Spirit in Action
Radical Tennessee Preacher Shane Claiborne
Shane Claiborne is a fiery, dread-locked, profound, fool for God. He grew up in East Tennessee, spent time with Mother Theresa, was in Iraq with Christian Peacemakers during the Shock & Awe campaign in Iraq, and helped found The Simple Way community in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Pennsylvania.
- Broadcast on:
- 29 Apr 2012
- Audio Format:
- other
(upbeat music) ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice, with every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ - Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice, with every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ - I have a real humdinger of a spirit in action for you today. My guest is Shane Claiborne and humdinger is exactly the kind of word he might use, what with his East Tennessee accent. Shane is an awesome storyteller, activist and preacher, but his preaching might be both familiar to you in some particulars, but it is radically honestly different as well. My opinion is that if more of us followed the Jesus that Shane Claiborne follows, this world would be a far more welcoming, accepting gracious and beautiful place. Shane grew up in Eastern Tennessee and among other things that formed him, he worked alongside Mother Teresa in Calcutta. He spent three weeks in Baghdad during the 2003 Chaconna attack with the Iraq Peace Teams, a project of voices in the wilderness and the Christian peacemaker teams. He's a founding member of a community called The Simple Way, a group living in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Pennsylvania. Plus, Shane Claiborne is an author and co-author of some six books, the latest being common prayer, a liturgy for ordinary radicals. Today's spirit in action comes in two parts. I go to a week long national Quaker gathering each year and I'm registering for it this very week. So I went back to a recording from the Friends General Conference gathering in the summer of 2009 when Shane was one of our speakers. First part of this spirit in action is about half of Shane's 2009 talk at the FGC gathering and what a stunning tale it was. The second half of my program will be a phone interview of Shane bringing you up to date on what he's been doing in the past two years and there's lots, including a visit back to Iraq. I'll mention that if you're interested, you can get an MP3 of Shane's full-length talk at QuakerBooks.org for $5 and I think every minute of it is divine. So we'll start off with about half of that 2009 talk and then we'll call Shane up. Let's go to an auditorium at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia and listen now to Shane Claiborne today's spirit and action guest. - It's a great honor to be together and to listen and to speak and to have conversation. I think it's a fun time to be alive right now what a gift to be alive at any moment in history but particularly one right now, I was on an airplane the other day and I fell sat down next to me. He said, "So what is it that you do?" I decided to have a little fun. So I said, "Well, sir, I'm a preacher." And he said, "Oh, I never would have known." (audience laughs) It must not make preachers like they used to. I said, "No, thank God." And he... (audience laughs) Then we talked for a minute and he said something very interesting. He said, "Well, you must not be short of preaching material these days." And then he kind of went on this spiel about how this is the apocalypse. And these are the end times and kept going. And I first thought to myself, I think this brother's read too many of Tim LaHaye's left behind series books. If you don't know what they are, don't worry. You're not missing much. But I listened and then he started talking about things though. And I thought to myself, you know, I think he's onto something because this word apocalypse, as you may know, doesn't just mean the end of all things, but it comes from the same root as revelation to reveal, to disclose, to unveil things. And I think in the truest sense of the word, this is an apocalyptic time where we're seeing what lies underneath so many of the patterns of our world. Kind of like the Wizard of Oz when they march in, they rip away the curtain. They're like, "Whoa, a little old man, who knew?" You know, and I think everywhere I go, people are asking really good questions about the time that we're living in and seeing some of the things that we could miss like that the average executives and CEOs are making 400 times their workers. You know that the average person in the US is consuming what 500 Africans consume. If we continue to live into the patterns that we're living in now, we would need four more planets, you know, and I think across the board people are going, maybe God has a different dream than the American dream. Maybe the patterns of God's kingdom and reign don't just look like the patterns of Wall Street. I grew up in East Tennessee, you know, in the Bible Belt and it's actually very disturbing that this past year and a half, there was a study done by the Barna Research Group. What they did was they asked people outside of the church, what are your perceptions of Christians? And they did this survey and I think every state in the United States, they asked folks outside the church, what are your perceptions of Christians? And you guys, the top three were this. Number one, Christians are anti-gay. Number two, Christians are judgmental. And number three, Christians are hypocrites. We've got a little bit of an image crisis, you know, and much of it's well-deserved. And it's certainly not what we know of Christianity, but it is what has hijacked the airwaves of Christianity and it's what has monopolized the story of our faith in the recent decades and yet I'm excited 'cause I think many of those things are changing right now. But I also, I catch glimpses of that, you know, kind of everywhere 'cause when I go, when I preach places, I don't always draw the church crowd, you know, I remember one place I was speaking, this pastor came up beforehand and he wanted to make sure that I noticed something. What he wanted to make sure that I noticed was that there were two gay men that came in holding hands and they were