Mark Scandrette

It is with deep gratefulness that we wish you a Merry Christmas. With a quickly growing family and ministry, we are in the fullness of life.

Lisa continues to teach our children and helps manage a very complex calendar of lessons and classes, play practices and social engagements for three active teenagers. She also works part-time with ReIMAGINE helping prepare and lead Learning Labs and special events and by doing important administrative tasks.  In her spare moments she loves to read, knit and watch English period films.

Mark had a very full year leading local programs for ReIMAGINE, training leaders, speaking in various places and writing his second book, Practicing the Way of Jesus (to be released by IVP summer 2011).  In spare moments he enjoys exercising, going on dates with Lisa, watching movies with the kids and eating insane amounts of popcorn.

One of the rewarding surprises of the year has been getting involved at Bernal Dwellings, a government housing project a block from our house. Mark and Lisa volunteer together at a food program, participate in public meetings and help organize projects that serve the community and neighborhood, including being founding members of the Friends of Garfield Park. It’s been fun for us to have a way to serve together that takes us back to our roots working with kids in low-income neighborhoods in Minnesota.

Hailey (16) …continues to be dedicated to her work in the theater.  This year she was the assistant director for a production of the Magic flute and played a challenging role in a debut production of The Wave,  which she also did soundtrack recording for with producer/guitarist David Denny, (formerly of the Steve Miller band). She was featured in a SF Chronicle story and performed a segment of the show at the American Association of Theater Educators.  During the holidays she will appear in 26 performances of Siddhartha.  Hailey also went to her first prom with her boyfriend, Jonah, won a film society essay contest and carried 1/3 of her weight on a 5 day backpacking trip in Lassen Nat’l Park. She overcame whooping cough and began voice training at Community Music Center.

Noah (15)…continues to enjoy photography and this year cultivated his interest in astro- physics, reading Stephen Hawking in his spare time. The big news of the year is that Noah started a job at the Exploratorium (a hands on science museum) where his official title is Explainer. He rotates to various stations where he performs card tricks, dissects cow eyeballs, demonstrates a Van de graaff generator and helps lost children find their parents. He works three days a week and bikes 5 miles each way.  Noah enjoyed the trip to Yellowstone and time in D.C. & New York with his dad and best friend. You can visit his blog at: http://noahsphotographs.blogspot.com

Isaiah (14) … often mistaken for the pop star Justin Bieber, discovered a new level of passion in his music this year, taking up guitar, melodica and ukelele in addition to violin. He won a music scholarship and was invited to participate in the Comprehensive Musicianship Program at CMC. Isaiah also performed in a musical production of the Magic Flute. Isaiah went on a cruise to the Mexican Caribbean with his grandparents, where he enjoyed snorkeling. He also made his first solo flight to Seattle to visit his cousins and to the San Juan Islands to spend a week with his best friend’s family.  With a deepening voice he is almost 6 ft tall. After years of patient anticipation, he was allowed to purchase his first gaming system.

This year we finished a major renovation project on the exterior of our house: repairing windows and doors, replacing weather damaged bits, building permanent storage spaces and having the house prepared and painted in Victorian detail. Its fun to see the old lady shine! With an abundance of fresh fruits available to us this year, we also did an amazing amount of canning and preserving.While Mark worked on his new book this summer, the rest of the family did a cross country road trip through Yellowstone and other parks on the way to a family reunion in Minnesota.

We have been reflecting this Advent on the abundance that we have.  We are grateful for kids who are growing into the people they were created to be, grateful for nearly 20 years of marriage partnership, grateful for meaningful work and for activities we enjoy when we are not working.  During this time of the year, we are also particularly grateful for warmth and light in our home.  We savor time together in front of our Christmas tree each night, reading and singing carols together and enjoying the quiet moments of the day in a full time of life.  May your family, too, have a wonderful Christmas season filled with gratitude and awareness for the gifts that Christ brings.

