Tim Keel's Blog

Week-end Highlights

It's been a great week-end. I spent yesterday with a house full of people. Mike Mastin and I were not in said house however. We were climbing around in mud beneath the deck on the back of my house. We're putting some support piers beneath a part of our house that we've recently discovered was in need of attention. I was Mike's cheap labor. One of the nastier jobs was reaching up under the house to pull out old insulation. I had no idea how old. Under cardboard was cedar saw dust (we're talking "old days" here) and above that, fairly well-preserved newspaper. It took me a few minutes to figure out what I was looking at. The first headline was, "A Stalingrad Key Falls." Then this, "Snow in Caucasus May Slow Hitler's Drive."

"London, Sept. 12 - A new and deadly foe of Hitler appeared today in the high passes of the Caucasus mountains. It was snow, the first sign of approaching winter, which the Germans learned last year to dread."

The other interesting story (among the few I've had time to look at) is titled, "Baruch Report is Sharp Challenge."

"Washington, Sept. 11 - For a brutally frank, hard-hitting report, the job just turned out by the Baruch committee will stand as a model for a long time. There doesn't seem to be a punch-pulling line in it. In view of what the Baruch committee reports, it is inconceivable that there can be any longer objection to nation-wide gasoline rationing."

The paper is The Kansas City Star and the date is September 14, 1942. Now I know on what date the builder insulated my house. The real estate ads tell me my house was likely sold for $500 - $1000. It's pretty cool to read through this stuff. It's also cool because my son's fifth grade class is studying the Holocaust and Nazi Germany right now. I'm excited to go through this with him.

Speaking of my kids, another week-end highlight was the St. Peter's all-school skate party tonight. What a blast. I have not been to a skate-rink in a long-time. The best part was using roller-blades. And the freaking great music. I mean, Funky Town (Won't You Take Me To) and Black-Eyed Peas' Let's Get It Started! I'm not embarrassed to say I went up to the DJ to find out the name of some song that was great to skate to. Turns out I'm now a "Mis-teeq" fan. I just bought (and am currently listening to) Scandalous off the iTunes music store. Maybe I'm just a Scandalous fan (okay, so it's better with skates on and flashing disco balls). The only thing that was missing to complete my return to junior high skating memory lane were slightly older freaks making out underneath benches with Journey playing in the background. Regardless, I am now the proud owner of two mildly painful blisters.

And since I'm speaking of "speaking of," then let me speak of last night's musical offering. After finishing our day's work, Mike and I went to the Hurricane to see Mike Crawford and the boys of Builder. As usual Builder put on a great show, though four or five more songs would have been better. For those who don't know, Mike is the worship leader at Jacob's Well. He is also building a recording studio at the church and now that demolition is done, the framing begins tomorrow night.

Okay, enough of this meandering post. One lowlight: packing up the fam and driving to Lawrence to see the previously mentioned Barry Moser show only to discover that Signs of Life Bookstore/Gallery/Coffee Shop is closed on Sundays. Note to self: next time remember to follow through on wife's advice to see if the gallery is open on Sundays. Bummer. At least the company was good.

Open Studio Featuring John Raux

 

John says: February's First Fridays (nice alliteration) in the Crossroads is coming...come and see my art!

 

Jacob's Well Language Institute

That title is kind of a joke, but there is something kind of cool happening around here. Last summer our family ministry coordinator, Phil Lesniewski, began an ESL program through our church and the Della Lamb Community Services Center. Phil has been working with immigrants and displaced people for a long-time, including a stint in Morocco with the Peace Corps (he was the displaced person in that situation). Anyway, given Phil's passion and the fact that he never asked and was never told no (I'm kidding), we now have a thriving little ESL community within our church.

The group meets Tuesday and Thursday nights and there is a beginning class and an advanced class. The way Phil knows if a person should be in the advanced class is that when they walk in the door and he greets them in English, if there is any flicker of recognition or response, they're advanced.

Out of that community has developed another connection point: homework helpers. Many of the immigrants who show up for ESL bring their school-aged kids who have passable language skills but are overwhelmed by homework demands (sounds like my kids). Now adults are connecting with those kids while the ESL is going on and tutoring them. Additionally, a guys' small group was looking for an opportunity to serve and had offered to change the oil in cars for people from the church. When no one showed up, the group ended up servicing twenty cars from the ESL community. Now they may develop an automotive ministry that will work on cars belonging to immigrants. Cathy Gordon from Mercy and Truth Medical Missions (in Kansas City, Kansas) has described this need as enormous.

