Trust the Abundance

We spent some time at our last Admin. Team meeting talking about community. How do you know when it's strong? Why does it feel like a fragile thing at times? This in response to a hasty decision made, questioned by others and the followup discussions. And then this wonderful quote from Parker Palmer of course to remind me to trust the abundance. “When a leader is willing to trust the abundance that people have and can generate together, willing to take the risk of inviting people to share from that abundance, then and only then may true community emerge.” In fact when I don't trust it is when I make poor decisions, it is then that I fall into micromanaging situations and when I break down the community we try to build together.

Live the Questions

There are two books that are taking up considerable mind-space for me right now: Bob Goudswaard et. al.'s Hope in Troubled Times and Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change. McLaren has high praise for Hope In ... calling it a must read. Apparently someone in Calgary had the brilliant insight to get the two of them together in one room a few weeks ago for an inspiring evening, according to my sister-in-law. Both books are prophetic in what they call us to. They are showing us the cracks in the empire and as much as that may frighten us it should also encourage us who live with hope. It does raise lots of questions, like Francis Schaeffer's How then should we live? Trust a great poet to shed some light, Ranier Maria Rilke from his Letters to a Young Poet: "I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." Isn't that the way it is in life. We have these big questions and over time they lead to a new, and hopefully more faithful, way of living.

Faith Has Better Teeth

This little gift on doubt from a

sister to a sister to me.

Gerhard Frost, the brother that

Robert never had.

Faith Gnaws Too

"Yes, doubt does keep gnawing
at one's faith."
I said it to a friend,
my friend in deep distress.
I said it to encourage,
but quickly he replied,
without a moment's hesitation,
"But faith keeps gnawing at our doubts, too!"

It was a great response.
I am strengthened by it.
Intending to comfort,
I was comforted.
Today I walk more boldly
as I say:
Yes, Doubt does gnaw at my faith,
but faith gnaws, too,
and faith has better teeth!


Gerhard Frost