Our work with ReIMAGINE continues to grow and develop. The vision of ReIMAGINE is to invite people to be revolutionized by the life and teachings of Jesus and to equip leaders who can revolutionize their communities. We do this by (1) communicating vision, (2) inviting people into transformational experiments and (3) developing leaders. Our particular focus is emerging leaders in emerging multi-cultural contexts.

Training Leaders. This year ReIMAGINE did intensive spiritual leadership training and coaching with 35 leaders across the Bay Area through four different initiatives.

Engaging Experiments. We designed and led 7 multi-week Learning Labs (action-based group discipleship modules) with a total of 150 participants. Twenty-five people are currently active in two ReIMAGINE neighborhood Tribes, (a year-long commitment to be part of an intentional Christian community). We also facilitated intensives for 8 visiting groups.– one-day to one-week city-based learning and serving opportunities.

Communicating Vision. In 2010 Mark had the opportunity to teach 32 groups in nineteen different cities. This year leaders in five cities have adopted our approach and curriculum.

ReIMAGINE is a grassroots Christian religious nonprofit, organized by a host of volunteers and a small staff team, and governed by a local board of directors. Our budget is funded by a combination of private donations, program fees and speaking & coaching honorariums. The vast majority of our funding comes from small individual donations. We are grateful to those who faithfully support our work month after month and year after year!

Consider giving a year end gift to ReIMAGINE to help us offer transforming learning experiences at a reasonable cost, allow us to organize projects to serve urban neighborhoods and fuel our efforts to develop and empower emerging leaders.  This support allows us to have an enduring role in developing paths of faith for people in the dynamic emerging culture of San Francisco and beyond.

All donations are tax deductible. ReIMAGINE P.O. Box 411601 SF, CA 94141. You can also donate online here: https://www.justgive.org/nonprofits/donate.jsp?ein=31-1783556

Here’s a on-line version of the print newsletter about our work with ReIMAGINE

Pilgrimage Landscapes 8-10

This summer Christine Sine invited me to write something about an unconventional spiritual practice. Here’s something I wrote that is posted on her blog.

Love-Making As a Spiritual Practice

“Fire crackers like gun fire
Shatter the velvet silence of sweet release
with you in my arms.”

When I shared these lines above with a group of friends, reactions were mixed. One friend nodded with the knowing relish of common experience. Others squirmed uncomfortably as if what was spoken was too private or salacious.  Despite the fact that sexuality is central to what it means to be human and to be alive, so often it is a dimension of our lives that is fraught with conflicted feelings, secrecy, wounds or shame. Here are examples of common themes I hear in conversations among friends:

“We’ve never been able to talk about sex– I don’t think my spouse would understand what I need or want.”

“I stayed up all night twice this week looking at internet porn.”

“My partner and I haven’t had sex for almost a year. It brings up too much pain about my childhood trauma. ”

“I thought that if we got married, the same-sex attraction would go away.”

“I accidently made out with someone I just met at the party last weekend. We may have had too much to drink.”

“My spouse just caught me pursuing someone I met online. This has opened up the wounds and broken the trust … but I feel desperate for soul connection with someone.”

“I wonder why I haven’t found anyone to marry yet. I’m so hungry to share life with someone and experience intimacy. What’s wrong with me?”

The yearning to connect with another human being in whole person ecstasy is a sacred gift that is frankly overwhelming in its potency. And often it is the unspoken energy that is shaping our relationships with one another and our sense of belonging to God. It is a beautiful treasure that needs to be awakened, cultivated, disciplined and celebrated.