sitting on the front row and he said, "I just want to make sure that you saw." And so, if you want to say something about that, you can. (congregation laughing) I took a little time in silence and I said, "You know, pastor, if I were going to say something, "I would want to say that I'm really glad "that they felt welcome in your church." That wasn't what he had in mind, you know. (congregation laughing) But as we talked, I said, you know, I think that we've really got to rethink a lot of things and you know, when I think of my upbringing in East Tennessee, there were a lot of things that I saw that they didn't really add up, you know, and I'm thankful that I had people in the church that loved me. I had a radical conversion experience, you know, at one of these emotional festivals where we all came forward and we got born again. There's not a ton to do in East Tennessee, so that festival is like the highlight of our year. We'd go and get born again, again, every year. But there kind of came a point for me anyway that I said, man, there's got to be more to being a Christian than just getting born again, again, every year, you know. And there's got to be more than, like we would come forward singing just as I am and leave just as we were and live just like we always had, you know. And the more I read about Jesus, the more I saw that Christianity wasn't just a way of believing, but a way of living. And that the kingdom of God that Jesus talked about every time He opened His mouth wasn't just something that was happening after we die, but it's something that we were to bring on earth as it is in heaven. That this wasn't just about going up when we die, but about bringing God's reign down on earth. It became clear to me that this wasn't just about getting into heaven while I ignored all the hell that was going on around me in the world. And so I became a little agitated. I mean, actually what happened for me was I just became so conflicted. I mean, I was running after all of the things that the culture had taught me to run after. You know, I can remember in East Tennessee, I was like in the end crowd in high school. I was the prom king. I know that's hard to imagine, you know. It was a small town. But, and yet I started to read the things that Jesus said and I'm thinking to myself, my gosh, here he is, he's saying, if you want to be the greatest, you should become the least. And I'm thinking why am I working so hard to be the greatest? And yet there was a part of me that just said, man, does anybody really believe this stuff? Does anybody really believe that Jesus meant this stuff that he said? And as I looked around, I was just fascinated by the life of Mother Teresa. So, you know, with sort of this childlike innocence, a few of my friends and I, we said, well, let's just write her a letter and let's see if we can come learn from her. So, we wrote a letter and it basically said, we don't know if you give internships over there in Calcutta, but we'd love to come work with you, you know. Send it off. We waited and week after week, we didn't hear anything back, you know. And then I got a little impatient. So, I just started calling some nuns on the phone, you know, and I was trying to get the number for Calcutta and, yeah, some of them are like, is this a prank call, you know. And finally, I get a hold of one of the sisters in the Bronx, in New York. And I said, yes, I'm trying to get a hold of Mother Teresa or someone in Calcutta and she says, well, I'm gonna let you talk to the head nun here. Her name is Mother Superior. I'm like, awesome. Anybody with Superior in their name, I'm into it. You know, so I talked to Mother Superior and I tell her we're trying to go to India. And I think she just kind of thought we were cute. So she said, okay, I'm gonna give you a number. Don't go giving it out, you know. And I called in the middle of the night so it would be a decent hour in Calcutta and all my friends are around and I, I'm expecting, you know, sort of a polite greeting on the other line, you know, like missionaries of charity. How can we help you? No such luck. I just hear this raspy old voice answer the phone. Hello. Thinking I got the wrong number and I did my research. It was $4 a minute. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna make it quick. I'm calling from the United States. We're trying to get all the missionaries of charity and Mother Teresa's, I went over there. Can you help me? You know, and then I just hear, well, this is the missionaries of charity. This is Mother Teresa. Yeah, and I'm like, and I'm the Pope, you know, what are you talking about? (audience laughs) So I, you know, I ask her, I say, well, can we come work with you? And she says, yeah, come on out. She didn't have a Southern accent, but you know, and come on up. And I'm kind of, without words, so I said, well, I start asking what I think are logical questions. You know, I said, well, where are we gonna sleep? You know, what are we gonna eat? And I'm asking Mother Teresa, you know, she didn't worry a lot about that. And so she just says that, oh, God takes care of the lilies and the sparrows. God will take care of you. Just come. I don't know how you argue with that, you know? So we did. We went over to India and many of us in our community, and I know many of you too have been over there and worked, and I worked every morning in the orphanage. I worked every evening in the home for the dying. And saw things that have just formed me in so many ways. But we would have these street parties on the street where we would get all the kids together and we would blow bubbles and turn flips, you know, and play with these kids that were eight and 10 years old and just begging on the street to survive. And there was one day where one of those kids, it was his birthday. I'm thinking to myself, I gotta get this kid something 'cause it was one of the kids I'd grown really close to. And I'm trying to decide what to get him. And it's almost 120 degrees Fahrenheit. So I decide what better to get this kid than an ice cream cone, you know? So I go get him an ice cream. And I have no idea how long it had been since he had ice cream 'cause he gets it and he's just stunned, you know? So he stares at this ice