I awoke, looked at the clock blinking 4:22 a.m. and slowly made my way out of bed towards morning oatmeal and the first cup of coffee. I leave the house shortly before six to begin the familiar ascent up Bernal Hill as the sun rises in blue-pink melancholy hues on a cool and foggy winter day. These early mornings are to be treasured, when the city sleeps and I receive the warmth of the Maker’s presence and the hopes and dreams of a new day–especially today, a day when the anticipation of thanksgiving weekend and the holiday season hangs electric in the air. Stepping along the ridge I meditate on the strange words of the Nazarene, “I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” Today I want that love to breath through me.
On my way back down the hillside I walk past a group of migrant laborers waiting for work, their dark native features suggest recently departed hometowns in Oaxaca or Chiapas—southern Mexico. Brave adventurers, I muse, far from family and full of stories about border crossings and unimagined opportunities in the Northern country. In through the front door and back towards the kitchen I see Lisa beginning the day at her desk checking email, arranging the children’s itineraries, administrating a home school network, and preparing lesson plans. On Wednesdays our kitchen turns into a classroom—or more accurately a biology lab or writer’s salon. Eight to ten students sit around the large table dissecting a sheep’s brain, writing haikus, conjugating Spanish verbs or competing in math games. This morning Lisa is making breakfast for two French-speaking friends visiting from Montreal. Today she will buy the holiday groceries and finish preparing tonight’s simplicity workshop attended by thirty people in our living room. Our refrigerator is full of local fruits and vegetables bought at the farmer’s market. Lisa lets me choose a scarf for a friend from the collection of items she has created that is kept by her desk. If you have been near Lisa you know that her hands are always busy making something. This year we watched her clean, card, spin and knit wool fleece I brought back from Scotland in another winter.
Isaiah (12) stands at the stove frying potatoes for breakfast, his favorite thing to cook and eat with lots of ketchup. He hums cheerfully about his work, emptying the dishes from the dishwasher back into the cupboards, eventually settling into breakfast with a book by his plate (the third installment in the Eragon series written by a fellow home-schooler). Today Isaiah is going to Nature Awareness class in Woodside where he and his best friend will build fires and forts in the woods and hike along with a naturalist noting the flora and fauna. He is the king of relaxation. After his studies, violin, soccer or tennis, you will see him luxuriating in a hammock strung up underneath his bed listening to his ipod (Matisyahu) and reading comics. When I look at him I think of the comic relief he brings to our family and friends, a living three-dimensional animated cartoon with a heart of compassion and a longing for justice. He and I are the two people in our family who tear up at movies and Isaiah is prone to wax philosophical or theological at the dinner table like his father.
Dinner table conversations these days at the Scandrette home are always interesting and sometimes magical discourses on politics, scripture or family dynamics. They are also a cross-cultural affair now that Isaiah is the only one of us left on the concrete side of Piaget’s formal operations. In other words, the house is full of teenagers with growing wit and sophistication (“Dad, do we have to have the sex talk AGAIN!) Hailey will turn 15 in February and Noah (13) is currently the tallest person in our family at six foot one and still growing.
Noah can be found in the backyard sanding the handle on a knife he began making at a weekend workshop along with a rawhide leather sheath. Stoic and quiet like an Elvin warrior prince, Noah was made for the outdoors. A keen observer of what he discovers at Nature Studies or on camping trips, his greatest passion continues to be birding and photography. On Saturday mornings we roam the hidden and lonely places along the bay in search of new species to capture with the camera. While studying the brain this year we learned that some people are right brained (intuitive) and some are left brained (logical/analytical). Noah tested fully left-brain, which explains why he plays the cello with such technical skill and is the one person in our family who has solved the Rubik’s cube (a new fascination for a generation who did not experience the 1980’s firsthand, along with the Mohawk and the band Abba, also currently popular at casa Scandrette). This fall Noah and Hailey spent a weekend taking classes at Stanford, where he mastered the Rubik’s cube and learned to use image manipulation software to enhance his growing bird photograph library. Beneath Noah’s reserved demeanor resides a skilled and gentle conversationalist both among adults and younger children, who flocked to him when he was an assistant nature instructor last spring.
