Confessions of a *Failure

Coffee, Conversation, And Community development

Andrea, my wife of six years this June 1st, is finishing her MBA in ecconomic development from, and I was able to spend an evening with her class, which confirmed my need to be around more thinking Christians. People who are engaged in the world, realizing, “hey I can not change the world, but I can make an impact, and I can find a role in this great big world that fits…”

This Past weekend my friend Josh Smith and wife Gina Smith came up from Maryland to celebrate his graduation from .

Friday evening Jared Byas , Josh and I sat on the upper porch off my “man room” to be… and spoke of our dreams to develope community to see trasformation of culture and lives for the betterment of the the world.

lately I’ve been thinking

So I have been thinking a lot about this title of my blog…

I do not like it anymore… (Any suggestions?)

Here is why:

Every month since December I face a goal that seems larger than my capability to fulfill. There is a sense of fear all around me and I wake up with my heart racing. It is that moment when I think:

I need a drink.
What if we don’t make it?
How will we reach our goal?

Then I start to process these feelings and thoughts.

I fight the feeling of rage.
I become paralyzed by the amount of work before me.
Then I try to numb my feelings.
This has never worked.

I think it is time to confront the basic fear of humanity.

Death, the end of it all, or is it a new beginning.
One day I will find out.

Till then there is a practical need to be met and I have accepted the responsability. What is funny about this free verse i just wrote, is that I am talking about sales goals… These goals are based on the bottom line of helping people, yet I act as though i can not help myself.

Here is what has helped;

1. A return to the Spiritual formation that healed me once before; the desire to have a relationship with Christ.

However, I do not know how anymore. I think it is in reading and understanding the simple concept and impossibility of the Gospel, then By faith taking a step toward the belief that The Kingdom has come and will come again, at any moment someone can lay their life down for another and in the moment the Kingdom is revealed.

2. Cooking; I love grilling and preparing meals for people. (If you are interested let me know.) I realized with a little investment in healthy, tasty food, I feel better about my responsibility to my body.

3. Planning; I love planning for the future and seeing dreams realized. I believe we were created to become more fully alive and in that experience of reconciliation to the Creator we experience the Kingdom; healing, hope and the fulfillment of the Story. I am not the end…

4. A new apartment; Moving into a space where the ceiling is nine feet high. Recently, Andrea and I moved in the apt. Off the back of my parents house. They gave me the greatest gift, allowing us to pick the colors and carpet. This may be the greatest contribution to the expression of who I am. I love interior expression through design.

5. Community; I realized recently that the “living room” which is a group of individuals practicing simple communal activities once a week that reflect the call of the Gospels. Caring for the inward and outward needs of the greater community, sharing a meal, playing a game, listening to a story, hearing a teaching, singing a song, confronting a difference, embracing the discomfort in another person, helping each other experience the Kingdom.

6. Movies; I love movies more than books. I am picky about what I watch, and some of the best stories have helped me recently like;
This is a story that begs the question, “what if mental illness is a way for the person to communicate?” What if the person suffering needs the illness? What if the suffering is processing? What if a community embraced all of the person even the illness it self?

7. Family; I have the pleasure of working with my family to realize a dream. A coffee company that supports community development; community of communities, connecting the disconnected people of the under developed world through the industry of coffee.

When other people seem to have more fun

Lately I have been morning my inability of having fun.

Then I realized fun is a choice I am not making in my day to day decisions.

I have become obsessed by the work I long to complete that is un completable on a large scale.

There are things that are fun for me, i am now doing.

Cooking being one of them.

My goal is to find ways to eat more food that is a live than processed. I would like create meals based around that theme and see how my body reacts. How weird that this is fun for me.

Watching American Idol has been fun for me lately.
I love it when a singer gets it right, they pick the right song and connect with the harmonies and melodies of the moment. This is embaressing how fun this is for me.

I like walking my dog in the morninig. I try to run but I get to tired quickly. It would be fun to be in good shape again.

I like reading a chapter in a book and pondering the ideas presented. I have fun thinking about the possibility that God is involved in every little detail of living.

i would like to pay more attention to my body, my breathing my eating. I want to think of my self, more than my thoughts or my emotions. How is that possible and why do I long to be more than my thinking, and doing?

There is so much depth to living that I have only tasted in part and I want to swallow it whole.

Going away scares me

This weekend I will go away with some friends to North Carolina.

In preparation for this trip I think about a couple things:

How much money will i spend?
How far will I be behind in my work on my return?
How much sleep will I get?

IN these questions is the suggested assumption that negative things will take place.

The realization from this is a negative outlook on traveling.

A loss of control and a feeling of vulnerability.

However, if you were to ask me one of my favorite things, i would reply, “traveling”.

How odd, don’t you think?

Wanting the Best for People

I had a conversation with one of the people on our Sales Team.

This is an amazing person with a heart to serve others. He is caught in a place I have found myself in several times. A place where hard work is just not enough of a motivation to do everything in there power to succeed.

I know he wants to do what is right and I believe he will.

This is how I know I want what is best for people.

