Cotton Presley spoke on the theme of heaven and this morning I came on these words of Catherine Booth quoted by Roger Green in his biography of the ‘Army Mother’:

… it must be self-evident … that it is the most important question that can possibly occupy the mind of man – how much like God can we be – how near to God can we come on earth preparatory to our being perfectly like Him, and living, as it were, in His very heart for ever and ever in Heaven.  Anyone who has any measure of the Spirit of God, must perceive that this is the most important question on which we can concentrate our thoughts.

Her words make sense as we pray ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’.  Think about it.

Thank, Audrey, for leading us in worship!

The Rev. Velda R. Love is Director of the Justice and Intercultural Learning Office of Diversity at North Park University in Chicago where tonight students will gather to see The Interrupters. 

If you can’t join them, you can watch the television premiere of this award-winning PBS documentary on WTTW or your local PBS station at 7:00 PM.

The Interrupters tells “the moving story of three dedicated “violence interrupters”—Ameena Matthews, Cobe Williams and Eddie Bocanegra—who, with bravado, humility and humor, work to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they themselves once employed.

“Their work and their insights are informed by their own journeys, which, as each of them points out, defy easy characterization.”

The Archdiocese of Detroit is expected to announce this month its plans to close 30 suburban and as many as 20 urban parishes.  To put this in perspective, the Archdiocese included 112 parishes in 1988.  The closings will mean about a third of them remain.

Many of the proposed closings will amalgamate congregations.  But the loss of services and vitality to Detroit neighborhoods will be felt.  No small loss now as Detroit faces its most serious challenge in the months ahead fending off state control and bankruptcy.

Here’s a link to the Detroit Free Press article.

Deshun Winfert was with his father in their car at 66th and Mozart.  Another vehicle pulled up, someone shot both Deshun and his dad.  Police have no explanation why.  Seems random.

Listening to this on the radio I remembered one Saturday morning years ago.  I was driving the minivan north on the Dan Ryan Freeway from errands on the South Side.  My son John was with me.  For a change he was riding in the front passenger seat instead of his usual far-from-Dad-as-possible back seat.

The ramp for the Eisenhower was just ahead.  I changed lanes heading for it.

‘pop’.  like a light bulb.

I needed three seconds to figure out that it was a bullet through the back driver-side window.  The entire back window was gone, now on the Dan Ryan.  I hit the gas and paid no attention to traffic around me.

I was shook up.  When we got home I called Chicago Police District 12, told them what happened.  The officer explained there had been a high-speed chase, gunfire along Roosevelt about that time.  11:00 in the morning.

Years later in Detroit I ignored the stoplight two different times at the same intersection when I heard gunshots.  Traffic signal at Dexter and Tuxedo.  Gas pedal.  The young people I was driving home after youth activities understood.  No complaint about blowing the red light.

When I heard the news this afternoon about Deshun I thought about John riding with me years ago on the Dan Ryan.  I can’t tell you anymore than that.

Waiting.  His thoughtful assistant came in carrying an armful of magazines.  I picked the February 6 issue of Fortune.  Article by Eric Klinenberg caught my eye.  In the late 1950s more than 70% of American adults were married.  Today that figure is 51%.

Klinenberg is a professor of sociology at New York University.  His book  Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone will be published this month.  In it he will point out that 28% of all households consist of only one person.  Double the rate from 1960.

Something is happening in America, and many other places in the world.  And at the center of this social shift, where it is taking place:  the cities.

Last January I was in Toronto at the Urban Forum where Glen Smith talked about the same trend in Canadian cities.  Smith told us that the churches need to recognize and find how to minister to the increasing number of ‘singletons’, what Klinenberg uses to refer to single adults living alone.

One trait Klinenberg identifies of singletons is their high social activity, in “urban tribes … social networks that substitute for families … living alone has become intensely social”.

How do we engage single adults living alone in ways that meet their needs?  To challenge and help them serve others?

Urban congregations, corps, and ministries will need to recognize the role they can take.  In offering to be a place for single adults ready for an intense social experience among those who love God.  Some might even call it ‘church’.

