fish feeds plants, plants clean water, water feeds fish… rock/paper/scissors II [aka Aquaponics at TSW]

so this past week and coming week at the Simple Way we have had a bunch of volunteers fly in from California as well as some local guys helping out with our latest project which is known as Aquaponics and i thort i’d stick some of the updates here so you can check it out – most of this is lifted directly from the Shane Claiborne page on Facebook:

Check out our newest adventure — Urban Aquaponics!!!

Over a year ago, we began to dream of creating an aquaponics system on our block — raising fish that “enrich” (poop) and fertilize water that gets pumped to raised bed gardens where fresh veggies grow like crazy. Hundreds of you have supported us in this adventure (we raised over 10,000 dollars!)… and tomorrow is the day we start to construct the whole system. We are thrilled to see another dream come true. Thanks for making it happen. Keep an eye out here for regular updates over as we build this sucker over the next two weeks. And check out this video from several months ago where we cast the original vision for Simple Ponics!

or alternatively click here. but not here as that is just a link to the fire ant wikipedia page which does not have a lot to do with aquaponics at all.

It won’t be long now until we have fresh fish tacos right in the food desert of North Philly.

here is a link to day 1 as the team arrived and started to get the equipment ready for the big build [our local team had spent more than a week digging and laying the foundations and creating the cement slab it would be built on]

another update which shows the framework of the greenhouse that will house most of the aquaponic system…

and finally a short video of day 3 of the work as the team realised they were way ahead of schedule and were almost needing to slow down to make the most of the two weeks set aside for the job.

and so that it just a taste – i have really enjoyed connecting with the team and getting to know them a little bit and share stories of life and adventure and God – some are leaving this weekend, more are arriving every day and we have local volunteers coming in and helping clean up the block and start prepping the greening of the H street lot across the road – really has been a community event and we look forward to the community benefitting from it for years to come…

and finally there is the closing piece [well of the two week build] of the two week build… ha ha

the health board, the PICNIC and a bunch of nutters. [guest starring valerie luthor king jnr] part II

[let me disclaim this post and say that nothing mentioned here is official ‘The Simple Way’ stance on these issues but rather my personal reflections and experiences]

so yesterday there was a public meeting for the board of health who were commenting on a 14 page document relating to the serving of food outside to homeless people… which is linked to a recent order brought in by the mayor of Philadelphia [the previously-ascertained unfortunately-named mayor Nutter] to specifically ban the serving of food to people in two specific parks [big touristy attraction places] ALTHO it was very clearly stated that this would not affect family picnics…

and this is where i go and say that my beautiful wife Valerie came up with the very brilliant idea of throwing a picnic outside the place where they were going to have the meeting, and then inviting anyone who was nearby [including the homeless] to join us for our family picnic [because after all they are our brothers and sisters] – even the name Philadelphia which comes from the greek word ‘Phileo’ meaning brotherly love…

so it was a symbolic gesture [would have been a form of civil disobedience had we done it in the actual parks where it is possibly going to be banned if that goes through as is, although that is a bit of a harder one for us to work as getting arrested, as romantic as the notion is when connected to reaching out to ‘the least of these’ can have serious consequences to visa bearing south africans] and it worked amazingly.

we spread the word to our web of subversive friends and through facebook statuses [stati?] and other connections and arrived with picnic blankets and set up outside of the meeting place and invited people to join us – one guy drove an hour to come and be part of the fun and our friend cody made a coolbox full of ham sandwiches and had another one full of bottled water.

occupy philly set up some tables near us and also engaged in feeding the public and so it was free food and sharing happening all around – other groups that are involved in feeding the hungry and members of the public, including some homeless people joined us and we sat eating food, literally breaking bread together and having conversation about life, the universe and a bunch of related things.

one of the things shane spoke about, when i accompanied him to a conference in Canada recently, was how in many cases, the church has lost its imagination and this group open picnic was just something small, although hopefully also something huge in helping ignite that in peoples minds and kickstart their imaginations for future work and protest and creative solutioning that can and needs to be done.

so yay for my wife [the real yay for my wife comes in part III] for the idea and for running with it and getting so many other people involved and thank you to everyone who came and was a part of the fun and feast.

for the third part and the one where all the action happens and ‘the christian’ swears, spits and calls people the antichrist, click here…

the perspective of enough.

here is a short but cool story that shane posted on facebook…

here’s an old proverb that has been told in many different ways, but this is a version of it from Anthony de Mello:

