How Sweet It Is

"How sweet it is when brothers and sisters dwell together in unity." (Psalm 133:1)


This was the verse on my mind all throughout the week that I was able to attend to COA (Campus Outreach Academy). When we arrived last Sunday, I knew a total of about 5 people beforehand (and those I had just met the week before), out of about 90 people altogether at this retreat. But after just a few days, it was easy (and necessary!) for me to call all these people my brothers and sisters. It was awesome how a group of people from all different backgrounds could come together to worship and fellowship with such passion. 


The focus of the COA this year was on ecumenism. If you don't know what that is, by definition it's


/ɪˈkjuːmənɪz(ə)m/ (noun) the principle or aim of promoting unity among the world's Christian Churches.


Ecumenism and Christian unity have long been strong parts of the calling that the Lord has put on my life, so I loved every minute of it. And what was even cooler than all the talks was seeing ecumenism lived out in a very real way at the retreat. There were Catholics, Orthodox, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists (I think I was the only one of those, actually), and others--all worshiping and fellowshipping together. It was a beautiful thing. I love corporate worship, and witnessing a huge crowd all lift up their hands and voices to the King of kings. But to see that happening among traditionally disparate groups who have been unable to worship together because of their differences--that was incredible. 


And we ask, how can we make this happen in a larger context, out in the world? The answer, I've found, is with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit longs to bring believers together and to unite us under one purpose and one Name. UCO and its supporting communities were borne out of the charismatic renewal movement that started in the 1960s, right here in Ann Arbor. This movement believes strongly in the work of the Holy Spirit and working for ecumenism. And the latter can only be possible by the former. It's really cool to see the results of this being worked out in real life. I've never really had any Catholic friends, and I didn't really know that there were any Orthodox believers in America. But now I can say I have friends (more so, brothers and sisters) in both denominations, and many others. 


The COA has made me very excited for what this year is going to bring, and the work that the Lord is going to do through us. Unfortunately, I had to leave COA early (it's actually still going on now), to come home and be with my family as we wait for my grandpa to pass away. So if you all wouldn't mind sending a prayer for my family in this time, we'd appreciate it. 

Update

The Catherine Street houses in Ann Arbor

After four days of living on Catherine Street, things are going very well. The brothers here are great, and I've felt very welcomed. When I first got here on Monday evening, I joined several of the guys who met up with a large group to play soccer. I didn't have cleats, so I didn't play well, but it was a lot of fun. Then we came back and ate some dinner, and a few of us went out onto the porch and smoked a pipe and drank beer. Not exactly what I was expecting for my first night of living with the monks, but it was awesome. Since my job hasn't started yet, there hasn't been much to do during the day. Usually I try to do some reading (and often fall asleep), or take a walk, etc. But every night there's been something going on, whether it be soccer, going for ice cream, watching a movie, or going to a prayer meeting and then to the pub afterward. 

The brothers join together for prayer three times a day: in the morning, evening, and right before bed. Eating meals together is very important for their community life, and everyone helps out with the cooking and cleaning. I'm actually looking forward to learning how to cook well. I don't think the brothers would enjoy my grilled cheese as much as I do. 

On Sunday I leave for the Campus Outreach Academy (COA), a nine retreat for training people in UCO. It's weird, because since I'm on UCO staff this year, I'm expected to lead parts of this, even though I have no idea what I'm doing, and the people I'm leading will know a lot more than I do. But from what I've been hearing about it, COA is always an awesome time, so I am looking forward to it. 

Spiritually, it has been a very interesting week. I struggled a lot spiritually this past summer, so to jump right into an environment where seeking God is built into the structure of the day has been good for me, but I'm hesitant to jump right into this place where it's so easy. I don't want the strength of my faith to be entirely reliant on my context, because what will happen then when I leave this place? Faith is something that needs to come from my own convictions and relationship with God, which still is not where it needs to be. So this week has included a lot of quiet repentance and prayer for renewal and obedience. 

The other things I'm struggling with is the worship of the brothers here. The Servants of the Word was born out of the charismatic movement a few decades ago, so there is a lot of focus on speaking in tongues and prophecy and the other spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit. These are things that I am by no means opposed to, but given my background and my personal experiences in worship, it's not what I'm accustomed to. I know that the Holy Spirit has power to work in our lives, especially in worship, but I just don't know. This year will be a good one for learning more about the Spirit and how He can work in my life. I'm excited to learn and grow as much as I can this year, and my prayer is that God will prepare my heart and mind for what is to come. 

A New Adventure

Hello.

