If you have ever been to Mighty Oak during school hours, Mr. Mike was most likely the one to greet you and welcome you into the building. He is the Mighty Oak Security Guard, always on watch, always patrolling making sure our students are as safe as possible. While Mr. Mike has only been in this position for a couple of years, he has been part of Love City’s family, and this community, for much longer.
At Love City, we know that we are just stewards of God’s resources. Nothing that we ‘own’ personally, or as an organization, is really ours. We just watch over it, use it when God tells us to, and use it for who God tells us to. While this is a big principle in Love City that we strive to live by, it is really encouraging when we see the community living the same way, and we have gotten to see a couple of those instances just in the past week.
Living in a neighborhood with older houses creates many problems when temperatures begin to drop. Pipes bust, poorly insulated houses chill quickly, and fires in abandoned houses from people just trying to stay warm all become common issues. The good part about being in community is that we are able to help one another out.
A few months ago I wrote a Love Letter about the Crosses and Crowns that are associated with each other in the Kingdom of Heaven. It is a paradox, a literary tool that puts forth two seemingly contradictory ideas to reveal a deeper truth that one idea alone could not fully communicate. It is like a dollar bill, when one side is printed on and the other is blank, it is a great prop for a movie, but when both sides are printed on then it gains actual value. Paradoxes are used all throughout scripture, like crosses and crowns, lions and lambs, and the servant-leader. There is another paradox that is ingrained into our society, but not always recognized: the personal and communal God.
Over the break, I got the chance to go see the new Wonka movie. This week, our eighth graders got the chance to go see this same movie. If you aren’t familiar with the franchise of Willy Wonka books and movies, they are about an eccentric candy maker who lives in a fantastical world of candy creations. The latest movie is about the origin of this candy maker, where we get insight into how Willy Wonka became who he is. It is a beautiful story about how a boy with no family, no money, nothing but a dream, came to help change the world with his candy.
Let’s start off the New Year with a joyful look on some of our students’ thoughts on God and Love. If you missed the first post looking at our Kindergarten through Fourth Grader’s ideas, you can read it here. This post contains the Fifth through Eighth Graders that I interviewed. All of these answers are our students’ words that have only been edited when needed for clarity in written form.
At Mighty Oak, we teach our students about God through Love. We do not have any hermeneutical or theological curriculum or assessments, so I wanted to share some conversations I had this week with our students. I interviewed one student from each grade and asked them what they know about God and Love, this week I will share the responses of our Kindergarten to Fourth Graders. These responses have been lightly edited by me for clarity in writing, but they are our students' words.
When Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and into the wilderness, they were stepping out on faith. They were leaving harsh conditions, but conditions where their basic needs for survival were met. Yet in the wilderness, they walked into nothing, with their only chance of survival being God’s provisions. Even through their disobediences and complaints, God provided manna and quail. Not just enough for them to survive, but an abundance where everyone was filled and there were still more provisions. In 1 Kings, Elijah is called out into the desert, and God sends his provisions by ravens. Throughout scripture and history God has provided for His people. At Love City, we are fortunate enough to get to witness God’s provisions for our community first hand.
One thing that I have learned over the years at Love City is that community has many different aspects, and it is multi layered. We may think of community as one thing, but then see it in places we wouldn’t initially have expected. There have been many times when I have been so focused on our community, that I’ve missed the fact that those that are called to join our mission are a part of our community also. They give of themselves, are dedicated to the people both in the neighborhood and at Love City, and often the miracles they see in their lives are just as important and impactful as the miracles we see in our neighborhood. This week we had a miracle in our community, it was with one of our staff members at Mighty Oak Academy, and that miracle overflowed to encourage not just me, or our staff, but our students and our neighbors as well. And since we view all of you, as our neighbors in this journey as well, I wanted to share that miracle with you all.
We just wanted to take a moment to say thank you on this week of Thanksgiving. Thank you all for your support, in prayer, time volunteering, finances donated, and all support that you give us. You help support us and the mission that we believe creates real change in our neighborhood and city. We hope that you all have a blessed time with family and friends this holiday. I wanted to give you a reminder that the Fish Fry will be closed this week. If you are anything like me, you might usually close out of the email and skip the advertisements at the bottom of these letters. But please just take a moment to look this week at some alternative ways that you can help by looking at our apparel options or contacting us about any catering needs you have this holiday season. Thank you, Love you all, and Happy Thanksgiving.
