June 2009 Archives

Closing on Huss School and holding the actual keys in our hands opens up a world of possibilities. We, along with *cino and Three Rivers friends, are eager to get to work on everything from the nitty gritty details of cleaning to recruiting students for service and study. However...

We've attempted to put all of the ingredients together just right for this project and now we need to let things rest for a bit. It will be quite like the process of making bread from scratch, which begins with a lot of doing--gathering, measuring, proofing, mixing, kneading. And then, after that initial frenzy of work, you place the dough in a bowl, cover it, put it in a warm place and let it rest. Rising requires proper preparation and is necessary for a successful finished product.

The next few weeks will be a time of resting and rising for the Imagining Space project. Though it may not look like we're doing much, there will be plenty going on beyond our efforts. Rising is a process that can't be rushed as the micro-organisms--our dreams and ideas--begin to bond in new ways to become something that is both beautiful and nourishing.

Please say a prayer for this process, that we'll have eyes to see the possibilities that emerge from this time of rising and that we'll be re-energized and refreshed for all of the tasks that lie ahead of us in July and beyond.

Bruce Snook did an e-mail interview with me yesterday and posted an article about the closing on the River Country Journal blog--check it out!

Elena Hines, managing editor at the Three Rivers Commercial News, was on hand at the closing on Friday to take photos and do interview for a story that appeared on yesterday's front page. Thanks, Elena!

We closed today. :)

Thank you to all of you who have sent your congratulations on meeting our first fund raising goal, either virtually or in person or just through your thoughts and prayers. People keep saying to us, "Wow! You must be excited!" Well, yes, we are excited. It's been so liberating to be able to begin imagining specific possibilities for the space at Huss School after having to push "pause" for several weeks of discernment and fund raising.

At the same time, our excitement is tethered by ongoing logistical details and an appropriately sobering awareness of the responsibility we're about to take on, not just in terms of earth and bricks and mortar and money, but in terms of honoring a community's dreams and needs, as well as our own big ideas. I think it's not unlike having a baby, with all of the joy and uncertainty accompanying that decision.

At this point, it looks like the closing that was scheduled for this afternoon at 3pm is going to happen and we're doing everything we can to get there. We've finally secured an insurance policy and we're working feverishly to get all of the paperwork in order. We'll post an update later this evening, but in the meantime, please hold us and this project in prayer for peace, for wisdom and for joy.

It happened one weekend in early June of 2009: *culture is not optional crossed a threshold and entered a whole new realm of possibilities. What a Monday morning!

It's true, we've officially surpassed the $20,000 goal we set at the beginning of May in an attempt to see what might be in store for *cino's future. We'd already determined that Three Rivers, Michigan felt a lot like home for the organization. But if that future was going to include the historic Huss School, the first step was a $20,000 down payment. We had never raised that much money so quickly in our seven-year history as an organization, but we put the vision out there and the results have been simply astounding. People of all ages from all around the world have contributed according to their abilities--a fitting beginning to what we hope will be a vibrant center for education and service both within Three Rivers and beyond.

How do we change gears from holding an idea loosely to letting our imaginations run wild with the possibilities for a specific space? We're still figuring that out--what a great problem to have! And we just can't wait to see where this journey takes us next. Thank you for walking with us in the past and in the future, even when the path is scary, even when it's exciting, even when it's a big ol' question mark and it feels like we're completely lost. With your continued partnership and God's blessing--well, anything can happen, can't it?

One of the primary reasons we launched the Imagining Space campaign was that, in an age of so much virtual interaction, we realize the distinct value of just being in the same place with other people. There's simply no substitute for learning and loving in the presence of actual eyes and ears and physical embrace.

Since we can't invite you all to a *cino space (yet!) to talk about food and faith issues, Rob and I are taking to the road this summer. We'll travel throughout the midwestern U.S. and southern Ontario on the Eat Well Food Tour, a partnership between *culture is not optional and the Christian Reformed Office of Social Justice. We plan to visit farms and farmer's markets, conduct food and storytelling workshops at churches, explore local food networks and chronicle the whole thing on the tour blog. And hopefully we'll have some good food and great conversation along the way!

If we're coming to a town near you, please get in touch or just show up. We'll be updating the schedule as events are confirmed.

For the past six years, Rob and I have been attending the Jubilee Conference in Pittsburgh every February. Jubilee is a gathering of college students from throughout the eastern U.S. and Canada who have a hunger to learn about how faith thoroughly infuses all of life, from studies to vocation and everywhere in between.

There are always wonderful speakers, both on the main stage and in workshops. One in particular has stood out for us this year: Bill Strickland. Growing up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, Strickland cultivated a sense of worth and creativity thanks to a teacher who let him throw as many pots as he wanted to on the pottery wheel in the art room. After high school, rather than using his perspective and skills to get out of Pittsburgh, he returned to invite other students to create pottery. The Manchester Craftsmen's Guild was born as a humble house-based operation, but now dwells in a beautiful building in north Pittsburgh that includes a state-of-the-art music hall where jazz legends have recorded benefit albums for the organization. The Manchester Bidwell Corporation has also developed vocational training programs in pharmaceuticals, culinary arts and orchid cultivation.