cream and just shakes. He's like, and then his instinct is this is too good to keep for myself. So he yells at all the other kids and he goes, "We've got ice cream!" And he brings them all over and he goes, "Everybody gets a lick!" And he goes down the line and he's like, "Your turn. "Your turn, your turn." So this kid, he goes full circle. And then finally gets back to me, right? And he's like, "Shane, you get a lick too." I got this whole spit phobia thing going, you know? So I sort of like fake a lick. I'm like, "Ooh, that's great!" Chocolate, he's like, "No, it's vanilla." And I'm like, "But he knew the secret of Jesus." Which is the best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them away and to share them. And Mother Teresa knew that too. Sometimes people, they hear that was over and they're like, "Oh, Mother Teresa, she's a saint. "Did she shine?" I'm like, "Well, not really." I mean, sister wasn't a nightlight, but she was beautiful. I mean, she radiated God's love. But there's one thing that I will never forget about Mother Teresa and that is her feet. You see, her feet were terribly deformed. And I noticed because every morning we would go into worship and we would take off all of our shoes and we would go in barefoot and we would bow down to pray. And I noticed her feet were deformed. And I sort of wondered if she had caught leprosy or something, you know? And of course I wasn't about to ask her about it. You know, what's going on there? But one day, one of the sisters came up and she came up and she said, "Have you noticed Mother's feet?" And I said, "Yeah, I have." And she said, "Her feet are deformed "because we get just enough shoes donated "for everybody to get a pair." And Mother Teresa doesn't want someone to have a worst pair of shoes than she has. So she digs through all of the donations and she picks out the worst pair of shoes and she wears them. And after years and years of wearing the worst pair of shoes, it's deformed her feet. I mean, don't you wonder what the world would look like if we really took this idea of loving our neighbor as ourselves that literally are honoring the needs of others above our own. It shamed all of my short-term mission trips that I'd gone on as a youth, you know, where we dig through our closet and we get all of our worst clothes, you know, to give to the homeless. And Mother Teresa would say, "Don't you dare." When you give to the poor, you're giving to Jesus in his most distressing disguises, give the very best stuff that you have. And it flies in the face of so much that we hear in our culture and so much even that we hear in the church with this self-centered blessing obsessed gospel of prosperity that is about what we can get from God. And if you give a dollar, you'll get a hundred. And in all of it, like becoming a better you and finding your best life. And if we're not careful with our infatuation with ourselves, we lose the secret of Jesus, which is if you want to find your life, you've got to give it away. In Philadelphia, we began to see in our Calcutta, we began to see, as you say, tell me what you see in the church. It was different from East Tennessee, you know, but we began to see a lot of really ugly things. And in 1995, there was a group of poor and homeless families in Philadelphia that moved into an old abandoned Catholic cathedral and they began living there. And they were living in this cathedral that had been abandoned for about six years. And then the archdiocese that owned the building came in and gave them an eviction notice. And said if they weren't out within 48 hours, they could be arrested for trespassing on church property. I don't know about you, but that didn't feel right to us. You know, we read in the newspaper their story and the headline actually said church resurrected. And it told the story of how they had brought this place back to life. And it ended, of course, with the terrible timeline that they were facing this eviction. And it sparked a movement on our campus that many of us got involved in that struggle for housing. And we went down and we found the cathedral. And on the front of the cathedral, the families had hung a banner that said, how can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday? It took our little evangelical ears a minute to process that, you know, and we entered into that struggle with these families and we began to read the Bible with new eyes because we read in the book of Acts where it says all of the Christians in the early church, they shared everything that they had and no one claimed any of their possessions were their own. And then it says, and there were no needy persons among them. One of the signs of the birthday of the church at Pentecost was that they ended poverty because they figured out how to flesh out this idea of being family, of being born again. And one person's comfort has to be disturbed by another person's discomfort, that this idea of rebirth has to mess with us. And we felt that happening in us. And incidentally, like we continued to have worship services in there and like we would have communion and it was like old apple cider and stale bagels or whatever we could find, you know, but it felt sacramental. I figure you guys like that, you know, communion with stale bagels up. And so we were thinking through so much of this and we saw some really disturbing things. I mean, the media was making the church look really bad and the news was making it look like the church was kicking homeless people out. And that's 'cause the church was kicking homeless people out, you know, so they brought in a fire marshal and they said, well, we're gonna say that they don't meet fire standards and it's in the interest of their safety that we could come out, you know. The night before that was supposed to happen, there was a knock at the door and we went to the door and it was almost midnight and we opened the door. There's all these firefighters outside. We're thinking, oh my gosh, they've come, you know, at midnight and all the kids are asleep. So we start telling them, can you please come back tomorrow? You know, everybody's already in bed. No, no, no, no. One of the firefighters said, no, no, no, listen. We're not here to kick you out. In