Would you Join me?

“Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels.
the troublemakers. The round pegs
in the square holes- the ones who see
things differently.
They’re not fond of rules and ther
have no respect for the status quo.
You can praise them,
disagree with them,
quote them, glorify them or vilify them.
About the only thing that you can’t do
is to ignore them.
Because they change things”

–Jack Kerouac
quoted in an Apple computer Ad, 1997.

Where does it that you can not minister others while going through difficult times? Where does it say that you can not find wholeness when you walk against what the “religious people” think is not right? Where does it say that we can not learn from our Muslim, Hindu, Bhudist brothers and sisters? Where does it say that in order to change we need to keep doing what we have done for the last 2000 years?

According to the quote above the ones who bring change are those who are willing to move beyond the standars of our society, the ones who are not fearful to be talked about, to be rejected, to be stoned and even to die for their cause while trying to empower others.

How can we change, if in reality we are not willing to change?

Real change starts within myself, and change will come when I am able to say “yes” to who I am. Change will never happend if I try to become what others tell me, or what “old traditions” talk about it, or through the morals and beliefs of the close minded standars of “faith” people.

Change happens when I can see my self as a whole and loved person; as a wonderful creation with all my flaws, imperfections and weaknesses. Change happens when I can say “Yes” to a new life, to embrace the beauty of my humanity and accept God’s pure love for me just as I am. A friend just told me a couple weeks ago: “Faith is not about changing people; faith is to love them”.

So if we keep waiting for a change without the radicals, the controversials, the ones who see things differently, the Ghandis, the Marthin Luther Kings, the Mother Teresas–or even without the willingness to change ourselves–we will be stuck for another 2000 years still expecting to change without really changing at all.

I have decided to change, would you join me?

Experiencing Hospitality

The story I am going to tell you has never happened to me before; when my words written in one of my post become a reality after sharing my thoughts. It is not something planned before but a true story:

It was a another day at Providence, the parking lot was full and I was arriving 15 minutes late in a service that last 60, so I already missed a big chunk of it. Since I started coming to this Community I have always decided to seat in the middle of the chairs so I could have a better experience, but this time I was late and I felt a little awkward so I went to seat at the back of the auditorium. As my other two times I was there, I was expecting being an spectator, listen to the teaching, get involved in the communion and leave without being noticed. Just a couple days ago I wrote a couple of post in my blog wondering and asking myself about “hospitality” and how we could practice it more. I wrote about my first experience at Providence:

I was left alone to enter into the auditorium and found myself in a very uncertain territory, surrounded by people that I did not know, without knowing if we had something in common. I came desiring community in the midst of a new church and I found myself isolated. No one, close, approached me to introduce themselves and let me know what was happening. No one got closer to be friended me and may be have the possibility to have lunch with them. No one one said bye to me, because by the time the gathering was done, the greeters were already cleaning the house.

But this Sunday I was going to get a big surprise and a true reminder that my written words are spiritual prayers. First of all I have been a little upset and disappointing with the church and specially with the tradition Sunday service of just coming together as a routine with an empty meaning and without any involvement with the local community at all; and if there was any was just with an agenda of bringing people to the fellowship. Second I am going through a difficult moment in my life and life seems a little bit uncertain. Third, it has been many years since I was going to a service as a participant.

So here I was, in an Anglo Sunday Service, seated in the back, expecting nothing to happen except a good moment with Abba. Just as a way to attract attention(like I really wanted it!!!)the boxes where I was seated moved and made a tremendous noise making some of the people look at me and gave me a little smile.

“oh this is just what I needed for people that I do not know too look at me”- I said to myself and kept listening to Jacob who was giving an introduction of his teaching. Suddenly from nowhere this guy appeared, say hi to me and with braveness in his heart asked me: “excuse me are you ok?. I feel that you are hurt, may I pray for you?”. For one moment I didn’t know if he was talking to me or to the benches, “of course he was talking to me I was the only one there”. But then he did another brave move; he came and asked me if he could seat by me. “What’s going on here?”- I asked myself. May be Jacob (the pastor) already shared with his people my post and now they are practicing hospitality, may be this is a plan to make me feel more comfortable. Who is this guy by the way?. He introduced himself and invited me to go to a little tent where he was in charge to pray for people.

