Dream Awakener

The Cobalt Season - Thursday Night - April 24 at 7:30 p.m.

My pastor friend Ryan Bell and his congregation are hosting The Cobalt Season tomorrow night.  It is great music (Indie/Acoustic/Folk) and meaningful lyrics.  Check out their myspace.  Details below.

Invisible Children Roadies This Saturday at Artist @ the Fountain

This Saturday, April 19th at 7:30 p.m.  Artist @ the Fountain presents a screening of Black is for Sunday.  There is no cover.
 

A four person road crew from Invisible Children will be hosting this event.  They will be giving updates on what is happening with Invisible Children as well as showing the film. If you are in the LA area and want to come to this film screening, the Fountain Room is located at 4903 Fountain Avenue, Hollywood, CA 90029.

ABOUT "BLACK IS FOR SUNDAY"
Invisible Children's filmmaker Bobby Bailey went back to northern Uganda in March 2007 to spend 10 days living among and like the people displaced for 10 years in one of the worst humanitarian crises of our time.  His adventure took him to the heart of the longest running war in Africa and into the life of a child that would change his life forever.

In this film, you will meet Sunday.  Only 15 years old, there isn't a part of his life that hasn't been affected by the war.  Orphaned at a young age, he lives in a displacement camp and struggles to survive amid the affects of poverty, disease, and malnutrition.  Having no family left to depend on, he must try to provide for himself.

But without enough time to work and go to class, Sunday can't make the money needed to pay his fees and is asked to leave school.  The war that has already taken so much from him now threatens to take the most valuable thing he has left: a future.

Come check out the screening.  Spread the word.  This Saturday, April 19th at 7:30 p.m. The Fountain Room 4903 Fountain Avenue  Hollywood, CA 90029  There is no cover, but you can buy black bracelets to help the children in Uganda.

A Look at Brokeness and Healing through Two Classic Films Part V

Today we end this series.  In part one we looked at the plot summary of Patch Adams and Good Will Hunting.  In part two we looked at some themes and issues that the films especially related to brokenness and healing. Then we took a look at insights into modern/postmodern culture through these films. In part three we took at look at Patch Adams,and part four Good Will Hunting.  Now for the conclusion.

Conclusion
We are broken people in a broken world, with a broken church.  We all need healing.  If we desire to be agents of healing, we will need to get more in touch with our humanity like Patch Adams did, and realize, like Will Hunting, that healing comes when we are willing to honestly face our brokenness.  As we face our brokenness together, we must remember to work not just with our heads, but with our hearts and hands as well. It was Fredrick Beuchner who said, “Calling is where your deep hunger meets the world’s deep needs.”  We are called to be wounded healers, helping people to become fully human again.

I enjoyed the different interactions that we have had with this series.  And one of the entries sparked Jonathan Brink to write an excellent entry on Restorative Spiritual Healing.  Check it out.

A Look at Brokeness and Healing through Two Classic Films Part IV

We are broken people living in a broken who desire to experience healing in wholeness.  We are exploring this through two films.  In part one we looked at the plot summary of Patch Adams and Good Will Hunting.  In part two we looked at some themes and issues that the films especially related to brokenness and healing. Now I would like to take a look at insights into modern/postmodern culture through these films. In my last entry we took at look at Patch Adams, today we will look at Good Will Hunting.   

GOOD WILL HUNTING
One of the ways that I see the contrast of modernity and postmodernity in Good Will Hunting is through the life of Will Hunting.  Will in some ways is the perfect product of modernity.  He is a genius filled with all kinds of knowledge.  He is machine-like in his ability to learn and regurgitate book knowledge.  Yet in all of his book knowledge, he remains isolated in his hurt – radical individualism (modernity).   When Sean meets with him, he confronts him on this.  One of the most amazing scenes is the second time they get together, when Sean talks about the difference between book knowledge and life experience.  Here is just the beginning of that scene, “If I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book written.  Michelangelo, you know a lot about him, life work, political ambitions, him and the Pope, sexual orientation, the whole works, right?  I bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine chapel.  You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling and seen that…”  Throughout the movie Sean, in his therapy sessions, not only helped Will to honestly face his past, but he helped him to move from radical individualism (modernity) toward relational selfhood (postmodernity).