fact, it's just the opposite. We know what's happening. We know that it's not right and we're here against orders. In fact, we could get in really big trouble for being here and they said, so we're gonna walk you through and help you get ready for tomorrow because the fire marshal is going to come. So they helped us get the exit signs and the fire extinguishers and the smoke detectors and we worked all night, that night. And the next day the media came and the police and the archdiocese officials and the fire marshal walked through and he said, I'm not kicking them out. They meet fire standards, you know. Yes, Lord, you know. And it felt like God could split open oceans and swallow up armies to protect these families. It was a beautiful moment. And there sort of came a moment in that struggle where we relinquished our frustration with the church and we said, we're gonna stop complaining about the church that we've experienced and work on becoming the church that we dream of. And work on figuring out how we can be these people of God in the world that are formed into something different from the world around us, that embody the love and the grace in a way that people can see and touch. And right now as I begin to look around, you know, I think that part of what we saw in our neighborhood was that we have to be a witness against the things that have become so unhealthy in the church. And for me, as a young man from the South, one of those things that we saw in our neighborhood was that we're trying to teach kids not to hurt each other, you know. Over and over, we see kids that are killing each other. I'm so thankful for the witness of the heating God's call and so much of the work we're doing around the gun shops. But then there comes a point, you know, where in our neighborhood, we do with Sister Margaret and their community, we do the AVP programs, alternative to violence programs. But then like the kids begin to ask questions, you know, about the world that we live in. As Dr. King said, I've told kids in the ghettos that violence won't solve their problems. But then they ask me, why does our government use massive doses of violence to bring the change that wants? And of course, Dr. King said, I knew that I could no longer speak against the violence of the ghettos without speaking against the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, my government. And it's those kids that really challenged me into the way of the cross. I can remember one of the kids right after September 11th, I was talking to this young man named Stephen, and I said, Stephen, what are we going to do? And Stephen looked up and he said, well, he's about 11 years old and he goes, those people did something very, very evil and wrong. I said, yeah, they sure did. And then Stephen said, but I always say, two wrongs don't make a right. That's good, right? And then he goes, besides, we're all one big family, Shane. And then he got really excited. His eyes got wide and he goes, Shane, that means you and me are brothers, which is really cool because we've got different colored skin. And you're like, yeah, that's the message. Preach that to the world, right? And it's that message of little Stephen and Dr. King and Jesus that is actually what led me and many of the people in my community to go over to Iraq, as I'm sure many of you have. I was in Iraq in March of 2003 with the Christian peacemaker teams and formerly voices in the wilderness. We were there together. That was during the shock and awe campaign, during the bombing, and it became very clear to me that what is at stake right now in the world is not just the reputation of America, but the reputation of Christianity because they're so closely associated. And I can remember hearing folks in Iraq call leaders in the United States, Christian extremists in the same way that we've heard the other. And this one woman, she threw her hands in the air and she said, your government is creating all of this violence and asking God's blessing, it's the same thing that my government is doing. And she said, my question is, what kind of God wants to bless any of this? And what has happened to the God of love and the Prince of peace? And I saw some of the hardest things I've ever seen. And again, many of them, if you say, tell me what you see and what you hear, people were seeing things done in the name of Jesus that didn't look like Jesus. I remember going to the Amaria shelter, which was one of those spaces that was filled with women and children, almost 400 of them, when two smart moms fell in the roof and they killed everyone in there. And that was what people were seeing and hearing. And yet, you got to hear this. One of the most exciting things about being in Iraq was seeing this incredible, persistent triumph of love over hatred. And everywhere we went, we were embraced by people. You know, we were invited to worship services almost every night. And there's this one worship service that as I was sitting there in the middle of the bombing, we had hundreds and hundreds of Christians together from all over the Middle East. And we sang amazing grace in Arabic. And then the bishop stood up and they read a statement from the Christian church to Muslim people. And they said, we want you to know that we love you. And we know that you're created in the image of God, that you come from the same dirt of this earth that God breathed life into, and that we're from the same dysfunctional family of Abraham and Sarah. And then they led us to the cross. And one of the priests said, this cross doesn't make any sense to the wisdom of the world, but it's the foolishness of the cross. It's the very center of our faith. I was so moved, I was just crying, you know, I was bawling. And I ended up talking to one of the bishops afterwards. And I said, I can't believe it. This is one of the most powerful experiences I've ever had in the church and in worship. And then I said something a little ignorant. I said, I can't believe that there's so many Christians in Iraq, he was gentle with me. But he said, yes, son, this is where it all started. [ Laughter ] And then he said, that's the Tigris River over there. And that's the Euphrates. Have you heard of them? [ Laughter ] And he said, you