Joewulf's Weblog

Surprisingly amidst the hustle and bustle of having our house jammed full of people, today’s birthday party afforded me my first real chance to look back and think over Jude’s first year here on earth (while watching a slideshow of pictures of him).  Amazing.

Its been a great year baby boy.  Its been amazing.  Absolutely amazing.  I wouldn’t trade anything for this last year.  What a journey…and what a cute little cake eating maniac!  Enjoy!

The first thing you learn, as it relates to blogs, is that something has occurred in the life of the author to illicit  silence.  In this case it has been the craziness of hosting twelve people from the US while also planning and prepping for a five day retreat (where you will also be doing most of the teaching).  Oh, and in the eye of the hurricane is your son’s birthday.

Whew!  I feel like I need to take a breather after just writing that sentence!

As I said, life has been amazingly busy this last week, though not needlessly so.  Since I haven’t been able to share this past week, let me take the time to do it now.  Here are a couple of the things I’m excited about:

• Jude just turned one!  It has been an amazing year to growth as reality and parenthood have set in in new ways.  After opening presents in the morning we went to a theme park called Duinrell
• The Lord continues to lead us corporately and me individually in to who he is and who he has made us to be through the Gospel.  I’m especially excited for how this is lending new, sharper focus to my interactions with people both inside and outside the church (stories to come later perhaps…)
• Next week is going to be a week of discovery for many of the students present.  We will not only be uncovering the power God that is at work in us, but also the identity he has implanted in us through Christ’s indwelling.
  From the understanding of our identity in Christ and his work in us that we explore at camp, we will be moving to reshapre our current weekly meeting time in to something that will better serve the pursuit of God’s purposes in and through our lives in the daily, ordinary places we inhabit.  God help us break down the barriers of sacred/secular, church/world, emerging with a more unified, holistic life in Christ!

I put some pictures and videos up Flickr too.  This video is from the theme park we went to on Jude’s birthday (Thanks Bert!).  He locked on to me and made this sound the whole time…

You know what a doctor’s office looks like.  You know what a high school looks like.  You know what a residential area looks like.  You know what to look for in the average storefront.  You get the idea.

I just found out I’ve been living down the canal from a retirement home these last eight months.  And I’m constantly discovering new businesses, shops and schools every day.

One of the major questions we’ve been asking since we arrived in Holland is, where are all the marginalized people?  Crazy to think about, but it was the wrong question.  The question that comes after thoroughly cultural questions like: What does an retirement home look like?  What does “need” look like in a semi-social state like Holland?  Where are the signs telling me what things are?  (many times the only signage a business will have will be some frosted lettering on the front door or a small sign by the front door)

From businesses that look like homes to schools that look like office buildings, it seems we’re constantly discovering new depths to enculturation and how we come to decode the world we live in.   And now, we’re learning (quite willingly), the Dutch code.

I think my favorite way of thinking about it is in the language of story.  Every culture (tribe is probably a better word) tells their version of reality’s story.  And right now our contribution to the story to listening to the story ratio is pretty lopsided.  Sometimes it feels like we only listen.  Someti

mes it feels like we can make meaningful contributions.

Lots to learn and a long way to go, but the progress is coming.  Imagine, someday we are going to be able to tell the difference between a school and an office building!  :)