A Look at Brokeness and Healing through Two Classic Films Part III

We are broken people living in a broken who desire to experience healing in wholeness.  We are exploring this through two films.  In part one we looked at the plot summary of Patch Adams and Good Will Hunting.  In part two we looked at some themes and issues that the films especially related to brokenness and healing. Now I would like to take a look at insights into modern/postmodern culture through these films.  Today I want to look at Patch Adam.

PATCH ADAMS
In Patch Adams, the difference between modernity and postmodernity is displayed most concretely in the conflict between the institutional way to health (modernity) and the Patch Adams way to health (postmodernity).  The institution, best embodied in Dean Walcott, thinks that all the patients need are experts filled with the right kind of knowledge.  Dean Walcott feels that doctors need to remain distant from the patients in order to keep a sense of objectivity. In one of his showdowns with Patch, he says, “What you want is for us to get down there on the same level as our patients, to destroy objectivity, all to uphold some idealistic buddy system…” At another showdown, he tells Patch that people don’t need entertainers and friends, they need doctors.   

Patch, on the other hand, thinks it is important to connect with people personally, to call them by their name, not just their disease, and to bring a little joy and laughter to their lives.  He considers distance to be the problem, not the solution.  For him, heart knowledge is just as important as head knowledge, and it seems that his way catches on. For his roommate Mitch finally realizes that his rigorous studies can’t make his patient eat when she needs to eat.  He has to call in Patch to personally connect with her for healing to take place.

A Look at Brokeness and Healing through Two Classic Films Part II

In this series we are taking a look at brokenness and healing through Patch Adams and Good Will Hunting.  In part one, I just gave an overview of these films.  In today's post, I want to take a look at the themes and issues that these movies engage with. 

THEMES AND ISSUES
Both of these films deal with brokenness and healing.  In Patch Adams, Patch first discovers brokenness in himself and then brokenness in the institutions that are supposed to bring about healing.  In Good Will Hunting, we are shown the brokenness of Will long before he is willing to see this brokenness in himself.  We learn through these films that when we are honest with what is broken, we can better find our way to healing.

When it comes to bringing about healing, both of these films display conflict in regard to the best way to bring about wholeness.   They look to answer the question:  how does real healing come about?  In Patch Adams, the conflict is between the institutional way of bringing about healing and the Patch Adams way.  The institution tries to bring healing by creating the perfect doctors who through their objective knowledge, superiority and focus on the disease, can bring about healing.  On the other hand, Patch seeks to bring about healing through the mind and heart, subjective relationships, meeting people where they are at and treating the patient, not just the disease.  In Good Will Hunting, Will thinks that healing can happen through avoidance and book knowledge and Professor Lambeau believes healing can happen by becoming successful in the world’s eyes, while Psychiatrist Sean Maguire recognizes that the way to healing is to face the past honestly, for then one can move toward wholeness and more clearly see what the future holds.

Both of these films reflect on what it means to discover and live out our calling with a sense of passion, despite being pushed and pulled by institutional forces or people. In Patch Adams, we learn that we find our calling when we discover how we can truly help people. Patch learns to live out his calling, despite the institution’s training that tried to choke the life out of him.  In Good Will Hunting, we learn that some people in the world desire to shape our calling through manipulation according to their own personal dreams (what Professor Lambeau was trying to do with Will), while others help us to find our calling through self discovery and healing (what Sean did with Will).  Will found his sense of calling and passion near the end as he decided to go to California to seek his soul mate.

In the next post in this series, I will talk about the insights we gain into Modern/Postmodern Culture from these two films.   

A Look at Brokeness and Healing through Two Classic Films Part I

Introduction
We are broken people living in a broken world, so how should we pursue a sense of wholeness?  How do we find healing? What are we being healed for?  How does our sense of calling in life connect with our ability to find wholeness?  These are a couple of the themes that are addressed in Patch Adams and Good Will Hunting.