Strickland tells his story in a book, Making the Impossible Possible, which we've recommended over and over again since Jubilee. But seeing him speak in person, I was struck by his humility and matter-of-factness. He's simply done what needed to be done in order to achieve an extraordinary vision. He's proud, but not vain and grateful, but not overly sentimental. He also has a goal to see models based on MCG emerge in 200 cities around the world. We're really tempted to take him up on that challenge as we envision what's possible in Three Rivers.

At the core of Strickland's philosophy is that people who are financially, emotionally and spiritually poor don't just need basic material things; for true internal and communal transformation, we all need beauty and affection. A serviceable building may protect the body from the weather, but a beautiful building will nourish the spirit. A boring-but-nutritious meal may give us the vitamins we need to survive, but a lovingly, skillfully prepared feast will give us the wonder we need to thrive.

As we think about how this building project might be a blessing to Three Rivers in whatever space it lands, I don't doubt that Strickland's ideas about serving deep needs with great beauty will be foundational, as well as his practical model of arts and vocational education.

We have an official closing date and time: June 10 at 3:00pm. We're still a little short of the down payment amount necessary to close and we're still working to secure insurance (which is proving more difficult than expected), but we're moving forward in faith and trying to get everything in order nonetheless.

There are still a few funding options on the table that we're trying to firm up, but the support of the *cino community is still vital to the success of this vision. So far, the response has been amazing and we're truly humbled by and thankful for your support!

If you haven't read the book Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch yet, we highly recommend it. Through stories, biblical exegesis, examples and cultural analysis, Crouch explores how the only way to change culture is to make more of it. Christians have become experts at certain "postures" or strategies toward culture--condemning, critiquing, copying and consuming--but none of these postures actually helps create more of the Kingdom-oriented culture we long to embody.

Admittedly, *cino leans toward the posture of critique. We believe it's important to analyze what stories are informing our practices, be they the stories of modernism or capitalism or individualism or Christianity or any combination of these and other stories. What foundational ideas cause us to behave as though single family homes are and should be the norm? What invisible intersection of beliefs guides our transportation or grocery shopping or parenting habits? Do these practices tell a story other than the Christian story we profess as our central narrative? Unearthing the answers to these questions about our practices through critique is essential for understanding where we've come from and where we might be going.

However, it's not enough to sit around and think about things, even if that thinking is insightful and wise. In order to change where we're going, we need to do something. In that spirit, the Imagining Space project is about culture making, about changing culture by making more of it. Surely our efforts will overlap and intersect with good work that's already being done and we plan to form many partnerships in the course of working out our vision. But we also plan to pull threads together in a new way, weaving possibilities into a tapestry that will delight, inspire, challenge and reveal in order to change people's ideas and actions for the loving benefit of themselves and others.

We're not out to change the world, and Crouch warns against such overstatement of purpose and potential. But we are out to be stewards of our small sphere of cultural influence and to offer our cultural power in the service of others. In his insightful analysis of power, Crouch writes,

Stewardship means to consciously take up our cultural power, investing it intentionally among the seemingly powerless, putting our power at their disposal to enable them to cultivate and create. This is different from charity, which is simply the transfer of assets from rich to poor. It is closer to investment.

Think, for example, of the community gardens we'd like to cultivate on the Huss property. As charity, we might grow or purchase food to donate to the local food bank. As a culture making investment, we'd teach and learn, water and weed alongside people in the neighborhood in the hopes that kitchen gardens will start popping up all over the city, sprouted from saved and shared seeds. These seeds won't grown on account of our own willpower or cleverness, but out of the rhythms of nature God mindfully created. Likewise, our best hope is that in the process of such stewardly and collaborative investment, we might actually become agents of what God is doing on the streets of Three Rivers and in the hearts of those we serve, expanding people's imaginations to hope for more than they thought possible of their city or themselves. Again from Crouch:

Culture making is needed in every company, every school and every church. In every place there are impossibilities that leave even the powerful feeling constrained and drained, and that rob the powerless of the ability to imagine something different and better. At root, every human cultural enterprise is haunted by the ultimate impossibility, death, which threatens to slam shut the door of human hope. But God is at work precisely in these places where the impossible seems absolute. Our calling is to join him in what he is already doing--to make visible what, in exodus and resurrection, he has already done.

So it's not about changing the world or charity. Is this all just about doing something so dramatic that we'll be remembered after we die? Or about checking off some box in the effort to get to heaven some day? Well, no, it's not really about legacies or future rewards either, but about doing something that we hope is of worth here and now. Putting it in perspective, Crouch writes:

We enter into the work of cultural creativity not as people who desperately need to strategize our way into cultural relevance, but as participants in a story of new creation that comes just when our power seems to have been extinguished. Culture making becomes not just the product of clever cultural strategy or the natural byproduct of inherited privilege, but the astonished and grateful response of people who have been rescued from the worst that culture and nature can do.

In short: Imagining Space is an attempt to embody our gratitude and love. We sincerely look forward to seeing how this project might make new culture toward the faithful renewal of Three Rivers and beyond.