Faith Revolution

As I sit here tonight nearing another bedtime and anticipating a good night’s rest in preparation for tomorrow’s work, I am peering out the picture window seeing nothing but a jagged column of icicles.  Beautiful they are!  But contained in their beauty is the harsh reality of a cold dark night in the midst of winter’s blast.  Beauty in harshness, an oxymoron if there ever was one.  But perhaps therein lies a secret of living, joyful living.

Whenever I enjoy an especially delicious meal in an aesthetically pleasing environment, I often find myself saying, whispering in my mind’s ear if nothing else, “this is living!”  Of course when involved in something that brings great pleasure, it is easy to see the beauty in life.  But, what about the times in life when freezing winds blow across my face and I literally feel the harshness of the worst of winter’s blast.  Is that living?

As I journey through the middle years of this gift of life, it is a passionate desire to recapture the wonder.  The wonder of a walk through the neighborhood hand in hand with the one I love.  The wonder of the cry of a newborn.  The wonder of the dove as it alights on a branch of the tree in the middle of the yard.  The wonder of a heartbeat, my very next breath.  It seems to me that contained within the wonder is both the reality of pleasure and pain, icicles hanging from the rooftop.  Beauty and harshness.

May I always see the beauty.

That was the discussion on Friday between me and two friends on the last day of Winter Institute at Oglebay in Wheeling, WV.  Being, the last day, I am thinking that our brains were in overload mode and that we were beginning to get at least a little but silly in our conversations.  Consistently inconsistent certainly would describe aspects of my life, and probably yours too.

Such has been the case with this blog over the last year.  Maybe a better descriptor would be consistently non-existent.  Certainly the prominence and ease of facebook and Twitter and my use of those has contributed to the lack of article writing.  I have been utilizing them to keep in touch with the people that I love.  Add to that a shift in focus of writing to other purposes and “voila!” blog writing ceases.

But I have to tell you that I miss this exercise of writing my thoughts on life, liberty, politics, religion and other topics.  I miss the interaction that many of you brought as you read and reacted.  I miss the fun of putting together a particularly provocative piece, knowing that I was stirring the pot, so to speak, and that some of you would react in ways that were passionate, sometimes in more anger than was necessary.  It was fun.

So I am going to try again.  I don’t know–it may end up being consistently inconsistent.  I am hoping that this time it at least will not be consistently non-existent.

Let’s start here.  How about some sort of brief update for the many friends who I am just not able to keep up with as I would like?

We are still in Cambridge Springs, early on in our third year of work.  Everything is going quite well.  The church ( I speak of the people, of course) is terrific.  This year, we are turning our attention in the direction of emerging and young adults.  We are being quite intentional about working with this age group.  But, we don’t just want to work with them, as in creating funky programs that we think that they will like and hoping that they show up so that we can teach them about our way of doing things.  We want to learn about them and their way of connecting with God.  We want younger people in leadership so that they can begin to creatively shape the future of our ministry and services.  I am hoping to gather, from the existing core group, several people who will truly be intentional about learning and understanding emerging adults so as to be a force in our movement in that direction.  There are other plans beginning to take shape that will hopefully bring this desire about.  But the central focus will be relational and missional understanding rather than programmatic.  I am excited about this and the intentionality of the people that I work with at Cambridge Springs Alliance.

Throughout the last six months of 2009, I turned my nose in the direction of studying emerging adulthood.  It all began with a question that I had to ask myself.  With the desire to prepare coming generations for leadership, how do I lead an organization, in this particular case the church, to become part of the experience of younger people if I don’t know anything about the loves, passions and desires of younger people? The answer was obvious.  I needed to learn.  So I went back to school.  In the fall of 2009, I enrolled in the Masters of Art in Higher Education at Geneva College.  I also became Student Advisor of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at Allegheny College; a wonderful group of about 40 students.  The plan is also in place to begin teaching a couple college courses beginning the in fall of 2010.

What have I learned so far?  The biggest lesson is that most churches are totally out of touch with the younger generations; particularly late Gen-X’rs and Millennials.  Period.  We don’t have a clue.  Period.  And, tragically, we don’t care to know.  Our attitude is that we know what is right.  We know the right way of doing and young people need to listen to us and come to the wonderful programs that  we have designed.  But I digress.  The experience has been wonderful and hopefully, God will somehow use it to help the wonderful group of people at CS Alliance to prepare for the future.

The family is doing quite well.  Caleb graduates from high school this year, works full time from spring to fall, owns two cars and a dirt-bike…the passion of his life.  Bethany is in 6th grade continues to work her loves in weekly horse riding lessons (english) and model horsing.  You can check out her model horse web-site here.   Mom, dad and Ronnie are still going strong; enjoying their daily activities.  God has blessed them with health and strength and through them, blessed us in ways you cannot imagine.  Kim is heading to Beruit, Lebanon.  If you would like to know why, I suggest that you go to her blog to find out. I cannot tell her story like she can, so go there and see for yourself.

Some things that I am looking forward to this year:  Watching the family continue to grow up and interacting in a meaningful way with the kids.  Enjoying another year of work, play, fun and tears with CS Alliance.  Seeing my FCA Allegheny gang after Christmas Break and spending another semester with them. And, teaching in the fall.  2010.  I think it’s going to be a great year.

Oh by the way, I would love to have you as my friend on facebook.  Here’s my profile:  http://www.facebook.com/cliffcartwright.  Linda, Caleb and Bethany also have facebook accounts.  You can connect with them through my fb site, if you like.

I would like to hear from you.  Feel free to connect with me.  I miss you.  I miss your friendship and our interactions.  Unfortunately, it is hard to keep up with everyone.  But I will try my best to respond to you if you contact me.

…that reaching out to people by inviting them to participate in American Christian Pop Culture is not an effective means of bringing transformation. What is needed is a coherent, intelligent conversation that brings connection between the Creator of the universe and the people who live there in order to make sense out of life in that universe.

It seems that neither the church nor the academy is doing that effectively. I do have hope for the future, however.

But what about the pain?  The pain can be pretty extreme at times.  How can that statement be true in the darkest hours?

Katharine Hepburn:   “I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.”

“Just being is fun.”  Really?

I have been thinking about the possible truth of this concept for a while and I would like to wrestle with my thoughts and studies out loud a little bit in this forum.  I am going to leave comments open.  If you are so inclined, feel free to think about it yourself and chime in.  I love good conversation.

Until then…