Plot Summary of Patch Adams
We meet Hunter Adams in the Psychiatric Institution, where he admits himself after attempting to take his life.  He goes to find healing from the doctors, but instead finds healing through the patients.  He finds healing as he helps the patients, thus earning the nickname “Patch.”  Arthur Mendelson asks Patch a question that sticks with him through the film, “How many fingers do you see?”  Through this question, Arthur helps Patch to focus beyond the problem in order to find solutions.  One of the keys to healing is looking at life from a different perspective.

Two years later Patch finds himself at a Medical Institution to get trained to be a doctor.  While Dean Wilcott and the institution want to “train the humanity” out of the students and make them Doctors, Patch Adams sees a need to bring humanity back into the healing process.  This sets up a major conflict between the institutional way of treating diseases to the Patch Adams way of bringing healing.

In the end, Patch realizes he needs to create a space outside of the institution, in order to bring a sense of healing to people.  As he takes this journey, he is able to dodge the arrows of the institution and endure the loss of the love of his life, because he realizes that wholeness comes when we are willing to lose our life by helping others.

Plot Summary of Good Will Hunting
Will Hunting lives in the tough part of South Boston with his buddies and works as a janitor at M.I.T..  He can solve math problems better than the M.I.T. professors, but has difficulty working through the issues of his own life.

Will is a genius when it comes to book knowledge, but an infant when it comes to understanding himself.  While he can speak about economics, science, history and art better than most people on the planet, he finds himself getting in fights, stealing cars and incapable of building a meaningful relationship with a woman.

He avoids a jail sentence by taking the invitation to work with Professor Lambeau and making a commitment to meet with a therapist.  Sean, the fifth therapist, helps Will to understand that there is much more to life than just book knowledge, and that the way to wholeness is by living, by experiencing, and by making commitments to imperfect people. 

Professor Lambeau wants Will to start thinking about the future and use his gifts to become successful.  Yet Sean, his therapist, wants Will to honestly face his past and find healing first.  As Will honestly works through his past and becomes more whole, he is able to take the risk to follow his heart, and leave his friends and a successful career to explore what it means to follow his passions and pursue life with a soul mate.

In part II I will take a look that the themes and issues these films bring up, and then in part III look at the insights the modernity and postmodernity make on these two films.

East Hollywood Election Results

  That's Hollywood 
  Originally uploaded by tata_aka_T

So, some of you have asked how the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council Elections went.  I just wanted to let you know that I did get elected and that each of the candidates that I endorsed were elected, aside from one candidate who was a write in running against others who were on the ballot.  He only lost by two votes.

Now comes the hard work, transforming the neighborhood.

Halloween in Hollywood

  something scary in Los Angeles 
  Originally uploaded by incendiarymind

It is interesting to me that the biggest party time of the year here in Los Angeles is not New Year's Eve, not Christmas, not Easter, but HALLOWEEN.  There are huge parties everywhere, especially in West Hollywood.  People come from all around to celebrate Halloween here.

Today my friend Chris and I went to lunch down the road and on the way back decided to stop by this costume place right down the road from where I live (I live on Hollywood Blvd in East Hollywood).  While we were at the costume shop it turns out that Ricky Martin was picking up his costume for the night.  My friend's cousin really likes Ricky so he asked him if he could have his picture with him.  I snapped it on my iphone.  Just another day here in Hollywood. 

I called my friend in the paparazzi, but it was too late, for by the time I got a hold of her, Ricky was gone. One of the interesting ministries I get to engage in by living in Hollywood is connecting with people who have the most interesting vocations.  In my desire to live incarnationally and to build bridges with people so that Jesus might walk from my heart to theirs,  I sometimes hang with people at their jobs.  Last week I did that with a guy in the paparazzi.  It made for a very interesting day.  Who said ministry couldn't be fun.  Sometimes it is too fun to be legal.

I enjoyed this little piece by Richard Mouw (Pres. of Fuller) on Halloween.  Here is a portion of it: 

"I’m not a hardline Christian critic of Halloween. For the most part it strikes me as fairly innocent fun. I was even quoted in USA TODAY a few years ago as wishing that the Christians who warn against the celebration of Halloween would lighten up a bit.