The rich industrialist from the North was horrified to find the Southern fisherman lying lazily beside his boat, smoking a pipe.
“Why aren’t you out fishing?” said the industrialist.
“Because I have caught enough fish for the day,” said the fisherman.
“Why don’t you catch some more?”
“What would I do with it?”
“You could earn more money” was the reply. “With that you could have a motor fixed to your boat and go into deeper waters and catch more fish.
“Then you would make enough to buy nylon nets. These would bring you more fish and more money. Soon you would have enough money to own two boats . . . maybe even a fleet of boats. The you would be a rich man like me.”
“What would I do then?”
“Then you could really enjoy life.”
“What do you think I am doing right now?”

one blue sky above us all

at the two recent festivals we attended – PAPA [People Against Poverty and Apathy] and Wild Goose – Shane did a short talk on some kids he met in Afghanistan recently and this blue scarf initiative they had and then we handed out strips of blue material and got everyone to hold them up together signifying that we are all under the same sky and that God made us all – it is part of a new Friends Without Borders initiative that Shane and others are a part of and you can watch the video clip here.

the simple way: a glance back

this is a newsletter sent out by shane claiborne in the fall of 2009 just to give you a glimpse of some of the exciting stories that are associated with this place we are privileged to live in and this family we are a new part of…

Family, Friends, & Partners

Let me start with the bad news . . . A few days ago, another young man was shot and killed on our block, on the corner of H and Westmoreland. He was in his twenties, walking home around midnight. It was the 248th homicide this year in Philadelphia, nearly one kid killing another kid per day.

Now for some good news. This year something extraordinary happened here in the City of Love. The faith community came together in an unprecedented way – the historic black church alongside the Mennonites, Quakers along with Catholics, mainliners, and evangelicals… the Church came together to call for an end to the violence on our streets. It started with the realization that we have over 900 gun shops in Philadelphia. Over 900! (There just aren’t that many deer in Philly.)

Out of the 900+ gun shops, there were a few that stood out as particularly notorious for selling guns which were later used in violent crimes, shops like Colosimo’s Gun Store in downtown Philly. After much prayer and preparation, a delegation of religious leaders approached the gun shop owner, Mr. Colosimo, with a request for him to sign a 10-point code of ethics, a covenant to sell guns in a way that would decrease violence (that even Wal-Mart has signed). Before long, it became clear that Mr. Colosimo would not sign the covenant, and a few things happened. Weekly prayer vigils began outside of his store, which culminated in a Good Friday service. Outside the gun shop, we remembered the suffering of our Lover Jesus, and recalled the stages of his execution. We listened to the Gospels speak of the women at the cross as they wept over Jesus’ bloody corpse. Then we heard stories of mothers who had lost their kids to gun violence, like one mom who told about how her Harvard-bound boy was shot down outside a movie theater in a random act of violence. And finally, we were reminded by some good Gospel preachers … that it was Friday… but Sunday is coming. The Great Story ends with resurrection and an empty tomb.

Another thing happened at Colosimo’s gun shop. As Mr. Colosimo refused to sign the covenant, a group of clergy and religious leaders who remained inside his gun shop in prayerful vigil were soon arrested, charged with such things as defiant trespassing and conspiracy. This is where it gets good. They went on trial and it was everything you would hope for in a trial. Hundreds of folks packed out the courtroom. Some teachers even brought their kids on a field trip so they could see justice at work. And they did. The defendants had a female African-American judge who allowed them to present an argument of justification… that they were justified in breaking a law in order to prevent greater harm. What happened was phenomenal. The judge found all the defendants not guilty on every charge; and basically, what happened was the gun shop was put on trial. In the ensuing months charges were brought against Colosimo, who pled guilty and his gun shop was closed down.

In the end we are people who believe, not in punitive justice, but in restorative justice. We don’t want Mr. Colosimo to waste away in a prison cell, but we would like to make sure he doesn’t sell any more guns… and we would love to see his heart stirred and transformed by God, as he could become a major player for good, like ole Saul of Tarsus… or any of us for that matter. The story is not over. That was just one gun shop. There are still over 900 left.

What we learned through it all is the power of the Church working with the Spirit of God. We are reminded that we can do more together than we can do on our own – it is the story of communities and movements. This is the same work you have been supporting here at The Simple Way, some of you for over a decade now. We are not just closing down gun shops, we are launching new projects of hope.