Last Tuesday night marked a transition though. Now every Tuesday night there is another group meeting for language class. It's a SSL class: Spanish as second language. Fifteen students from the JW community came to the first Spanish class offered and tonight will be class #2. So in a sense, there is a little language institute developing. I have had a goal for about five years that I will be passably bilingual by my 40th birthday. I thought it was going to be French (given my background with the language in high school and college), but demographic research in Kansas City demonstrates the folly that that would be. Given current growth trends by the mid-2040s, Hispanics will be the largest demographic in Kansas City. I need to get cracking if I'm going to make it.

I am really excited about what is slowly unfolding.

Here's another amazing statistic, by the way: according to the February issue of Wired magazine, India will become the country with the most English speakers by the year 2010.

My Girl

 

Opening Next Week, in San Diego

Next week is the Emergent Convention in San Diego. I leave Tuesday and will return Saturday. It's a great time of learning and connecting, and to be honest, it's San Diego. The opportunity to teach in these environments is stimulating as well. I push away from the micro and look into the macro. I ask myself what have I been observing/experiencing that I'd like to interact with other leaders about? Last year it was the issue of preaching. I did a seminar called Preaching as an Act of Intimacy. Between the first presentation in San Diego and the second in Nashville and all the conversation that was created through times of interaction, I was really able to develop some ideas that had been stewing in my brain and body but that had no outlet. It has just recently ended up as an article in the latest issue of Leadership Journal titled, "Naked in the Pulpit." This title should come as no surprise to any of my good friends. TMI, I know. Deal with it.

This year I am chasing an idea about intuition. It is not really a "this year" thing but a "this life" thing that is finally finding articulation. The seminar is titled, Reckoning with Intuition: Developing and Fostering the Creative Impulse in Self and Community. It's an ambitious title and one that I have not yet fully lived into (thank God) but I am nevertheless describing the idea behind it this way:

In the emerging life of the culture and the church, pastors must develop new sets of competencies and learn how to attract leaders with those new competencies already in place. The modern age was ruled by science and in that environment, the humanities were relegated to the margins. In a post-modern context, the humanities are beginning to reassert themselves, not in terms defined by science but in their own language. Part of this language set is a highly intuitive set of skills. Much of traditional seminary training has revolved around cognitive faculties and so has attracted people with greater sensing capacities (from Meyers Briggs type indicator: intuitive versus sensing). In this seminar we will dialog and explore intuition as it relates to leadership, imagination, and creativity applied to the local church in the context of the emerging culture.

We'll see what, if anything, comes of it. It may end up being something completely unexpected. Just putting language to this stuff has been really life-giving, as has the research that I've been doing. The advantage of being sick is that I have read and read and read this week, words without end, amen, amen.

In addition to the learning, communicating, researching itch that this time always scratches, there is the relational side as well. I think I am going to get to see almost everyone pictured to the side here and a whole host of others I've grown to know and love over the last several years. And if I don't see some folks, there is a good chance I'll see them in Nashville in May. I'm planning on meeting a whole host of new people as well.

This will be the last year Youth Specialties partners with us to do this gathering, however. They have been good partners and will continue to be so in new and likely different ways. You might not guess it, but the timing is really good. Over the last six months we have been shifting the structure of Emergent that it might be more organizationally flat and expansive. This is something we're processing through at Jacob's Well, too. In Emergent's past we had a Coordinating Group (pictured above in 2003 at Conception Abbey). Unfortunately, such groupings tend to get more attention than what they deserve. So we have continued our transition away from this structure and have moved to a structure of contributors and affiliates. It is still unfolding, but we're really excited about it. At the Emergent Village blog, Doug Pagitt has taken some time to talk about the new way we are organizing ourself and how it will effect the future of the national event. If you consider yourself part of Emergent, then take some time to read through this. Moreover, if you're planning to be in San Diego then also plan on our first contributors gathering on Friday night.

Endless Web Fun

An apology to begin with for posting a link that is titled "fat dutch man."

And second, a confession before I give you the link. I am home spending my second consecutive day in bed fighting some unnamed illness. Ugh. This will explain a great deal. Trust me.

Then I get this link from my friend Todd Clary in Denver. My day has just brightened a bit. Okay, it's brightened a ton. I am somewhat embarrassed by the insane pleasure I get from this. Enjoy.

Two more thoughts...does anyone know what this song is and how do we get this guy under contract?

