The quotes this week come from Killian Noe’s book, Descent into Love: How Recovery Cafe Came To Be. It was written in 2015, ten years after she, and her community in Seattle, started a non-profit intended to provide a place of radical hospitality and belonging for those on the margins, especially those who have been trapped in addiction or other mental health issues. A mission group at Bread of Life church, of which I’m a part, has helped midwife Recovery Cafe D.C. in Southeast D.C., working closely with Donald and Jacqueline Connerly, the two pastors who sounded this call for us several years ago. We are a part of the Recovery Cafe Network, along with 14 other groups throughout the country. To learn more about this powerful movement: recoverycafe.org.
“We needed to stay conscious that planting ourselves in the soil of community and showing up daily through meditation or contemplative prayer as a means of surrendering our lives, was not just about our own self-actualization, but was for the sake of a wounded world desperately in need of healing and justice. That healing and justice can flow through us, but is not from us and is certainly not “about” us.
“The Sufi tell a story about a spiritual seeker who was distracted by the sick, crippled and beaten down who continuously passed by as he tried to pray. Finally he cried, “Great God, how is that a loving creator can see such things and do nothing about them?” Out of the long silence, God said, “I did do something about them. I made you.””
-Killian Noe, Descent into Love: How Recovery Cafe Came To Be
Good information, Jim.