Closing of a Season
Written by Allie Sampson
Photographed by Sydnee Mela & JD Gravitt
As the Cageless Birds community, we have set our hands and hearts to so many things. We release albums and books, create art, run an online store, take photos and create videos, roast coffee, craft leather goods and take on building projects. Though we spend six months out of the year creating and growing the Cageless Birds collective, we believe that there is no greater thing we can invest in than people. In the other six months of the year, we host two discipleship schools: Phase I and Phase II of the 18 Inch Journey. We consistently refer to the discipleship season as the highlight of our year, and while we value art and love creating, we have found that seeing people come face to face with Jesus is the most rewarding thing we can invest in. More than songs, more than words, more than art, we believe that the effects of a person who has encountered the love of God will change the course of eternity. At the heart of the Cageless Birds collective is the dream for discipleship — to see a generation wake up to who they are as sons and daughters; to see a generation changed by the Love of God.
Last Friday we closed this year’s 18 Inch Journey and we were blown away by the Goodness of God in the lives of each of the 32 students. They each came in to the school unsure of what the sixty days would bring, but ready and willing to give Jesus their yes. Throughout the school, they discovered the power of their willing and humble hearts. They consistently came to the end of their ability and made the powerful choice to let God meet them, help them and change them. Through the creative collectives, teachings, cleaning times, work duties and assignments, they unpacked this one simple truth: dependency on the Holy Spirit is the key to sustainability. Over the two months, the students found themselves in the middle of moments that challenged them and pressed them in many different areas. It was in these moments that their character was forged as they learned the power of their choice: to refuse His help and stay the same, or to make space for the Holy Spirit to speak into their lives and change them. Over and over again, these students chose to let the Father tear down their walls and to welcome the process of becoming a new creation. From standing on chairs and declaring who God is for them to creating paintings to declare who they are as sons and daughters to letting family see and celebrate them, they faced their fears and they were transformed. As we sat down at an extravagant dinner table, we reflected on all that the Father did in their lives in such a short time and we were overcome with gratitude. Truly, He is faithful.
Tonight our entire community will sit down at another beautiful feast as we close our Phase II school. These ten students all chose to come back for another season in the woods of Sophia, North Carolina. They said yes to six months of discipleship, humility, growth and servant leadership. They said yes to Jesus, and they have been profoundly changed. As we sit together for one final dinner, we will hear from each of the ten as they read their exit statements and seal their season by proclaiming what the Father has done for them, who they have discovered Him to be, and who they are as they step into their next season. We will laugh deeply and weep earnestly as we remember how faithful the Father is to each one. We will close this season with celebration and bless them as they bravely step into their next seasons. Tonight, around the table, we will honor the incredible journey of each of their lives and raise our glasses to the Author of their stories. It has been our deep privilege to walk with them, lead them, live alongside them and love them. We are forever grateful for the season the Father gave us with these ten. Their lives are saturated with hope, and we are certain that beautiful things are ahead for each of them because they have cultivated friendship with the Father and surrendered themselves to the best leader that they will ever have: the Holy Spirit.
After closing the Phase II school this evening, our community will be taking some time off to visit our families and loved ones over the Thanksgiving holiday. The Cageless Birds community will resume our normal rhythms in December. We pray that you have a restful holiday. We look forward to sharing more from our community with you this soon!
The Value of Meals
Written by Ella Roselt
Photographed by Sydnee Mela
“Encouragement is the table family feasts at.”
David Burbach
It is one of the greatest honours of my life to be a member of the kitchen staff team (captained by the phenomenal Martha McRae) at A Place for the Heart because the kitchen is right at the heart of the ministry. Meal times are an essential part of our everyday lives and play a crucial role in establishing our core value of family and community during the 18 Inch Journey. I grew up in a family that believed in eating meals together around the table – but I didn’t understand the full value of that simple ritual until I was much older. Because it was so normal to me, I was surprised when I discovered how rare it actually is to find families that regularly take time to eat together. I was therefore so delighted, when I first came to the 18 Inch Journey in 2011, to discover that meal times are something this family deeply values and makes time for. This is because we have received food and meal times as a good gift from our good Father, and as a family we prioritize time spent around the table together.
