's still hard work to even remember to share what I have, and an even harder task to surrender when I remember that sharing is good, and right. Thanks to my parents, sharing my stuff isn't as big of a deal, although still hard at times. Sharing my life, now that's another story.

The shared life is one thing in the Gospel that is the most captivating and the most convicting all at the same time. To forfeit your life, your comfort, your things, your emotions, your safety is a confounding, ridiculous notion. Isn't there something that's just mine? Can't I have one thing all to myself? If I share my life, how will it last the year without breaking?

It's hard to open my life to the possibility of depletion. Sharing in someone's need without having the answer on how to fix or fill the need is like walking backwards blindfolded. If I can't fix it, how can I bare the brokenness? I can give a smile, but can I bare to love enough to shed a tear? I can give a meal, but can I be so bold as to share my fears? I can give a ride, but do I have the strength to walk with you? I can sit next to you in church on Sunday, but can I have coffee with you on Tuesday night?

This is where I'm at. I'm all too often convinced in my own ability to fill myself up with the courage, the strength, the benevolence to give. And when I run dry, I want to run away. I want to run away from the problems of others. I want to run away because I don't have any more to give and I am terrified of the responsibility of making this all work out right. Because if it doesn't work, people go hungry, they stay alone, they stay broken.

The story of the Gospel is the story of a God who shared His very life with His own creation. When I think of meeting a need, I tend to wonder what I can do to fix it while staying comfortable in my own day to day existence. How can I help without really getting involved... Not God though. He actually wore the skin of the broken humanity, confined himself, by his love, to our bodies, to our world, to our emotions, our pain, our suffering.

The shared life is, at times a needy life. It seems to always be a life that is poured out, that's given. It's full of compassion, which means to suffer with. It means whether or not I have an answer, I will climb into your suffering and join you there. This scares me. But this compels me. I pray that this changes me and makes me move and see the world differently.