Knowing that our sexuality is a sacred gift, my wife and I have tried to be intentional about  our sexuality and love-making as a spiritual practice:

One of the ways that we do this is by talking about sex and our sexuality regularly outside the bedroom. Sometimes we talk about the mixed messages we got about sex growing up, or the guilt, shame or confusion we have felt about our sexual awakening and desires. We acknowledge that we are sexually broken. Most, if not all of us have wounds, guilt or repression about our sexuality to navigate. Knowing that the journey to healthy sexuality is often a winding road from adolescence throughout adulthood, we try to be deeply vulnerable and realistic– while offering each other grace and understanding.  We also talk about the nuts and bolts of what works for us in the bedroom–the words and touches that make the other person feel attractive, beloved and aroused. And though it is sometimes embarrassing for our kids, we talk with them about the loveliness of a sexual relationship and the sacredness of sex between people who are committed to one another. And we try to normalize and celebrate their awakening desires to experience union and intimacy with another human being.

As corny or unromantic as it might sound, we schedule our times for love-making. For us the days of spontaneous eruptions of sexual desire diminished quickly with the onset of full-time jobs, children, and the other the responsibilities of adulthood.  The truth is that at the end of a fulfilling day of meaningful work, family and community life, we feel pretty tired and often wish for a few moments alone. Like our weekly dates,  we schedule love-making as a way to make it a value and priority in our lives. Sex can be a measure of the whole quality of a marriage. Scheduling special time for love-making each week is a way for us to take the temperature of our relationship. There is a lot that has to happen before we get to the bedroom. We need to be reconciled with one another. We need to be conscious of our words and tenderness throughout the day so that the other feels safe and open to intimate touch. We need to be relaxed, centered  and de-stressed in order to be fully present to one another between the sheets. The practices of exercise, healthy eating, dressing and cleaning the body are all ways that we  affirm that we are God’s temple– sacred, attractive and worthy of care. And our bodies are sacred temples that we invite one another to enter. The teachings of Jesus and the Disciple John suggest that the love and care we give to one another is as close as we can get to loving the God we cannot see. The attentive gaze into one another’s eyes, the tender touch and gentle words are tangible practices in the mysterious ways of the kingdom of love.

Whether a person is married or single, we can explore ways to be God-conscious in our sexuality.  I know a devout single woman who practices what she calls, “Sexy time” — a space where she chooses intentional practices that help her feel feminine, beautiful and in touch with her body in ways that affirms dignity and a sense of being beloved.  I believe there is a way for each of us to invite God into the earthy realism and beauty of our sexuality– to walk with us in the complexity and power of being created as sexuality– and rather than seeing sexuality solely in terms of moral successes or failures, perhaps it is better to ask, “What are my next steps towards healthy God-conscious sexuality?”

THE RESCUE:

On Saturday, 100,000 people will come together around the world in 100 cities to stand in solidarity with over 30,000 children that have been abducted and forced to fight a senseless 23 year long war by the Lord’s Resistance Army in East Africa.  We will be waiting to be rescued by a person of great cultural influence on that night.

We will not be leaving until someone of great cultural influence comes and rescues us.  There will be 1900+ young people in attendance on Saturday, and as many as possible will continue to wait it out for our rescuer if no one comes on Saturday evening.

We are meeting at 3:00 PM on Saturday at the corner of Jefferson and Hyde Streets to walk to East Beach (near Crissy Field), where we will be waiting for our rescuer from around 4:00 PM Saturday until as long as it takes.  If you would like to watch the video that better explains the situation, you can find it online at www.therescue.invisiblechildren.com

Don’t sleep through the revolution.

In September of his 11th year he boarded the school bus and left the neighborhood and childhood behind. They closed the local school a year before he would have finished sixth grade, and now a busload of children from the sleepy neighborhoods along the West Mississippi were being shipped off to the inner city. The bus quickly passed what was familiar: the library, the diner, and Wong’s Chinese restaurant and used car lot. Crossing the tracks by the new shopping center, they entered the West end of Lake Street where the Native Americans, black families and Vietnamese refugees lived. He looked out the window and noticed the marquee of the adult theater and watched the people milling around talking loudly on the corner.  They passed the old cemetery where some of the graves were so old that the trees had grown into the tombstones.

