Mark Scandrette

My friend Tony Jones emailed me from Washington, D.C. and two other friends called to relish the brief moments when my book, SOUL GRAFFITI was in the top 1,000 on Amazon and in the top 100 for Religion & Spirituality books. Tonight its back down in the 1,700’s, but it was fun to have a few moments when it seemed like there was a spike in popularity.
This past weekend Luis and Heloize visited us from Sao Paulo, Brazil. I met Luis through my friend Sandro Baggio and they stayed with us for four days. Heloize doesn’t speak much English so she was very relieved and elated when we took her to have dinner with friends who speak Portugese on Saturday night. Luis and Heloize are part of what seems to be the Emerging Church conversation in Brazil– people searching for an authentic and missional path of faith beyond the crazy consumer hype of the health and wealth mega churches in South America.

This afternoon a group of us from SEVEN went to Garfield Park to play games– and hoping to connect with neighbors. We played Frisbee Football along with a new friend who was at the park. We are trying to be more intentional about being involved in our neighborhood together. We plan to hang out in the park every Thursday afternoon.

Tonight I took Isaiah out for a dad & kid date and suprized him by taking him to see Spiderman 3, which he is very crazy about. Then we went to a comic book store and out to Vietnamese at Tulan for dinner. Isaiah and I are good movie watching buddies– and he can talk for hours about movies he’s seen. I like watching Isaiah watch movies even more than watching the movie myself. He really lives in the action, characters and drama of the story, (except for the mushy parts where they kiss).

Lisa and I just returned from a two-day trip to Napa Valley– a bit of an early get-away for our 16th wedding anniversary. We stayed at a great historic spa in Calistoga (thanks to a gift certificate from friends). We sampled some great food and wine, relaxed by a natural hot spring pool in the sun, and made mad love together at all hours of the day and night. I am more exacted about my wife right now than at any other moment in our twenty-one years together.
When we first arrived at the visitors center we were invited to a time-share schpeal at a new local resort– with promises of wine tasting vouchers, free lunch and a free two-night stay at the resort. It was the most painful 90 minutes of my life– in a brightly colored room with many large smiling people drinking soda out of styrofoam cups and celebrating the  salvation wonders of prepaid points based resort-style vacations.  We were not good candidates for the sales pitch– since we mostly stay with friends on vacation or $47 rooms in budget motels. The saleswomen seemed shocked by our frugality and extensive global community (and the truth that friends from Brazil were presently staying at our house). When she found out I am a writer and speaker, she gushed over her affections for a well-known television preacher from Houston.
I don’t spend much time in the America outside of San Francisco, but when I do, I’m reminded of the markers that identify our culture as being individualistic, consumptive and debt-based. I watched the vacation home sales people sweat as they tried to determine which of us would be likely candidates to help them pay their mortage or credit cards for the month.

There has to be a better way to live– one that is more communal, sustainable, thoughtful and content. And on days when I think that it is hard to pursue community rhythms and intentionality, all I have to do is remember the alternatives. We are going somewhere we have never been before, and sometimes we may think we’ve lost our way, but I believe the struggle to live into our dreams is worth it.

Ryan Sharp, a friend from our community wrote this simple mantra to help us remember what we are running toward together. We’ve been saying it at our gatherings the past couple of weeks– and I think it is an elegant summary of our SEVEN vows, and a reminder that its all about LOVE.
To Creator, obedience
To creation, service
To each other, community

In all things, love
In all things, love

For life, prayer
With possessions, simplicity
In our world, creativity

In all things, love
In all things, love

A NEWS FLASH:

Come celebrate the release of Mark Scandrette’s new book, SOUL GRAFFITI, (published by Jossey-Bass Wiley). Now available in stores nationwide and at amazon.com

WHO? Friends, family, fans and companions of Mark Scandrette (families with children welcome).

WHEN? Saturday May 12, 2007—6:30-9:30 P.M.

WHERE? Goat Hall (On Portrero Hill)
400 Missouri Street
San Francisco, CA 94107

WHAT? Drinks and hors d’oeurves, desserts, dancing and a book reading by Mark. (with special musical guests,The Cobalt Season)

• Copies of Soul Graffiti will be available for sale at-cost for $15 (32% off the publisher’s list price). Bring cash, (or checks can be made out to ReIMAGINE).

Enter the drawing on-site to take home a free copy of SOUL GRAFFITI.

For more information check out: www.soulgraffitibook.com www.markscandrette.com

To R.S.V.P. and for more information contact Amy Ross (amy AT reimagine DOT org)

I’m celebrating the recent release of my first solo book project, SOUL GRAFFITI,  published by Jossey-Bass Wiley. SOUL GRAFFITI is now available on Amazon and in bookstores across the U.S. I have verified reports that it is available in Barnes and Noble and Borders Books in select locations nationwide. Its been a whirlwind couple of weeks for me traveling and sharing the message of SOUL GRAFFITI in D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia and more recently at Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz and Sanctuary in Menlo Park. I have to admit that I still find it a bit awkward to be autographing books for people and I’m tempted to write the kinds of things we wrote in each others year books in 8th grade (”Friends forever” “Have a great summer!” “Stay your same cool self.”) You can listen to my author talk at Sanctuary here. And you can hear selected excerpts from the book and read reviews at SOUL GRAFFITIbook.com.

The most economical way to buy SOUL GRAFFITI is through AMAZON.COM.

A BIG THANKS  to everyone who preordered the book through AMAZON!

SOUL GRAFFITI is ALIVE and now you can help this project THRIVE by creating some buzz.  Here are a few ideas:

1. After you’ve read the book, if you enjoyed it and found it helpful, post a customer review on amazon.com

2. If you have a blog or website, post a review of the book on your blog.

3. If you think the book is helpful, let other people know about it.

4. If you have connections to media or speaking venues, and think the message of SOUL GRAFFITI  would be a helpful addition to the mix, please let me know.

