This was such a good movie. I caught it today and was captivated by its redemptive story line. A story about 3 orphans born into squalor in Mumbia. The main character, Jamal, gets a chance to be on India’s version of “Who wants to be a Millionaire show”, and it takes off from there.
I was also digging the sound track.
Yesterday I preached on Immanuel, God with Us. I said that the name “Immanuel” is a beautiful truth, yet also remains in many ways a theological conundrum. God becoming flesh, a baby, and dwelling among us is a mindblowing, life altering, historical truth. It was also worth mentioning that any metaphor or illustration that I used attempting to explain God identifying with humanity would always be limited. And its true. James Cone once said that theology is “human speech about God.”
So we used a clip from Talladega Nights with Will Farrel. In this movie, Will Farrel played race car champion, Ricky Bobby. In this one scene Ricky Bobby is with is with his best friend and family at the dinner table about to say grace. He then prays saying stuff like “Dear Lord Baby Jesus, we thank you for this bountiful harvest of Taco Bell…” Or 8′6OZ baby Jesus…Use your Baby Jesus Powers.” It’s a hilarious scene depicting Ricky Bobby’s functioning view of God as baby Jesus. There was something safe, approachable, attainable and irreverent about his prayer that had us all laughing.
Through the laughs we were challenged to re-think and revisit Immanuel, because the way we receive this truth, will determine the way we arrange our daily lives. Is Jesus simply some baby in a manger? A distant historical figure? Is he like I mentioned, a parent we write to from sleep away camp, who we may provide with some cursory details about our lives, but never the deeper dimensions of our souls. What was the significance of Jesus becoming a part of a culture, inhabiting an ethnic group, and having a locus of ministry/service.
God becoming human meant he identified with us in a way never recorded in the Old Testament. It’s this identification that we’re challenged with. Because while most religions say god(s) are to be worshipped. The gospel demonstrates that Jesus is not only to be worshipped, but He also considers us friends.
One of the the most helpful things for me in church planting is getting help from a church plant coach. Coaches are people who intentionally look out for my own personal health or well being, as well as the health of the church. Coaching has also created much needed check points for me. Places where I can rest, vent, heal, laugh, cry, sometimes all at the same time. After some time with a coach and/or a group of peers, I will find these experiences to create echoes in my mind and heart. Meaning the advice and encouragement as well as the wisdom, develops its own stickiness in my soul. So when challenging times come the choir of voices lift up, the echoes of encouragement resound, pointing me back to the reasons I’m doing this in the first place.
I recently read an article where a church planter said,
Every pastoral ministry experience has exhilarating success and devastating disappointments. If you are not grounded on the conviction and confidence that this is for God and from God, your pride will puff in the mountaintop times and your faith will waver in valleys.
(You can find the rest of his interview here.)
This echo of voices serve to anchor me as well. Especially when we vacillate between two extremes: Thinking too much of ourselves, or thinking too little.
I believe stocking up on this wisdom is God’s own way of making sure we have a storehouse of encouragement. And I’ve never heard anyone say, “Geeze, I’m tired of all that encouragement.”
Church planting has some intense moments of loneliness. This is what I’m hearing from both seasoned planters and “rookies” alike. I’ve experienced it for myself as someone who is a new church planter and pastor here in East Harlem. I’m finding more and more, loneliness is not so much about whether people around, but the weight of a specific call in life. A call can us leave us gazing up at this gigantic mass, causing this looming shadow. And some days honestly, it can just sneak up on you.
This week I flew to Atlanta and was part of my denomination’s African-American peer mentoring group. Here were a group of vibrant and authentic pastors, people who “keep it real”, many of whom were leading multi-ethnic congregations. And in our conversations its interesting how the common thread of loneliness weaved its way through each of our narratives.
