getting a handle on the rain…

yesterday was School Supplies Distribution day at the Simple Way and my beautiful wife Valerie [tbV] had spent months organising donations of school supplies and planning out volunteers and mapping and entertainment and announcements and food and so many other things [as the LOUDest lightning crashes its way down outside my window as if to emphasise the point i am about to make and by lightning, clearly i mean thunder] and the only thing she couldn’t really do much about except pray and hope and watch weather reports was the rain, which was mostly supposed to stay away, and mostly didn’t…

and so it was all stations go as a whole bunch of incredible volunteers and neighbors braved the conditions and did a really great job in making the best out of a rain-drenched day – from the bag distribution to the dental van, from Josh the juggler to Ran’D Shine [yeah, no kidding] the magician, from the bouncy castle to the MC to the people creating lines and carrying bags and covering everything with rain-repelling tents and blankets and upside down plastic swimming pools and anything else we could find out hands on…

and in the midst of it all i discovered this:

if you look closely you will note the umbrella ends after the handle… that’s right, somewhere on the ground i found the bottom piece of an umbrella and so i decided to do my small bit in terms of raising the spirits by channeling my best Charlie Chaplin and so i walked through the rain holding the handle as if it was attached to an umbrella and told kids they had to stand really close to me if they wanted to avoid the rain [yes, one of two stares told me i had to be doubly aware of the stranger danger aspect of how it might seem to young people who didn’t know me] and most of them laughed or came close and pretended not to get wet.

to the adults who were secretly rolling their eyes or letting out a brief LOL at the sight of the silliness i would tell them, “it is very easy to pack away – i get home and it’s just straight in a drawer and sorted, although it does lose a little in terms of actual rain protection” and they seemed to like that…

simple, silly, laugh-enducing, fun – it brought a few smiles and hopefully made some of the people forget a little bit about the semi-deluge we had going on around us…

and 450 kids or more got bags of free school supplies, and more will be going out on Thursday and sp you can’t go wrong with that!

pot ‘o luck

so some friday nites we have a potluck at the village house [intern house of simple way] which means people come around and bring food and we share and eat and chat and stuff – sometimes we watch documentaries with the directors who filmed them and other times we just eat and chat and stuff.

last nite we had some people from a chinese church in philadelphia join us and we had a chinese food theme [except for one neighbor who refused to try and cook chinese food for chinese people and so made a thai dish instead – we were going to simply buy from the local chinese takeaway until Monkman stepped up to the stove and created a great stirfry tofu dish] and during the meal we all separated out and chatted to them and heard some of their stuff and shared some of ours. After the meal we showed two recent clips from stuff we’ve done at the simple way this year – the school supplies giveaway and the recent fall fest party for the kids – and then we did some Q and A.

that’s all really. small things with great love, that’s what we aim for. doesn’t feel hugely significant in the big scheme of world issues perhaps but a bunch of people got to feel loved and so did we and some good connections were made and stories shared. hopefully some inspiration and encouragement and challenge was passed across and hopefully some kingdom things will result. but it is such an easy thing to do is my point.

and so if you’re struggling with questions of ‘how do i get started on intentional community’, this might be a good way – have some folks round for a meal – it can be your neighbors in your street [even if you invite 40 and only 4 pitch up] or your colleagues at work or maybe some people at church or from your sports team that you’ve never really connected with. food is pretty universal and alluring and a good way to get conversations going.

what are you waiting for? the people aren’t going to invite themselves…