59159

stuff_that_happened_this_weekend

we held our fourth ReadRetreatServe event with sojourn on saturday. 25 students, staff, and volunteers joined together for an immersion experience with one of our neighborhood initiative partnerships. i am particularly excited about some of the conversations coming out of the weekend as there is a new wave of students involved with sojourn who, before yesterday, weren't familiar at all with this aspect of who we are and what we do. 

we spent the morning reading and talking about God's justice and his heart for the oppressed at St. Mary's (where our UMASS students tutor high school kids). we heard some stories of folks who have intentionally moved to the upham's corner/quincy street/dudley street sub-neighborhood of dorchester to live this out. we ended the day with an interactive tour of the neighborhood and some practical next steps for students to take. i thought the day turned out great and each element brought a particular aspect of the conversation to life for our students. i am stoked to see what happens next! check out the slide show: 

oh, and then today amy and i participated in foxborough's old fashioned ten miler (amy as an employee of marathon physical therapy and me as a runner). if you've been following me for a while you will remember that i ran in a trail race circuit in durango. a couple of thoughts...one, those were trail races and at high elevation so i actually thought they were all harder than this run even though it was a couple miles longer than i've ever run before...two, there were a LOT more people in this race than any i ran in CO...three, i actually surprised myself considering my running has been very spotty in january and february with the snow (i was hoping for a 10 minute mile pace and i actually beat 9!). ps. if you check out the results you will notice that the winner was from dorchester! 

40559 Day 212

2_things


great meeting this morning with eric, mac, and nathan regarding a potential partnership between sojourn at umass and eric and mac's church.  we're trying to help them start an SAT tutoring class for students in the upham's corner (dorchester) area.  very exciting!


our newly multiplied community group is going really well.  i feel like we've found our rhythm now and i am so pleased with our 5 minutes/5 questions approach to the text that is helping us approach the text in a fresh way.  good stuff!

39659 Day 203

quote_of_the_day

we continue to use some of the story language from a million miles to help explain the Ask.Pursue.Live. sojourn lingo for our on campus gathering at BU.  tonight we talked about character: a character is what he or she does...who are our favorite characters...what is it that they do that is so compelling (or repulsive)...and ultimately do our actual lives/character match up with the kind of story we want to tell.

billy, as an expression of his frustration over the fact that the life he wants to lead doesn't always match reality said this: "i want my life to be an action-adventure but it feel more like a social satire."

hilarious.

on a completely different note: please pray for our neighborhood...it is pretty clear that there has been some dealing going on in the park next to our house and that our street and the park are being watched closely.  when i left for BU tonight there was an unmarked police car in the street with all the doors open and the engine running and three detectives questioning and searching a dude right at the edge of the park.  been a crazy week.

39159 Day 198

the_good_and_the_bad

the good: a few months ago amy applied for a scholarship through the American Physical Therapy Association.  the scholarship was for minority students who are in the final year of their program and who have demonstrated strong academics and a commitment to serving under-resourced communities.  amy applied, with some encouragement from her advisor, and today we found out that she had received the award!  aside from the money that comes with it, she will also be recognized at APTA's 2010 conference...wicked cool, way to go babe!

the bad: on a completely different note, for a while we have really been struggling with one of our neighbors.  there is a group of guys who hang out on the porch right next to ours (same floor), and smoke weed all the time.  they don't really cause any problems but they are a strong presence on the street and if nothing else it makes you sad to see them wasting their lives and time.  we've not really known how to connect with them at all...most of my waves and hellos have gone unheeded.  today 8-10 police cars showed up and raided the house...like you see on The Shield.  still not sure what exactly went down, or why, but something did and it was intense.  hope we find out more soon.  it seems like there is a lot going on in our neighborhood right now...prayer would be great.

37359 Day 180

party_time


got to hang out with our friends in the neighborhood tonight and celebrate the work that some of them have done in haiti.  we also got a chance to help support the work of one young lady in particular.  good stuff.  always kind of fun to dress up too.  boston introduced to the infamous green pants tonight!

35559 Day 162

southie


to this day no neighborhood in boston has as much mythology and mystery surrounding it as south boston, or "southie."  from good will hunting to the dropkick murphy's, pop culture, movies, word of mouth, and books have all contributed to the fine line between myth and reality.


All Souls: A Family Story from Southie, the first in my boston history series, is a no-holds-barred attempt to rip the lid off of the jar of myth.  in the end, as honest as the author is, he still lands in a place that leaves a lot of room for the mythology to remain, and even grow.  but maybe that's the way people like it.


there are a lot of interesting things about this book.  one is that roxbury (the largely african-american neighborhood of boston) and southie (the largely irish-american neighborhood) have been intimately tied together through poverty, busing, and affordable housing initiatives.  and also drugs, gangs, and all kinds of other issues.  what is interesting about that is the city has largely wiped out the "old" southie, replacing it with a trendy, gentrified neighborhood that looks a lot like some of the nicer areas of san fransisco.  meanwhile, roxbury has not experienced the same fate.


and all the while dorchester has always been this strange middle ground between the two...never quite as "bad", never quite as "cool", always a little bit forgotten.