After all, for too long we Christians have been known more for what we hate than for what we love, for what we are against than what we are for. So we will keep rolling with the gun shop stuff, but we will also continue building alternatives to the things wrong in our world.

This year you have helped birth all sorts of goodness. 2009 marks the birth of Conspire Magazine, which is creating all sorts of holy mischief. This year, we worked with Eastern University to create our first scholarships for kids here in Kensington. We had neighborhood field trips to the zoo, the beach, and Taco Bell. This year we saw over 400 kids get school supplies in the best Labor Day block party we’ve ever had (we had a bubble machine, a magician, about 20 drummers and African dancers, all sorts of festivities… and not a single fight). Hundreds of folks have gotten food and clothing this year in Kensington thanks to your support. We were able to purchase the heroine house on our block along with 2 other houses that belonged to an absentee landlord (which are now being restored!). A few weeks ago we broke ground on the neighborhood green space, which will have a playground for the kiddos and an area for families to hang out – all on the land where the fire burnt everything down 2 years ago. Thanks to your support we get to bear witness to the power of resurrection – a God who is restoring broken hearts, broken neighborhoods, and a broken world.

It doesn’t stop. TSW is helping create a prayer book this year that will weave together songs, prayers and liturgy to help the Church and our communities pray together. We have a new director of all things local, Coz Crosscombe, who is an incredible gift, and we just moved in half a dozen new young folks to join the fun here on the block. In the works is a partnership with Timeteo (http://timoteofootball.com/home.aspx), the flag football league and mentoring outreach, one of the most redemptive things going on here in Philly for young men, to create new futures and possibilities. Over the next few months we hope to launch our plans for an Apprenticeship House that will start next fall. In a few weeks we will share toys with hundreds of families here; but more than presents, we want to give presence, a steadfast love for neighbors and God here in one of the abandoned corners of the empire. Pray for us as we continue to build our little village… and know that you are loved and appreciated. As you send us gifts and checks, we don’t mail you prayer cloths and anointing oils… but we do think of you often with big smiles and prayers of gratitude. You are loved.

braai vs barbecue

this moment outside epitimises life in kensington – street closed off [each block has a block captain which is really cool cos encourages community and they have the right at certain times to officially close off the road and make a block party happen], fire hydrant spewing water into the street, little kids playing in that water, at least three barbecue/braai type structures cooking up a storm, neighbours sharing food, music pumping [somewhere in the middle of a best of michael jackson cd at the moment, usually more hip-hip dodgy lyric fare so this is a welcome change], most of the families out sitting on stairs, laughing vibing, kids running down road, some basketball being thrown across the road, three porta pools filled with splashing laughing kids, shane walking around offering a plate of watermelon to the neighbours having been one of the barbecue/braai protagonists and my little friend adriana offering me sesame seeds and a bit of corn… great times…

earlier we were packaging some cookies that were donated a while ago and had been frozen so heated them up [mint in them but the mint here is red – interesting but tastes great] and stuck cute little ribbons on the packs which will be added to the food packs that get distributed closer to half past four…

then heading to the bus stop to pick up some new people who will be staying with us [in the hospitality house] for the next month and getting involved here – and then we will be heading out later to a party on the philly art museum [Rocky movie steps] steps with a couple of bands [earth, wind, and fire, Dj Jazzy Jeff and others – yup certified A list of American culture] and a huge fireworks display… gonna be a party, but in the meantime i will be heading back outside to rejoin the one already on.

i need an eye op. urgently.

i probly have a good 30 or 40 more blogs i could write about the goose fest but i don’t know if i’m going to get to them – i don’t want the blog to become a sort of dairy [as i spell it] of events and lose the heart of what is happening here – i also don’t want to be caught up too much in blogging that like a person filming or photographing an event i spend so much time filming the event i wasn’t really part of… i still don’t know if the simple way folks may some day see this blog as part of my ‘online ministry’ and ask me to take a sabbattical from it too for 6 months… so i feel i should write this one at least before it happens…

after listening to shane again at the goose [by far my favourite talk or session and largely because it was the first time in three days i remembered hearing the name Jesus more than once and heard passages read from the bible] i was reminded or challenged by the fact that i need an eye operation. i need to start seeing people the way Jesus sees them – he retold this one story about this argument he had with a buddy of his who told him ‘Jesus never spoke to a prostitute’ – shane whips out his bible and is ready to argue and quote scripture and claim battle victory but his friend continued, “the reason Jesus never spoke to a prostitute is that He never saw a prostitute, He only saw a child’ and that hit me once again and i know it needs to do so much more than give me a moment of “oh yes, that” – it needs to become my dna.

