If you have been following my blog for the last few years (I think there are three or four of you) then you know that aside from writing about music, traveling, books, and movies, I spent a good amount of time relaying my personal questions and quandaries about spirituality. I look back on some of my posts and am amazed at not only how different I was but also how nieve I was as well (of course, I will look back on my current posts and think the same thing someday). What you may have not noticed is that, Africa aside, these have died down quite a bit. This is because I am no longer in this question-everything-what-the-hell-is-going-on-trying-to-figure-out-my-life-and-future phase of my life that I have been in for nearly four years now. I don't know why but I just am. With that said, I am moving on.
I will no longer spend the majority of my on this blog. Rather I will relocate to
a blog off of
Content Magazine. My participation in the magazine has increased quite a bit. Aside from writing articles I am also supposed to be cultivating our writing section by scouting new writers to add to the team. I am very excited about where Content is heading but know that it will take quite some time before it can fully blossom. If you are interested at all then send me an email. chonhavens@gmail.com.
I will spend most of my time over at Content and my posts will be more about arts and culture rather than theology or what is going on in my life. I may still blog here occasionally but it will be fairly infrequent. So as a farewell (or until we meet again), I will post one more introspective post about my life. Here goes...
Matthew 12: 43-45
When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, "I will return to the house I left." When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.I take this passage to mean that you can rid yourself of something evil or not life-giving but if you don't replace it with something better or more right and true then you can end off being worse than before. Paul says, "Do not be overcome by evil. But rather, overcome evil with good." Don't just get rid of evil, put good in its place. Back towards the end of summer, a spiritual director told me that if a church is not life-giving then get out. So I did.
I moved to community that met in Capitola and vowed to never return to an institutional church ever again. I am extremely grateful for this community. It was exactly what I needed at that time. But because of the practice of institutional churches I had subtely and unintentionally gained a bad image of who God was. It wasn't that God was bad but rather that I took some characteristics from church (from every church I've ever been a part of) and accidentally started attributing their actions to God. So I needed to replace this image of God with a greater one. One of the ways this could happen was in community. But this community didn't do that. It was a lot of people who would sit together and pray, take communion and talk about spiritual matters. Again, I am not bemoaning this community. It was what all of us needed at that time. But that period has passed and I still haven't replaced church with something greater. The above passage has been the analogy I have used for several months now.
Before I left for Africa I thought that perhaps it would be good to join my future (and now current) house with the girls house (who always get together anyways) for a Bible study. But I didn't want it to be like the last small group. I am tired of getting around and talking about the Bible. I don't really even read it anymore and what good is arguing and praying if we aren't doing anything? Whilst in London, Simon told me that he has a couple of "mates" who have met for the last few years to be accountability partners and what not. It occurred to me that perhaps shooting for the stars is not the best approach and I should really get together with a couple people. So when I got back from Africa, through a series of random conversations, Rob, Chris, Thad, and I decided to get together. We met a few weeks ago and all realized that we wanted to focus on growth and service. I could not be more happy with those two focuses. How this will play out is the next step.
The current plan (as recommended by Mark Scandrette) is to form some sort of mentoring/apprentice group with the folks up at ReImagine. I couldn't be happier with this as well. So what will this look like? What are we gonna do? I have no idea. And since I won't be blogging about it much you will have to just ask me in person. In the meantime, you can find me over
here. Thanks for reading.
