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Listen as Daryn gives us an audio walkthrough of the Mix. Check out of Facebook page for a visual accompaniment to that walkthrough, coming in the next week!
I’ve noticed that we tend to celebrate infancy as a time of blissful, uncomplicated simplicity. However, as I’ve watched my son’s young life, I’ve become aware that his day-to-day is fraught with frustration.
A couple weeks ago, he learned how to crawl. It was not always a pleasant experience. He slipped. He fell. He cried. He strained. There was nothing I could do. To take away the struggle would be to take away the growth. All I could do is make sure he didn’t hurt himself too badly, hold him close and sing to him if he bumped his head, and celebrate every faltering step as a great triumph.
For me, there was both pride and pain: pride at watching him growing into a little boy, pain at the suffering I knew that change caused. The world is foreign and hostile when we are just born: the negotiations of digestion, the persistent inarticulateness of speech, the irresistible weight of gravity, the complete perceptual re-orientations as new parts of our brain turn on.
There is power and helplessness in my love. I can’t make him walk, or talk, or digest. I can’t prevent him from crying or bumping his head. However, I can make sure that there is enough space for him in my love for him to learn what a beautiful place this world is.
In those beautiful moments, when he stares into my eyes as I sing him to sleep, or watch his face light up when he sees me for the first time in the morning, I’m learning that our love will be enough for him, as he learns how to navigate this world for himself. Perhaps that’s true for all of us, as well.
This is perhaps the most complete story we’ve ever told in one episode. Daryn does the beautiful, honest, whimsically wonderful story of how the Mix emerged, from her sitting alone in a church basement filled with pianos, to the beautiful place of community that it is today. Enjoy!
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Join us as we talk with Daryn DeZengotita of the Mix Coworking and Creative Space and the Missional Wisdom Foundation. Hear one of the most complete stories we’ve ever told about a new ministry, from Daryn’s dream of working in intentional community, to her Advent time sitting alone in a church basement full of pianos, to the ups and downs of starting the Mix in partnership with White Rock UMC, to the beautiful “accelerated serendipity” that is the co-working space today.
One of my longest, most practical b-sides ever. Listen to a master church planter talk about how to use community organizing techniques to cultivate spiritual community. A great listen!
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As I was making smores the other day, I read this article, (one of several I’ve read recently), about how our chocolate is made. Here’s one telling quote from an article on the topic in the Daily Beast.
Many of the children are sold into slavery, some for less than $30; others are kidnapped or tricked into thinking it’s a real job, the complaint alleges. Once there, the children are allegedly trapped on isolated farms, threatened with physical abuse, required to work when they are sick, and denied sufficient food….
Mistrati…said he witnessed child slave labor firsthand—and believes it can be stopped quickly. “Mars, Hershey, and Nestle have had every opportunity to stop the trafficking of children and illegal child slaves,” he said. “I have seen small children, 6 years old, being trafficked from Mali to Ivory Coast. It was so heartbreaking to watch. But the companies have not had the will to end it for many years. Only empty words and expensive advertising instead of using money to pay back to the children on the ground in West Africa.”
So, if all of us would agree that child slave labor is unequivocally evil, then why do we walk into stores looking for smores and leave having sponsored the exploitation of children? As Peter Rollins points out, it’s not that we don’t believe in child labor, it’s that we only believe that we don’t believe in child labor.
Take the example of buying chocolate from a corner shop. If I know, or suspect, that the chocolate is made from coco beans picked by children under the conditions of slavery then, regardless of what I say, I believe in child slavery. For the belief operates at a material level (the level of what I do) rather than at the level of the mind (what I tell myself I believe). And I can’t hide in supposed ignorance either for if I don’t know about how most chocolate is made it is likely that my lack of knowledge is a form of refusal to care. For the very fact that there is Fair Trade chocolate, for example, should be enough for me to ask questions about whether other chocolate is made in an unfair way.
This is the moral danger of living in the most powerful nation in the world. Our way of life is predicated upon the exploitation of others for our gain, whether that be driving cars whose ecological cost is paid by other regions of the world, buying ten dollar jeans made in a sweatshop, or getting a cheap chocolate bar made by child slaves.
We have to actively work *not* to harm other when we participate in our economy. Sometimes, doing so may be just plain impossible. I hope that this genuinely troubles every time you roast smores in your backyard during these waning days of summer.
It genuinely troubles me.
After saying all of that, I opened the cabinet in my kitchen today and what do I find?
Here’s hoping we all learn how to do better.
Join us for more of our conversation with Trey, where talks about how to use community organizing techniques to cultivate spiritual community.
Trey is one of the most thoughtful interviews I’ve ever done. I was impressed by his authenticity, grounded in the twelve step tradition, and his ability to hold his own beliefs so charitably. In our polarized society (and polarized church), Trey embodies the wisdom of what it means to embrace a common humanity that transcends our differences. Enjoy!
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Hear Trey Hall, co-founder of Urban Village and coach with the Epicenter Group talk the spiritual resources of 12 step recovery, making difficult transitions, and creating post-ideology, third way spiritual communities in post-Christian contexts.