You may be right, I may be crazy

As we approached last week and our community outreach week, weeding through the bureaucratic maze of insuring a major event, putting in place all the preparations we could think of...as we went through the week, watching lines of hundreds of families come and go, feeding hundreds and giving dozens of prescriptions away...as we have answered questions about it this week, talking about ideas and trying to make sense of it all, one of the dominant things that was and has kept running through my mind is "This is crazy...absolute insanity. What are we doing?!" The interesting thing is that that is how we first felt when we started More than more. It is how we felt when we started Center on More. It is how we felt when we went to Puerto Rico 2 years ago and to Matamoros last year. I have said more times than I can count, "I feel like I am in so far over my head. I don't have any idea what I'm doing or exactly how it is going to happen." I am sure many of you have heard me say that.
Each of these crazy over-our-head things, however uncomfortable though, we do not consider to be bad. In fact, we consider them to be among the most wonderful things in our lives. We have been so pitifully out of control, yet we have been on the most amazing and wonderful, fulfilling journey we have ever taken. I am not saying it was easy or even fun all the time - there are huge struggles, mostly against ourselves, the ideas we have, the tendencies we have developed, the brokenness we have inside us, misconceptions we have, the issues we have - but also sometimes against politics or attitudes of other people, sometimes against institutions, certainly against the grain, the mainstream ideas of what American life should be like. The strange thing is that we don't remember the fights for the most part - we remember the journey God has taken us on. The stuff inside us that was so hard to break no longer binds us in the same ways. The habits we struggled with often times are memories of habits now - seemingly because of the journey - as crazy as it has been!
We have chosen to not live by the conventional American ideal - we have chosen to break out of the society of "more" - get more, become more, achieve more, buy more, be more - the society of "upward mobility" - instead to embrace what I have heard called "downward mobility" by this friend of mine named Garrett. We have chosen to invite God into the moments of our lives and to ask Him where He wants us to go and what He wants us to do on a sometimes minute by minute basis. This request, and the God who responds to it, has taken us on the over-our-heads, fulfilling, wonderful, joyful, fun, hard, and crazy journey that landed us where we are right now. This changes everything.

Something I read last night really characterized this idea well. It is a quote from a guy named Albert Camus,

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very act of existence is an act of rebellion."

and then a quote from Brennan Manning,

"Simplicity, purity, and obedience to the Word [in this case meaning Jesus, God] will leave us weak and powerless in the world's eyes because we can no longer call on our possessions and privileged position as security. We will be subject to derision and outrage because [following God in this way] is a life of sublime madness."

Wow - I see us living free - More than more as a group - breaking free from the idea that more is the answer - and shedding that idea for the wonder of uncertainty and giving of ourselves, our money, our time, our energy, our passion for this amazing and insane journey...willing to be powerless and weak, to give up our rights to be what our education, status, neighborhood, upbringing, history, bank acct say we should be...even willing to hurt and beaten down, taken advantage of, to have those we are trying to help even hurt us because of the pain and loss within them - all because we choose to be free, in our madness - that our very existence would be an act of rebellion to the very broken world we live in.

We invite you to join to us, every other Thursday night - the next time is 8/6, next Thursday - as we continue this journey - who knows what craziness is next...