But I will not be doing any trick-or-treating or going to any Halloween parties again this year. I do plan, however, to have my own quiet observance of the Protestant Reformation. Even though Reformation Day seems to be getting less attention each year, it does happen around the same time as Halloween.

Actually, the Reformation and Halloween have some things in common. At their origins both were addressed to the power of evil in the world.

Halloween traces back to a time when folks believed that this is a time of the year when the spirits of the dead are roaming the earth, and they need to be placated by treats in order to ward off their malevolent tricks..." Check here if you want to read the rest.

This Week with Henri Nouwen - Choose Life

God says, "I am offering you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live" (Deuteronomy 30:19).

"Choose life." That's God's call for us, and there is not a moment in which we do not have to make that choice. Life and death are always before us. In our imaginations, our thoughts, our words, our gestures, our actions ... even in our nonactions. This choice for life starts in a deep interior place. Underneath very life-affirming behaviour I can still harbour death-thoughts and death-feelings. The most important question is not "Do I kill?" but "Do I carry a blessing in my heart or a curse?" The bullet that kills is only the final instrument of the hatred that began being nurtured in the heart long before the gun was picked up. - Henri Nouwen

Tonight and Tomorrow

TONIGHT
So our event tonight at the Fountain Room went well.  Mike Officer and the MOB had a great Alternative/R&B sound, and Kendall share her life as well as her songs.  It seemed that all who came got something meaningful from the evening.  It looks like something we will be doing more of in the future.

TOMORROW
Tomorrow morning I'm going to meet up with a friend in the morning and then head off to Denver, Colorado and eventually to Estes Park, CO.  I will be speaking a couple of times at a conference and the other days I hope to simply relax and enjoy a few days off. 

It is likely that I will not be able to blog a lot this next week.  I'm not sure what kind of internet connection that I will have or what my time will be like.  But I hope to make a few post, but if not, then realize why.

Mike Officer and the MOB opening for Kendall Payne @ the Fountain Room

So it is all going down this Saturday.  If you are in the area, I hope you can make it.  It is a five dollar donation at the door.  The majority which will be going to help orphanages in Kenya.

If you want to get a preview of the music check out Kendall Payne and Mike Officer's Myspace pages. Mike's genre is Alternative/R&B/Rock, and Kendall's is Lyrical/Indie/Folk

Bridging the Gap Between People

"To become neighbors is to bridge the gap between people. As long as there is distance between us and we cannot look in each other's eyes, all sorts of false ideas and images arise. We give them names, make jokes about them, cover them with our prejudices, and avoid direct contact. We think of them as enemies. We forget that they love as we love, care for their children as we care for ours, become sick and die as we do. We forget that they are our brothers and sisters and treat them as objects that can be destroyed at will.

Only when we have the courage to cross the street and look in one another's eyes can we see there that we are children of the same God and members of the same human family." - Henri Nouwen

Nouwen has so many great quotes. For over a year I have been a part of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council, and it has been a great way to meet some of my neighbors.  In Los Angeles, because the city is so large geographically and population wise (over 4 million in the city proper, 10 million in the county and 17.5 in the metro area)  we break up into neighborhoods.  I live in East Hollywood and we have our own unique problems and jewels.  We are one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Our neighborhood council was recently certified, and I am on the interim board. It's been a great way to "cross the street and look in one another's eyes."

Monday Morning Medicine

  por-sha 
  Originally uploaded by Kris Kros

"A cheerful heart is good medicine"  Proverbs 17:22a

Most of the time when we are wronged, we simple want to wrong others as well. Forgiveness doesn’t come naturally.  It’s like the story that was in the LA Times.  A guy saw a Porsche for sell in the newspaper for $50.  He couldn’t believe it, but it was true.  He went to see the car and discovered that it was a relatively new car in mint condition.  He said to the lady at the house, “Is this the Porsche being advertised in the paper for only $50.  He was amazed and asked the lady why she was selling it so cheap. She said, not to long ago my husband divorced me and ran away with a younger woman.  He told me, “you can have the house and everything, but just sell the Porsche and send me the check for what you were able to get from it.”