When our Father created us, he could have designed us so that we would need food only once a week, and perhaps even that we could get it in a simplified form; like a car being re-fueled. But in His great wisdom and kindness, that is not how He dreamed up our lives. Perhaps because He wanted us to have a daily reminder (in the form of our physical hunger) that we have a spiritual hunger that may be easier to ignore, but which it is even more important that we tend to. Gathering around the table three times a day during the 18 Inch Journey reminds us of our need, and how the Father wants to meet it.
We know only a fraction of the day-to-day life of Jesus, and yet much space is given within those limited accounts to his interactions with people over the business of meals. Take for example Jesus inviting himself over to Zacchaeus’ house for a meal; the feeding of the five thousand; the fish breakfasts he cooked for his disciples on the beach; the last supper. Every meal was a significant time to Him, because it made space for family moments to happen, and he understood that the very act of eating together carried in seed form many truths of what life in the Father’s kingdom looks like.
Meal times are an essential part of our year-round lives at the farm (as we affectionately call our 52 acres). The kitchen is the heart of the land, and the table is the place we reconnect with each other after a full work day. It is where we gather to encourage each other, to swap stories, to share the hard things of life, to celebrate the victories. And so when students arrive for the 18 Inch Journey, and join us at a table for a meal, they are folding into a pre-established rhythm of honouring the life-giving space that a meal can provide. Meal times are always very intentional, and just as important as a teaching session or a collective time. It is important that we learn to dive into the depths with the Holy Spirit, and it is important that we learn to let Him lead us back up for a deep breath of fresh air. Laughter around the table is just as necessary as the laying on of hands.
We take great delight in the planning and serving of our school meals. As Papa Ken Helser says, “You can find God in everything and miss Him in anything,” and we have found so much of God in every part of the process; from the planting and tending of the garden and the harvesting of its bounty, to our weekly shopping trips; the planning of a great feast, to the fruition of a wonderful evening, and even in the washing up of dishes that comes later. We have seen the Father as Planner and Provider. We have learnt about His intentionality and the delight He takes in planning beautiful moments for us. We have discovered how He loves and leads us through serving us, and laying a place at the table for us. We have learnt how He helps clean up with us the messes we make as we create the dishes of our lives. Every student has the invitation and opportunity to learn these aspects of the Father too: the second phase students get to help us chop vegetables and lay tables in preparation for meals, and the first phase students take turns to help us clean up afterwards. All of it is full of delight because it is full of the nature of the Lord, and full of family.
In the physical, we never get to the point where we have eaten the one meal to end all meals. In both the physical and the spiritual, we will never progress beyond the cycle of becoming hungry and then having that hunger met. May we never stop becoming hungry for community, for the feasting on the Word, for communing with the Father.
Collectives
Written by Molly Skaggs
Photographed by Greg Harris
Creativity is one of the core values of the 18 Inch Journey because we know it is a key for living out a thriving life with the Trinity. We believe that we were created by a beautiful and perfect Creator, and that one of the most wonderful gifts He gave to us as image-bearers of His likeness is our hunger for and ability to create. In the journey of Wholeheartedness, we have a deep need to use our own voices and hands to create something that tells our heart’s story. We have a need to communicate and a desire to be seen and heard. While the 18 Inch Journey is not a school whose primary focus is on students becoming better, more skilled artisans, we see important purpose in incorporating weekly rhythms of creativity in focused artistic areas for the students. These are necessary times for our hearts to exhale. One of these times are Collectives, one of our favorite school rhythms.
