Shannon Hopkins

“to be fully human, fully myself
to accept all that I am
all that you envision
this is my prayer
walk with me out to the rim of life
beyond security
take me to the exquisite edge
of course and
release me to become”
Sue Monk Kidd

I saved this from Sue Monk Kidd sometime over the last few years and only came across it again as I was cleaning up files on my computer. (Now that is another story!) Anyway I love the quote, it resonates with
me. However, I also feel the other part. The parrt that knows the answer to this prayer involves risk and trust in the Divine. And that at times everything in you wants to turn back, and that there will be times of discomfort, times of insecurity, times of longing for security.

To be honest I have found myself in a bit of two minds lately. one part of me crying out “YES GOD, wherever you lead me” and the other part going, “why have I chosen such a difficult path? why not something normal?”

Then God is so good to me. Within hours of each other I read the Sue Monk Kidd quote which reminded me of my hearts cry and then I came across this reading from God calling and it encouraged me, reminding me that God knows right where I am at.

“You shall have My Joy. But Life just now for you both is a march — a toilsome march… The Joy will come, but for the moment do not think o fthat, think simply o fthe march. Joy is the reward…

Between My Promise of the Gift of Joy to My disciples and their realization of that Joy came sense of failure, disappointment, denial, desertion, hopelessness, then hope, waiting and courage in the face of danger.

Joy is the reward of patiently seeing Me in th dull dark days, of trusting when you cannot see…Joy is as it were your heart’s response to My smile of recognition of your faithfulness…

Stop thinking your lives are all wrong if you do not feel it… Remember you may not yet be joyous, but you are brave, and courage and unselfish thought for others are as sure signs of true discipleship as Joy” (from God Calling)

ok.. now i dont know what i have done but i went to center my last post and it is centering most of my blog and all of the comments .. can anyone help me? also it isn’t showing my categories.. which i am trying to work on filing and categorizing… so really i am a technical edit… please have pity on me and help me! Also I just realized all my links went to the bottom of the page….. UGGGH!
Now wouldn’t you know it that this one turned out normal– how frustrating!

I am back from the other side of the pond and I am glad to be back! My trip was good but quite full on and I have no idea how to re-cap it.

Alaska—
Was a bit of its own thing. A time to be with my family. My stepfather had a stroke days before my arrival there and we had to make a decision about surgery. An anurism came up in his brain as a result of the stroke. The surgery filled the clot with platinum bullets so that it would minimize the chance of it rupturing.
I have to admit that in spite of all the stress and doctors visits it was quite possibly the best time I have had with my mother in years. And Alaska is a great place to go.. it is a place of pioneering having only become a state in 1959.

Texas —
Brain (Spirit) Storm was a gathering I was involved in in Austin the end of October and then in Houston we had a gathering of about 20 to talk about a training trail of sorts. I really have gone to calling my time in texas.. the texas tour… i seriously felt like I was on the road… spending time in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and Kerrville and going back to Houston again! There is no way to recap… but here are some of my highlights (in no particular order and surely leaving out a few things):

sushi with Karen and Jeff
time with Erika
surprising my grandmother and father on Halloween as one of the trick or treaters
surprising amy at her front door
being with soul café
staying at carl and reginas…. At the ranch right before
thanksgiving
a day with the girls that Karen put on after the Houston meeting
the Shannon party (that was taking place in Houston and San
Francisco..for my send off)
Mojito’s with Nathan at some Brazilian place by the campus
Studio 60 at the sunset strip
meeting the girls at teresa’s house and spending a few nights there
Seeing Dawn and my last 24 hours in America with the Thames

and some of the not so high lights:

getting towed within 24 hours of being in Austin
a sinus infection that lasted the last 10 days I was in the states
realizing I really am a misfit in my family
a rocky start to my time in Austin

and the most productive thing?

i cleaned out my storage unit.. even i surprised myself with that one! thanks teresa, jenny and caroline for your help!

Ok.. I think that is a good enough re-cap… I might post more later

it is time to go home!

“Everybody wants to go to Heaven
But nobody wants to die”

I was thinking alot about death to self tonight and the different things I have to keep laying down and trusting God with. It is a good journey but not always easy.

* What is it with spam and wordpress? Seriously, I am deleting about a 100 spam at a time from my wordpress comments. It just makes me wish for more comments from friends!

*I love tylenol pm! And the over the counter medicine shelves in the states!

*Texas truly is the land of eternal sunshine!

“I will not die and unlived life
I will not live in FEAR
of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me
to make me less afraid
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom
goes on as fruit”

–Dawna Markova

“O Lord, I give my life to you.
I turst in you, my God!
do not let me be disgraced….

Just two things that i have been hanging onto in recent weeks

well… i couldn’t be in austin 48 hours without getting towed! at least i did not end up in jail having to wear and oarnge jumpsuit!

I had this idea to do a gift for my Father’s birthday in August. I was going to give him 52 cards, one for each week of the year that shared snipits from life and photos etc. (Just for background information… I have a rough relationship with my Father and we have been on a journey on how to be in relationship with one another) Well August has come and gone….and guess what… I didn’t do that….it just felt like a bit much. So I decided … I would send him a postcard every week, from wherever I was in the world. Well… Week one… I was in Spain… Postcard sent! Yeah Rah! That was August… I haven’t sent one since.

Why do I share that? Because blogging has been a bit like that for me. At the end of July, Stacy and I were sitting in Costa Coffee at Victoria Station in London and she asked me if I considered what I was doing “Emerging Church”? I got to thinking throughout the day and thought… I should “unpack” my thoughts around that on a blog… but then it just felt like a task I never got around to…. So basically I got silent and then in the silence it felt I had too much to say… and didn’t know what to say. Like when you haven’t talked to a friend for a long time you don’t really know where to pick up.

But it has felt like it has gotten ridiculous… either that or I am indeed the WORST blogger ever!

So… is what I do emerging church? I think using the term emerging church is helpful for some, it allows people to put me in a category, and gives them a frame and emerging church leaders are my friends and peers. Furthermore, from a missional, ecclesial perspective a I tend to agree with the emerging church camp. However, another group lately said to me “you know what you are… you are a walking missions incubator”. That felt more right than any other label someone has tried to give me in my ministry to date. But really I just consider myself a committed disciple of Jesus living missionally trying to follow Him wherever He leads, part of his body… emerging, existing, traditional, messy etc.