Jesus in Luke 6:27-28 says, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” Jesus calls to be communities that learn the art of reconciliation and forgiveness.

Words for Artists from T.S. Elliot

For those of you who are musicians, involved in film making or other artistic endeavors, you have the opportunity to help shape people's lives in deep ways.  I hope that this quote from T.S. Elliot will stimulate you to help people think more deeply about the transcendent and reality.  Now for the quote: “A great poet or a serious artist should be able to perceive or distinguish more clearly than ordinary people the forms and objects within the range of ordinary experience and ‘be able to make people see and hear more at each end’ of the spectrum of their sensibility than they could ever notice without his help.” 

Hollywood and the Ancient Text - 2007

So this past year we observed the Christian calendar from Advent to Pentecost.  During the ordinary part of the Christian Calendar year, we are looking at various themes from the book of Genesis.  The first theme is that of creativity. 

In light of creativity and culture, we are doing our annual Hollywood and the Ancient Text series starting today - June 3rd.  It is a series where we take some of the top films of this past year and bring them into conversation with the Scripture.  We took at survey with our congregation here in Hollywood to discover their interest and then I met with some of the people who will be helping to speak during this series.  In light of the survey and the thoughts from the other speakers, we came up with this years line up.  Drum roll please....

June 3rd - The Pursuit of Happyness
June 10th - Blood Diamond
June 17th - The Devil Wears Prada
June 24th - Letters from Iwo Jima or Babel
July 1st - Little Miss Sunshine
July 8th - The Last King of Scotland

If you are in town, drop by, if you are elsewhere, tune into the podcast. Just go to itunes and search for  Kairos Los Angeles.

Mayor Seeks to Make LA Greener

  freeway city 
  Originally uploaded by dream awakener.

I just got back from NYC where there has been various conferences going on about sustainability issues and the environment.  While I was in NYC for other purposes, I did meet up with my friend Sander who was doing research for the Free University in Amsterdam on partnerships relating to some of these issues.

The LA Times reports that "Joining the ranks of political leaders who are seizing the issue of climate change, Mayor Antoni Villaraigosa will release his own proposal today to curtail greenhouse gases in Los Angeles over the next two decades." 

They go on to say, "The plan, obtained by The Times, relies on greatly expanding renewable energy sources and providing alternatives to driving in a city well-known for its love affair with the automobile, once of the largest sources of greenhouse gases in the region.  Villaraigosa will declare his intention to reduce the city's carbon dioxide emissions 35% below the 1990 level by 2030, even as the city's population of 4 million is expected to keep growing."

"Villaraigosa says,  'We can't wait for Washington to act.  As city leaders, we have a responsibility to confront the gathering climate crises.'"

The article reports that in 2005, 77% of Southland commuters drove to work alone.  Villaraigosa is a proponent for more development around mass transit lines among many other things. 

A while back I did a blog entry on Sustainable Living:  Where Does Your City Rank?  In that entry I talk about a cool website called Sustain Lane, that I came across.  A site concerned about the environment and the sustainability of a city, as well as helpful information from a nationwide study that measures the fifty largest cities in the United States when it comes to fifteen different categories including Energy, Green Economy, Waste Diversion, Affordability, Public Transit and other helpful things.

If you look at this study, LA ranks 25 out of 50, which isn't bad considering we are tied for the worst in air quality and near the bottom on affordability.  But the study reports we do well in a number of areas.  Check out where you city ranks, if you live in one of the big cities in the U.S.

While I look forward to reading Antonio's plan and it's critiques I am glad the plan includes 35 new parks for LA, the planting of one million trees as well as securing 35% of the utilities energies from renewable sources by 2020.  I sense that mayor that is concerned about the environment.  LA's concern for the environment has improved since what is known at the brown days of the 60's and 70's.  I don't think you have to convince many in LA that the environment is an issue, because we have seen the results of what happens when you don't care.