5. Some  people have started experimenting with using SOUL GRAFFITI as a tool for small group discussion and formation. Conversation questions and recommended exercises are included at the end of each chapter.

Thanks!

–mark

Some people have already finished reading SOUL GRAFFITI and here’s what they have to say:

“One of the things that I find intoxicating about good filmmakers, like the Cohen brothers who made among other films Fargo, is their ability to climb inside of a certain cultural context and then speak from that place with authenticity and meaning. This is exactly what I love about Mark Scandrette’s work Soul Graffiti. As a person who grew up in church in Minnesota and has spent the last decade in the Mission District of San Francisco, he provides a practical and prophetic look at life and faith in one of America’s most progressive cities. His work is a perfect collision of his grounded upper-middle America upbringing and the sometimes wheels off life on the streets of San Francisco. He interprets life and faith as a street-wise pastor struggling with people in their search for more. He brings passion, hope and a new language to those of us who sometimes fall a word or two short in our ability to put words to our experiences. As Donald Miller and Blue Like Jazz was to the average Baptist youth grouped southerner, Soul Graffiti is to everyone else . . . .only better.”

–Jason Mitchell, Dallas, Texas. Also see a Video podcast by Jason Mitchell.

“A creative smart version of Blue Like Jazz. If one were to take the mind of Dallas Willard, the tongue of a beat poet, and the heart of a Franciscan brother, put them in a blender, and pour them into a book, you might end up with Soul Graffiti. Soul Graffiti is a poetic, prophetic, call to follow the radical Way of Jesus. Mark Scandrette rips off the scab of encrusted, safe, sentimental American Christianity and invites the reader into the provocative, fresh, improvisational riff of discipleship with Christ. The book is a call to imagine the Way of Christ for the Post-Christian West.”
–Mark Van Steenwyk, Minneapolis

“Mark Scandrette’s first solo effort is really something– lyrical, ethereal, and visceral. It is a compelling call to a life lived after Jesus written by a real person with a real family living in the real world. As arresting and engaging and upending as Dallas Willard’s Divine Conspiracy, but made practical, and set to music.

This book made me hungry, and not just metaphorically. Its look at real-life spirituality made me grateful for my body, my appetites, and for the good world in which I live. I wasn’t hungry for fancy things, either– a piece of chocolate, a bowl of cereal, an egg, a turkey sandwich, or a good beer (since Mark is such an oenophile, and I’m such a contrarian). It is a rare book on Christian spirituality that doesn’t make a person feel guilty for their physicality, but Mark has found a way to affirm and expand our humanity, all at once. Remarkable.

Of some books, it is said, “I couldn’t put it down,” but of this one I want to add, “I didn’t want to keep reading.” On the one hand, I wanted to move quickly; to take in its beauty all at once. On the other hand, I wanted to slow down and accept the gentle invitation to live into this life. And on the third hand, with its call to a new kind of life so compelling and clear, I found myself not wanting to change. And yet, I can’t seem to get the tune out of my head.”
–Mike Stavlund, Washington, D.C.

“Beautiful encounter with lived Christianity. Mark Scandrette’s Soul Graffiti reminds me of Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis. What sets Soul Graffiti apart is the practical dimension. Mark uses his unique talents as a storyteller to draw us into real life experiments in following Jesus in the details of life. As he illustrates this way of life he manages to be both raw and elegant at the same time. This book is full of ideas for pressing forward on the journey…walking in new ways, developing new habits, finding new rhythms. You will encounter an inspiring and dangerous faith full of risk taking and love.”
–Nate Millheim, San Francisco, CA

“….a truly remarkable work —best book I’ve read in 2007.…I savored EVERY word on EVERY page. I bathed in this book.”
–Bill Dahl, Author of THE PORPOISE DIVING LIFE. 

I’ve finally begun reading again after a year and a half of writing. Arrogance, I am understanding is not the same as ego strength, and I’m slowly learning to value the thoughts and experiences of others who have gone before me as much as I value my own thoughts and experiences.  This week I’ve been reading SUBMERGE, written by John Hayes, and other neighbors who work with INNERCHANGE, an urban order among the poor. The message of John’s book resonates with what I am learning on a deeper level right now: that we love our Maker by caring for the needs of people who live in the shadows of empire. Sacred texts like Isaiah 58 and Matthew 25 make it very clear that loving God translates into care for those who are oppressed, lonely and abandoned. People who are hungry, thirsty, naked, sick or imprisioned should always be on our radar of consciousness and relationality. Whenever I have spoken of this recently, there is always a strong reaction– and those responses (defensiveness, justifications, minimizations) really say something about how challenging it is for us to digest the reality that our love for God is measured by our concern for the poor. Perhaps we shouldn’t so readily dismiss the tension we feel and the questions that are raised by the call of justice. Maybe we should always be wrestling with the question, “how am I loving God by caring for all that God has made?”
“Religion that God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” Yesterday my friend Charley suggested that people who care about justice often play fast and loose with their personal moral ethics– while those who are well-off and (offended or convicted by justice rhetoric) often comfort themselves emphasizing their personal piety and prudence. Seems that we are invited by the brother of the Nazarene to do both– seek justice and attend to our daily personal ethics.
So… back to SUBMERGE. It is a balanced well-articulated and well-lived apologetic for a life after justice in community with others along the same path, with helpful insights from John Hayes, who has has taken the path of “a long obedience.”  It is less a book and more the story of how a community wrestling with the question of how to love God by livingwith and loving the poor.