Cheeky Creativity: Engaging the World with the Surprising Spirit
I recently stumbled across this sticker on Etsy, and it perfectly captures how I feel every time I open my newsfeed or turn on the radio or read a new article about current events:
I don’t know about you, but the amount of injustice, insane decisions, ludicrous policies, and outright corruption we are bombarded with has made me really and deeply tired.
I saw a post saying we don’t even know what to call and complain about to our representatives anymore. “I’d like to express my concern about….all of it?” Another said, “It’s not enough to touch grass to stay grounded. I need to be buried and commune with the mycelial network under trees.” It is harder and harder to remain human, even while we acknowledge that our paralysis is nothing compared to the outright death and violence experienced by those directly affected by the worst of the decisions being dealt out by vicious men and systems.
Preaching about the surprising encounter between Philip and the Ethiopian in Acts last week at IMC, I shared a blessing about engaging the “Gaza Roads” (wilderness places where we’re sent by the Spirit) with “cheeky creativity and compassion.”
That phrase has been rolling around my head all week, and I wanted to flesh it out here. How do we as followers of Jesus keep showing up in a world that is hell-bent on destruction? What does “cheeky creativity and compassion” look like in sustained, purposeful living?
I believe we can find new hope and strength to work with God in the world in these ways:
Remembering What Matilda Sang
Knowing Our Watershed
Learning From Those Who Have Linked Arms
Finding Surprising Spaces to Share Endangered, Beautiful Life
Finding What Works for the Tenderhearted Among Us
Remembering What Matilda Sang
One of our family’s favorite movie musicals is Matilda. There is a song that jumped out to me the first time we watched it together: “Naughty.”
Here are a few of the lyrics:
We're told we have to do what we're told, but surely
Sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty
Just because you find that life's not fair, it
Doesn't mean that you just have to grin and bear it
If you always take it on the chin and wear it
Nothing will change
Even if you're little, you can do a lot, you
Mustn't let a little thing like "little" stop you
If you sit around and let them get on top, you
Might as well be saying you think that it's okay
And that's not right
And if it's not right
You have to put it right…
Sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty
I got to share about Sister Irma Dulce of Brazil in the same sermon I mentioned above, and she is a Sister Matilda would have loved. Besides being a busking nun who loved people in a community called “The Island of the Rats,” Dulce was unapologetically cheeky for those on the margins. My favorite story about her is what happened when she was evicted from the fish market she was using as a hospital. She asked her Mother Superior to house people in the convent chicken yard. She agreed on the condition that Dulce would take care of the chickens. St. Dulce did– by preparing a huge meal of them for the 70 people she invited in! That chicken yard became Santo Antonio Hospital, a 1500-bed health care center specializing in cancer treatment, known for stressing the importance of laughter to help patients recover
In what ways can we be cheeky, naughty, subversive? Not just for the sake of being contrary but in the pursuit of God’s justice and order? In what ways can we be like Jesus holding up a coin and making people acknowledge how much Caesar can really ever own?
2. Knowing Our Watershed: I’ve had friends who have taken part in amazing adventures of resistance like the Petrol Free Jubilee bike/music tour, communal living, pilgrimages, protests and artistic expressions of radical kingdom living. To be completely honest, these kinds of experiences both fascinate and intimidate me. While I don’t know if I can wholly embrace the counter-cultural movement of some of these Jesus-followers, I do love what I’ve learned from them about “watershed discipleship.”
In his primer on the topic, Ched Myers describes “watershed discipleship” as
”an intentional “triple entendre”:
1. It recognizes that we are in a watershed historical moment of crisis, which demands that environmental and social justice and resiliency be integral to everything we do as Christians and citizen inhabitants of specific places;
2. It acknowledges the bioregional locus of an incarnational following of Jesus: our individual discipleship and the life and witness of the local church take place in a watershed context, without exception;
3. It challenges us to become disciples of our watersheds, learning literacy in its ecology and history and adapting to its characteristics and its limits.”
