Building Bridges (Not Walls)

...snowflakes were blown thick and fast from the canyon until they hid the mesas. As they shut out the world and made for me a hushed place in their midst, I was very near the source of things...By noon the snow had come and it fell until the earth was thickly covered. When darkness came, I went out into it--that softly falling whiteness in the hush of the night. This morning all was heavy with snow and from it rose a white veil about the foot of the mesa. I was alone in a world of snow and I was conscious only of what came to me from it. 
Edith Warner (1892-1951)

Edith Warner first traveled to New Mexico from her native Pennsylvania when she was thirty. Her doctor prescribed a year of outdoor life without responsibilities. Imagine! She eventually moved to New Mexico and transformed her little home into a tea house. She lived on the Rio Grande River next to a bridge that connected the Pueblo Indians on one side with the city of Los Alamos on the other.


This shy woman became a legend, befriending both the Pueblo and the scientists from all over the world who were in Los Alamos to develop the atomic bomb. Her friend and neighbor Peggy Pond Church wrote about Warner after she died:

The knowledge that leads to power, and the wisdom that grows from the service of the earth and the love of its beauty existed side by side for her, as though they were the opposite banks between which the great river flowed. 

Like Warner, we long to live into this bridge building vocation, working to connect urban social justice activists with suburban sojourners of faith and conscience. And like Warner, we are learning to take our cues from our Mother. During the first week of December, we flew into a Southern California constellation of wind-blown wildfires. The L.A. Times reported that, with relative humidities in the single digits along the coastal mountains, the air was the driest it’s been in recorded history. A week later, we flew back into a Detroit snow storm. Truly: this is Nature's way of clarifying vocation. And: this rather aggressive weather shift is Nature's permission-granting invitation for us to sit, breathe and reflect. To be very near the source of things.

This vocation also has everything to do with building the bridge between the spiritual and the political. We grew up trained by Evangelical leaders that our personal relationship with God was the only thing that mattered. Shelve the "political" talk! And so: we compartmentalized. But the more we learned about our world and the more we discovered other, more compelling Christian voices, the more we felt the strong urge to fuse the spiritual and the political into one blueprint for life. This paradigm shift is driven by the agape love of Jesus, what the 20th century black pastor and Civil Rights leader Howard Thurman described as “creative love for what is different, alien and ugly.” 

Lastly, we are settling into a vocation of generational bridge-building too. Practically everyday we find ourselves wedged in a group hug between Baby Boomers and Millennials. These sixty-and-seventy-somethings and twenty-and-thirty-somethings grew up in vastly different contexts with vastly different opportunities and experiences. Boomers are heavy on work ethic, dedication and resilience. Millennials have a patent on technology, transparency and mobility. Meanwhile, every generation struggles to shake addictions and distractions. The brilliant contributions coming from both sides of the river are needed for the much-yearned-for task that Nigerian Bayo Akomolafe beautifully describes as the "regeneration of spaces for us to grieve, to celebrate, to eat together, and to learn anew how to relate to the world around us."

Kardia Kaiomenē [kar-dee-uh ky-oh-men-ay] is the name of our up-and-coming community-supported non-profit. We are partnering with individuals, families, churches and organizations to equip and accompany all those whose hearts burn for intimacy, community and justice. Kardia Kaiomenē is a Greek phrase that shimmers in the ancient story of a distressed couple-in-conflict journeying to the little village of Emmaus. At the end of the Gospel episode, they say to one another: “Were not our hearts burning (kardia kaiomenē) within us…?” (Luke 24:32)

Our hearts are burning...

...to build bridges.
...to discern and follow Spirit, as she breathes and nudges toward more just and nurturing ways of being together and inhabiting the diverse places that sustain us.
...to resist everything conspiring to keep us isolated and siloed.
...to find common cause in a world that wages continual war on the planet, the poor, and all of our spirits.
...to facilitate good faith gatherings where we can walk together in respect and healing.
...to participate in the healing of ourselves and all our relations.

Kardia Kaiomenē is the moniker for the small team of financial contributors, prayer warriors and spiritual pilgrims partnering with us to make this vocation possible...

...to support us, encourage us, challenge us and, above all else, keep us accountable to a community.
...to free us up to spend our time, energy and resources on people, rather than programs and projects.
...to equip us to cultivate and co-create spaces that nurture intimacy, community and justice.
...to empower us to build bridges where institutions have failed and personal legacy projects have usurped the well-being of communities.

We feel called to accompany parents, pastors, and all those on a spiritual pilgrimage. We are thrilled to be commissioned for work that feels not only compelling and practical, but also congruent with our particular giftings, backgrounds, passions, and callings. We are honored and joyed to be commissioned by and partnering with you in this work.

(Below: Our raging New Year's Eve festivities found us accompanied by a cloud-covered moon and partially frozen Huron. After a 2 mile walk in 15 degrees, we reflected and gave thanks over a warm meal at our favorite Depot Town eatery.)

To you and yours, we wish an abundance of place-based adventuring and good pizza in the new year!