After the service was over, I went with him to this place sat down and I said, “excuse me! this is very weird to me, did Jacob told you anything about me?” Of course this nice gentleman was looking at me as I was a very crazy guy and without going further, he invited me to have lunch with his family. “What a heck!, Jacob! What you have done?. You have planned all this for me or what?”. An unknown guy just approached me, asked me if I was hurt, befriended me and invited  me to have lunch with him?; this is what i was talking about “practicing hospitality” a couple days ago and now I was experiencing it. Of course Jacob never told anything to this friend and I went and spend a great afternoon at his house and the company of his family. He even went further and invited me back to go to their home gathering next Sunday evening. Talk about true hospitality: I enter that house as a stranger and left as a friend. Both of them hugged me and told me that I was always welcomed in their house.

I know, I was supposed to be that morning at Providence, in that service, surrounded by strangers; so I could experience what I just wrote a couple days before. In order to welcome to stranger in our houses we need to become the stranger itself, the one who is welcomed, the one who is given a friendly hand.

To this family that wanted not to mention their names: Thanks for made me experience my own words, my own prayers.

The only man who make no mistakes is the man who never does anything.–Theodore Roosevelt

Practicing Hospitality II

I have never continue a post and created a second part, but I have been thinking a lot about the hospitality and the community of faith than I have a need to keep writing. In the last post I shared with you about the experience I had in a new community; I shared how  I went from the lobby to the auditorium, from being friendly greeted to left alone. is it possible to reverse these places? From the lobby to enter into a continuous lobby. From friendly to a continuous friendly place. Henry Nouwen shared this experience:

During a visit in Mexico, sitting on a bench in one of the village plazas, I saw how much larger the family of the children was. They were hugged, kissed and carried around by aunts, uncles, friends and neighbours, and it seemed that the whole community spending its evening playfull in the plaza became father and mother for the little ones. Their affection, and their fearless movements made me aware that for them everyone was family. The church is perhaps one of the few places left where we meet people who are different than we are but whom we can form a larger family (Reaching out by Henry Nouwen)

Honestly I have never been in a larger church or community of faith where the hospitality was the main goal. Most of my experiences have been great in enjoying the great music, excellent teaching and an awesome media, but hospitality is something we left aside for those who have become part of the fellowship of participants. The issue is creating spaces where the stranger is welcomed, cared and nurtured, and leave as a friend, just as it will happened when I invite new people to my house. I never understood this until I traveled to the easter side of the world: Tunisia.In the streets of one of the cities we met a young lady and five minutes later she was already inviting us to have dinner at her house. When we arrived the table( well the cloth table on the floor) was full of wonderful and delicious meals; her parents welcomed us with so much love and the whole night was all about us. I entered that house as a stranger but I left as a friend. I think we have lost that sense of hospitality in the western world, may be we have never lived it and because of this we do not even know what is true hospitality. We think is welcoming people with a cup of coffee and some information about us, we think is  creating a cool places with great signs and an awesome children program, we think is about dressing casual or having an amazing choirs who can sing the highest notes or the most wonderful hymns. But real hospitality is not about creating surroundings, it starts within us. Yes! with the realization that we are human beings in a “world full of strangers, estranged from their own past, culture, and country, from their neighbors, friends, and family, from the deepest self and their God, we witness a painful search for hospitable place and where s where life can be lived without fear and where community can be found” (Reaching Out)

Please share with me your thoughts about this matter, is it possible? or am i a true dreamer?…..for one thing I know it can be done we just need to learn from the Jews, Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim communities the meaning of friendship and brotherhood.

Note: for the participants of Annual Conference 2009, did you left the place experiencing real hospitality?

Practicing Hospitality

“Being able to lighten up is the key to feeling at home with your body, mind and emotions, to feeling worthy to live on this planet”–Pema Chodron

I recently visited a new church, I wanted to go since they started. New churches have been my passion and desire and I wanted to learn the journey of the person who initiated this project. As always, when I am searching for something new, I contacted the pastor and introduced myself and tried to set a time to get to know him. Most of the time, the first meeting happened after a while, because I believe relationships take time, but now I can say that I have gained a new friend.

When I have a reunion in my house, I usually invited everybody: friends, friend’s of friends or even strangers. I prepare my house for the up coming of people, clean every room, set the table, cook a good meal, and make of my home a good and welcoming place. When they get to the house I tried to practice hospitality and I become a good host, always welcoming people and offer them wherever they need for their best experience at my place. But lamentably I can not make people to relax and feel at home; yes I can create the space but the experience itself it is only done by the individuals. Henry Nouwen said, “we cannot force anyone to such a personal and intimate change of heart, but we can offer the space where such a change can take place”.

