nourishing those who are hungry http://karenmains.com/

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

http://www.sundaysolutions.com/hungrysouls.html

One work of fiction that captures the agonizing alienation in our culture is Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. This American writer has a genius that is expressed by focusing on ordinary people, all of whom seem to have attachment issues. The book explores the relationships of the Tull family; the mother, Pearl, abandoned by her husband Beck Tull; the sons, Cody and Ezra; and the daughter Jenny.

The organizing metaphor in the book is Ezra Tull’s Homesick Restaurant. The dilemma of a family who can never make it through one meal is captured in this reflection by Cody, the eldest son:

“Hadn’t Ezra noticed that the family as a whole had never yet finished one of his dinners? That they’d fight and stamp off halfway through, or sometimes not even manage to get seated in the first place? Well, of course he must have noticed, but was it clear to him as a pattern, a theme? No, perhaps he viewed each dinner as a unit in itself, unconnected to the others. Maybe he never linked them in his mind.

“Assuming he was a total idiot.

“It was true that once–to celebrate Cody’s new business–they had made it all the way to dessert; so if they hadn’t ordered dessert you could say they’d completed the meal. But the fact was, they did order dessert, which was left to sag on the plates when their mother accused Cody of deliberately setting up shop as far from home as possible. There was a stiff-backed little quarrel. Conversation fell apart. Cody walked out. So technically, even that meal could not be considered finished. Why did Ezra go on trying?

“Why did the rest of them go on showing up, was more to the point?”

The brilliance of Anne Tyler’s work (John Updike once called her “wickedly good”) is that this metaphor of people who can never finish a meal together in the Homesick Restaurant is not only the picture of a dysfunctional family, it has a broader application to a whole society that is increasingly separated from knowing how to create meaningful connections with each other.

In a recent article by Janet Kornblum, USA Today reported that Americans have one-third fewer close friends and confidants than just two decades ago. This is something of a seismic shift. “You usually don’t see that kind of big social change in a couple of decades,” reports Lynn Smith-Lovin, professor of sociology at Duke University, Durham, N.C., and co-author of the study reported in American Sociological Review.

In 1985, the average American had three people in whom to confide matters that were important to him or her. By 2004, that number had dropped to two confidants, and the findings determined that consequently, 25% of Americans have no one in whom to confide.

Smith-Lovin explains, “Close relationships are a safety net. Whether it’s picking up a child or finding someone to help you out of the city in a hurricane, these are people we depend on.”

The USA Today article makes the point that research has linked social isolation and loneliness to mental and physical illness. If that is the case, can we not also conclude that our mental and physical (and spiritual) health improves when we are socially connected and not living in isolating environments?

In 1967 I wrote a book, one of the first of its kind, I believe, that developed a theology of hospitality. Open Heart, Open Home has sold more than 600,000 copies and is still in print (InterVarsity Press). I believe — indeed, am even more convinced — that scriptural hospitality is an antidote to alienation. It is a sure-cure for spiritual homesickness. It is a tool that, when practiced in the family (learning how to stay at the table with each other), can create a sense of profound welcome and acceptance. It is a tool that, when regularly and intentionally practiced in the church, is guaranteed to effect assimilation of the members as well as the creation of community. It is a tool that, when practiced in the neighborhood, results in neighborly connections. Believe me when I say that today, in this disconnected society, just inviting people for dinner (then using deep-listening questions like those we are developing in the Hungry Souls Listening Groups) is an evangelistic act. Hospitality can (and does) heal the lonely soul.

So why are we not using this powerful spiritual tool — in our families, in our churches, in the world around us? Why is this ancient spiritual practice falling into disuse? Aren’t there many of us who, longing for significant connection, cry like Ezra Tull, “Please! Please. For once, I want this family to finish a meal together. Why, every dinner we’ve ever had, something has gone wrong. Someone has left in a huff, or in tears, everything’s fallen apart…”

In the next months, I want to revisit the concept of hospitality. God has given me one of those Grand Ideas, and I am going to need help to pull it off. I’m hoping some of you may want to be on my Grand Idea team. But first, we need a little time (and a few Soulish Foods) to recapture the beauty of this spiritual practice, its relationship to the inner journey, and the high value God places on having an open heart and an open home.

