Simple Living

Today was Day 10 of 10! 


As a lot of you know, I spent the last 10 days scrubbing, purging and decluttering the apartment. My inspiration was from an empowering and practical spiral book by Tsh Oxenreider called Organized Simplicity: The Clutter-Free Approach to Intentional Living.


Tsh's main idea: simple living is about living holistically with your life's purpose. All things intentionally work together -- including your stuff -- to purse your purpose. So, with that in mind, I spent 10 days on this massive, frustrating and wonderful process of cleaning and reassessing each nook and cranny of our apartment. 

Each night I made a pretty long list of my TO DOs for the next day. 

William Morris helped with some guidelines, advising to "have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." 

BEFORE: Goodness, we keep a pretty clean frig, but after taking out the shelves, I found some surprises! 

AFTER: Everything got a nice scrub down (even the jelly jars!), all expired foods were tossed and now it's nice and fresh! 

It was really helpful to have our JAR Purpose Statement up on our wall throughout the process:

We believe that Jesus can use us to change the course of history. Our purpose is to:

• Enjoy a life-giving relationship with Jesus 

• Love each other 

• Build bridges that encourage community 

• Invite others to rest, pray, heal, grow, play, give thanks, create and celebrate with us

There were many many many times I wanted to quit the process, but sticking to the plan for 10 whole days gives me a hugh sense of accomplishment. 

This was between our washer and dryer. 

I now feel like I can do anything if I put my mind to it. And, I will think a bit harder the next time I go to the store and put anything in my shopping cart. 

Josh helped me take two car's full of stuff to Good Will.
Everything has a second chance to be beautiful or useful to someone else now :) 

Tsh says "All the independent things in your life -- the items you own, how you spend your time, the relationships you cultivate, and the books you read -- ultimately benefit your life's purpose." I am all about living holistically. I love this kind of intentionality, and feel refreshed and ready to live lighter in 2012. 


Shout outs: 
**Mom and Dad for helping me put up curtains in my room! I love them!
**Josh for riding behind me on the way to Good Will -- I was a little nervous that coffee table was going to be sprawled out on Strickland Road...but luckily it stayed put!
**Jess and Liz for providing the entertainment of Ugly Betty to keep me going. 
**Antje and Kate for being so affirming and supportive of this process!!

all the jruss's

all the jruss's together for christmas :)

Dinner with Janel

We had a great time at your house. Thank you so much for dinner.

What wonderful house you've got! Loved hearing about your vision for pouring into girls' lives with "The Rise Up Effect."

http://www.theriseupeffect.org


Rock it!

The Rockford.

JAR and friends have brunch one sunny, wintery Sunday at a delicious little place with a funny address.  320 1/2 Glenwood South.  

50/50

Thanks to our summer neighbors, Antje and I enjoyed a large container of popcorn on Saturday night at the $1.50 theater (which is now $2) as we journeyed with Adam through his experience of dealing with back cancer. 

50/50 was a movie that encouraged me to not pity people who suffer, but rather  to learn with them and walk with them in their suffering. Those who join along in the path of pain and suffering help experience dignity and treasured community. 

JAR Award of Excellence

Know of any crazy, creative ideas that are changing the world?  Yeah, we like those, too. And we like sharing them with you.

Photo credit: BBC News

The JAR Award of Excellence* goes to Deyong Wu and Mingce Long, at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Hubei University for Nationalities, for inventing an alternative to doing laundry the traditional way.

These all-stars have developed fabrics that clean themselves just by hanging them in the light.

"Efforts to create self-cleaning cotton fabrics are bearing fruit in China," the BBC Online reports. "Engineers have created a chemical coating that causes cotton materials to clean themselves of stains and remove odours when exposed to sunlight."

And if that's not enough, "The researchers say the treatment is cheap, non-toxic and ecologically friendly."

Awesome. Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16225050

*At JAR we believe in creativity and collaboration that serve people across the globe, especially in underserved areas.

Healing and Transformation

Below is the final chapter of Richard Rohr's Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer. Over the last couple of months, I have learned so many life lessons from this wonderful little book, and I am very thankful for Richard's powerful and fresh conclusion that puts words to many of the frustrations and joys inside of my soul.

A Contemplative Seeing of The Doctrine of the Cross  

· God is to be found in all things, even and most especially in the painful, tragic and sinful things, exactly where we do not want to look for God. The crucifixion of the God-Man is at the same moment the worst thing in human history and the best thing in human history.

· Human existence is neither perfectly consistent (as rational and control-needy people usually demand it be), nor is it incoherent chaos (what cynics, agnostics, and unaware people expect it to be); instead, human life has cruciform pattern. It is a “coincidence of opposites” (St. Bonaventure), a collision of cross-purposes; we are all filled with contradictions needing to be reconciled.

