The colors in the stars, they dance

The colors you choose
The reds, greens, and blues
They are reflected in your voice
You know I had no choice
I listened to your words, your cries
And saw the same reflected in my eyes
My colors, purple, blue, and black
From who we are, there's no going back
The blue runs through it all
Reflected in summer and fall
When the world wants to, starts to, cry
The rain is reflected in the blue of your eyes
It's the dark I am drawn to, again and again
The color reflected in the cry of the rain
The colors of fire, of water, of blood
And the brown in the blue, the color of mud
To let go again, fall into this flood

If I said you were dead, would you kill me?

Instead of teaching us how to defend the Gospel, teach us how to live it.

Growing up, I never liked going to church. I basically only went because my parents made me. I mean, why would you want to waste three hours of your day going to a large but unexciting building, sitting in a class where you learn nothing except how to goof off, go upstairs, sing three generally boring songs, and then sit for half an hour on hard benches and listen to someone talk about something completely uninteresting, if not seemingly irrelevant, to your life, and then wait for your mother to finally finish talking to all the other ladies so you can go home, change, and watch TV? Welcome to my old view of church. I usually read a book through it.
Recently, I have learned that church can actually be good. It can feel alive. And you can get stuff out of it to encourage and support your daily walk with Christ. Not to mention that Christian community is really really important.
But I have one complaint. Why did I have to leave the country to learn this? One church service from last year stands out in my mind. It happened at my parents' church in Saskatchewan, the same church I grew up in. Maybe I'm jaded, I don't know. But the person who was preaching that day preached on creation. How creation was right and evolution was wrong. He had examples and everything. Proofs. Details. Complicated intricacies of the animal world, proving that we are created beings. And my problem is this: I don't care. People have decided their stance on creation versus evolution a long time ago. I didn't come to church to hear another argument about it, when you're saying the exact same thing everyone has already said. Again. I came to learn about how to live my faith in the world. I want advice on how to love people who are hard to love. I want to know how to live my faith in the workplace. I want to know how to not be distracted by boys. I want community that encourages me, where I feel that after these few hours with other Christians, I can go out into my extremely secular culture and live for another week or few days confidently, strongly, differently. I want to learn how to share my faith with strangers who confront me in the street. I want to know what following Jesus is. And I'm sorry, but I didn't come to hear how the mosquito proves that we are created. I don't give a damn. Teach me how to live so radically different from the world that they will notice, and then teach me how to love those who are persecuting me. That is what I want to know. And then shove me out the door so I go do it.
So my final question is this. How do you bring to life a dying church? Because I can't get over the fact that I feel like the church I grew up in is dying. It's not growing. It's cold. And at the risk of being called an upstart young girl who went to Bible school and now thinks she knows everything, I think something drastic has to change.

Dangerous

So I don't really know what to write... I'm pretty bad at this updating thing. Sometimes I just prefer to live my life, and not tell people about it. Though I know I ought to. That, and I'm lazy sometimes. Maybe more of that. So what do you want to know about my life? Lately it's been eventful in small ways, such that they matter to me and probably not to you, the reader. What are some of these things? I like drinking London Fogs. I have become a follower of three different television shows via the internet this month. I am being challenged to live differently than the world. What will that look like? I have no idea. But I fully expect things to be different. Unexpected. Risky. Dangerous. If we call ourselves Christians, we ought to look different than the world. I'm starting to think that if we don't, we also don't have the right to call ourselves Christians. Because if you can't tell that someone is a Christian by the way they act, they're not doing a very good job of being Christ to the world. And this means that some things have to change in my life. I read a book. It changed my views on some stuff. It is called "Radical" by David Platt. And it made me think. And I think that some things are going to change. Because I want to be different. I want you to see Christ in me. And to live so that you want what I have. Because it is the one thing that is worth giving up everything else for. And it's not easy and it's not safe and it's scary. But it's worth it. If it doesn't change your life, it's not Christianity.

