Kardia Kaiomenē: The Way

Society miseducates us. Society gives us a lot of prompts and a lot of encouragements to be reactive, emotionally reactive. In this, we have received tremendous tutelage. So the ability to do what our societies seem incapable and unwilling to do is important. It's incumbent upon us to be reflective, to be complex, to be subtle, to be nuanced, to take our time.
Junot Diaz

Over the past four years, right around this time of year, we have been repeatedly baptized into the anticipation of autumn. The temperatures drop and the leaves glow. At least for a few weeks. We are currently peering into that brief window on the calendar. And it is glorious.

October took us East on our first series of book tour stops. We road-tripped to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania via State College, the home of the Penn State Nittany Lions. We met up with Ben Wideman, who started the first Anabaptist student group at a public university. Ben is a fellow Fuller Seminary grad and grew up north of Toronto. We re-connected with dear friend Tom Longenecker and his wife Cindy and daughter Bella. Tom hooked us up with a great variety of communities. We huddled with Mennonites, activists, cradle Catholics, former missionaries, progressive Evangelicals, priests, pastors and professors.

There were six gatherings, including a stop on the way back to Michigan to see friends who are permaculturalists and farmers at a new retreat center in Wakeman, Ohio. Our post-Evangelical conversation was lively in the living room of Kyle and Lynea Mitchell! And the next morning, we got a tour of the beautiful land, where they are cultivating organic produce and beloved community.

In Ypsi, we traveled just three miles north to visit the garden plot of our friend Ruth, who participates in our weekly Bible study in Detroit. She has been gardening out here for years, as part of the Southeast Michigan Land Conservancy, a thirty year adventure in preserving land from the grasp of developers.

We also revisited the garden plot that our friend Luke planted a few years ago on abandoned land in Southwest Detroit where a couple homes once stood. Luke shared about an elderly gentleman on crutches who was thrilled that he could get fresh kale for free from him. Luke sells whatever he doesn't give away at the Saturday morning Eastern Market. Last Friday, we planted more than 400 garlic cloves. His goal this year is 1000.

Last Sunday, Tom preached at St. Peter's Episcopal, the beloved community who received us with open arms and hearts in late summer 2014. The Gospel text was Mark 10:46-52, the story of blind Bartimaeus. This is the second blind man healing in the Gospel. Two chapters earlier, Jesus needs two attempts to heal the man born blind in Bethsaida. After Jesus' first go, the man, now blurred, laments, "I can see people, but they look like trees walking!" Between these two stories, Jesus and his disciples travel from one town to another, sharing subversive stories about the God of Steadfast Love. Here's the conclusion of Tom's homily:

In this election season, we remember that Jesus was taking his disciples on the campaign trail. He was casting an alternative vision of what it might mean to really make Israel great again. Along the way, Jesus reclaims symbols and stories from the Hebrew Bible because religious elites had, for too long, been gerrymandering the sacred texts to fit their own agendas.

It is also important to remember that the original name for this Jesus movement was "The Way." So when the episode concludes with Bartimaeus regaining his sight and "following him on the way," it cues us to the kind of trust and allegiance that we are called to. And to the kind of movement that it is: always in process, always new, always transforming with the times, highly imperfect, but gloriously redeemed.

Today begins the Celtic new year, a time when we remember our ancestors, the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us and who remain intimately with us, wooing and warning us along the way. We remember our fathers and our grandparents and our coaches. They rise in our hearts and in other mysterious ways as well.