didn't invent Christianity in America. You guys only domesticated it. [ Laughter ] He said, you go back and you tell the church in the United States that we are praying for them to be the body of Christ, to be the things that Jesus is and was. It seems to me today that while all those things are true, that people have seen and heard many things that don't look like Jesus, I want to just leave you with one last image that is, this is kind of an East Tennessee image, my grandfather was a farmer. So we always used to bail hay, you know, growing up. And I can remember this one time where my grandfather had gotten this brand new truck and trailer. And so he tells everybody, all right, we're going to break this thing in today. So they start stacking hay bales, you know, just like as high as you can possibly get them as just giant tower of hay. And when you couldn't get any more on it, he's like, all right, that'll do, you know, and they hit the highway. And they're driving along, my uncle's driving, my grandfather's in the passenger seat. And what they didn't notice was that there was so much hay that it was resting on the tires. So it was, you know, it gets hotter and hotter. And yeah, little problem, thing called friction, you know? And so it catches fire. And it's hay, so it spreads, you know? And they're driving along, you know? And, I mean, just listening to their country music. And if folks are waving their arms, you know? And my uncle's nodding back. And eventually, like, they end up looking in the mirror and my uncle's like, oh God, you know? And they pulled the car off the road. And now when they stop, the problem is all the fire that had been going behind them is not just sort of like going straight up and it starts melting the back of the truck. My grandfather is over on the passenger side. He's got his shirt out and he's in the glove compartment. And my uncle looks at him and he goes, what are you doing? He's like, I don't want all this to burn. I got my bluegrass tapes in there, you know? And he's like, he's sick. He's scraping it all out. And then my uncle looks at him, dead in the eye. And he says, no, no, no, it's not going to burn. I've got an idea, get back in the car. My grandfather's like, all right. So they jump back in. Now the idea was that they would go back onto the highway and try to shake the fire off the truck. So they're driving along. And it's just blazing inferno going down the highway, you know, and they're rocking it back and forth. And these hay bales are falling off, you know? And they're lighting fields on fire behind them. They're being followed by like fire trucks from all the neighboring counties, you know? Trying to put these fires out. And then, like eventually they put the fires out. And my grandfather says to me that week, after he got out of jail, no, I'm just kidding. He said, Shane, we caught half of East Tennessee on fire this week. And my first thought was, who is this man, you know? But my second thought as I was going to bed that night was, what a great image of God's kingdom and rain coming on earth, you know? And not that we should be pyromaniacs, you know? But that we should have something behind us that leaves a trail of God's love, you know, that as Mother Teresa says, we should be the fragrance of Christ. As we come through the world, as a community of people, we should remind people of the goodness of God by who we are together. And certainly not so that people will praise the great things that we do, but so that they can't help but recognize how good is our God. And one great pastor I heard, he said it so well. He said, sometimes there's a lot of us that we get to do in this work in the world, and we start to think that we're doing something good, you know? And he said, it might be kind of like the donkey that rode Jesus into Passover. You know, this donkey that's riding Jesus into the Passover Festival, and all of these acclamations are happening. And that donkey might have started to think a little something about himself, you know? He said, that donkey might have been walking along and seeing the palm branches and hearing the hosannas, and been like, that's not my name, but, you know, and strutting right along. And he said, but we got to remember it's not about the donkey, it's about the one who rode the donkey. We're just the asses that get to bring Jesus in, that we're just the asses. So, but what a beautiful thing it is to get to carry the precious cargo and that the Spirit of God wants to move through us, and that we have a God that doesn't want to change the world without us. I'm so convinced that a generation from now, when people hear the word Christian, that their first responses will not be anti-gay, judgmental, and hypocritical, but that they will say things like grace, love. Justice and peace. May I be so? You're listening to Spirit in Action, which is a Northern Spirit Radio production website, northernspiritradio.org, and I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet. Check northernspiritradio.org for all the places that were broadcast, but also to listen to our archives and to let us know that you're listening, what you like, and what you would like to hear. We just heard about half of a talk by Shane Claiborne from 2009, with the whole thing available at QuakerBooks.org. I recommend it highly. Shane is such a vibrant spirit and an amazing storyteller, and he's lived so many important experiences in Calcutta with Mother Teresa in Iraq during the 2003 Shakunah attack, and with the simple way community in Philadelphia. Let's go to the phone now and catch up with Shane Claiborne in Philadelphia, PA. Shane, it's great to have you here for Spirit in Action. I'm absolutely delighted. It's great to talk with you, brother. It's been a year and a half since I saw you. What's been happening in your life in the last year and a half? Yeah, not much. Not much of that. There's actually never a dull day. It feels like almost every day is filled with some sort of adventure or crisis, but things are good most days. We've got a pretty steady rhythm here in North Philly in our neighborhood, and the tulips are coming up. The gardens are starting to get rolling, and I'm still traveling about 10 days a month. It's