What did you like best about Christmas when you were a kid? New toys? Grandmother’s house? Or was it the piney aroma of the tree? Could it have been simply the sheer wonder of it all? http://ping.fm/Qlvl8

Give the Gift of Meaningful Storytelling this Christmas

In the tradition of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein come these heartwarming allegories of good and evil from best-selling authors Karen and David Mains. Your entire family, from children to adults, will be entranced as Scarboy and his friends boldly follow the one True King to overcome the evil Enchanter and his tenacious hold on the oppressed residents of Enchanted City.

This Trilogy of three titles are Gold-medallion award-winners and we’re the only place where you can receive “signed” autographed copies of these beautiful picture books. These popular, but hard to find books are selling for $40-$60 apiece on Ebay! But you can order your keepsake Christimas gift copies direct from Mainstay for much less and give a meaningful gift that will last forever.

Sit down with your family or friends this Christmas to enjoy rich Kingdom Truths wrapped in a delightful package of riveting stories, told by master storytellers, David and Karen Mains.

Each signed book ($30 plus $8 S/H)
OR the whole autographed Trilogy of three books…save 17% ($75 plus $10 S/H)
(We ship in 24 hours using USPS Priority Mail 2-day delivery service, so you’ll receive these gifts in time for Christmas).

Order securely online or call 1-800-224-2735:
*http://www.sundaysolutions.co/talesproducts.html

Go here for Tales of the Kingdom:
*http://www.sundaysolutions.com/talesofthekingdom.html

Go here for Tales of the Resistance:
*http://www.sundaysolutions.com/talesoftheresistance.html

Go here for Tales of the Restoration:
*http://www.sundaysolutions.com/talesoftherestoration.html

Go here for more details about the Trilogy:
*http://www.sundaysolutions.com/talesproducts.html

Here’s what others have said about the Tales of the Kingdom Trilogy:

“Many join Gloria Gaither, singer and author, in saying, “I loved this book!”:

“The plots of these fairy tales are imaginative, the characters delightully unpredictable, yet real enough to remind us of ourselves. Like us, they are often pulled in opposite directions–toward both good and evil–and whether we are young of old we enjoy their adventures and learn from their right (and wrong) choices.”

“These tales draw us almost imperceptible into the Kingdom through the open doors of whimsy and invention.” Luci Shaw, Listen to the Green, The Sighting

“Sound theology wrapped in creative storytelling. substantive and biblical, skillfully crafted, marvelous for family reading.” Harold Myra, Publisher and president of Christianity Today

“These stories are a good marriage of fantasy and a Christian Aesop’s Fables. They bring narrative, sight, and sound together to tell a convincing story with excellent moral fabric.” Walter Wangerin, author, Book of the Dun Cow American Book Award

Order securely online, or call us today at 1-800-224-2735

David & Karen Mains
Mainstay Ministries & Hungry Souls
1-800-224-2735 or 623-322-3334
27314 N 37th Ave, Phoenix, AZ 8508

The Perfect Eco-Christmas Gift!

Are you interested in focusing more on Christ and less on mass consumerism this Christmas? Proverbs 19:17 reads: “He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward him for what he has done.” Try multitasking your gift-giving by Buying a Bag … Feeding a Family … and Preserving the Planet! The Global Bag Project’s reusable kanga-cloth bags:

• Are made of sturdy, eco-friendly fabric
• Are sized big enough for grocery shopping (instead of using plastic or paper bags)
• Include a matching, zippered change-purse with recycled beads rolled from paper
• Come in gorgeous kanga patterns and colors with Swahili sayings
• Contain a DVD telling the story of the seamstress who made it (and more)
• Provide a fair-trade opportunity for needy families to eat and send their children to school!

