A Hunting Party

A
Hunting party
Sometimes has a greater chance
Of flushing love and God
Out into the open
Than a warrior
All
Alone.
Hafiz

We teamed up with some beloved friends this month, in our constant search for love and God.

Sarah Nolan and Adella Barrett, in the midst of a cross country road trip, joined us for a couple days in Ypsi at the beginning of the month.  We had great connections with them during our time in the Ojai Valley this Spring.  They were part of the couples retreat we facilitated in April.  Both of them are committed to a form of ministry that blends pastoral nurture, theological depth and growing food!!  (Below, from left: Lindsay, Adella and Sarah pose at controversial Hantz Woodlands on Detroit's Eastside)

Our friend Bryan Victor helped us transfer a couple hundred gallons of water to a food pantry in Detroit's Brightmoor neighborhood.  These folks are consistently reporting high rates of water shutoffs and yellow and brown colored water coming out of their taps.  Bryan is a professor of social work at the University of Michigan and participates (with his partner Tom) in our weekly lectio divina Bible study on Wednesday nights in Southwest Detroit.

Speaking of the Larkins Street lectio divina group, Lindsay consistency joins Erinn Wylie-Fahey and her two sons (Cedar, 1, and Isaac, 4) for a pre-lectio jog through our old neighborhood.

Our friend Jacob Taylor drove four hours north from Cincy in his clearly messaged Hyundai to join us in a weekend of coffee, conversational catch-up, co-conspiring, and dream analysis.  We originally met Jay Tay when he was interning with Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries in February 2015.

Some people are hunting for love and God in the strangest of places.  Crowds flocked from the Detroit suburbs for six consecutive nights to take in Kid Rock's segregationist brand of music and politics.  We joined a group of about two hundred protestors before the opening night of $800 million Little Caesar's Arena, much of it financed with public money (while tens of thousands of black Detroiters suffer water shutoffs and home foreclosures). Images like these below remind us of the challenging words of Martin Luther King (and Jesus) who preached:

Every word and deed must contribute to an understanding with the enemy and release those vast reservoirs of goodwill which have been blocked by impenetrable walls of hate...We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.

These are confusing and agitating times. We are feeling the wake-up call all the time. We need each other: for nurture, support, discernment and just to keep one another's courage up! Grateful to be part of an ever-expanding hunting party that prods us out of our alone-ness and into the love and God being flushed out all around.