The folks from ThPM have just left and I feel energized and happy. My friend Barbra Henderson runs these small groups she calls Simple Spirituality. Her main goal with them is to help people “practice the practices” they believe in. I’ve come to really appreciate that phrase — practicing the practices.

You know, there are really only two reasons for me to cultivate something like ThPM. One is because I believe in remaining intentionally, deliberately connected to God. One of my mentors, Rose Swetman, calls this the “upward journey,” which is a phrase she copped from Church of the Savior in Washington DC, I think. The other reason to cultivate ThPM is that I believe in the incarnation. I really think that God dwells within each of us. (But to quote Donald Miller, “every time I talk about it I sound like palm reader.”) This belief in an incarnational reality requires me to live an intentional, deliberate life of attentiveness and service to others. Rose calls this the “outward journey.” (Although, that word “out” always implies some sort of inclusive “in,” and I’m not sure that distinction really exists. But that’s another story. We mustn’t let semantics hold us captive, must we? At some point we must allow ourselves enough grace to actually use words, no?) That’s why I give my life over to this crew, and to the people we are connected to out there on the other side of my door. It’s because of the journey, upward and outward, and my need to make the journey in the company of others. We’ve got to practice these practices. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Tonight, I feel like we managed to do both of those things at ThPM – which is actually very rare. One of the things we’ve been doing is practicing the practice of compassion. You know that thing that happens when you hear about something really awful on the news and so you switch to Entertainment Tonight instead? Well, I think the outward journey requires us to stop doing that. We need to put some tools in our tool box which will allows us to practice compassion– even in the face of a media-drenched global community. I don’t know what those tools are, but I’d like to find out. So ThPM is experimenting with that right now. Practicing the practice of compassion.

This week we looked at the genocide in Sudan, which is 18 months old and absolutely appalling. I mean, the way the western world has responded is embarrassing and ridiculous. Seventy thousand people have died. 10,000 people a month are dying in the refugee camps in southern Sudan and across the border in Chad. They die from poor water, mosquito bites, diarrhea, and plain old starvation. Women are being gang raped – whole villages at time. Infants are being used for target practice. Have we sent peace keepers? No. Instituted sanctions? No. Heck, we’ve only recently acknowledged that it’s even genocide. Meanwhile all the men have been killed, and the crops can’t get planted and we’re looking at at least a year with no food, not to mention a generation of orphans.

I don’t know how to respond to this anymore than the next shell shocked reader of BBC.com. But I want to respond with compassion, not denial. And I don’t want to do it alone. So, following the advice of Jen Lemen, my two little girls and I gave it a shot. First we made a visual to help us pray. In a tricked out shoe box-cum-triptych we pasted pictures of the Sudanese refuges, quotes from news magazines, and the basic info on who’s fighting who. Then we overlaid the whole thing with a transparency of a burning heart (a copy of my tattoo – it’s sort of turning into a family crest. I’m working on designing it in tile on our backyard patio.) I explained to the girls that both the enemies and the victims here get to have God’s love. That we should pray for people on both sides of the conflict.

Later, after we’d had dinner with ThPM, I did a little teach-in about what I’d learned. Afterwards Shelli sat by the Sudan box and prayed, lighting a candle for intercession. I got on-line and pledged to send a relief organization a little bit each month for a year. Folks took home slips of paper with web addresses where they could send messages to their local politicians. We sat around the table and talked the whole thing over while we “journaled” out our emotions in collages.

I felt like I’d connected with God, with her heart for the people she’s birthed, with his desire to bring justice and shalom-wholeness to the world. And I’d felt like I’d engaged, just a little bit, with the outward journey, with the trip towards extending the loving hand of Christ to the world.

Josh tells me that Sudan has oil. Lots of oil. And that therein lays the west’s silence and hesitation to act. Celeste tells me that there are Sudanese orphans who have been brought to the U.S., “lost boys” in need of foster care. There is obviously more to learn here, more to do. A journey moves onward. It’s not a matter of taking one step and standing still. But it feels ever-so-good to have gone a little ways down the road.

That’s why we’re here.