When I surrender the right to tell them, when i believe in more than my own instinct.

I would like to be like this more often…

How about you?

What is a Preacher

A preacher is one who communicates the gospel to people.

I have often found it hard to view the pastor as the soul preacher, even more now than before. Today we have all sorts of preaching but very little gospel revelation.

I have scene the gospel and I have experienced the Kingdom in the most unlikely of places. The parts of the Gospels that inspire me are the part where the impossible is realized or the wrong is made right. IE, sitting with sinners, healing the sick or talking to woman.

There are parts of the Gospels so human they often go un noticed by most evangelicals, parts that reveal the very nature of man and the very possibility of God.

Tomorrow night I will share the story of One Village Coffee to over 100 employees of a Whole Foods Market in my community. This is an opportunity I am grateful for. From the perspective of the listener, I am just another voice in the market of wholesaling goods through their venue. From my perspective I am a man apart of a emerging organization designed around organic principles of growth. Care for the customer and contribution to greater society, the enabling of the poor to sustain a society longing for growth and change.

I am a simple person full of dreams for more than I can create, the possibility that God is involved in Creation and wants all of us to be involved together. Tomorrow night will be a moment like that, and my only hope is that I will be aware enough to see the Gospel. The place were the Good News of God So loved the World… The space and time where The Creator steps in and Create His image, divulging the secret of the Universe…

There is a God and that God is love, and in Him there is no darkness at all…

Wont you pray with me…

The Hardest Thing to Do is Try

For over a year now, I have been apart of One Village Coffee.

We are a group of people trying to help children through funding development in overlooked regions of the world.

We are a Coffee Roaster, providing sustainably certified coffee to the conscious customer.

We are an educator, storyteller and believer.

There is more to starting something than being good…

With out the common value of change, wrong choices and painful experiences we would not be here still alive and growing.

This past year has tested my beliefs, confidence and understanding. Almost every day I am in over my head. For the past month I have immersed myself in coffee equipment and brewing technique. It is my goal to create a program for people who love coffee and the way it can develop community.

I long for community…

Ever since I left vocational ministry to pursue the dream that is the Kingdom: the belief that God is involved in His creation and longs for the created to take part in,

The restoration of relationships
The acceptance of the un accepted
The empowering of the poor
The development of Freedom
The community of Faith.

I wake up with a small understanding of the mess of the Gospel:
Giving up the right to do what is best for me and only me.
To consider others that I see as less than me, better than me.

I can not be who I am created to be with out the constant reminder of how scary this is:
Life and the pursuit of happiness,
True success, in the upside down world

A capitalistic tool of business, marketing, and sales:
Providing a commodity produced in the under developed countries through the industry of Coffee.

Marketing our product to the customer who believes paying more is supporting more:
I sometimes struggle with the idea of capitalistic gain through the helping of the poor.
I sometimes struggle with the sale of an idea or dream.

Concepts that we are a people who are made to co create and begin to build a better world.

I am not sure what all of this means, but it is helpful to write it out.

Sorry it has been so long…

Who wants to see these movies?

Films are at best art and at the least, entertainment and a form of recreation.

My friend Ed Travis who writes for Hollywoodjesus is the one who helped me realize films are just that, movies. they are not right or wrong they are about something, they have purpose, you can disagree with what a movie is about or the purpose of it, but you can not say it is wrong.

Ok, there are some discrepancies, obviously porn is one of them, but the purpose behind pornographic movies is not to tell a story, it is to turn you on. I do not put porn into the same category as the type of film I am referencing. The reason I think it is important to look at films as art and not as right or wrong is because when we do that we limit the possibility of what can be used to open us up to God and bring us into relationship with the world/people we are relationship with.

With music, art and film I live in conflict with the part of my brain formed in the evangelical world view. It is hard for me to enter a story depicting evil and not feel ill, like I am doing something wrong.

A film made with the purpose of exposing humanity allows me to enter a story and have something revealed about myself, this something I have come to appreciate and value.
My favorite films of all time have very different values, and have changed through out my life, here are a few:

Magnolia, Life as a House and Legends of the Fall,

This is a film recommended to me by my friend David Decker, he is an artist and i enjoy hearing his perspective on most anything.

This may be the most anticipated movie of the year for me: young@heart there just are not a lot of feel good movies out there, I don’t find boring.

What I expect from movies like young@heart is:

To feel good when I leave.
A cathartic experience of hope, laughter and tears.
A memory with a friend.

The movies of 07 that stand out in my mind are, No Country for Old Men and There will be Blood

If you have not scene these two movies do not go expecting to feel good after words. but if you expect the portrayal of raw humanity and enter the story you might find a depth to your nature you where not aware of.

Why do you watch movies?

What are some of your favorite films?

Let the “No” define you and the “Yes” inspire…

I can not stop thinking about how good it felt after a sales meeting when a president of a local grocery store said, “I can not go with your coffee because It would be like shooting myself in the head.” What he was saying in my perspective is: you do not represent what I want.

Stop for just one min and contemplate that:

“Your product is not what I want.”

