John 15

"For knowing why won't really make a difference but growing close and knowing Jesus will." -Hoff

"I AM is the answer.  He doesn't want you to know more, he wants you to lean more."   -James MacDonald

I was laying on the floor during Body Balance meditation and looking out the window at the rare blue sky.  I look out this window every week on Wednesdays.  I had my picture that day of John 15.  The branches who were far away from the trunk were really swaying and bending every which way.  But the branches close to the trunk were secure and unmovable.  Lean in Kristyn.  Selah.

SEWN Together

Margaret is making dolls.  Margaret is teaching women who are victims of abuse to make dolls. Margaret decides that they could sell their dolls so women could experience freedom.

Addy is making bracelets.  Addy is teaching her Muslim friends to make bracelets.  Addy decides that they could sell their bracelets at school so under resourced children could go to Class Vert.

SEWN Together.

Gray Learning

Emma is teaching me
Abortion?
"I don't like labels.  I don't like the term pro-life.  As if everyone who is pro-choice is against life.  They value the life of the young girl who was brutally raped.  They define life at a different time."

Shannon is teaching me
Prophetic voice?
I doubted it until I read the prophets. "Proclaim good news to our friends on the street with Nino and proclaim freedom to those who seek asylum like Wayne, and Hammah and Milad (Isaiah 61). "  We need to speak truth about the new earth that is to come.  This is also redemption.

CA is teaching me
Women in leadership?
Moderate egalitarian?  Still learning this one or maybe I feel freedom to not have an opinion (see Emma and Jeremie).  The body of Christ is diverse.  Maybe we are putting our periods and commas in the wrong places or leaving out quotation marks.  Richard says the only mature believers in his Latin context congregation are women.  Married men and women working in close proximity?  Boundaries?

Andrew is teaching me
Consensus leadership?
It is European.  It can take a long time to reach a decision but then the implementation goes quicker because there is buy in.

Jeremie is teaching me
Opinions are exhausting?
Americans analyze what they think about everything.  We carefully construct opinions as if we will be called on and our ideas valued.  "Do you ever just look at something and not judge it?"  This is freeing.

Jodi is teaching me
Love your enemy?
I've never had an enemy.  Harmony is learning to sit in a mess.  Harmony can agree to disagree. Harmony and Woo are not failures.

Kate is teaching me
Gender is complicated?
Braden has Sam in his class.  "There are a lot more people born hermaphroditic than you think." Sexuality is biology and gender is objectified (what society says) and realized (what you feel/say).  Can we really start allowing truth to be based on feeling?

Rubens is teaching me
I am a work of art (Ephesians 2:10).  We have come so dangerously far from the once ideal body type. I'm starting to take the pressure off and be content.  Who says?