In the afternoon, I show up to the Marsh Theater a few minutes before the end of rehearsal to secretly observe our daughter Hailey practicing her singing parts and contact improv routine for an upcoming performance. Her flowing platinum hair, innocent grace and confidence win her the affections of many friends (and admiring boys who are kept at a distance by her brother’s protection and her own discretion). Younger actors and the students she teaches at preteen nature studies adore Hailey. In the spring she played Mrs. Beaver in the Marsh Youth interpretation of Narnia, complete with a convincing cockney accent. When she isn’t studying or performing her social calendar is filled with friends and new freedom to take the train to places she wants to go. She writes songs and plays guitar, corresponds with friends and is a dedicated diarist. During our Abolition project this fall, Hailey and her best friend developed a keen interest in human-trafficking issues, highlighted in the recent film Call + Response, directed by our friend. Hailey and her brothers wrote letters to our politicians about modern day slavery and were pleased to receive personal replies from our Senators and Representatives.
I stand in front of the mirror looking at a gray-bearded nearly middle-aged man bearing resemblance to each of his progeny who are early on the journey of living and becoming. I’m the dad who wears many different hats, writes books and ambles across the country telling stories, sometimes performing as his alter ego, preacher A.L. Withee in a rolling gospel revival show. The wrinkles deepen and hair now sprouts from his ears, but the eyes are bright and eager to learn to carry the growing weight of significance and responsibility with playfulness and humility.
“I want to learn to see the world through eyes of understanding and hands of healing”—my prayer early in the year answered by an opportunity to travel with Hailey through El Salvador in May, where we stood on mud floors in a shanty hut holding hands and giving thanks for daily bread with a widow and her children who live on less than $2 a day. In October our whole family received the leaping hugs and wet kisses of orphaned children in Mexico. We had our hearts broken by the knowledge that trafficked woman are being held behind the locked doors of brothels less than a mile from our house.
I bike through the mission and ride the elevator to the fourth floor of a building where the ReIMAGINE team is waiting to begin our weekly meeting. Jeff and Melissa moved to the city in September for an apprenticeship year and Sarah is just completing hers. Adam has taken over much of the management duties so that I can be free to write and speak and dream. The work of ReIMAGINE grows steadily. Two weeks ago more than thirty people took vows to live as intentional seekers of they way of Jesus together as the community and friends of SEVEN. The projects and learning labs that make up our year long spiritual formation process have 30-50 regular participants. This year we blessed Nate & Andrea and Damon and Alice to start SHALOM in impoverished east Oakland, and sent other team members to serve in Africa and Haiti. Our team is increasingly invited to tell our stories, inviting people into new experiments of faith and action. Throughout the year I led retreats or taught college students, mission & humanitarian agencies, musicians and songwriters, graduate students and church leaders. Lisa and I have enjoyed more opportunities to teach together and people have been quite responsive and appreciative of her voice as a model and guide.
Inspired by the life and teachings of Jesus, the work of ReIMAGINE is to help people revolutionize how they live their lives and to empower leaders who will revolutionize their communities. We continue to be passionate about helping people discover their journey with God in the complex and exciting matrix of the emerging world. When we think of 2009 we dream about how we can do our work more effectively and sustainably. We anticipate a new book project, an expanded learning network, a formalize apprenticeship process, funding for administrative assistance, and possibly a few months sabbatical. (If you believe in what we do and plan to do some year-end giving, please keep ReIMAGINE in mind).
In a world divided by politics, religion, economic disparity and a desperate sense of scarcity, we are tempted to forget that WE ARE ONE. The dream of the ancient messiah-rabbi, echoes in my ears, on my lips and in my prayers, “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
May we live with one another in the hope and reality that this love has come to us. Grateful to share this journey with you! Happy holidays!
Mark & Lisa Scandrette | c/o: ReIMAGINE! | P.O. Box 411601 SF, CA 94141 |
In Birmingham, I spoke with leaders and churches who are asking, “How do we follow Jesus in a culture where authenticity is so rare and nearly everyone is superficially religious?” I’ve sat with many people also asking, “What does it look like for us to follow the Way of Jesus when we live in affluent suburbs far removed from the struggles of people living in poverty?”
My friend Gareth Higgins is in town for a night and we thought it might be fun to get a few people together. Gareth and I met in London and have spent time together in L.A., Nashville, SF and the Bahamas. We like to talk about sex, God, justice, literature and art– and together make profane jokes about dead Christian mystics.