And on a different note, here we are at Teotihuacan:

Reasons why today is exceptional

1) We have started watching a new television show that looks really good. But there are only three episodes out so far. We watched the first one.
2) It is raining for the first time this year. And hard. And we danced in the street in the rain.
3) Lady Gaga has now played four songs in a row that I know...
4) We went to the tianguis this morning.
5) We stayed up really late laughing really hard last night.

Homesick at home

"All the optimism of the age had been false and disheartening for this reason, that it had always been trying to prove that we fit in to the world. The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do not fit in to the world... The optimist's pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the Christian pleasure was poetic, for it dwelt on the unnaturalness of everything in light of the supernatural. The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I had still felt depressed even in acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring... I knew now why grass had always seemed to me as queer as the green beard of a giant, and why I could feel homesick at home."
-G.K. Chesterson

Follow

I would first like to say that I dislike "steps to salvation" and I don't know why these came out in steps. But it seemed the way it wanted to be done. We are talking lately about evangelism, discipleship, and things like that, and today during an exercise I came up with these 10 "steps for telling someone about God", focused in one girl I know. I doubt it would speak to many other people, but I thought it was interesting what came, and so here they are.
1) You are loved. You are beloved. And you will never, never be abandoned by this lover.
2) You were created with purpose, and that has not been forgotten.
3) It isn't promised that your problems will go away, but rather that with God's strength you will be able to deal with them. For in your weakness He is strong.
4) The difference between being dirty and clean is accepting the washing. And sometimes being scrubbed clean hurts like heck, but it is worth it. There is no other way to truly live.
5) You have to choose to follow without knowing where you are going, or how to get there. You have to trust.
6) It is hard. You will be mocked, tested, persecuted. Why pretend that it is easy? You have to die to yourself every single day. It is only in this dying that you are able to live.
7) You have been covered by the ultimate sacrifice- Jesus Christ. As repugnant as the image might be, it is true. It is his blood that makes you whole again.
8) It is easy to forget. Don't. Remind yourself every day that you have been made new, that you have surrendered yourself and now live for Christ.
9) Jesus Christ, a sinless man who was and is the Son of God, was killed but rose from the dead, and doing so conquered death. It is in his life that we have our hope and our example. And they may be able to kill and torture our bodies, but the cannot touch our faith and our spirit. For we belong to the One who has already won, and the Spirit of God is within us. It sounds crazy, but it changes everything.
10) It is not enough to know. You must also live. Start by doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God. And you will fail, and God will pick you up and still love you, and despite every time everything goes wrong, keep following and loving Him, because He will never let go of you. And that is a promise.

Untitled

The sky here is sideways
It's different than I'm used to
But the Moon smiles in the evening
And some things never change
I know you stay the same
In the places the stars have been hidden
By the lights and the smoke of our shame
Still the Moon smiles with her secrets
And you still softly call my name
To look at the sky is to abandon myself
Knowing that nothing will be the same
To know that there is now no going back
And surrender wholeheartly to this flame
But I still remember you created the stars
You know them all by name
You know all the reasons the Moon has for smiling
And you lift up my head from its shame

I have not died, just disappeared

Below is an edited version of a passage from my journal. This last week we spent in Casa de Paz, which is my church here in the city. We learned a lot. The focus of one of the learning times was The Call of God on our Lives.