sort of a tenorate evangelist for love, I reckon. So that's part of my life, too. Some of the things I know that have happened, you've put out another book from your community, Common Prayer, Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals. I think you've been back to Iraq. I understand you're getting married. There's the whole community of life, everything you're doing. Why don't you fill me in on some of the color of that wonderful life you're living? Yeah, the book that we created, it was an absolute blast. I mean, it's really been like five years in the work. So it was a collaboration of just dozens and dozens of people from all different traditions and different nationalities. So the prayer book, Common Prayer, it's got daily prayers for every morning. We sort of, it's a great way to greet the days together, you know? So we remember important events throughout history, you know, and we sort of say, well, yesterday, you know, like this is the day that Martin Luther King was killed. This is the day that Nagasaki was bombed, you know, where Mandel was released from prison or Rosa Parks stayed on that bus, you know? And so we kind of remember those things throughout the year, and we remember really important figures through history. So we got like 100 different saints, you know, in quotes there, saints, you know? We remember through the year and 50 songs from all different traditions. So that's been great. And that's what we use every morning here as we pray. And a lot of it's on the internet too, on commonprayer.net. It's been a blast to create. So we had an Orthodox guy creating original wood carvings for it. So it's got some beautiful images and art through it. That's been fun. And then, yeah, I got to go back to Iraq this last year. I was there seven years ago with a Christian peace team, and it was an incredible experience. One of the really important events that happened was on the way out of Iraq in 2003, we had a pretty bad car accident on the way out. And all of us were injured. Two of my friends were hurt really badly. These Iraqis literally saved our lives. I mean, they got my friends to a hospital, and these Iraqi doctors took care of them. It was such an amazing experience that we've been dreaming of getting to go back and find them and say thank you. So we got to do that this last year. And, you know, it's not really easy to travel to Iraq right now. So it was a lot of very difficult to get our visas and everything. But we were able to get in, and we got to the border. We were blocked by U.S. troops that said, "Can't come in here." And we're like, "Oh, we got our papers here." And they're like, "We don't care. We got a little war going on here." And they said, "No one comes into Iraq without guns." And we said, "That's really part of the problem." And we don't think that the guns are making anything better, but our friendships will. And we've got friends on the other side of this border that are waiting for us. And so after like three hours, they let us in. And we got to go into this town again. It's a little town, I like 20,000 folks, called Ruth. But it was just an incredible experience. The whole town has really gathered the mayor, the shake, all the sort of elders and the principals of the schools and stuff. It was just an amazing time. And when we first got there, they said, "When we heard you were coming, we thought you must have forgotten a computer or your wallet or something." And then they said, "But when we heard that you were coming back to say thank you, we were deeply, deeply moved." And so we're, you know, it's very important to us to continue to nurture these friendships. And then they said, "And you should know that there are a few people that would want to hurt you." And I said, "But don't worry, we'll take care of you." And they, you know, had people sleep outside of our rooms with AK-47s. And I'm sort of like, "That doesn't fit into my theology, but I'm really grateful for the hospitality." You know, so it was an amazing time though. One of our big projects this year has been trying to rebuild the hospital in that town of Rutba. The hospital was bombed in March 2003 when we were there before and during the shock and awe campaign. So we're right now trying to, we help get a generator so they can have electricity because it's hard to run a hospital without electricity. You know, we're continuing to create some clean water systems and other stuff there. So a lot of that, you can find out our website, you know, just at the simpleway.org. But it's an incredible story. It's an incredible act of compassion that really, really helps form and shape who we are. Is the reception for Americans in general positive there? I mean, I guess you weren't just Americans in general. So maybe you can't answer that exactly. But what was their point of view? Are they, do they feel like, okay, the U.S. is letting up, moving out, giving us our space? Well, you know, it's really hard to say because I don't think they have a ton of vacationers coming over or anything, you know, but one of the things that they said that was so incredible was they said, you were the first visitors that we've had without guns in seven years. So that's just an incredible reality to think like, you know, here we are, we're the first international visitors just to come to this town, you know, outside of the military since the war started. So what we felt just across the board was this hunger for those friendships to continue and to spread. And like we went to schools, we got to speak in one of the schools there. It was such an amazing experience afterwards. One of the kids said, I haven't heard this kind of Christianity. And what stunned me was, you know, what has become really clear to me is that what's at stake in Iraq right now is not just the reputation of America, but the integrity and the reputation of our faith as Christians. So that was something that was so important to me and it's why I went and it's a part of, I think, what we really need because Dr. Martin Luther King said 40 years ago, you know, these are extreme times and the question is whether or not we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists will we be? Will we be extremists for hatred or extremists