This is a phrase communicated though out the day in the economy of people. We are communicating all the time about what we want and what we do not want.

“Let the No define you and the Yes inspire you…” rang in my ear as I walked out that meeting late one night.

What people want defines who they are. When we cloud what we want with words from another vocabulary we miscommunicate to people. When we do not say what we mean we miscommunicate and confuse others. Then we become frustrated by the no, the passive aggressive no.

The metaphor of product as people is a bit controversial, and I enjoy entering in the conversation of consumerism a “buzz” word that interests me.

Here is what I hear when I listen to people talking about consumerism as bad.
I hear:

“you must watch what you buy”
“scrutinize every purchase”
“become a conservationist”
“don’t buy certain things”

I hear a generalization of the natural order of society, which is production and consumption.

I am a producer and people I sell to are consumers or customers. In order to make a transaction I need to connect to the basic need of that person, to consume what I produce.

What I am saying is this, most people are extremely picky about what they buy or do not buy, and in doing so, put people in catagories intentionally or unintentionally by what they buy. The conversation I have been apart of is more about categorizing people than it is about responsibility.

Here are some questions:
Is it more sustainable or socially responsible for a low income family to shop at Walmart?
Can the only middle and upper class families shop green?

A reflection on communion as talked about in the gospels/acts.

Jesus used the consumption language in communion and it dumbfounds me to this day.
Are we suppose to consume relationships?
Are we missing the point of relationships by categorizing people by what they consume?

For example:
Do we love overweight people less? (they consume a lot of food, right?)
Do we judge someone who wares a t-shirt that represents something we resent.

Have our judgments become resentments leading to categories for people? Affect they way we treat others.

Here is what I have observed.

People are starting to judge others and make cases against others,
The question being asked is who is in and out of their community.
Who is lost and does not get it?
Are they worth talking to and listening to what they say?

Is what they represent not what you are looking for and therefor like shooting yourself in the head?

Here is what I know:
Jesus brought those outside of the religious community in, and he even consumed or took part in unholly things, like wine and healing on the sabbath. I like how confusing Jesus becomes when we put him in our context and I like how simple the gospel becomes when we look at the gospel story literally.

Side note: I hope this was as fun to read as it was to write

What $1000 did for Bala

This is a letter sent from the director of NIFES, Bala Usman.

I am posting this because I want people to understand how much we have been given, and how much a little will do. This is a dear friend of our family and the reason we set off to start a coffee company, One Village Coffee, in order to support Non-Profit. We are currently working on starting an umbrella non-profit, Open Hand Initiative (OHI) for all the over looked people doing this kind of work around the world.

Right now there is a partnership forming with the MAMA project and the Nigerian leaders through my father. The reason we want to start this non profit which will be funded through One Village Coffee, grants, personal donations and other business’s is due to the rising interest in the involvement our family has internationally.

We are the connectors to communities around the world and it is time to tell the story of these amazing people do so much with so little.

Here the words of Bala:

Dear Hackman,

Warm regards to you and your family.

Beloved, you are the blessing that God has blessed to see that our vision and dream of transforming Africa through the Nigeria.
This is to personally and formally thank you for the timely gift you sent to help with our Coffee farm development which is a basis of enhancing
thousands being enhanced and empowered to make impact and reduce the poverty level of our people. The said amount came to N116, 300:00 because they gave me some lower denominations for $900@N119 (N107, 100) and the $80 @N115 ( N9,200) and the balance of ($20) was charged
as commission for the transfer from the USA. I feel deeply concerned for and loved by your act of mercy and care for the unknown. May his Love overwhelm you.

This is the summary and briefs for the total sum sent:

The sum of N72, 500 earmarked for the bore hole due to its dept and materials and labor. The boreholes work has started and will be finished by tomorrow.
The sum of N24, 000 earmarked for the cow dung manure, which has been supplied, and
The sum of N12, 500 to pay the workers for the month of December -January 2008.
The sum of N3, 500 earmarked for the fuel towards the watering.
The balance of N1000 I used it to buy phone card for phone calls and 2,800 gas for my car and movement for supervision.

These are the things that we are able to do at the school.

I used the balance to purchase 16 bags of cement @ N1, 530 and used it to floor the 5 classes (N24, 480). We also did deposit N 25,500: for the roof Hedges to cover the open areas of the roof and then fixed the window louver glasses costing N14, 160 against the cold weather to protect the children. The chicken birds were sold and we used them to settle our children fees (N135, 000: 00)

I WILL LIKE to APPRECIATE and keep thanking you for your graciousness and kindness to make us have less tension and more relaxed mind. I am humbled by your thoughtfulness.

I AM DEEPLY GRATEFUL FOR THE THOUGHT OF MOBILISING A TEAM TO HELP BUILD TH OTHER PART OF THE SCHOOL. You talked about working to gather the materials for the building. Sir, Can I know what and what I should begin to gather and put together? We are deeply overwhelmed over your desire and discussion to have people mobilized to support and come build or help work on the building in the school
Grace and I are praying and planning to have some time spending part of my Rest in 2008. Love to your wife and the Children.