i know with some of the kids on the street and some of the parents whose names i am already learning it already has, because they are not statistics or a demographic – they are now a name and a person and a personality and a story – i have not come close to connecting with people on our street like i want to but i have started connecting and at least that is something, but with them i already have a growing sense of how God sees them.

but i know with a lot of the people i don’t have those eyes and i certainly don’t have the heart of Jesus that is desperately needed in the community – those dealing with or doing drugs and those who look worn down with the ugliness of life and some of the barely dressed women we pass in the streets and so on – i judge and i think i am so better and my sin and uncleaness is forgotten in a horrible instant of somehow thinking i may have earned everything God has so freely given to me.

i need God to give me new eyes. and i need a new heart. to see as He sees. to love as He loves.

i have realised since being here how little i actually care about the poor in for-real terms – and that’s another blog – but if i really cared for the poor as much as i needed to then my life back home would have looked dramatically different from what it does now – i can’t change the past but i know i need to be changed so that i walk a different future. that excites me. i know it starts with personal connection with God as well and that needs my attention too.

the wild goose part guns

soooo i had a bit of an oops moment on the third morning of the fest… shane [anti-war, pacifist] was leading morning prayer from the main stage with another dude and a crowd of people were participating and someone asked me if i’d make him a coffee so i went to base camp and grabbed the blue thermos mug we had taken from the office to use at the fest – when i took the coffee he was busy leading the prayer and so i motioned to him and set the mug on the edge of the stage…

[time passes]

lying in E-beth’s hammock vibing a bit later and shane comes up to me – “do you know what this stands for?” and holds up the coffee mug with the letters NRA boldly on the side and i instantly have flashbacks to the michael moore ‘bowling for columbine’ documentary charlton heston interview and sheepishly answer “National Rifle Association?” and he responds with “yup, at first i thort you were playing a joke on me and then i figured you probly didn’t know what it had meant.”

i hadn’t. to me it was a cool blue mug with three letters on it. wow, spot the irony. cool that he thort it was quite funny though.

when he asked me where i got it and i said “our house” [which wasn’t true altho i thort it was, val reminded me later that we picked it up at the simple way office, much better] he responded with “someone must be trying to set me up” all still in a jokey vibey mood.

that was one of the moments of the festival, harr, and it’s great to have an ongoing private joke with shane…

the Wild Goose part overall

so… wow! playing a theatresports game of word-at-a-time story with shane claiborne [a flippin good one involving an armadillo and a reconciliation within the neighborhood] in the van on the way home from the wild goose festival brought home how surreal this whole adventure is – i don’t put him on a pedestal or anything as he is just a man, but this is the guy who wrote the book that changed my life, inspired me to seek out community and continued to fuel my struggle with the acts 2.42 picture of church and what we see today in that weekly meeting’d thing we attend.

but ja, a couple of blogs are not going to do much justice or come close to explaining clearly my and our experiences at the wild goose festival but hopefully i can give out some tastes at least. this is the first time the wild goose festival has taken place and i strongly imagine it will happen again next year [at worst the year after] and become a regular thing on the calendar and i imagine it will grow pretty huge. not sure of numbers this year but i would say 2000 is a rough idea of how many people were there – the camping spots were so spread out and there is always so much on the go that it’s really hard to estimate because you never have everyone together in one spot at the same time but hearing the numbers as people were registering i imagine it was somewhere there.

okay so quite a big bunch of us headed out from the simple way – the five village people [me, tbV, A-Ron, E-beth and Erica] as well as Shane and Katie-Jo and Darin and his family and Didi and family and Janelle [from the office] and then our master chef Taehu [spelling?] who is a Korean American and amazing servant and food-producer and a bunch of his friends from different places, oh and also Kassim and Mike, two young guys from the neighborhood and then we met up with A-Ron’s kids [Ocean, Cana and Silome] and so we were quite a big group with a communal kitchen area that kept growing as we invited new friends in [really saw community working in the fest which was one of my highlights] to eat and vibe with us.