29259 Day 100

community_group

for the past year and a half amy and i have had the opportunity and privilege to lead a reunion community group in our neighborhood. i kind of proudly enjoy the fact that people were excited about this group starting but not sure how it would fly. not only did we survive but this group has thrived...from the point of being the odd man out (when we started they had to create a new area on the map =), to now being an extremely viable group. pretty cool. on top of that, this group allowed me to make a very smooth transition from ctk-durango to boston. just a bunch of notorious sinners trying to participate in God's resurrection in our neighborhood in Boston.

thanks for being a great group to lead, for being wonderful friends, and we look forward to a lot of great times to come!

22159 Day 29

flickering_pixels

here's another interesting book i'm reading. quick summary...using mcluhan's communication theory (the medium is the message) he (shane hipps) makes the compelling point that truth and reality are not merely communicated through technology they are shaped and framed by technology...which has obvious implications for how we view our faith. (as an aside, this book is pretty similar to stuff that eugene peterson and, especially, wendell berry have written. in fact, i find it somewhat amazing that he doesn't make mention of this at all).

he says that human's started out as an oral culture (tribal), transitioned to a print culture (individualistic), and are now in an electronic culture (a tribe of individuals). he argues that each phase has positives and negatives, but our current situation creates some interesting paradoxes, and one of them i have been contemplating quite a bit. in this electronic world the "near have become far, and the far have become near...our electronic experience creates a kind of empathy at a distance...[which], if unchecked leads to numbness and undermines our ability to extend compassion to those in our own city, neighborhood, or even homes."

he then says: "prioritizing those who are physically present can have a transforming effect on us when so many are digitally absent...the task of recalibrating our psyche and reigniting compassion must being with local relationships."

there are numerous thoughts i have in response to this, but i'll just share this one angle. as a campus minister who lives in the inner-city, i am struck deeply by these words. college students right now are more "wired" (or "wirelessed") than ever before. they are also as interested in serving and engaging compassion as any previous generation (maybe more).

furthermore, i sense that a lot of times people (young people) are drawn to the inner city because they are bored...or restless...or are searching for a better story (to borrow donald miller's words). none of those reason are bad, per se. believe me, i want to connect students with opportunities to serve, and i will definitely be recruiting students to live with us in our new house.

but, hipps points out that: "ninety percent of communal living experiments fail." whoa! "people so thoroughly shaped by individualism are simply not prepared to withstand the emotionally invasive experience of tribal living."

i won't tell you what his conclusion is...nor will i tell you mine (still working on that one), but i think that this has some large implications for the why and the how when it comes to inviting people in to our home(s) and our neighborhood(s).

20859 Day 16

a_million_little_churches

there are at least 10-15 churches on our "temporary home" street. (this picture is actually a bad picture because this is not one of those churches, it is a school that's associated with one of the churches, but i do like it because its architecture captures the essence of these buildings). if you continue northwest from norfolk on to washington street you'll see another 15 or so churches. all on in about a one mile span.

i have completely mixed emotions and thoughts concerning this reality. on the one hand i understand why there are so many: they meet the specific needs of "niche" groups...you'll have your pentecostal-french-speaking-haitian church, and one block over your baptist-spanish-speaking-dominican church, and a million more examples. i also love the idea of small communities meeting all over the city (sounds familiar)...smallness has many advantages. and yet, everyday as i walk home from the train station i can't help but feel like something is not quite right about this.

thoughts?

20759 Day 15

bike_ride

i made a deal with myself today. we are experiencing some beautiful late summer/early fall weather here in boston. the best weather we've had in a long time actually. a "must be outside" kind of day. so i said, "self, get your work done quick and then go for a bike ride." amy and i recently invested some money in fixing up some bikes and i used mine almost every day during camp, but haven't had much of a rhythm with it since that ended. it felt really good to get back on this today...

...i discovered via a handy "bike map of boston" amy acquired at some free event on campus that it is very easy to get from the Nelson's to the infamous dorchester bike path that i've heard so much about but never biked on before...

what a cool trail! not hard in any sense, but it kind of reminded me of durango...

...ok, so it only reminded me of durango in this one spot, but, still, quite the oasis of beauty on a path that runs around and through some of the rougher areas of boston. i love it. plus you end up in a place like this...

which is pretty cool. needless to say, i had a great experiencing a little beauty in the middle of busy week and a crazy town.