Continuing on the Journey of all things changing, nothing staying the same... Yet all things are still the same externally, my heart and mind are going through things which will influence my physical actions. Anyway, I want to blog out some things and work through them, "so pardon me while I burst."
So I have moved on to reading Shane Claiborne's "The Irresistible Revolution" and wow. Shane is my age, and he chose to chase after Christianity and got to experience working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta (of course while he was doing this, my life was in bad shape and I was far from Christ.) He followed his visit to Calcutta with a semester at Wheaton College and an internship at Willow Creek. He was in my town. He says in his book "I must say Wheaton wasn't the easiest place to be." After which my sister (whom I borrowed the book from) wrote HA!!! I know he was referring to the college, but for us, its the town we grew up in.
Wheaton is full of churches. It is the church capitol of DuPage county and you can't drive around much without running into a church. But oh how spiritually dead it is. And at the time Shane was here, there was still a dancing ban at the college! (I will never forget dancing at the college to worship God and thinking how much this would piss some people off- and it was Matt Redmond's doing. I would swear the balcony would fall down!) Now there are some people truly searching God, there always are, but the reality is that Wheaton is just another suburban town centered around appearances and bigger and better homes. Even in the neighborhood I grew up in, mansions are replacing older homes at an alarming rate. (well alarming to me anyway.)
What gets me always when I think about how cozy our little area is, and as I watch cars drive down streets that could support an entire village for a few years with the cost of them, is how damn selfish we are. I felt this before Shane's book, and to be honest, I am glad to see others feel it too.
Shane noticed the difference between the poor in Calcutta and in the suburbs. The people in Calcutta had no money, the suburbanites were spiritually poor. "The more I read the Bible, the more I felt my comfortable life interrupted." Yes, that is exactly how I felt. Shane says how much he "long[s] for the Calcutta slums to meet the Chicago suburbs, for lepers to meet landowners and for each to see God's image in the other. Its no wonder that the footsteps of Jesus lead from the tax collectors to the lepers. I truly believe that when the poor meet the rich, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end." emphasis mine.
Call me a revolutionary, but I am only following in the footsteps of the one who saved me. Jesus.
So what does this mean? Where do we go from here? Its the question we all must wrestle with. And so I leave you with a quote from the late great Mamma T (Mother Teresa). "We can do no great things, just small things with great love. It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it."
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