Over the summer he had entered puberty, somewhat prematurely, his voice changed, he was a head taller and his body was now covered in hair like a monkey.  He was becoming a man like his father, who was strong and wise and left bad smells in the bathroom. On the bus they regarded him as a wonder and freak of nature—someone their same age who had passed from childhood and was now on the opposite side of a great chasm.

He exited the bus and parted from the group. His parents had placed him in a special program they thought fit his personality and interests better than the three ‘R’s of a conventional education. He was going to Open School, a post-hippie era experiment in education that consisted of boundless learning opportunities and the absence of rules. There were no classrooms or walls, only wide-open spaces and choices. Students could choose the courses they wanted, worked on projects independently, and were instructed to address teachers by their first names (like Joan, Susan or John). Joan, his homeroom teacher, showed them R-rated movies on Fridays, called them “little f*#%rs” when she got angry and chain-smoked incessantly. Most of the other students were from progressive wealthy or academic families who lived on the east side of the river by the university, except for a few gifted minority students from the immediate neighborhood. If his parents had listened to public radio or read the New York Times they would have known that many his classmates were the children of prominent city planners, politicians, celebrity authors and musicians. Aram Karapetian, who would become his best friend that year, loved to tell about the time his father, an orchestra conductor, got into a brawl with Pablo Picasso at a bull fight in Madrid.

All of this was a new world to him. Home-life was gentle, strict, oriented around religious piety and duty with a conspicuous lack of humor or irony.  At school he found solace in the art studio, under the direction of a French Catholic bachelor who, recognizing his artistic inclinations, invited him to spend three hours a day working in the studio supplied with any materials he wanted. During that year he created three sculptures. The first was a terracotta bust of his father, the second, a terracotta bust of Jesus Christ and the third, a life sized plaster sculpture of a young man seated on a stool in contemplation.

The first sculpture of his father was admittedly crude, but showed promise and some familiarity with ancient and renaissance forms. In the fall of that year, his father was promoted from Lieutenant to Chief in the U.S. Amy. This change brought more money for the family, more responsibility for his father and meant more time that he was left home alone with his mother and three sisters.  Making this sculpture was his way of identifying with manhood in the relative absence of his father that year. He was becoming a man, and as he carved into the clay day after day he saw something of himself and who he might become. During that time he and his father had the talks about wet dreams, the strength of testosterone, and a man’s natural curiosity about the shape of a woman’s body. Becoming a man was exciting, scary and complicated—and though he closely identified with his father, they were different. He was flamboyant, creative and risk-taking while his father was shy, cautious and duty-bound. He was becoming a man like his father, but also like himself. It was the beginning of his journey to discover how to combine the integrity, sensitivity, and devotion of his father with the courage to dream and act with courage and abandon.

The second sculpture of Jesus Christ was more technically developed, but when fired in the kiln the skull cracked, necessitating an impromptu addition of a crown of thorns. This piece was of special curiosity to his schoolmates from more “enlightened” secular families. “Who is this sculpture of?” They would ask, mockingly. With sincerity he replied, “It is suppose to be God.” He was never the good student in Sunday school or family devotions, but this environment brought out his nascent interest in the spiritual. It was the beginning of his journey to negotiate deep devotion beyond the sentimentality of provincial folk religion. The crown of thorns this path requires would be a continual surprise.

The third sculpture of himself was life-size and inspired by the haunting figures of George Segal, with and obvious awareness of Rodin’s “thinker” in bronze. What is the proper posture of a person, in reference to one’s humanity and the awareness of the divine?  The figure sits leaning forward as in deep thought, with hands clasped to the face and eyes staring forward, equally conscious of the world within and the world without. When he visited the school fifteen years later, the sculpture was still on display in the window case. It was the beginning of his journey to identify as a mystic and a pilgrim—continually on a search for meaning and purpose—living into the questions—and inviting others to stare toward what is beyond and within.