Tuesday night house church

The Klinefelters are here tonight. It's a nice time to be around people we love.

Chad and the Canipe Family are, obviously, a focus tonight. This is also a very loose session; Eric has questioned Colin Powell's pronunciation of his first name being, as he says, that his last name sounds like "Bowel." So loose that we're talking about dog names - Cory's name used to be Marquette and she came with the house. So loose that I'm blogging, live.

Other comments include Angela talking about the "Quick Wok" restaurant on "Long Drive" and Tracy wanting to end her sentences with the word "semi-colon" instead of "period" - more on this below.

"I want to give us an opportunity to process a bit...and share some stories," Thurman says.

Chad's Podcast
This is our conversational centerpiece tonight. It's his first and (only?) audio blog entry about the church, Poema, he and Renee intended to start.

Here it is.

He and Renee moved here, to Norwood, to build Poema.

In the podcast, Chad said that he wanted a dialogue and that the journey of faith he wanted to walk in was one that begins with questions. And, boy, has this community got 'em tonight.

Good news, btw, Palmer is doing better - check Kevin's site for stuff about him.

Poema, Chad says in the podcast, means masterpiece or workmanship - and "...that's what we're about, being God's masterpiece, his work of art."

Chad asked listeners suspend any disbelief and consider the idea that "...God created. He is the master artist...he has a plan and a purpose for your life..."

Chad said that our purpose was deemed and intended by our creator and that we should try to discern what that purpose is(I'm extrapolating a bit - correct me if you think I'm off on this one.)

Chad spoke about disasters, Like Hurricane Katrina, which had just happened at the time he recorded this. He said no matter what happens in our lives, God can use even the bad things that happen - tragedies - for his purpose and make something good out of it. This kind of foretold the situation we are in now.

"Thanks for listening. It looks like I've gone a bit longer than I expected."

Sara Klinefelter said, "Here is Chad comforting us..."

Everyone felt that the recording spoke to them.

"What part of Chad's mission are we called to carry forth?" Kevin asked.

Julie Gross spoke about how open Chad was to discussing his faith ecumenically, such as with a Hindu friend at Fifth Third.

"It's ordinary and extraordinary at the same time," she said. "I think that part of his vision is something to carry forward."

Aaron said that Chad was visionary and died before his ideas came to pass - that being the vision for the city. "You don't hear that at seminary," Klinefelter said. "Chad's thing was being known as the best neighbors you could have."

"I sense that that nugget is something that's going to be coming," Aaron said. "It seemed very significant."

Angela brought up the communion of saints. "Chad talked about email him or call him," she said. "And you still can."

For myself, I was struck by the depth and detail of planning Chad had done. You have to understand how meek and understated Chad was in person. I had no idea about this at the time.

Along the lines of the communion thing Angela mentioned, that thing that happened the day he died seemed significant. Our answering machine started playing all of its messages just before 7 am, the morning and approximate time that Chad died. I also felt strongly that Chad would die a week before it happened. The podcast is maybe the message (recorded) that he wanted us to listen to(?}

Kevin said that he and Tracy as well as the Canipe family also felt that Chad was going to die several days before it happened.

Klinefelter (Aaron) said he had an experience on Thursday (the day before Chad died) and that he understands the idea of speaking with the saints better. That the plane between this world and the next is much thinner that we often believe. I gather that the communion of saints stuff is verboten or taboo or something in evangelical faiths(?)

Klinefelter said he went to the hospital on Thursday night and felt very discouraged, disconnected and defeated. "It kept going down, down, down," he said. He said he listened to scripture on the way to the hospital to seek comfort. He just wanted God to say something. "The sense of...deep and abiding peace (the Canipe family) had...I received so much form them in terms of encouragement...I felt like other people in our community needed to know that."

Klinefelter came to the Brown House looking to share..."after I left here that night, driving home, I had a very real sense that I was talking to Chad. I don't even know how to explain it. Not that he was there with me..."

Aaron said he communicated to Chad,"don't be discouraged. God's got it."

It was like I was having a conversation with chad and it was like he was saying, 'Thanks for saying that, but I've got to go...I can't fight in this physical body, I've got to go.' I remember driving home thinking he's not going to survive...but that he was okay with that...it's time to go and it's like just letting me know, it's okay."

Tracy said he died, "...very gracefully, very quickly and well...even the position he was laying...was like he was laying back, watching a football game, was peaceful."

"Just as a comfort to you all, he did really well," Tracy said. "I don't think he suffered."

Kevin said he thought Chad could hear things even though he was in a medically inuced coma, and he was spoken to by many for the days he was in the hospital.

Julie said this means the Kingdom is not far away, period. (Tracy would have said ...far away, semicolon." That's the context of the joke from earlier.)

"Those who believe in me will never die (experience death)," Kevin quoted.

"I have this kind of working theory...somewhat based in hope...that there is this kind of seemless time when you're entering...this transitional time where you're literally being greeted by people who are going to help you...(and yet you're still connected to the material world)," Kevin said.

Sara said when her mom died she had this amazing understanding of the term, "Born Again." That she had this literal vision of her mom being born again, going through the birth canal. "It was like labor," Sara said. "She kept saying she had to go."

She kept crying out, 'God help me.'" Sara said. "I just had never felt the presence of God so full."

"You just have this amazing new life in a different form," she said. "I've never thought of born again Christian the same way again...now it's even more real."

Sara said she prayed, "God breathe life into Chad. Breathe life into him again...that's all I could pray and it was like a joyous song...and that God was going to breathe life into Chad...and whatever that would look like...I really had the faith that God was breathing life into him like he had never known...he was at the feet of God...can you just imagine?"

Aaron said he felt a piece of himself, and the community was gone with Chad. "That's not like a bad thing, as in 'Woe is me,' it's just the reality of it...he made up a part of who I am and when he leaves this place to the other side of the veil, theres a piece of me that lacks..."

Thurman said," When you said that, I thought, 'A piece of me went with Chad and Chad is at the feet of God.'"

I don't feel so much closer to Chad as I do closer to God," Kevin said. "When (some of Kevin's friends went to India) I felt like part of me was in India."

"This was a tragedy but now a lot of people are reexamining their lives," Kevin said. "...I'm very comfortable dying now in a way I wasn't before this."

"We're a fairly young community," Aaron said. "...death is a part of life. It's like we know now of a whole other country that we didn't know of before...I can say, with confidence that we, as a community, can get around in that country."

Aaron compared this to orienteering. Julie compared this to becoming fluent in the language of heaven. Becky spoke of her uncle Stewart's death and how connected she felt to him.

"We've been talking for the past few weeks," Aaron said, "We've been talking about healing and...what happened? ...I see what happened to Chad as part of the same conversation as to what does healing look like...his healing came as going beyond the veil...I think what we've experienced has been healing for us as a community in a way that Chad healing physically (could not have)...You always lose something when you got to war you always gain something when you go to war...it has hurt like hell...but that has also brought about healing (to the community)."

Aaron said that he thinks something is happening, very deep down in our community, that Chad's death won for us.

"If we continue to talk out and feel this...we're going to know him as we never have," Sara said. "...if we keep opening it up and feeling, then we can keep growing."

There was much more laughter than crying tonight. And, as Chad said, God is near.