· The price that we pay for holding together these opposites is always some form of crucifixion. Jesus himself was crucified between a good thief and a bad thief, hanging between heaven and earth, holding on to both his humanity and his divinity, a male body with a feminine soul, expelled as the problem by both religion and state. Yet he rejected none of these, but “reconciled all things in himself” (Eph. 2:10).

· Christians call this pattern ‘the paschal mystery’: true life comes only through journeys of death and rebirth wherein we learn who God is for us. Letting go is the nature of all true spirituality and transformation, summed up in the mythic phrase “Christ is dying, Christ is risen. Christ will ever come again.”

· We should not be surprised or scandalized by the sinful and the tragic. Do what you can to be peace and to do justice, but never expect or demand perfection on this earth. It usually leads to a false moral outrage, a negative identity, intolerance, paranoia, and self-serving crusades against “the contaminating element,” instead of “becoming a new creation” ourselves (Gal. 6:15).

· We must resist all utopian ideologies and heroic idealisms that are not tempered by patience and taught by all that is broken, flawed, sinful and poor. Jesus is an utter realist and does not exclude the problem from the solution. Work for win/win situations. Mistrust all win/lose dichotomies.

· The following of Jesus is not a “salvation scheme” or a means of creating social order (Which appears to be what most folks want religion for), as much as it is a vocation to share the fate of God for the life of the world. Jesus did not come to create a spiritual elite or an exclusionary system for people who “like” religion, but he invited people to “follow” him in bearing the mystery of human death and resurrection (an almost nonreligious task, but one that can be done only “through, with and in” God).

· Those who agree to carry and love what God loves, which is both the good and the bad of human history, and to pay the price of its reconciliation within themselves – these are the followers of Jesus – the leaven, the salt, the remnant, the mustard seed that God can use to transform the world. The cross is the dramatic image of what it takes to be such a usable one for God.

· These few are enough to keep the world from its path toward greed, violence, and self-destruction. God is calling everyone and everything to Himself. God just needs some instruments and images who are willing to be “conformed unto the pattern of his death” and transformed into the power of his resurrection. They are not “saved” as much as chosen, used, purified, and beloved by God – just like Jesus, who did it first and invited us to “the great parade.”

· Institutional religion is a humanly necessary but also immature manifestation of this “hidden mystery” by which God is saving the world. History seems to make both the necessity and the immaturity of religion glaringly apparent, which upsets both progressives and conservatives. Institutional religion is never an end in itself, but merely a wondrous and “uncertain trumpet” of the message.

· By God’s choice and grace, many seem to be living this mystery of the suffering and joy of God who do not formally belong to any church (Gandhi, Simone Weil, Etty Hillesum, and Nelson Mandela are just a few examples.) And many who have been formally baptized have never chosen to “drink from the cup that I must drink or be baptized with the baptism that I must be baptized with” (Mark 10:38). They have the right to words but not the transformative experience.

· The doctrine, folly and image of the cross is the great clarifier and truth-speaker for all of human history. We can rightly speak of being “saved” by it. Jesus Crucified and resurrected is the whole pattern revealed, named, effected and promised for our own lives. If we can say yes to this vulnerable face of God, there will be no more surprises for our mind and no more victims of history. I personally do not believe that Jesus came to found a separate religion as much as he came to present a universal message of vulnerability and foundational unity that is necessary for all religions, the human soul, and history itself to survive. Thus Christians can rightly call him “the Savior of the World” (John 4:42), but no longer in the competitive and imperialistic way that they are usually presented him. By very definition, vulnerability and unity do not compete or dominate. In fact, they make both competition and domination impossible. The cosmic Christ is no threat to anything but separateness, illusion, domination, and any imperial ego. In that sense, Jesus, the Christ, is the ultimate threat, but first of all to Christians themselves. Only then will they have any universal and salvific message for the rest of the earth.

· The contemplative mind is the only mind big enough to see this, and the only kind of seeing that is surrendered enough to trust it. The calculative mind will merely continue to create dualism, win/lose scenarios, imperial egos and necessary victims. It cannot get out of its own illogical loop. Einstein put in this way: “No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that caused it.”

· God has given us a new consciousness in what we call “prayer” and an utterly unexpected, maybe even unwanted, explanation or reality in what we call “the cross.”

Forgiveness

On Wednesday morning, the day of The Oaks Christmas Celebration, I read a chapter from Who is my Neighbor by Wayne Gordon. He talked about how my neighbor is someone who is vulnerable. And he quoted this letter from Patricia Raybon’s book I Told the Mountain to Move. 

Dear Babies:

This is Mama. You will know my voice, I think, even though we were together for such a short time. I did a bad thing. I didn’t trust God.  

I didn’t understand that God would have made everything ok. I was like Peter [who]…looked at the waves, not Jesus. And when he looked at the waves, he started to sink – down, down, down.

