NIKO

Christmas season creates a favorable vibe in our hearts.
It is advent, to carpe diem an expectation. As we hope to receive a gift from family and friends, pause for a brief moment during this season to wonder what God’s gift is or was for you.
If you have done Niko this year either as a staff, alumni, retreatants or a participants, the days spent up in the mountains with a group of people, Iwould “expect” was one of the gifts God has given you. How’s are you using the gift of Niko? Have you opened this gift? Have you forgotten about it, shelved it, maybe discarded it?
On behalf of our Niko leadership community, we are expecting a fresh infusion of God’s power and spirit in our beloved program we call Niko. We on the leadership team, are really excited to announce a realligned, upgraded, refreshed Niko this coming new year.
Daniel Cheung will spell out the details. . .

Soren Kierkegaard in Copenhagen, what would he say?

Kierkegard in Copenhagen, what would he say?
As the green world wishes to turn the global temperature back to room temperature, the village gathers together in Copenhagen- Kobenhavn- Each brings their own questions and answers. If you were there what would your Q&A be?

I lived in Denmark for 2 years as a missionary, I had my own questions asked and partly answered there. Well, suppose Kierkegaard is still alive and happy to have the global village around in his own village. What would his questions and answers be?
Here’s a tiny little bitzy piece of his mind from his little book ” Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing”
“. . . But whether your occupation is great or mean, is it of such a kind that you dare think of it together with the responsibility of eternity? Is it such of a kind that you dare to acknowledge it at this moment or at any time?”
Kierkegard imagined Jesus-”the transfigured”- visiting an  individual:  ” Suppose he visited you and that you there before him, before his piercing gaze, dared continue in your present occupation!

” The proof that a man’s occupation is the right one is that he is able to practice it.”

Coram Deo- my i live and occupy my space living before the face of God.

urban youth workers spirituality

This  blog is a series  to map out an urban youth workers’ spiritual growth experienced working  with urban youth.

Compassion, emphathy, solidarity are graces initiated by God to take us to the poor taking us closer to Jesus.

One summer outreach in Los Angeles’ skid row, we have about 30 kids reaching out to the homeless. The kids made peanut butter and jelly sandwich, salami sandwich, chips, a drink and a cookie to share with a homeless person. We have them write something on the brown bag to personalize each sandwich bag. Kids wrote Jesus loves you, God bless, John 3:16 verse and drew happy faces,  to name a few of their personalized message for each person they are about to meet. To prepare our team to our one hour event, we talked about things we have in common with the homeless to help them be human with fellow humans. 

I recalled a Spring break  backpacking trip that showed how my spiritual life is the lens that I wear to see the disadvantaged youth I care for. One of our teenagers on the trip, living on the skid row, had a bad case of skin rashes due to poor hygiene.  I noticed how sensitive I was to him, I wanted to care for him more than the suburban teenager also on our team. 

As I have evolved over the last seven years from working directly with children, teenagers and family  to working with youth workers, I am now more about the spiritual life of youth workers and the care of their soul- the vitality needed to be in the urban mission frontier.

Most urban youth workers I listened to were drawn to disadvantaged youth through compassion.  Whether they’ve heard about the urban youth angst and plights  in college, seminary, experienced it during summer outreach, or for some, they simply grew up in it. 

Through compassion, we see a broken down, alienated and dis-enfranchised youth and romanticized how we can love them to health, wholeness and lead them to Jesus.  We unknowingly put them on a pedestal disguised in compassion.  We see them as victims, survivors and most vunerable to abuse and neglect.  We will soon find our compassion- what we sometimes call honeymoon stage- to be fading and when it does we hope to be moving on.

To move prematurely from the way of compassion is trying to grow up too fast to quickly.  At this passage, perpetual freshness and boundless energy dominates personal newsletters.  Young people we touched are angels no matter what they’ve done and rightly so.  We are filled with gratefulness for what we have seeing what they have.  We are full of hope for them, unbridled optimism and all because of compassion.  The sweet call of Jesus for us to visit the poor, imprisoned and disadvantaged youth.

What If. . I can meet Joan Chittister today?

Polarization in the Christian world has touched me personally. I am not a teflon, I am pretty sensitive. One of my peers from my mission community spoke harshly to me indirectly. I was trying to explain how open we should be in the name of bringing this generation’s into a biblical global village. As soon as I mention our need to embrace an open mind into looking what the emerging church is like, I was in essense labeled an “heretic” because I am open to a conversation. I was very dumbfounded and sad. . .
Last night my wife and I played that “What If” game and my what if question is, who is the living person you would talked to that would give you answer ( someting to this effect) My answer: Joan Chitister- a Carmelite nun. I was asked her why some Christian Evangelicals can be harsh and more concern about “truth”?

The Berlin Wall- 20 years later

Twenty years ago  marked a significant spiritual geography in my life. Riding in a public bus at the smallest European city capital, Torshavn in the Faroe Islands, I became a prayer.

It was rather an ordinary day, I was day-dreaming in the bus while music plays on the radio. Suddenly, I was awakened from my day dream I heard the news broadcast  announcing the fall of the Berlin Wall. I cried and the public bus I was in, it seemed to me,  turned into a cathedral with a somber and solemn atmosphere. I didn’t make it to East Berlin, I was living in Austria in 1988 and our missionary community  regularly  prayed for Eastern Europe. We also “harbored” a few Polish and Czech refugees who has joined our community. I left Manila to be close to Eastern Europe and be a missionary to the Slavic people. I didn’t transform the nation, I didn’t have a crusade or teaching ministry. A few years later, I visited Berlin with a small group of American, a Dane and a Faroese youth. We did  our own little memorial and prayer service at the City Hall, Brundenberg gate and on a neighborhood were the wall once stood.  The Cathedral in Berlin was another place we pay homage and pilgrimaged. The Cathedral has since been rebuilt leaving the portion of what left from the bombing and adding a prophetic and post-modernistic architecture to remind us of the horrors of wars, dictators, tyrants, and now welcomes the peace makers and intercessors. We felt at home and at peace with the prayers offered at the church.  Our small group of seven are awe-struck and drawn into silence trying to make sense of history.

My spiritual geography today reminds me that I am intercessor, praying and standing in the gap for the people to experience freedom from tyrants and authoritarian rule that diminished people to less than what our Creator made us to be.

It is a sentimental day trip I just did. I am reminding myself to look around for more “Berlin Wall” erected around me and once again embrace the life of an intercessor.

Beauty giving to beauty

Editor’s Picks

^{I have written a few booklets on spiritual retreat practices and yesterday I was absorbed with this passage.}

 ^”Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”       John 12:3

Beauty giving to beauty. Faced with today’s ugly news- shooting at a military installation, and a corporate office. Let us in physical form give beauty beauty. Be nice to yourself today, to someone and this is our spiritual warfare against ugliness

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