Remaining more curious than certain

-
My church has a problem familiar to many inner-city mainline denominational churches. With a large, beautiful facility and a membership that is a fraction of what it once was, we have struggled to learn what we need to be in order to serve God's people in our neighborhood, in our city, and in our region.

A small group of us have taken on the task of reimagining how we interact with ourselves and our surrounding community. It has been a long but necessary process, because the neighborhood surrounding our church is changing rapidly, and not always for the better. While the new investment in many of the buildings and homes nearby has been great to see, it has also meant many who have called Detroit's North End home for decades no longer live nearby, all for the sake of progress.

Our facilitator for this journey had us read an excerpt of Margaret Wheatley's book, Turning to One Another (link is to my Amazon affiliate account). It is powerful in the context of my church, but it is also powerful in the context of deciding to share my stories, both in deciding to look for my birth father and the journey my wife and I have enjoyed by becoming parents through adoption.

Here is the excerpt:

There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about.
Ask: "What's possible?" not "What's wrong?" Keep asking.
Notice what you care about. 
Assume that many others share your dreams. 
Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters. 
Talk to people you know. 
Talk to people you don't know. 
Talk to people you never talk to. 
Be intrigued by the differences you hear. Expect to be surprised. 
Treasure curiosity more than certainty. 
Invite in everybody who cares to work on what's possible. 
Acknowledge that everyone is an expert about something. 
Know that creative solutions comve from new connections. 
Remember, you don't fear people whose story you know. 
Real listening always brings people closer together. 
Trust that meaningful conversations can change your world. 
Rely on human goodness. 
Stay together. 

 I pray that I remain more curious than certain. I pray others follow me on this journey soon, too.

Popular posts from this blog

Marching for hope in our neighborhood

-
Image
The Kid and I walked our neighborhood this evening, but with a different purpose than usual. Many in our neighborhood gathered at Gesu Catholic Church to March for Hope . Roughly this time last year, a federal judge who lives a few streets over, was shot on his front porch in a botched robbery attempt. His physical recovery from the single bullet to the knee took the better part of a year and extensive rehabilitation, and his emotional recovery was sped by his church community and immediate neighbors. I don't know the judge, nor am I a member of his church Gesu Catholic. I'm not much of a protest guy either, I prefer to work behind the scenes. I read about the walk this morning , and almost forgot about it until Gladys started to do some work for a class she's taking. So we bundled up The Kid, and the two of us walked over to the church to support our neighborhood. When we walked into the church, I was struck immediately with the knowledge that this was not a protes
Read more

Yet another blog of parenting advice

-
Image
A friend whose wife is expecting their first child was asking me for advice today. He's going to be a new dad, so he was asking in general terms because until you're in it, you really don't know what to ask for. My knee-jerk reaction was to tell him to get rest. Lots of it, whenever you can from now until the kids are adults. Forget the idea of work/life balance too, because balance is a myth. Sometimes work will take priority, sometimes the kids will, and sometimes dad has to be a priority. If you're too concerned about hitting a false measure of balance, you're going to miss something. The End of the Beginning And that was it. That's all I could come up with until I got in the car and scarfed down one of the sugar cookies I bought for myself as a treat that I had no intention of sharing. Here's what I came up with. Avoid watching Caillou at all costs. For some reason, kids are absolutely mesmerized by him. No adult on that show holds the kid acc
Read more

But you're so young and athletic

-
Image
I fully expected to be writing a few humble brag posts on my social media channels by now of my athletic prowess, or at least tales of how I survived my first couple of organized classic cross country ski races. I’ve long thought about what it would be like to participate in the Noquemanon Ski Marathon , but living in a snow-desert like Detroit makes training tough. Since I’ve never done a race in my life on skis, I figured it would be a good idea to take on some shorter distances to see if this was something I would really enjoy doing. My training for the Krazy Klassic closer to home was fun. My walks with Barney were longer. So was my time on the yoga mat. When the race began, it was harder than I expected but I chalked that up to a lack of time on skis this year. Ultimately, I hit my goal, which was to finish the race. My 5k time was among the slowest that day , but I left the experience encouraged that my fitness was going in the right direction for the White Pine Stampede a few w
Read more