Usually I can easily get caught in all the excitement of preparing and cleaning that I forget about my own guests. One of the traits of my personality—and my friend John Purdue has confirmed it to me—is that I am a person that connects people. So when a guest come to my house I will make sure he will meet someone else, so he can relate and connect with others. No one has to feel themselves alone. I am also know that if I am the guest and not the host, I tend to be very shy and it is really hard for me to get to know people, so I will need the help of the host to open myself and start relating with others. So my point in all these is how can we translate the experience of receiving guest into our house to receive guest into our communities of faith?

When I arrived to this new church, the host, welcomed me with an awesome hug—checked–, the greeters gave a bulleting an smiled at me when I enter the lobby—checked–, they introduced themselves, and told me where I could seat, I was even introduced to other people so I would not feel like a stranger surrounded by unknown people—unchecked–. Yes! I was left alone to enter into the auditorium and found myself in a very uncertain territory, surrounded by people that I did not know, without knowing if we had something in common. I came desiring community in the midst of a new church and I found myself isolated. No one, close, approached me to introduce themselves and let me know what was happening. No one got closer to be friended me and may be have the possibility to have lunch with them. No one one said bye to me, because by the time the gathering was done, the greeters were already cleaning the house. Please do not take me wrong I had a great time singing, listening to an “awesome” teaching and enjoying the part I like the most in a service(mass): The Table of the Lord (Eucharistic).

I know is hard to create that in a big gathering, sometimes impossible; but we need to be aware of the new people, those who are in our house for the first time, those who are not familiar with our traditions and lifestyle, and be able to create community even in the midst of a large gathering. Many places that are created to bring people closer together and help them form a peaceful community have degenerated to be a passive place of listening without interaction, of assistance without connecting, of experience without relating, unless we know them already. We are people of the known, the unknown make us uncomfortable,insecure and distant in both sides, as a guest or a host. Practicing hospitality doesn’t end at the lobby or in the door of my house, it is a lifestyle we need to practice and as Nouwen said, “ Maybe the concept of hospitality can offer a new dimension to our understanding of a healing relationship and the formation of a re-creative community in a world so visibly suffering from alienation and estrangement.”

This is not a negative comment about this new community, it is just a reminder to myself that I need to always look around and find the stranger among any gathering–specially those I host– and make an effort to be the host I need to be so I can help transform the stranger into a friend…..by the way I will keep going to this community because I would love to get to know people and feel part of their fellowship, besides the teaching is less boring than my own.

The Eight Elements

I read something really good today from a book called “comfortable with uncertainty” by Pema Chodron when she talks about the eight elements, here is an extract:

“First, we like pleasure; we are attached to it. Conversely, we don’t like pain. Second we like and are attached to praise. We try to avoid criticism and blame. Third, we like and are attached to fame. We dislike and try to avoid disgrace. Finally, we are attached to gain, to getting what we want. We don’t like losing what we have. We might feel that somehow we should try to eradicate these feelings of pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disgrace. A more practical approach is to get to know them intimately. See how they hook us, see how they color our perception of reality, see how they aren’t all that solid. Then the eight worldly elements become the means for growing wiser as well as kinder and more content”

The promise of Christ has never been to have a life without all these eight things, he continuously said that we need to take our cross and follow him, to give up our life, to humiliate ourselves, not in a sense of letting our self being step over, but to never react the way we would want to do it. We constantly see the two sides of live in everything that he did; open the eyes of the blind, give life to the dead, bring significance to the rejected ones. In some occasion he brought confusion, hate, bitterness, desolation, insecurity etc.In fact in order to be resurrected he went to a painful time of suffering.He never promise a fairy tale for us  to live  a happy ever life, he embraced these eight opposites , pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disgrace to keep teaching us about our humanity, to get to know ourselves, to learn from our failures and value life, to encounter pain in order to receive healing, and may be after that being hurt again.But the true about all this as Brennan Manning says, “He loves me whether in a state of grace or disgrace, whether I live up the lofty expectations of His gospel or I don’t. He comes to me where I live–in pleasure,pain,gain, loss, praise, blame, fame and disgrace–and loves me as I am.”

My life has changed abruptly in the last month and even though people have asked so many questions, give many advices on how should I live the rest of my life or even suggested an option accordingly to their expectations on what life should be.I know that the decision I made, even though is not seen as the “Christian way” to do things, it is for me and for us, God’s purpose for our timing and moment in life.

“To affirm a person is to see the good in them that they cannot see in themselves and to repeat it in spite of appearances to the contrary”.–Brennan Manning…..Thank you for all the friends who have done this, knowing that what does not kill us, make us stronger.

…and I know this will become the means for growing wiser as well as kinder and more content.