If you're new here, welcome to my blog. You're just in time to join me on this new journey I'm about to begin.  For the next year I'll be living with the Servants of the Word, a neo-monastic community, in Ann Arbor, MI. I'm going to be working on staff with their University Christian Outreach (UCO), a evangelistic and discipleship-oriented college ministry directed at the students of the University of Michigan. I'm doing all of this under the umbrella of what's called the GAP program, which is where young adults like myself take a year to do service of some type. So the cool thing with that is that I'll be doing this alongside peers who are doing similar things. 


Some ask why I choose to do this with my year after college. In short, there are 4 main reasons:


1. Celibacy - For the past two years I've felt called by the Lord to commit myself to not dating. This I have done, but as for the long term, I have no idea where God is leading me. So one of my biggest intentions for this year is to explore the call to celibacy and whether or not that might be where God is calling me. I don't expect to have it nailed down by the end of one year (for many it takes several years to make a decision like that, as it should!), but this will be a good start for me. 


2. Spiritual growth - Spiritual disciplines are things that I have never been very good at, and this year will no doubt be very good for developing those more fully in my everyday life. Also, I realize that I just have a lot more growing to do spiritually in order to become the leader that God has called me to be. I fully expect this year to impact my life in an awesome way in this category. 


3. Not academic - I'm planning on going to grad school after this, and toward the end of my college career I just felt burnt out on academics, so this is a welcome break from the stresses of school work. 


4. Awesomeness - who gets to say that they've lived with monks? I mean, seriously, it's going to be a pretty awesome experience, and I'm excited for it. 


This year is something I'm very excited for, and I expect to learn and be challenged and grow a lot. So, hopefully I will use this medium of my blog to keep all you folks out there updated on what's going on, and I'm sure I'll jot down things I learn and all that stuff too. I greatly appreciate all your prayers, and I hope you will join me in praising God for the great work that He does through this!

Desensitized

When I was in 8th grade, a kid in my class was killed. His name was Butch Harris, and he died when he was hit by an out of control car while he was riding his bike along the road. I didn't really know Butch. We didn't really run in the same circles, and I can't even remember if I ever talked to him. His death didn't have much of an emotional impact on me at the time. I don't know if it was too much for my 14 year old mind to register, or if I just didn't care that much. But I remember my mom talking to me about it, and expressing concern at my lack of concern. She said that she was worried that I'd been "desensitized" too much by TV, video games, and such.

And I remember being really offended by that comment. I mean, here she is, attacking the TV I choose to watch and the games I choose to play, claiming that they are somehow poisoning my mind. All because I didn't have an emotional reaction to the death of a kid I barely knew? I was really annoyed with her for that. I mean, they talked about the kids that shot up Columbine as being influenced by their violent video games and music, but everyone knew that that was just crap. We can't be controlled by the media we consume.  We are individuals with free will to choose how we behave. We are our own creatures to control.

Now that I'm older and slightly smarter, I see things a bit differently. As I've grown, I've found myself less and less entertained by violence in movies and video games. Instead of cheering when the bad guy gets killed, I often find myself wondering if he had a family that loved him and how he got on the wrong track. That's stupid, some might think. It's a fictional character--no one really died here. It was an actor who was paid to look like he died. But, on the other hand, if our movies are supposed to be a reflection of life and reality, I have to ask myself--am I really cheering for a human life that just ended? A human, made-in-the-image-of-God life?

The main reason that I became a pacifist is that I value the sacredness of life. I believe that each and every person has incomparable value simply because they are human, and they have worth and feelings and thoughts and hopes and dreams and people that love them for the complexities of their personalities and yes, even their flaws. And every time a person is killed, whether in real life or on TV, it represents the cheapening of that sacred life, in that situation and in our society.

I'm currently finishing up a book called On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, by military psychologist Dave Grossman. It's a fascinating book, but toward the end, he discusses how the conditioning of America and her children through media is eerily similar to the conditioning of soldiers in preparation for war. Using classical and operant conditioning methods, the military has to break down the soldier's resistance to killing the enemy. Through our media, we are conditioned to be entertained by violence instead of disturbed by it, making it easy to emotionally distance ourselves from the enemy, and from other people. One fact that Grossman cites is that, at the time of his writing (1995), there had already been over 200 studies demonstrating the correlation between television and violence. And, even though correlation does not equal causation, there has to come a point, maybe after 200 studies, where you know causation is present.

So my question is this: does there come a point when we realize how much the media influences our behavior, and if so, do we do anything about it? Is it possible for us to become re-sensitized to the horrors of violence and death? Can we as people learn to value people again?

I would love to hear others' thoughts on this issue, since it can be a sensitive (no pun intended) issue. What do you think? Does violent media cause us to be more violent? Have we been desensitized to violence and war and death? Have you noticed this in your own life at all?