“This is the Village I Have Been Telling You about”

This is an excerpt from the Afterword of Thin Places and was first published over at The House Studio.   These postures and the stories that fill them out aren’t concrete, sure-fire steps to a vibrant life as a missional community. They are simply field notes from our humble attempts at living out the mission of …

Glimpses of a New Narrative

This blog was originally posted over at The House Studio (publisher of Thin Places) a couple days ago.   We live in the downtown neighborhood of Golden Hill in San Diego.  It is a place that contains a multitude of narratives.  At times they are warring narratives, other times they are complementary narratives and still …

My Child, the Marlboro Man and Interdependence

I was lying next to my daughter Ruby as she drank her milk and started to fade to sleep.  She often hums her favorite songs through the garble of milk, but this night she set aside the milk so she could nail every note of her newly assembled tune. To the tune of Twinkle Twinkle …

Missional-Monastic Community: Part 3

In part 1 I discussed the early developments of monasticism that later gave birth to a missional movement that was beautifully embodied in St. Patrick (Part 2).  Today we ask the question, how do we live out the best of both of these movements and daily live life as monastics on mission in our neighborhoods? …

Missional-Monastic Community: Part 2

Yesterday I presented a brief history of the soil which gave birth monasticism (Click to read Part 1).  In short, the monastics chose a life self denial, isolation and rigorous spiritual disciples out of faithful devotion to Jesus.  While the movement often withdrew from society (whether individually or communally) they offered a prophetic call to the low-committment …