for love? And I think that, you know, the world has seen enough religious extremists for hatred. You know, that are doing all kinds of terrible things and we've had militants of all strikes, no Jewish, Muslim, Christian that have done terrible things to sort our faith. So I'm ready to see some extremists for love and grace and it was a gift to be there. Are there other things that you're doing there in Iraq besides the hospital rebuilding? Yeah. You know, one of the things that happened when we were over there is that we became so deeply moved by the power of friendships and the power of real relationships, not just people that we've heard of on the news, but that these are real names and faces. So as we started talking and we traveled from Iraq then to Israel and Palestine and we thought as we were talking with kids and others, one of the ideas that emerged was this idea that let's create a network of friends without borders that are literally creating international friendships, maybe social networks on the internet, but that really the goal would be to build real friendships where we can get to know the faces of people whose nations might be in conflict. So we're really excited to be launched in this little project called Friends Without Borders. One of the cool things to happen was we were able to have a Skype call with the kids here in our neighborhood and some of the kids in Afghanistan and so they're able to see each other's faces and hear each other's story and these are kids both in Afghanistan and in North Philly that have seen a lot of violence. And so as they hear each other talk about peace and reconciliation, it's a beautiful thing. So that's exactly the sort of stuff that we hope to be doing through Friends Without Borders and you'll see the links and information about that on our website. So it's fun and I think has all kind of promise for cracking the walls that divide us throughout the world. But let's talk a little bit about your community, the Simple Way and again the web page is the simpleway.org. When you spoke back in 2009 that we just listened to, you were talking about going to visit Mother Teresa at one point. So she's clearly one of the inspirations for you. You also tossed in the name of Dorothy Day. Your aspirations take you closer to Mother Teresa or Dorothy Day. Yes, I love both of them. And I think that there is something in both that they, you know, this sort of a yin and yang for us. I think that we glean wisdom and courage from both of them. Above our door we have a little sign that says today let us do small things with great love or not answer the door. And that was really the heart of Mother Teresa was we can do no great things but only small things with great love and that's what I learned in Calcutta, you know, working with her and with the sisters is this is beautiful just let's love one person well. Let's be with one person at a time and those are the seeds of the gospel, you know. But Dorothy Day, I mean she did that as well but she had a heavy foot on trying to transform and challenge the systems and drive a stake in the wheels that are running over people. So I think we got to do both. You know Dr. Martin Luther King had a heart for that too and he said we've got to be the good Samaritan, we've got to lift people out of the ditch but after you lift so many people out of the ditch you also start to say maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be rethought so we don't keep finding people in the ditch. Tell me Shane a little bit about your religious community. What's the mixture of people, religious, I mean do you have to be a religious person to be there and what kind of work do you do in the community? We started, I think I shared some about it the gathering a couple of years ago, we started in this neighborhood out of a housing crisis where homeless families with the Kinsey-Dwellford right-genium were living in an abandoned cathedral and being evicted and that was really the spark that lit the fire you know that was really the catalyst that got us going and it was in that abandoned cathedral ironically that we started to sort of dream about what it means to be the church and as St. Francis used to say he heard God whisper to him repair my church which is in ruins and so literally for us those questions arose out of the housing struggle in the cathedral but then you know we started to read about the early church in the book of Acts you know and started going hey we're going to stop complaining about the church that we see and work on becoming the church that we dream of you know and so we moved into this neighborhood just put our money together and bought one little house and these row houses you know are real tight geographic area you know these houses were built around the factories and so we then saw that we've got as the factories moved out we've got 700 abandoned factories you know over 20,000 abandoned houses so we've been moving into those abandoned spaces over the last ten years we've claimed some abandoned lots and plant gardens we've got houses for you know some of them for a dollar from the city that they'll just give them away if somebody will fix them up so we've been moving into some of those abandoned places so now we got like about 10 houses on the same block and we've got some good rhythms in the neighborhood with neighbors and with folks that have relocated here that aren't indigenous to neighborhood and we meet together in the mornings for morning prayer and we do that from common prayer and then we send each other out to do the work in the neighborhood so we've got folks that are doing everything from accounting to gardening and helping kids with homework and feeding folks and sharing food with folks so we have a big potluck dinner on Fridays and then we have studies that we do sometimes on Thursday nights we're a part of local congregations so we tend to not see ourselves as like church plant or something but we're a Christian community here and we've become a part of the local congregations in the neighborhood so that might be going to a friend's meeting it might be going to Pentecostal storefront church or Catholic Mass but we kind of become a part of the fabric of what God's doing in the