I Will Know

"What is intentional community?" he asks, and I find myself at a loss of words.

Words fail to express the depths of the sacred. 

Intentional community is the act of bearing witness to the journeys of a small group of people who commit to practicing the "one anothers" alongside one another as the physical embodiment of the Church.

But I will always know intentional community first experienced as this, not in words, but in pictures:

Buying Calypsos in four different flavors, suitcases sporadically hitting sidewalk bumps on the way to the laundromat, the smell of the musty conflict mediation basement, plastic spoons scraping the last remnants of water ice out of cups during the evening hours, labeled tupperwares and dirty dish rags.

I will know intentional community as water dripping from the underground ceiling as we wait for public transit to arrive, lugging crockpots of black beans across the city, standing on crowded trolleys until 62nd and Elmwood.

I will know intentional community as the routine coffee dates and the dramatic fights, laughter loud and emotions high. I will know intentional community as sisters and secrets, and brothers and banter--game nights and nights out and time together. 

But I will also know intentional community as this:

Holding her together the night she fell apart in grief, our tears covering as a prayer for a journey we all knew was coming. I will know it in the washing of feet and the breaking of bread, communion til the early hours of the morning. I will know it in the hardship and the times when we wanted to give up--and they ways in which there was redemption in the seemingly lost and broken. I will know it how we acknowledged one another's healing in the process of the journey, through sweet letters and gifts and an honoring of story. I will know it in the way we embodied seeing and knowing as the intimacy that is the Church, the Beloved of Christ. 

I will know intentional community first experienced as them.


Let us break bread together on our knees
Let us break bread together on our knees
When we fall on our knees with our face to the rising sun
Oh Lord, have mercy on us.

When I Look Back

Sometimes I'm in Springfield watching my father's gentle hands gather vegetables from the garden, the breeze on my face from the Lake and the smell of rotting fish a reminder that I am home.

And sometimes I'm at Sawyerwood church singing "God Bless America" on Memorial Day, crock pots and Hallmark cards and protective, secure hugs--Grandma's laughter and the birthday bag and Father Abraham had many sons.
 
And sometimes I'm deep in the cornfields of Bowling Green, the horizon as flat and open as all of the possibilities ahead of me, a questioning and searching and seeking my spiritual truth. 

And sometimes I'm in Philadelphia where my Black church family taught me of justice and freedom and liberation and healing, where radical embrace sunk deep into my bones a healing I didn't know I needed and a healing I could never forget.

And sometimes I'm in Kapolei near the shores where the sun-soaked sand called my spirit to repentance, where the kalo was pounded on the papa ku‘i ‘ai into communion alongside coconut milk and we all partook of the feast as one Church. 

And sometimes I'm in the sun-scorched dirt of LA where shoots of resilient green in the midst of drought remind me that I am resilient green, too.

And sometimes I'm in Summit Lake, where the beggars and broken take communion alongside the rich and humbled and we call one another family.   

And sometimes I'm in the psychiatric hospital, and sometimes I'm the counselor. And sometimes I'm the Good Samaritan, and sometimes I'm begging for help and

Everywhere I go  
My heart keeps expanding and widening and falling deeper in love
Mystery and ocean depths and a never-ending contemplative horizon that leads me to marvel at--
How wide, 
how long, 
how deep, 
how magnificent 
is the love of Christ our Lord.

The Day I Tried to Protest at a Bar

"What are you protesting?" the man asked me while we were both painting the street in my neighborhood. I had just told him I was planning on protesting an event that was happening at a local bar that evening. 

In a flurry of feelings, I didn't answer his question well. To be honest, I hadn't quite figured it out myself. I just knew it was a luau that wasn't a luau and this wasn't okay.

And three hours later as I was in my room trying to sort through what to write on my sign, I still hadn't figured it out. I wanted to write "Native Hawaiian culture is not yours for pleasure and consumption" but I didn't think anyone in Akron, Ohio would understand what that meant. No one really thinks of Hawai'i as a land in Akron, just a paradise vacation destination. 

I was told from a couple of friends heavily involved and a part of the Hawaiian community in Hawai'i that to represent Hawai'i and Native Hawaiian people well I should protest with a spirit of aloha. I didn't quite understand what that meant but I kinda read it as "Amber chillax it's all gonna be cool just speak your heart and speak the truth and don't protest out of a spirit of violence."

I'm sitting, staring at my blank sign, wondering if I should talk about how Hawai'i was illegally overthrown and then eventually annexed by William McKinley who is buried a half hour from Akron, or if I should point out that none of the five luau foods are being served at their event.

Neither one feels like a good route but this is the third "luau" event I've seen at three different bars/pubs in Akron this summer and on top of the varying "Hawaii" floral sprays and "paradise fabric prints" found in any store I just cannot be silent anymore.

And so I think of Jesus, and how he speaks to the people he loves. 

He calls them by name: "Mary" "Jerusalem" "Peter"

And so I start off my sign by calling by name my city that I love--"Akron"

I don't know where to go from here because there is so much I want to say to Akron and beyond. And I begin weeping because I'm thinking of Jesus standing over Jerusalem, his heart breaking for the city and watching it be it's own destruction because it is too blind to see. And I feel connected to Jesus in that moment, somehow, in someway that I can't describe but is real.

And I ask myself, "What is it that gently needs to be said?"

And I paint:

And although the protest/education station didn't work out (due to rain and me recognizing that moving my solo protest to inside wasn't going to be the best idea) it doesn't change the fact that Hawaiians are important, and so are their stories and culture. 

And

And sometimes, love,
You must let a dream die
To compost into the fertile soil
In which another
may 
grow

Monday

We are here
Past the door frame with layers of grimy fingers
Across the sticky floor of the small kitchen 
Amid the shouts and hustle and bustle
And plates thrown about on the rickety table 
The gathering of children like the gathering of chicks
Around and around the plates are filled
And shouts are the laughter of tomorrow
Another day has gone
And we brush the work off our shoulders
With smiles and the passing of plates
And in the midst of chaos
A collective breath signals the day's end with a gentle
Take and eat.

 

 

Part 1

Grief--
You were the first to arrive at the scene
To perform emergency care for my bleeding heart
Wrapping it tightly with gauze to stop the grieving
But the feeling stopped, too.

Numb
So numb
Beneath the restricting gauze--
The survival kit in the midst of loss
My God
I have been half alive for so long I have forgotten what it is 
To feel.

Photo Credit: Sara Fouts

Sometimes I feel like dance is a bit like God

Photo Credit: Sara Fouts

Sometimes I feel like dance
Is a bit like God like
How I continually try to run and run
From that which beckons me to the
Sweetest surrender of expression
And 'Come away with me, Beloved'
To the naked movement of my soul
Flourishing and free and safe as it was meant to be
As it could be
(As it will be
Someday when the world is renewed
And we find ourselves dancing together
Raw and intimate and beautiful
The sweet laughter of communion)
Sometimes I feel like dance
Is a bit like God like
How I continually try to run and run
From S[He] who beckons me to the
Sweetest surrender of expression

Photo Credit: Sara Fouts