The Collectives range greatly in artistic focus. This year, our staff is able to offer Movement, Music, Writing, Bookmaking, Darkroom Photography, and Digital Storytelling. Before they arrived to the school, we sent these choices to the students and asked them to bravely choose a Collective where they felt their hearts would be challenged. Each week for two afternoons, our students break off into their groups to work out beautiful assignments with their leaders. They are confidently led into moments of facing the fears that challenge their greatness and keeps them from being exactly who He made them to be. Students are given opportunities to walk out the process of their hearts becoming more whole as they choose Belovedness over fear and shame. Sometimes, that looks like creating something by themselves; sometimes, that looks like creating and collaborating with others. Walking out the creative process is messy, andstudents often hit walls of fear, insecurity, and inadequacy. Yet, it never fails that each time, just when our students think they have absolutely nothing to say, they have a true face-to-face encounter with the Father. He meets them in their creative processes and through His love and value for them, they learn to love and value themselves. They learn how to fall back in love with creating from Love rather than from pressure to perform or be accepted by what they can do or make.
The Collectives are little families within the bigger 18 Inch Journey Family. Here, the students learn how to not only stand up and take back their own voices, but they learn how to bravely and joyfully fight for one another. They quickly discover that the more whole and free they become as individuals deeply loved by the Father, the only natural outflow of that love is lavishing encouragement on their fellow students. Collectives can be one of the most vulnerable spaces of the entire school because they invite students to be fully seen and known by God, themselves, and one another. Love is always the agenda. Joy is always the compass. Students’ hearts are recreated by the loving hands of Jesus in the midst of family encouragement, shared laughter and tears, and deep camaraderie and fellowship. The staff believe in the power of agreement and family fighting for each other, so much so that the Collectives are some of the safest places for sons and daughters to be reborn into who they always were meant to be, without pressure or competition, prideful striving or shameful hiding.
We are six weeks in now and find ourselves as a staff consistently amazed at the bravery, vulnerability, and beauty that has come forth from our students. The way creativity unravels the human heart is remarkable — it is full of confrontations with the truth of Love and becoming undone from the false identity of being only what you can do in order to really be loved, accepted or even forgiven and wanted. Creativity has a way of putting the shovel into our own hands and giving us opportunity to really find out who we are in the eyes of Perfect Love. It is all a part of the well-digging of Sustainability for a life lived in the Holy Spirit that we practice and cultivate in the 18 Inch Journey.
At the end of the school, we host our Collectives Presentation over two nights so that the whole 18 Inch Journey family can see, touch, and hear what the beautiful love of God has done inside of the hearts of our students in each collective. They are two of our biggest nights of family celebration and joy, and we are always undone and forever changed by the power of His love and the Gospel that has reawakened inside of them. Creativity has a way of Naming us as we have always been known and named by their Originator of our design, and it is our privilege as a staff to host these safe spaces for students’ hearts to be renamed forever.
Jesus Week // Adam Cox
Written by Allie Sampson
Photographed by JD Gravitt and Sydnee Mela
Every week of the 18 Inch Journey has a specific theme or focus. Week one is Father week and this year Jonathan led us through God the Father: what He is like and His deep love for us. Last week was Jesus week and we were honored to have our dear friend Adam Cox here to share with us. Adam and his wife Juli lead Navah Church in Kansas City, MO and have been very close friends with Jonathan and Melissa for years. Each year, Adam comes and teaches at our school during Jesus week unpacking the story of Jesus in a way that unlocks our hearts and reintroduces us to who He really is. This year, our eyes and hearts were opened as he taught the importance of going from being familiar with the story of Jesus to being fascinated by Him. Our staff and students were invited to drink in the Gospel again and open ourselves up to be transformed by it and changed by it as though it was our first time hearing it. After breaking open the scriptures, Adam broke bread and served our entire school communion, looking each one in the eyes and declaring that they are the Beloved of Jesus Christ.
Each year, after Adam leaves, we find that it was not just the sessions with him that affected us, but that he truly set a spark inside our hearts. Just like the two that journeyed on the road to Emmaus with Jesus, we look back at our time with Adam and find that our hearts are burning within us as we have begun to see who Jesus really is. Many of Adam’s teachings, including his teaching on the God Story, can be found at http://www.navahchurchkc.com/god-story. We encourage you to check it out and pray that you too would find your heart burning with a deeper love for Jesus.