The great thing I realize is that God doesn’t often put people in our path to “bail” us out, but to identify with us. This is what makes authentic relationships incarnational. In other words Christ is alive in relationships where we allow one another to sigh in relief, to breath, to exhale. To say “I understand”, and be reminded of the truth that Christ does too.
David Olson, director of church planting for our denomination asked me a question over some good Korean BBQ at Ham Ji Bak Bayside Queens today. Thanks for picking this place out Peter. I was hesitant to try out the food because of a stomach virus the previous day. But it was too delicious to resist…
David asked, “what are some learnings from the last 6 months of church planting?” The one thing (from many) I could think of, is how church planting has a noticeable way of accenting my insecurities and shortcomings. Everything from my limits around managing the many little details, to follow through on the many balls to be juggled.
On the other hand we’ve seen some good fruit in spite my stuff. We’ve seen a new leadership team rise up. Our team is ethnically diverse, and greatly gifted on many levels. We’re also seeing some retention (finally whew), developing some “stickiness” in our community, with friendships taking on a life of their own.
Find a little more of our story here as well. It was an interview with another Dave.
We’re really looking forward to 2009.
Harlem has some great museums. The Arturo Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture contains a large collection of art relating to the history of Black people. What many people don’t know about Schomburg is that he is Black, and of Puerto Rican descent. I love this convergence because it’s one I share as well.
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If you’re a fan of Hip-Hop, you know New York Rapper Nas’s 1994 album, “Illmatic“, is a socially conscious lyrical masterpiece. Michael Eric Dyson a Baptist minister, public intellectual, cultural critic and author is releasing a book titled, Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas’s Illmatic, January 2009. 
I’m looking forward to see how he unpacks some of this great album’s content.
Maarten Van der Weijden (wish I could pronounce it just as well as it’s spelled) of the Netherlands won gold in the swimming marathon at the Olympic games in Beijing. He fought Leukemia for a couple of years, makes a great recovery, goes back to training then wins gold. MOst people who say it was just enough that he competed. The amazing thing to me was how he uses the “threads” of each moment of illness to create this fabric of perseverance that would serve him later on. Here are a couple of quotes from the article below:
“The leukemia taught me to think step by step,” Van der Weijden said. “When you’re laying in the hospital bed and feeling so much pain and feeling so tired, you don’t want to think about next week or next month, you’re only thinking about the next hour.”
Van der Weijden was diagnosed with leukemia in 2001, came back in 2003 and began swimming faster than before. He now says he has “totally recovered” from the illness. He commits a large portion of his time to raising awareness about leukemia, and raised $73, 670 with a charity swim in 2004.
“You lay in your bed and just wait,” he added. “It’s almost the same strategy I’ve used here - to stay in the pack, to be patient, and stay easy just waiting for your chance.”
The NY Times recently interviewed Michael Phelps mom, (Phelps is a swimming phenom, and record-breaking, multi-gold medalist in case you’ve been at the beach all Summer). His mom talked about how his teachers underestimated him and pretty much thought he would amount to little…He was also diagnosed with ADHD. Go figure.
Here’s an excerpt of the article.
When Phelps was growing up, some doubted whether he was destined for great things. As early as preschool, teachers began complaining that he couldn’t sit still, stay quiet or concentrate. “Your son will never be able to focus on anything,” one teacher told his parents. He was later diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Dialogues with Silence is a book of prayers and drawings by Thomas Merton. I read the prayer below after dealing with some crankiness and disorientation this morning and it helped to settle me.
The way You have laid open before me is an easy way, compared with the hard way of my own will which leads back to Egypt and to bricks with out straw.
If you allow people to praise me, I shall not worry. If you let them blame me, I shall worry even less. If You send me work, I shall embrace it with joy. It will be rest to me because it is Your will. If you send me rest, I will rest in You. Only save me from myself. Save me from my own, private, poisonous urge to change everything, to act without reason, to move for movement’s sake, to unsettle everything that You have ordained.