If you have followed Love City for awhile, you have probably stopped by for a Fish sandwich on a Friday. What started as a small fundraiser to raise money to pay the LGE bills for after school programs has continued to grow over the years. We take pride in the quality of our service and in creating an inviting atmosphere that brings people from all over the city together. Now it is one of our main regular sustainability measures that we have. It is an event that requires our entire team to pitch in every week to help put on, and it is a beautiful depiction of community.
Edification is the building up of individuals and community. It builds individuals by affirming who they are created to be, their uniqueness, their individual gifts and callings. It builds community because when individuals lean into who they are called to be, it helps fill community needs. A cyclical effect that then proceeds to edify more individuals. I like to imagine the edification that Jesus spoke over his disciples, “Matthew, you are more than a tax collector, you are not here to put this burden on your people but to help set them free”. Sometimes we don’t even have to imagine what those conversations looked like, we see it in scripture when Jesus tells Simon Peter and Andrew that they are more than fishermen, they are called to be fishers of men in the Kingdom (Matt. 4:19).
When you walk through the doors of the Fish Fry at Porkland, the first thing you are greeted by is a picture. It grabs everyone's attention. It is nothing flashy, it doesn’t pop out from colors but it always gets attention. It is a panoramic picture of the First Solemn Mass in the new Saint Cecilia Church. It was taken in 1927 on the steps of the church building with everyone from infants to elders, altar children to priests. Old cars and buildings that no longer exist surround the perimeter. It is a picture of community, and it continues to serve its purpose of building community to this day.
Some of my favorite moments to witness are those of compassion between students. These moments of care are so pure, jovial, and innocent; they reflect the Father’s heart, the actions of Jesus. I don’t believe these are moments that can be taught, no matter how much consideration and thoughtfulness or social emotional skills we try to teach and instill in our students, it is ultimately up to them whether they choose to step into a compassionate moment because compassion requires action. I think if anything, these moments are Loved into existence. From the overflow of Love a student feels, a compassionate act can be born.
Since the start of Mighty Oak, we have wanted to provide our students with experiences. Experiences that expose them to new things, that get them out of Portland, out of their comfort zone. If we get them out of their comfort zone, then we get them into a state where they are forced to learn more about themselves and the world around them. That is why we have art classes and culinary classes and community service projects. It is why we like to get our kids out of the building to learn.
The past month or so, our Love Letters have been filled with ways of getting involved with our mission. Ways of being able to get involved in the school, helping with lunches, coaching, tutoring. Ways of being able to help change our city with your time. Now, we have another way that you can get involved and help support our mission.
This Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were Mighty Oak’s Fall break. I have talked in the past about how important it is to rest, to enter into a Sabbath and allow yourself to recuperate mentally, physically, and emotionally during these breaks. For our students that is what the break was, but a few of us spent time building a fence, buffing floors, and cleaning sidewalks. Why spend time doing these things? Why work on these improvements, instead of resting; these projects that, if they had not been done, would not have been noticeable amidst the boarded up buildings and precarious houses that are all throughout our neighborhood? Because these projects are just as important. We see that importance if we look back through history.
There have been 150 years of prayers that have been prayed on Saint Cecilia’s campus. Opened in 1873, I am sure many of those prayers had been for a great community; a great community for the children to grow up in with a beautiful future on the horizon. I know for a fact that our neighbor Ms. Betty, who has spent her whole life in Portland, had been praying for a good school to open in our neighborhood for her nephew to go to. I like to believe that God is using Love City to answer some of those prayers that have been uttered over the past 150 years. Many times, God does use people to help answer the prayers of others, weaving people into one another’s lives for his plan.
When we started Mighty Oak at the beginning of 2021, we were still in the midst of the pandemic. We all wore face masks, knowing each other by half of our faces. As the pandemic slowed we all became comfortable going maskless once again, revealing ourselves to each other once again. For most of our students it was a relief, they couldn’t get their masks off quick enough. However, there were a few that kept their mask, not for virus protection but as a form of hiding.