That’s how I felt, like I was sinking down. 

When the doctors said you were growing inside of me, that’s how I felt. So I didn’t love myself enough to know how to love you. I was afraid. I had made so many, many mistakes. And I was afraid. 

So I let fear convince me that more babies would just make things worse. 

Instead, look what I did. 

I robbed us. First, I robbed you –taking your own lives. Your own mama! I didn’t think I was strong enough. So I robbed myself of all the joy you would’ve brought me too. Brought all of us, your sisters, your family, and for each of you, your daddy. I thought we’d have more problems. That we didn’t have enough money. That we didn’t have enough time. That we didn’t have enough love. But I just didn’t know then that God is bigger. And God would make everything all right. I didn’t know. I was like Peter looking at the waves. 

I know you are in heaven, waiting for us – waiting for me. 

I know you’ve been waiting, looking every day, wondering when I would get there. Oh babies, I’m trying to get there – to be better, to live right, to be right, to learn what God wants me to learn, so I can make it to you.

My heart was deeply saddened and touched after reading this letter. Patricia’s honesty and forgiveness brought me to tears for most of the morning. I am so thankful for her hunger and thirst for righteousness. I am also thankful for the deep healing that is obviously going on in this woman's life. I want to understand God’s grace and forgiveness as this Mama does. 

Inspiration

Here are a few videos we watched during the creation of this program. 

Change your words, change your world. 

When you find a lone nut doing something great, 

have the guts to be the first one to stand up and join in. 

The heart of God is: I AM FOR YOU. God is for us, not in spite 

of those things, but right in the middle of it. And that is where He lives. 

JAR Wall

I heart my roomie :)

FYI

We enjoy leaving each other notes on the kitchen counter.
Here's a great example. :-)

Pranksters II

Last Sunday night we were pranked. You saw Jessica's frozen undies?

I thought I had gotten off easy. Not so.

When I got to the office Monday morning, I opened the door:

You have got to be kidding...

Toilet paper was strung throughout our entire office. I was in disbelief.

How am I going to explain this to my coworkers? What about my customers?!?

I made it to the light switch. Mission Impossible style, trying not to set off any of the "shredded paper bombs" on the strands of TP.

How nice. They left us a vacuum and broom.

That's when I saw the extent of the damage, and I knew exactly who had done it.

Enough said.

The phone was tactfully wrapped in TP and tethered to the desk drawer.

I had a big, fat dresser sitting on my desk. I couldn't get to my computer.

So, I decided to put first things first.

Screw it. I'm making coffee.

My coworker Rhonda took it rather well...

During the morning hours, we left the streamers in place so others could enjoy the fun. 

Rolling with it.

Phoenix JS, this is Antje. How can I help you?

Once the surprise wore off, we kind of enjoyed it, actually.

What did I tell customers that walked in? 

"Guess this is what happens when you prank your boss's daughter."

Escalating acts of kindness

WOW! Talk about a rebound! I came home from work on Tuesday to find a tree with lights in our living room! Turns out Jess, Liz and Brandon got it for us! Since they will not have their own space to decorate this year ::tear:: they decided to decorate ours! We spent the evening transforming our living room - it is so beautiful! 

Pranksters

So, last Sunday night was payback for all the 'decorations' and 'surprises' Antje and I have left for our neighbors over the past year. Here are a few images to show the creativity of Jess, Liz and Brandon's sweet revenge.

We walk into a SWEET set up...cookies, a fun program banner, and a few pieces of furniture moved to new locations. In case you cannot see the white board, it says: "We love you friends and neighbors. Something sweet for your tired dancing feet." We had just gotten home from a night of salsa dancing :)

Moving on into Antje's room. Fun sign!

In Antje's room we found marshmallows EVERYWHERE! In candle holders, pencil cups, under the mattress, in makeup bags and inside of every pair of shoes in the closet!

Now the Kitchen - Shredded paper, so beautifully placed inside of each bowl and plate.  

...And Cups

...And containers

Here are a few candy canes in the frig...I also found some under our place mats, in books, on shelves, in cereal boxes and in a few drawers.

Ohh look! In case you cannot see, there is a bowl full of all of Jruss' undies -- they are frozen solid!



Yup - a solid block of ice. This is retaliation from years ago when I hid all Liz's undies in the dryer.

Jruss' room: This sign makes me smile. And the TP job was rather impressive! 

I'm walking in the spiderwebs...leave a message and I'll call you back. 

Seriously, this part was the worst. After a few failed attempts to clean, I decided to sleep on the couch.

Too bad my pillow was NOWHERE to be found :(

Clothes were switched -- these aren't mine!

Nice finishing touch - the JustNeem soaps were switched too! Very cute.

There was also a room of surprises awaiting Antje at Phoenix, but I will let her post those pictures.