Let me rest in Your will and be silent. Then the light of Your joy will warm my life. Its fire will burn in my heart and shine for Your glory. This is what I live for. Amen, amen.
If you’re in NYC and want to catch a Broadway play, well, In the Heights is the way to go. Besides winning 4 Tony awards it depicts the whole experience of the Barrio in Washington Heights in a way that was true to culture. Mayra and I had caught it on Valentine’s Day and we were glowing with delight the whole time through.
My cousin also recently bought me the sound track and I’ve been “running” it ever since. It’s worth purchasing because its so inspiring, beautifully speaking the narrative of the Latino experience here in NYC with all it texture and flavor. It was even cool to see that even the piragua man got some attention. Piragua, according to Wikipedia, is a “Puerto Rican frozen treat.” Remember the neighborhood piraguero?
Ah, nostalgia.
If you’re still not convinced maybe this video clip will do it for you. Enjoy.
This was a post from my sister Rosalind’s blog:
Spanish coffee lovers usually do not tolerate natas. Our coffees are not lattes. They resemble an espresso but have a distinct flavor, aroma and taste. The boiled (not steamed) milk is a big contributor. If you serve coffee with natas, most Hispanics will get disgruntled and if they happen to be family members, they will immediately return their cup and ask for another.
Nata is the thick film that floats to the top after you have boiled milk. If you’re like me, you find it to be nasty and remove it quickly before you pour the milk into your coffee.
As I boiled milk this morning for my coffee, I thought about all of the natas that God wants us to scoop out of our lives.
Natas - the junk that floats up during a hot situation.
Natas - the stuff we don’t recognize, don’t want to look at, don’t care to admit, hide, dress up, are proud of, get fueled by, use as a protection, use as an excuse, believe, accept and live with.
So what are some of life’s natas?
Now there are those who don’t mind the natas. Some will push it to the side. Others will actually drink it. So what happens when we do that with life’s natas? When we push something to the side, it never gets corrected. When we drink it, have accepted it as part of our lives, it never gets addressed.
Junk that float up the top is an indicator that there is something harmful that is holding us back. We have the option to push it to the side, continue to drink or scoop it out completely. There’s always a choice when it comes to the quality of our lives.
It takes courage to continuously change and want change. I hope that each time you look at your coffee, you’re reminded of the pleasantries of life and how removing the natas can make your cup that much better.
Oh hail to coffee without natas and life without the same!
© Roz Humphreys Humphreys
The contents on this website are all copyright protected under U.S. and International copyright laws. You may not reprint anything on this website without the expressed written permission of the author. If you’d like to reprint anything on this website, please email the author at rozcorner@yahoo.com .
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Posted By Roz to Roz’ Corner at 8/01/2008 01:46:00 PM
Roz
The title of this post was part of a conversation I had with a group from Metro Hope Church while eating dinner at Mobays Restaurant on 125th Street, aka Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Some folks in the group mentioned deceased relatives they’ve never met. Other mentioned actors both alive and no longer with us. I thought about the question while digging through a good serving of oxtails. Finally, my memory was jarred. I thought of a book I read about five years ago titled Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Talk about an amazing story. A man who fought against Apartheid in South Africa, was imprisoned for 27 years, then becomes the President of the country. Meanwhile he does not take revenge on the people who imprisoned him, but actually had one of the officials who imprisoned him as a VIP at his presidential inauguration. Man, that’s redemptive. So Nelson Mandela is my living hero and I’d love to have a sit-down one day with him.
Liz Rios (You’ll find good posts on leadership at her blog) put me on to a recent article in Time Magazine titled Mandela: His 8 lessons of Leadership. I love leadership lesson #1, which was also mentioned in his autobiography: Courage is not the absence of fear — it’s inspiring others to move beyond it. My favorite quote on Mandela in the article is this one, “He is the most pragmatic of idealists.”