Sao Paulo is the largest city in South America, over 10.6 million paulistanos.  Today, some of them are crawling to the top of their skyscrapers, taggers leaving their marks high above.  Why?  Watch this minute and a half clip from Jao Winer’s documentary Pixo.  For more here’s an article Pixacao:  Sao Paulo’s acrobatic Urban Graffiti Movement from Environmental Graffiti.

The reunion celebrated 26 years of TSA’s continuous ministry as a gospel choir.  Gail and I were there when the choir came into existence with a few teens during the 1980s.  Those were the years of Michael Jordan, Mayor Harold Washington, the crack epidemic.  Young people living in the CHA Henry Horner Homes.  Gifted young people who endured very hard situations.  Today, many of them now can sing “Well, my soul looks back and wonders how I got over”.

TSA?  The Salvation Army.

A few photos taken by TSA drummer Patrick Simmons -

TSA Madison St singing at the Reunion Concert

One of the Temple Dancer groups led by Raven Temple, they were great!

 

 

 

I don’t agree with all his theology, but Walter Wink’s work on spiritual powers intrigues me.  Especially regarding the unseen powers which animate cities.

Wink offers a credible exegesis of Pauline texts dealing with powers, principalities and authorities.  It rings true with my experience in urban ministry.  If interested look at a copy of Naming the Powers or any of the other two books of his Powers Trilogy.

It’s good when someone points out unseen, almost invisible, ‘powers’.  Recently I’ve enjoyed reading posts from Benton on his WordPress blog The Data-Driven City.  Benton’s a Chicago lawyer (and former Michigander) with an interest in ‘government in the information age’.

For instance I find it, should I say, empowering to know who has the most lobbyists in Chicago.

And …

yes, who would have thought that according to the Chicago Lobbyists website The Salvation Army is the most active client for lobbyists in Chicago.  Check it out here.

To some, okay, maybe a lot of people, Detroit is a lemon.  Crime.  Poverty.  A remarkable post-urban landscape that makes us shudder.

But underneath the darker currents of Detroit runs great opportunity for creativity, innovation and hope.  People who are attracted to this kind of challenge come here or in the case of Margarita Barry decide to stay.

26 year old Barry created I Am Young Detroit as a website to highlight the initiatives of other young Detroiters.  Small neighborhood businesses.  Community development.  Arts.  Here’s yesterday’s Christian Science Monitor interview with Margarita.

Margarita Barry and others like her have discovered a mission.  It involves something beyond their own personal good.  It is characterized by selflessness.  It is very close to God’s mission to the world he so loved.  In fact I suspect some of those that Barry features at I Am Young Detroit are agents of God’s mission to Detroit.

It’s exciting to see in the midst of urban dismay that hope has made an appearance. 

A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.  (Isaiah 11:1)             

We had a tank of turtles to feed.  The season had been too busy to realize we had run out of their food and as I closed up the corps building I felt guilty.  These silent turtles looking at me.  Thus my visit to Kmart.

It’s hard to find a place in any city to buy turtle food on Christmas Eve.  I knew Kmart was open.  So did hundreds of Detroiters who were there not for turtles but for their children and families, buying presents, food.  And many were at Kmart with their children.  Crying, tired, upset.  Parents frustrated, tired too, angry.  It was ghastly.  I kept my head down in the slow line and left as quickly as I could this Hieronymus Bosch hell.  Mad magazine tableaux.

Not only for the turtles’ sake.  I was angry.  Christmas Eve was near the end of the worst Christmas season ever.  Death more frequent, more tragic and more children than usual.  Our wreck of a corps building not bearing up under the heavy snow and rain.  The typical exhaustion of an urban kettle season where you are edgy and paranoid.  All in the setting of our city crumbling.

A few years later I found myself staring out of an office window at a perfectly manicured lawn.   On the street passed ascendant urban life:  Chicago.  We now were on Chicago’s North Side, only a few blocks from Wrigley Field.

Where now was the anger?  Did it go away, or was it someplace deeper inside, occasionally rising when I remembered Detroit, saw one of its relatives, injustice and pain in Chicago, in any city, in urban America?  Where now is the anger?