Culture shock.

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I feel like I'm experiencing culture shock...

The culture shock is in the overwhelming experience of this very extraordinary ordinary way of life, and I've come to realize that what makes the ordinary extraordinary is God’s love manifest in all things.

If you didn't already know, my wife and I live in a community with four others at the moment and we do very normal things here. We eat lots of good healthy food (organic homegrown tomatoes, butternut squash, venison sausages made from wild game), we play (so far... volleyball, softball, cycling, the latter two had my bum aching the day after... don't know how I over-stretched my bum muscles playing softball but whatever), we learn together, we do our grocery shopping (and buy 40lb of bananas for $5), we decorate our house (with a piano and coordinating mismatch furniture), we mow our lawn (with an old petrol lawn mower which has now broke down, so now we use the neighbour's push-mower), play with the neighbour's cat (Asher the kitten), etc...

But it is the intentionality in which we do these things together and build relationships with one another and with God that makes the ordinary extraordinary. Our community house is an example of a few friends getting together, creating an environment in which we can make a home in which family relationships can organically grow and deliberately love one another in everyday life-on-life experiences. The wider community around us adopts the same culture of intentionally cultivating deeper relationships. In the same way we're trying to create that intentional space for God. We set aside time to pray together as a house, we pray with those who live in the same area and we pray as a larger Boiler Room/church community. It feels like the intentionality of what we do (e.g. pray together, eat together, share life together, encourage one another, rest well, spend time alone with God, explore creativity and things that God wants to enjoy with us) opens us up for deeper relationships with each other and with God.

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I feel like a lot of what I am learning is through osmosis. The culture around me is just seeping into me like water filling a plant cell. It's nice not to be running on empty all the time. Processing all that's going on around me is probably the biggest challenge. Articulating, naming and speaking family values and God's kingdom is not new but I think I best anchor attitudes and concepts by talking about them. I'm a verbal processor so I best process ideas and thoughts by speaking them or writing them down. If I didn't I'd just forget and it would probably lose its impact over time so writing this blog is really good for me :)

I really hope this experience stays with me. That our time in Kansas City, what we're learning and absorbing will really help us to continue to seek to be more like Jesus and live and love like He did. Someone recently said "You can only give out of what you have" and I think that's true.