Barry Moser in Black and White

As a student at the University of Kansas in the late 80s I studied graphic design and illustration. Those two disciplines were contained within the School of Design, specifically the fine arts program. I had switched from English and magazine journalism to art and quickly fell in love with all the drawing and painting I was beginning to do. But I wasn't yet a painter (I'm still not a painter) and so my love of drawing and my love of design came together in the design program from which I eventually graduated (and promptly went into full-time ministry - go figure).

Somewhere in the course of my program I (re)discovered the medium of scratch-board. Scratch-board takes matte board, applies a coating of a white, clay-like substance, and then a deep coating of black india ink. To illustrate, an artist works in reverse, subtracting black ink via a scratching tool to reveal a white line underneath. For my senior program we had to illustrate a children's book and I did nine illustrations from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Scratch-board is the poor man's woodcut. Scratch-board mimics the more in depth and prolonged experience of engraving into wood and then making prints from the engravings.

Last week two things happened which brought me back to this world. First, I received a mailer from Signs of Life, a bookstore, coffee shop and art gallery in Lawrence, Kansas (home of the university). Turns out they are hosting a show of the magnificent Barry Moser's (self-portrait above, click to enlarge) work. The second thing that happened was that quite separate from the invitation: I received an e-mail from John McClain, the manager of the bookstore part of the business. He had just read the chapter I did for The Relevant Church and was giving me some feedback. It was good to connect with John.

In the course of the exchange I found out that Moser has sent Signs of Life the entire body of the work he did for his illustrated version of the Bible. I'd be just a little freaked out. Of the 250 woodcuts he did, Signs of Life is framing 40 for display, but the remaining corpus of the work will be able to be viewed as well. The show opens this Friday night and I believe John told me will go for eight weeks. Please take the opportunity to go and see Moser's work. At times it is chilling and macabre, but it is always inspired and executed flawlessly. Moser is described on one web-site this way:

Barry Moser is a big bear of a man with a full white beard and the Tennessee accent of a Bible-belt preacher (which at age 19, he was). He is also an extraordinary bookman, one of the world's great book designers and illustrators. Added to that, he is a virtuoso wood engraver, painter, designer, publisher, author, and frequent lecturer on the art of the book.

And as you can see, Signs of Life is a beautiful gallery. Got plans Friday night? You should now.

Had...to...get...outSIDE!

It is crazy beautiful today: 60 degrees, sunny and clear. By 3:45 I was feeling insane and had to break out of the office. I rolled down the street to the Starbuck's on 39th. My throat is scratchy so I'm drinking an Odwalla CMonster, which feels like health in a bottle to me, instead of coffee. And best of all, my wireless card pulls up a wireless network that is accessible from across the street. Who knew? Fric & Frac has a wireless network that stretches across 39th street. Did anyone else know this? Shhhh...just in case they don't know.

I was planning on sitting outside and responding to e-mail, loading up my outbox for later distribution. No waiting necessary now.

The Space Between

The scene pictured here is from the Abbey of Gethsemani, the Trappist monastery in Kentucky that Thomas Merton entered at 27 years old. Except for the last year, Thomas Merton has been a fairly consistent traveling companion for me over the last seven years. This year marks the first year I haven't read Merton in some capacity as a means of facilitating and guiding my journey with Christ. I believe having one or two dead mentors is really good. Anyway, I think I know why I've petered out with Merton for the time being: I started reading Merton's writings about the spiritual life. That may seem confusing. I mean, what else does Merton write about? Simply put, himself. I love the journals of Thomas Merton, specifically the collection of his writings that follow his entrance into the monastery called The Sign of Jonas. These journals come on the heels of Merton's autobiographical, Augustine-like Confessions, The Seven Story Mountain, another one of my all-time favorites that gets Merton through his conversion and in the door of the monastery. It is really meaningful for me to be able to "spy" on someone like Merton and see that towards which he aspires and that with which he struggles and those places where he discovers God and his true self. Anyway, enough said...

A friend gave me this Merton quote a couple of days ago and I thought that I would share it.

"But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. Between these two answers you can determine the identify of any person. The better answer he has, the more of a person he is." - Thomas Merton, My Argument with the Gestapo: A Macronic Journal.

They May Get This Thing Right

Here's a first pic (click to enlarge) coming from Disney's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe.

From the left we see Peter, Susan, Lucy and Edmund. I think they are spot on. Let's hope the rest of the movie follows suit.