so basically the programme was a bunch of talks and bands and workshops and small group discussions happening all at the same time [5 to 8 at a time usually] and a very difficult-to-understand programme or schedule [but pronounced shedule] to try and follow to try and get to what you want to see/hear/be a part of… i probly could have used another week or so to go and attend all the sessions i wanted to but i did get to experience a lot of good and interesting and challenging and some perturbing stuff, but glad about everything i participated in i think, even the stuff that i was really not sure about

shane’s talk was probably my favourite, even though a lot of it was stories from ‘the irresistible revolution’ which i’ve already read but he did an exercise where we handed out blue pieces of material as scarves to a bunch of people in the crowd and we got people to hold them high to symbolise that we are under the same blue sky as a bunch of afghanistan children shane is in relationship with and so we video’d that and will send it along [same thing happened at papa fest] and that felt really significant and moving and just his message of Jesus and love and serving the pool stood out from a lot of the other discussion i heard or participated in. our new friend matt pritchard did a great workshop vibe in living in community together [some of the pitfalls most communities fall into] which was also a highlight and then one or two of the bands we saw…

as part of the village house we had to work shifts at the simple way booth handing out free copies of the latest issue of Conspire magazine [which a lot of the [people speaking at wild goose had contributed to] and selling subsccriptions and shane’s books and dvd’s and that was an incredible way to meet people and many of our new friends joined us in the booth helping us chat about the stuff with people as they got interested… one of the highlights was definitely new friends and especially new friends in community or trying to practically figure out what living intentionally in community looks like…

lowlights were three ticks, two of which were in places i cannot post pics about and so definitely not so amped about that – survived two full days ticks free while everyone else was getting mauled [think tbV survived tick-free] and then BOOM, too close… it was pretty heck-youknow…

so yes, overall an incredible experience and hoping we’ll be around next year for the second one to see how things go – huge room for growth and improvement but i think this is a festival that will provide some great conversations and dialogue on topical and relevant issues and will hopefully provide life change and kingdom growth for years to come…

[for  those who missed it before the wild goose is a celtic symbol for the Holy Spirit]

being part of the blind side

tonite shane and his wife katie-jo and the village people [me, tbV, erica, beth… A-Ron was still at Papa Fest] attended the Timoteo flag football season awards banquet… well we left before the banquet cos people had to be places [pancakes were had by those who didn’t!] but we got to watch the awards happen…

the front of the Timoteo brochure i picked up reads, “Timoteo supports communities by empowering men to mentor youth through athletics, spiritual formation and partnerships with local churches and organizations.”

this was the 7th annual awards dinner – Timoteo started with 40 athletes, 12 coaches and 3 churches involved – this year there were over 200 young men, around 50 coaches and ten different local churches getting involved in the process.

for those not in the know, flag football is to american football what touch rugby is to rugby – the players have a number of ‘flags’ (belt type coloures pieces of material) attached to their shorts and you ‘tackle’ a player by grabbing one of the flags off him…

it really felt like being a part of the sandra bullock movie ‘the blind side’ or any one of those dramatic sporting movies except that this one is real and it is being lived out in the neighborhood around us… we went specifically to support Kassim, a 16 year old guy from the area who attended Papa Fest with us and who i’ve really grown to love even in such a short time… and then i discovered when i was there that the Simple Way (the community we are now a part of) is an overseer of Timoteo, so this is one of the things we do. [can check it out on http://www.timoteofootball.com]

Timoteo specifically addresses young men in crisis and their mission is to support at risk communities by mentoring their young men through flag football – so the vision is much bigger than just a sports thing or even just a young men thing. In terms of community, this is what the brochure says,

“By engaging 200 youth and 40 adults each year, lives are being transformed. During the season and off season, teams practice, host youth rallies and go on outings together. Coaches invest in individual players and their families, encouraging them to work hard and stay in school. We seek to creatively empower young men by giving them responsibilities that prepare them to be leaders in their communities. Timoteo is also in the process of establishing vocational and educational advocates to connect youth with local businesses and colleges for jobs, internships, and college scholarships.”

i love so much about this program. after a full day and night at Papa Fest we were all completely drained [KZN type humidity and much heat interspersed with much rain plus, of course, avoiding the ticks] and so i was not particularly amped to go, but i’m so glad we did – church unity, intentional mentorship, community upliftment… this is what we signed up for…

tbV and i are definitely in the right place – is it all easy and comfortable? absolutely not. there have been some things that have been really tough and some adjustments that still very much need to happen. but every day i see new reasons to be absolutely stoked that we’re here and we haven’t even started our work yet [happens after wild goose fest next week]…