"We keep talking in HADIME about the call of God on our lives, and have discussed the five basic calls: apostle, pastor, prophet, evangelist, and teacher. I asked if we had to be one, and if so, if we were supposed to know which we were, because I didn't. Until this point, I had never figured out which I was, if any. So through some questions and some discussion my pastor told me he thought that I had the gift of prophecy. Which I think I would agree with, although it is not very developed in me I don't think. Prophecy isn't so much seeing the future, as it is affirm other people, call them out on stuff, and confess. To say the stuff that no one else wants to say, but that you know has to be said. And this resonates with me. It is interesting to me how this also keeps you more humble. We all think that being able to tell the future would be really cool, and if that were the main point of a prophet, it might be easy to get proud. But when it involves having to say the things that no one else wants to say, hard things, things that are often as not directed at yourself as well, it is a better reminder to be humble. It comes with a better understanding of what Jeremiah meant when he said “His word is like a fire in my bones, I am weary of holding it in, indeed, I cannot.” You have to say the things you already know someone is not going to want to hear, the things you don't even want to say.
That paragraph became more speculation. I don't actually know all that, it is more how I feel. Like I said, I am not very developed in any spiritual gift. But I am rather excited to find that not only do I have one, I know what it is. And for the first time, to have a real idea of what it means to develop it and use it, and how to do that."

Because I have been without a computer for the vast majority of the last month and a half, it is a bit daunting to update you all. So please forgive me the large gap. Many things happened in Oaxaca, in Mexico City, and this last week in Casa de Paz, my church here in Guadalajara. We have been all over the place and I don't even know what to tell anymore. I have learned a heck of a lot. One thing that stands out to me is that it is fairly easy to die for Christ. Dying is fast, more or less. It doesn't take more than a few days, or at most, years. But living for Christ is hard. When you live for him, you have to die to yourself every single day, and that takes more. But when you learn to die to yourself, to your own desires and dreams, that is when you truly start to live. And when you know what you are living for, dying is no longer scary.

Braiding Grass Hats

Here is a poem I wrote about my time in the indigenous village. Hopefully it gives a better idea of what we did there. There are certain verses that are also about our week at the church planting conference in Tlaxiaco. There was no official church in the village, just 3 or 4 people.

My life is a movie
And I am but an actor
Without a script
But I never imagined
Things would come so far
That I would be where I am
For these scenes take my breath away

I have sat atop a mountain
In a house without light
Watching an old lady weave grass hats
I have driven winding dirt roads
With a truck full of people I don't know
Never wearing a seatbelt
I have stood underneath
The largest, oldest tree in the world
And laughed at the bad English signs
I have eaten a hamburger
That cost 45 pesos
And had more meat than it rightfully ought
(All other hamburgers should be jealous)
I have not washed my hair
In ten full days
Which I think is the longest I have ever gone
I have not changed
A single piece of my clothing
For three days (and two nights)
I have a better understanding
Of what a dog feels like
For the fleas have bitten me too
I have gathered firewood
With a machete and a burro
On the side of a mountain
I have followed the path
Down the mountain at night
Walking by moonlight
I have taken communion, The Lord's Supper
With a chocolate bar and Coca-Cola
(Scandalous! they cry at home)
I have seen that the treatment of the dogs in the village
Would be a nightmare for animal rights people
But I think that we are overly sensitive in Canada
I have learned when it is necessary
To eat lunch twice (and always take seconds)
When you are not hungry the first time
I have gone spelunking
Without fear
And wondered at the stone shapes in the ceiling
I have appreciated for the first time
The colors in my blue-grey eyes
And the fairness of my hair
I have found good friends
In people I thought were unlikely
And through them been blessed in ways untold
I have discovered that it is simple
To be ready to die and to die for Christ...
It is living for him and dying to yourself
Every single day
That is hard
I have stared at uncountable stars
Marvelled at my great God
Who for some unseeable reason
Has seen fit to call me to this place
And work such wonders

It is then I remember
That a movie is a shadow, a copy
Such that even the best one
Could never compare
With one day of a life

It's like coming home

The city at night is beautiful
It's like the sky is upside down
The stars are dancing here below
Reflected on the ground
The city in the day is harsh
The streets are cold, the people too
But love is spreading tattered wings
Reflecting what we knew
The city is full of broken people
Living day-to-day alone
But the hope of few spreads to many
This hope is living and it grows

I just spent a week in the largest city in the world: Mexico. It has the same amount of people as Canada. We were actually in a church in the northern part. And it was wonderful.