K+5

I have another blog, where I play [more] nice, where I measure my words more, speak a touch more restrained, civil over the things that frustrate me.

Tonight, I wrote about my experience with Katrina...
http://mikebrantley.wordpress.com/

“You’ve Got to Get In to Get Out”

The world will impinge into your need

for silence, into your prayers. In the hardest seconds

of your life, your neighbours will be drunk,

booming hip-hop through thin inconvenient walls.

At the lighting of your candles, in the moment

you need to focus – the apex of your flame,

the voice of the Holy Spirit, someone

will be vacuuming, talking, ringing up change,

a bin wagon bleeping as it reverses, builders

swearing into the distance you put by pulling into

yourself. It sounds like they are calling your name.

~ John Siddique, Recital, Salt Publising, Cambridge, England, UK, 2009

THIS IS MY PRAYER LIFE!

Rarely does a poem capture the essence of one’s experience and one’s vocation – one’s calling. John Siddique caused me to stop – to literally stop, go into myself and completely relate with what he is saying in this short powerful poem.

In our community, where calling means incarnation amongst the world, not cloistered away in a monastery, though to be honest – we sometimes envy the monks! To love people, give yourself away; to be Christ in a world of noise, of distraction, of so much need; to be a people who are ourselves often irreverent to piety in the American religious experience, we find ourselves too busy, over committed and demands of life pulling on us from every direction.

John froze me in my steps – brought me face to face with my reality. I love my world, I love my calling, I love my community, and the many people with whom we journey to discover God beyond religiosity, beyond institution, beyond “ought to’s”. John put the tension into words – things I’d felt at the conscious and unconscious level… caught the essence.

The trick, as Brother Laurence addressed centuries ago is to be with Him in, amongst, while the world goes on around you. This is hard and something I have made progress towards, yet feel so immature and needing to grow further.

Thanks, John, for giving voice to the feelings I did not have words to even begin to define within myself, much less to others.

Note: I want to encourage you to consider this book, Recital. John Siddique puts into words the human experience on so many fronts. He addresses the harsh realities with a gentleness, acceptance, making peace with the disharmonious realities and complexities with which we must come to terms. From death, to parents and children, to love, life and living life, he captures our contemporary reality with a classic depth and reflection not often found today in our cheap veneer culture.

FREE THE MONKS!

Here in New Orleans, the orders are central to society. Our Benedictine Abbey, on the Northshore, in the suburbs, hidden in a wood, is St. Joseph’s Benedictine Abbey. They are our friends. We retreat there and they have been huge encouragers and pray for us in our own world and mission here.

The Benedictine motto is “ora et labora” (meaning “to work and pray”). They support themselves through various means: pastoring a few parishes; baking bread for missions, food banks, etc; teaching and administering in the under

graduate seminary, which they host for the Archdiocese & some international diocese; some specific other trades; they leased a Benedictine Ale recipe to Abita Beer; and they make very simple wooden caskets for a very small number of people who prefer the understated when they pass away. It began by them making simple caskets for themselves, and since 2007 have made about 50 for others. They also pray 365 days of the year, five times a day, as well as individually every day and have for over a century.

Two years ago, the powerful and very political funeral home director’s association had their board threaten the abbey for selling these wooden boxes. You see, they’ve used their lobbyists well and have made it illegal for anyone other than a funeral embalming business to sell caskets. They are threatening to put the Abbot in jail and fine the abbey. Take some notes on these little details:

1. It is not required to be buried in a sarcophagus or a casket at all. You can be buried straight in the ground… That is true in all fifty states.

2. The Funeral Home Director’s Board is composed of funeral business owners, save one – and he is connected.

3. There are forty thousand funerals a year in Louisiana. The monks have sold 12 1/2 caskets a year for the past four years. That’s .0003% of their annual business.

4. A casket from a funeral home runs $5-10,000. The Abbey sells these humble caskets for $2000. The use any proceeds to help cover medical expenses.

5. The argument the Funeral Directors gave is that “it places them in an awkward and uncomfortable position with families. …Ya think!

6. They made the bar so high, to get the Abbey to cease… take courses, get licensed, open a parlor at the Abbey, become embalmers, and have the monks involved do full time internships with a parlor that would take them …not paid.

In case you missed this – it is economic cartel at it’s best. The funeral guys who do a vital service, but also are bottom feeders feeding on the most dire situation a family faces and making bank on it. They have politicked themselves into a monopoly on something not even required for burial.

Two attempts by State representatives were voted down this past year… thanks to the funeral parlor lobbyists… Nice.

This political and economic bullying, threatening the Abbey and practicing A government sanction cartel is beyond wrong – it is immoral. It’s time to stop this and make a noise so loud that the state has to act.

Please drop an email or two to the governor, our sena

tors and our state representative for our monks!

http://www.gov.la.gov/index.cfm?md=form&tmp=email_governor

http://landrieu.senate.gov/about/contact.cfm

http://vitter.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm

abramson@legis.state.la.us

The monks have filed a federal suit against the state over this law. This is a national issue now. We need your help. Please write – it’s politics over the courts… This is the only way to bring about this change! THANKS for your help.

When the world is no longer listens to the words that come from the church, the incarnation of Jesus is all the more stunning

Learning to bring the Kingdom, to be the church - a body of people, a people missio (sent), is a mandate from The King, not an event, a place, or an institution, though those things are often necessary in different forms.

A couple of quotes from this chat...

Independence is a cultural value, but not a Biblical one

It is hard to get well in the same petri (sp?) dish (referring to getting healthy, from the synchronicity of our Western "suburban" consumer culture.

For those wrestling with what this means, I think this might help. Read these three authors afterwards... May it ruin you forever. :-)

The Ideacamp at Exponential 2010 with Shane Claireborne, Neil Cole and Alan Hirsch from The Idea Camp on Vimeo.