Know that he’s definitely about it…
I spoke last Sunday on God’s song of goodness from Psalm 23. The Message version reads “Surely your beauty and love follow me.” Other versions read “goodness and mercy” instead of beauty and love. Irregardless, I love the statement. We often think that we need to chase after good things, meanwhile God has a conspiracy of beauty and love knipping right at our heels.
Honestly, I find it hard to focus on beauty and love, goodness and mercy. But I think the problem is our eyes aren’t trained to see it. We’re going to miss it, especially in NYC, because we’re taught to live in the maze of craze (ooh i just made that up). A connoisseur of art is trained to find beauty even when it isn’t obvious. And God’s art is all around us, the beauty of moments which oft are overlooked.
So I was thinking some of this through during a few melancholic moments this week. What is beauty and love in my own life? After some good reflecting this is what I came up with…
Seeing my son’s smile while he’s relishing a moment on a swing at the park. With dad meeting him at every swing back-with each nudge of my hand its like the first time it ever happens for him. Its enjoying the Jazz Mobile yesterday at Marcus Garvey Park when I didn’t know about it. I was walking the dog and was pleasantly surprised by it. It felt good to be around people on a nice Summer day enjoying the beauty of Harlem culture at its best. What else? Its stopping by this new Moroccan Restaurant on 116th Street called The Kiosk, and chatting it up with the owner Muner. He just started this venture and I pray every day that “beauty and love” would follow him in this venture. These moments are a spiritual discipline for a dreamer like me. One of my issues can be “selling out” my present moments for “lofty” pursuits and simply forget that goodness and mercy, beauty and love are with me, right here right now.
I don’t bode well with random surprises in life, unexpected things that keep me off balance. But this beauty and love thing…well, that’s one unexpected guest I’ll host any time of the day.
I’m hooked on the Foodnetwork Channel’s Throw Down with Bobby Flay. Bobby Flay goes around the country challenging the best cooks/chefs attempting to improve on their signatures dishes. Today Bobby challenged Jorge Ayala, Head Chef of East Harlem’s La Fonda Boricua. La Fonda is definitely the spot for some good Puerto Rican food. Personally I like the Bistec Encebollado (steak with onions). Mayra loves their Pollo Guisado (stew chicken)
It was good to see that Jorge held it down with his Arroz con Pollo dish, beating Bobby in a close competition. I had to laugh when the Salsa dancing was included in the competition. Leave it to Boricuas to get their groove on even during a food competition. Sweet.
Yes, I’ve returned from blog flakiness….
Our church is planning to do a series on stewardship in October. As I prepare I’ll be using some material provided by the Acton Institute (Environmental Stewardship: Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant Wisdom on the Environment). Our conference, The Evangelical Covenant Church also has some great material on stewardship as well. I want to look at stewardship beyond the typical stuff-though we’ll be covering the typical too (finances, spiritual gifts, etc.). My interest in particular is how we can care for the planet in practical ways. Of course this stuff aint new, environmentalists have been saying this for years. The church is just beginning to catch up. I guess its okay. When you’re in the urban world it seems as if you need to pick a cause (any cause), because they’re so many ways you can go.
I’m not being cynical, just truthful. We just need to support the people in our churches who have a concern for distinct causes. This might be one way to begin. We’re looking to partner with Urban Go Green, a group in the city that deals with environmental causes. They’ll be visiting us one Sunday in October to educate us all. Here’s an excerpt from their site.
Being green. It’s about making a choice, here and now. There’s a culture war going on around us, and we’ve got to pick being sustainable over being wasteful, having a healthier lifestyle over never thinking of the future. The Urban Go Green expo will provide better options for how you chose to live, bringing together those already working to improve our environment, our lives and our communities, with people new to the movement.
Further, in response to some of the health issue in our area, East Harlem produced a cookbook called Go Green East Harlem. It contains a list of restaurant in our area that produce healthy specialty dishes.
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image: detail of installation by Bronwyn Lace