I ran across this interesting site the other day, entitled the Planet Green Game.  It is put out by Starbucks in collaboration with Global Green USA.  You might learn some interesting things by playing the game.

Heinz 57 Spirituality - Part II

In part one I introduced the topic of how the communal goal of spiritual formation is to become like Christ.  This is a continuation of my paper that I wrote for my class at Fuller.

SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION
So how will this transformation happen?  What are ways in which we can assess our own spiritual formation as well as that of our community or ministry?  That is what this paper is all about. The ideas in this paper come from the reading in this class, conversations in the community to which I belong, as well as through the crucible of learning as a church planter, planting a new church in the heart of Los Angeles.  After starting a campus church at Virginia Tech with a few dozen people and seeing it grow to 1,200, I learned a lot of what to do and not to do in my next church plant.  The matrix that I mention in this paper has developed much like a Polaroid picture. At first it was barely visible, but as we have grown in our experiential knowledge it has become clearer, though we still look in a mirror dimly. Eddie Gibbs in LeadershipNext describes the process we went through well when he says,

"The Church needs navigators tuned to the voice of God, not map-readers.  Navigational skills have to be learned on the high seas and in the midst of varying conditions produced by the wind, waves, currents, fogbanks, darkness, storm clouds and perilous rocks."(66)

In community I have navigated my way to a helpful character matrix as I have taken some time to reflect on my first two church plants, and then given some sustained thought on this topic over the last five years.  To get to this matrix I have had to go through fog-banks, darkness and storms.  The last couple of classes I have taken at Fuller, including this one have helped to steer me in the right direction.

As I suggest some ways of assessing spiritual formation, it should be noted that the matrix that I am suggesting is simply one way that I have found beneficial for both my community and myself.  While it is helpful to develop tools to try and discern where we are at in the transformation process, it would be wise for us to remember the advice of Marshall McLuhan who understood that we create tools and then our tools re-create us.   We would also do well to heed the words of St. Augustine of Hippo when he said,

"I’m discovering that a spiritual journey is a lot like a poem.  You don’t merely recite a poem or analyze it intellectually.  You dance it, sing it, cry it, feel it on your skin and in your bones.  You move with it and feel its caress.  It falls on you like a teardrop or wraps around you like a smile. It lives in the heart and the body as well as the spirit and the head."

It seems to me that as we look at a model of assessing spiritual transformation, if we remember both McLuhan’s and Augustine’s words, not only would we avoid over-intellectualizing things, but we will learn to use the tools that we develop in such a way that they will be helpful both in the West (North) as well as the Coming Global Christianity that is developing in the South, for as Philip Jenkins says,

"Achebe describes the impact of the new preaching on one young Igbo man:  ‘It was not the mad logic of the Trinity that captivated him.  He did not understand it.  It was the poetry of the new religion, something felt in the marrow… He felt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul.  The words of the hymn were like the drops of frozen rain melting on the dry palate of the panting earth.  Nwoy’es callow mind was greatly puzzled.’"  (43,44)

In part three I will look at some fundamental things we need to understand if we are going to develop a type of model for spiritual formation.

Interesting News

  Italian love 
  Originally uploaded by Pensiero.

In Defense of Film Critics
As a person who loves to engage culture, who has planted a church in the Hollywood and a person who loves films, I found this piece on film critics interesting.  I love films, but I also enjoy hearing a good honest review of a film by a film critic, often before seeing movie.  In this article, the Christian Monitor's movie critic weighs in on why viewers and reviewers don't always see eye-to-eye.

We are All Hokies
This article talks about social networking at it relates to the Virginia Tech Tragedy.  It says, "Social networking sites have played a major role in this catastrophe, linking up members with information, hotline numbers and the latest news stories."  Facebook has been the most active social network, with over 500 new groups have been created to give tribute to those at Tech.  I joined facebook about a month ago and found it the most effective way connect with people in my past.

The Democratic Presidential Debate
I was unable to watch the debates last night, but was glad that MSNBC put it all on video, question by question on their website to watch.  If you didn't get a chance to watch the debates, you can watch them on-line now.  You can watch the debate, some after debate interviews as well as different people's analysis.