He goes in depth about regional focused living: “Almost a half century ago, Senegalese environmentalist Baba Dioum suggested that at the root of our pathology is a crisis of affection. To paraphrase him: “We won’t save places we don’t love, we can’t love places we don’t know, and we don’t know places we haven’t learned.”… [we] need to become disciples of our watersheds…
Living as we do “on top of” or “between” places, we have long lost (or abandoned) the kind of basic knowledge upon which our ancestors relied: where to find basic things like water, or food, or shelter. Nor do we have “ears to hear or eyes to see” what our watershed requires to maintain health and equilibrium.
The ecological Endgame has revealed our ignorance as perhaps the costliest form of Docetism, which is why our need to apprentice to the places we reside is so urgent. Our learning curve will be steep: geological features, soil types, climate zones, flora and fauna, as well as built environments and their social history, the peopled stories, and histories of flourishing, oppression and displacement. This “curriculum” needs to impact our personal spiritual disciplines, ecclesial expressions, education systems and public policies.”
The idea of “Watershed Discipleship” gives me a handle, a place to start amid so many competing crises.
3. Learning from Those Who Have Linked Arms: If you’ve known me very long, you’ve heard me share about the Abuelas of the Plaza de Mayo from Argentina. I walked on the same cobblestones as them when I was sixteen, and I’ve only grown in admiration of them as an adult in an increasingly depraved state. These moms and grandmas tied cloth diapers on their heads, a ridiculous symbol for a ridiculous amount of government sponsored terror/disappearances. Other groups of women like the thousands who marched against apartheid in South Africa or Mayan land protectors in Central America today show us a myriad of ways to resist: reclaiming symbols of our weakness, refusing to be separated, showing up courageously, and speaking with courage and conviction—as a moving community.
4. Finding Surprising Spaces to Share Endangered, Beautiful Life
Our friend Lars is an activist, theologian, justice-practitioner, bicycle-riding prophet. One of his projects is the Life Lines Collective Project: Life Lines is an audio journal of poetry, spoken word, and other creative writing by people living on death row.
Their description of their role as a project has always taken my breath away: “Life Lines is about connection. It’s about finding surprising spaces to share endangered, beautiful life. It’s about recognizing our power and our powerlessness to give and take life.”
You can listen to the podcast here, but we don’t have to stop there. Where in our week are we building spaces to share life who have common hopes and needs? If Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, if the Spirit breathes life into dead places, where can we show up in our powerlessness to listen, lament, embody God’s presence, learn from our neighbors?
5. Finding What Works for the Tenderhearted Among Us
I would consider myself a sensitive soul. The same awareness that allows me to make art, throw parties, write poetry, and connect with hurting friends means that I’ve had seasons of burnout, anxiety, insomnia and despair. There’s a reason why “suffering artist” is a trope that we all know. Like someone who’s teeth ache at both hot and cold sensations, being awake to beauty means I can also physically be weighed down with injustice and pain.
I appreciate so much the work of Dorcas Cheng-Tozun. Her book Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul challenges our assumptions of just who God can use in building God’s kingdom on earth:
“Social justice work, we often assume, is raised voices and raised fists. But what does social justice work look like for those of us who don't feel comfortable battling in the trenches? Sustaining justice work can be especially challenging for the sensitive, and it requires a deep level of self-awareness, intentionality, and care to avoid overwhelm and burnout. However, those who consider themselves highly emotional, empathic, or introverted are wise, thoughtful, and conscientious. We need their contributions.”
“Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul explores six possible pathways for sensitive types:
- Connectors: relational activists whose interactions and conversations build the social capital necessary for change
- Creatives: artists and creators whose work inspires, sheds light, makes connections, and brings issues into the public consciousness
- Record Keepers: archivists who preserve essential information and hold our collective memory and history
- Builders: inventors, programmers, and engineers who center empathy as they develop society-changing products and technologies
- Equippers: educators, mentors, and elders who build skills and knowledge within movements and shepherd the next generation of changemakers
- Researchers: data-driven individuals who utilize information as a persuasive tool to effect change and propose options for improvement”
Before we discount ourselves or others from being a part of good, hard world-changing work, may we look for ways that even the tender among us may be able to lead.
This week may bring a dozen more dumpster fires. We may continue to see the rights of the least being violated or quietly destroyed. We may feel helpless or hopeless. May we not lose heart, dear ones, though because we are accompanied by the Spirit. May we keep in step and remember the ways, like these above, we can keep on walking in Jesus’ way.