What a great opportunity to honor the person to whom you are giving! “In your name I’ve purchased this Global Bag Project shopping bag, which provides sustenance for families lifting themselves out of poverty while also helping the environment.” Such a simple idea with profound results! Consider purchasing a Global Bag Project shopping bag as a viable option gift-giving option this holiday season.

If you are in the Chicago area and want to sign up for a Home Bag-Party for next year 2010, let us know at info@globalbagproject.org. If you are out of the Chicago area and will be a willing participant to test the “BAG PARTY IN A BOX” concept and give us feedback, also contact us at the above e-mail address.

http://karenmains.com

How does the Bible, written so long ago, really feed the spirit? http://hungrysouls.org/

I’m thankful to those who attended Hungry Soul’s Annual Advent 24-Hour Retreat of Silence… Bless you all! http://KarenMains.com

Friends and Strangers chronicles the beginning of the journey into
self-knowledge, a painful odyssey particular to the work of the middle
years. This narrative focuses on the ages from 38-45. Each of us has hidden
areas, lies we tell to ourselves that we don�t know we are telling. The work
of the Holy Spirit is to continually bring us into truth. In this book I
begin to look at truth through encounters with strangers, people I meet
along the way, brought to me by God, who have rich gifts to give that shake
my smug thinking. I am convinced that no encounter is casual, as each has
the potential to move the ground beneath our feet, which is never as solid
as we like to think.

http://mainstay.stores.yahoo.net/frienandstra.html

Perfect Christmas gifts for your love ones, books written with all my heart http://mainstay.stores.yahoo.net/karen-mains-books1.html

Teach Me to Play

I am at a major turning point in my six- (almost seven-) decades-old life, and as I put together the content for the 2009 sixth annual Hungry Souls 24-Hour Advent Retreat of Silence, I am aware that this will be the last Advent Retreat I plan. Hopefully, others will step forward to take up the responsibility of this lovely gift joyfully given to others, but if not, I am content to say, “We did a good job introducing many to their first taste of communal silence.”

My creative life is calling me; it hums in the night. I can see it in flashpoints during my days. The unborn works I have not brought to nativity wait patiently for me to give them birth.

How fortunate to have these days where I am still in good health and of sound mind. But the ubiquitous question—how long will they last?—always rises.

During the last session of the current cycle of Listening Groups (eight months of listening to each other), one of the women graciously extended words of appreciation to each member. When my turn came, she said this: “I have a friend who knows that I am in a Listening Group with Karen Mains. She loves your writing and asked me what you were like. I told her that you were an absolute free spirit!”

I was amazed. I used to be a free spirit (as Julie Andrews once sang as Maria, “Somewhere in my wicked childhood …”), but it has become painfully clear to me over the last three years that I have a play deprivation. Creativity oozes, and laughter, fortunately, has become a companion again—but a free spirit?—something must be showing without my knowing. I suspect my “free spirit” is always hedged about by my heightened sense of responsibility and peeks out at moments when I am not aware of it.

So for whatever of life is left to me, I want to dedicate that to learning how to play. In order to be content that I have lived well the life given to me, I am determined to go dancing, singing and scribing into heaven—with nothing undone that was meant to be done. I do not want to spend the last days of my life with an overwrought sense of obligation. I want to free the closet renegade within me and say, “Okay, your turn…”

Stuart Brown, M.D., in his fascinating book Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, writes that humans are genetically programmed for play. Brown has spent his career conducting more than 6000 play histories with people from all walks of life; serial killers (who displayed one startling commonality—a childhood play-deprivation) to Nobel Prize winners, to celebrities, to public servants, and to those who represent the rest of us, the common folk.

Brown writes, “When we get play right, all areas of our lives go better. When we ignore play, we start having problems. When someone doesn’t keep an element of play in their life, their core being will not be light. Play gives us the irony to deal with paradox, ambiguity, and fatalism. Without that, we are like the Woody Allen character in Annie Hall, who says, “What’s the use? The sun’s going to blow up in five billion years anyway.”