neighborhood and you know you asked about the folks who have to be a Christian or you know a religious person to be here and we love to kind of meet people where they're at and invite folks to journey closer to God and closer to neighbors so if folks are seeking that we love it and I mean our whole vision has been summed up in the little phrase that we are trying to love God, love people and follow Jesus so that's sort of the core of who we are but we have plenty of you know non-Christians and anarchists and folks that are all across the board that are intrigued or interested in being a part of that in fact we got one house that's devoted to hospitality it's almost like a little hospital that you know folks can stay at and check things out that's sort of what it looks like to us and we say that we're a web of subversive friends and I think at the core that's what we are the web of friends and neighbors trying to do the redemptive work that we would call God's Kingdom coming on earth. You know when you were speaking at the Friends General Conference Gathering you talked about how you arranged to end up go to India visit with Mother Teresa you ended up talking to her on the phone and she said sure come on is that the protocol do people call you before they come to email you or do they just show up at your door and how's that approached? Yeah sometimes they end up sleeping on the stairs and in the park but you know we have some visitors but here's the thing that's so exciting these days is there is really a movement happening all over the place so a ton of our energy is spent not just doing hospitality with outsiders coming here but trying to connect people up to sort of their local revolutions you know the communities and the stuff happening where they are so we've got a website called communityofcommunities.info.info and that has hundreds of communities around the world so we're just as excited to see people connect up and we're not you know we don't pretend to have the corner of the market you know radical faith or anything here so and then the other thing that we've got going is we've got a magazine called conspire magazine it's just a beautiful new avenue for folks to share stories and art and poetry and recipes you know for lentil soup or for holy mischief and so it's a really fun thing that we got going so a ton of our energy is just trying to connect the dots and get people into communities right where they are. Well how big of a community are you and is this just growing doubling every five years? The Dorothy Day's vision was beautifully articulated when she said our goal is not to become bigger and bigger but smaller and smaller as we take over the world you know so it's that vision which I think we get really excited about and a lot of that is the spirit of the friends and the Quakers you know is we don't need mega churches we need microchurch we need people living the gospel out of dinner tables and living rooms and shining their little light right where they are and we're very deliberate not to try to grow a giant power here but to just grow into a neighborhood and to start other communities that are doing the same thing where they are. Well maybe one last thing Shane I know you've got a very busy schedule I understand that you're getting married soon and I don't know bringing a whole community into your living room might be kind of complicated is this another member of your community? She is and I am really really excited about getting married that will be happening in May here and you know I've learned the time from being single over the years and it's taught me a lot about God and a lot about myself and I think that singleness is a real gift to the world and a gift to the cause of God's redemptive stuff in the world but I also think I'm going to learn a lot a ton from marriage and I'm in love with someone that I as we unite our life together I think that we will be able to do more together than we do on our own and I'm excited to see what I learned through that. I am learning that my mom and I are trying to make a tuxedo for the wedding and mom's really doing all the work for that so it's a little more difficult than making my little ragtag pants but we've got on our Facebook page and stuff I just learned how to use all that actually to be honest I don't even do all the Facebook stuff I'm still trying to learn what Twitter and all these things are but we got lots of smart young folks around here that help us so we'll be putting a lot of updates about the wedding on there but we're excited to land after we get married right here on Water Street where I've been over the last 10 years so Katie is a big part of the neighborhood already and we'll keep living that out as a family here with all our neighbors and everything. You've got such a beautiful faithful vision that you're living out there. Could you send us off with a little prayer Shane? Absolutely absolutely. In fact I would love to pray a prayer that we have in midday prayer that I learned in Calcutta it's a beautiful prayer that God through Jesus would live in us that we would become the hands and feet of God's spirit in the world so let me pray this for us. Soul of Christ, sanctify us, body of Christ, save us, blood of Christ, and deviate us. Water from the side of Christ, wash us, passion of Christ, strengthen us, oh good Jesus hear us. Within thy wounds hide us, suffer us not to be separated from you. Clean the malicious enemy, defend us in the hour of our death, call us, and bid us come unto you that with your saints we may praise you forever and ever. Amen. Amen. Thanks so much Shane for joining me for spirit and action. Go forth and continue the bright light. Well thanks and we're having a good time, you too bless you. My guest today for spirit and action has been author, activist, and member of a community called the Simple Way, Shane Claiborne. You can connect with Shane on the site, thesimpleway.org, and I've got several other useful links on my northernspiritradio.org. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World performed by Sarah Thompson. The Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host Mark Helpsmeet and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. [MUSIC PLAYING]