Here is a list of what he recommends to restore play to the play-deprived.

1. Take your play history.

For a long time I couldn’t remember how I played as a child, or what kind of toys I had, but this exercise helped me remember that I loved playing field hockey (high school and college); that my father’s exiled (to Des Moines, Iowa) Southern family loved family sing-fests; that as a grade-schooler I loved gardening with my father and canning with my mom and grandmother. Reading, reading, reading was always high on the list, and I remember the pleasure of riding a bicycle (purchased secondhand when I was in 4th grade). There’s a long way to go, I know—I’m a little deficient in the early-years play history—but it’s a start.

2. Expose yourself to play.

My friend Natalie Lombard and I have been experimenting with painting with brooms in her heated garage. (It is good to have a playful friend with a heated garage.) I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to choose people for these last decades of my life who know how to play and who make a way for the free spirit dwelling within me that wants OUT! Natalie and I are building a living metaphor on the Prepare Ye! theme for the opening of this year’s Advent Retreat of Silence. We are becoming really good at spreading paint with a turkey baster—another painting tool—though I am amazed that working with the same consistency of watered-down pastels and the same turkey baster, our hands nevertheless produce totally different lines!

3. Give yourself permission to be playful, to be a beginner.

OK. OK. I’m here already. I’m seeking out people whom life has not beaten into seriousness. In one conversation recently with the team of gals who are designing training for Retreat of Silence leaders, we discussed the importance of recapturing a sense of play. One woman mentioned her “fun dates.” Consequently, right now I am thinking about beginning establishing outrageously ridiculous Play Days once a month for the purpose of giving myself permission to be playful, to be a beginner and get this play thing down right.

For the rest of Stuart Brown’s list, I recommend you read the book and check out your own capacity for play.

For my whole life, I’ve visited Christ’s words, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3, NRSV). What did He mean?

David Steindl-Rast writes about the “child-like” concept, “The child within us stays alive. And the child within us never loses the talent to look with the eyes of the heart, to combine concentration with wonderment, and so to pray without ceasing. The more we allow the child within us to come into its own, the more we become mature in our prayer life. This is surely one meaning of the saying that we must ‘become like children.’ There is no childishness suggested here. … A truly mature person has not rejected childlikeness, but rather achieved it on a higher level. As we progress in that direction, everything in our daily life becomes prayer. The childlike heart divines springs of refreshing water at every turn.

What I want to concentrate on in the years left to me is not to let work overtake wonderment; indeed, I want to learn how to launch wonderment and let the work go hand in hand with it. I no longer need to develop the discipline of doing tasks I really don’t like or am not good at doing. That discipline has revealed that I’m pretty good at a lot of things—surprise! From now on, as much as possible, I want my work to become play.

Stuart Brown again: “Far from standing in opposition to each other, play and work are mutually supportive. They are not poles at opposite ends of our world. Work and play are more like the timbers that keep our house from collapsing down on top of us. Though we have been taught that play and work are each the other’s enemy, what I have found is that neither one can thrive without the other. We need the newness of play, its sense of flow, and being in the moment. We need the sense of discovery and liveliness that it provides. We also need the purpose of work, the economic stability it offers, the sense that we are doing service for others, that we are needed and integrated into our world.”

So here are the questions I’m beginning to ask of myself:

1. How am I incorporating play into my week—each week?
2. What outrageously ridiculous Play Day am I going to orchestrate this month?
3. Who are the people who know how to laugh and play, and how can I make them my friends?
4. How will I take this sense of wonder and marry it to the work I choose to do?
5. How am I going to find joy in the effort of simply being a little kid in God’s Presence—running toward the Kingdom of Heaven on happy feet (you saw the film Happy Feet, didn’t you? Yep, that’s exactly what I mean).

So, I hope to see you at this year’s 6th annual Advent Retreat of Silence. Let us meet each other in the silence and listen together to see what God has to teach us about being prepared. I am bringing my painting brooms and my turkey baster.

Karen Mains
http://KarenMains.com