Kati Stanford
About Mission Year
Mission Year is a year long urban ministry program focused on Christian service and discipleship. We take teams of young people, place them in an area of need, and help them to serve people and create community. We are committed to the command of Jesus to “love God and love people,” by placing the needs of our neighbors first and developing committed disciples of Christ with a heart for the poor. Learn more about our first year program…
Kati Stanford's Blog
you're scintillating / May 25, 08:48 PM
today i just drifted
in this (brand) Newport, concrete, rubber-banded rift.
beyond existing,
i have few gifts to list.
sustain me so i may share my life as well,
don’t let me destroy Your work for the sake of food.
my eyelids flag with grueling beauty:
i still feel asleep in the brown, metal, upstairs chairs,
and i am asleep when she asks me where she can go
(i no longer dream of the possibilities!)
what can we cherish if we sleep with no dreams?
what can i treasure if i see no assurance?
let’s exhume He who is intrinsically Love.
because there is sound you can see!
watch it walk through the 2nd and 7th floor.
standing sentinel / Feb 27, 03:09 PM
the potential of tomorrow is something i find beautiful.
hope is pressed down, shaken together, and running over in tomorrow.
tomorrow’s promise is crippling.
because the possibilities, plans, potentials; they agitate and disfigure my today, my now, what is real here in this moment.
‘tomorrow i can climb it, walk it, break it, love it, say it, mean it, burn it;’
NO!
it must be now!
build it, bridge it, speak it, find it, meet it,
now, here,
not after the illusive rest that tomorrow advertises.
tomorrow is a beautiful idea but a fall back none the less.
doing now, seeking now, asking now,
in exhaustion, in awkwardness, in drudgery,
yes that is exquisite.
knock on the doddering door of opportunity,
wait on its doorstep,
break in through its windows,
scream for it, demand it come outside in the whipping snow and meet you.
there has never been anything false about hope. / Feb 6, 04:19 PM
my ideas are not new, my mistakes are not unique.
if God is bigger than music,
and is not confined to a Biblical translation,
and is found in alcoholic, slurred speech,
and in sorrow,
and in the “secular”
and in that stunning turquoise color on the wall,
and in warmth,
and if He is in everything beautiful and decrepit, (in everything),
then what the hell am I waiting for?
excerpt / Jan 9, 11:40 AM
“If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own. We listen to people in other denominations and religions. We don’t find demons in those with whom we disagree. We don’t cozy up to people who mouth our jargon. If we are open, we rarely resort to either/or—either creation or evolution, liberty or law, sacred or secular, Beethoven or Madonna. We focus on both/and, fully aware that God’s truth cannot be imprisoned on a small definition. Of course, the open mind does not accept everything indiscriminately— Marxism and capitalism, Christianity and atheism, love and lust, Moet Chandon and vinegar. It does not absorb all propositions equally like a sponge, nor is it as soft. But the open mind realizes that reality, truth, and Jesus Christ are incredibly open-ended.“
—the ragamuffin gospel
flight! / Dec 19, 03:25 PM
I have been excited to go home for Christmas since….September.
Not out of discomfort or a longing to leave Chicago,
but I’ve just been excited!
But today I said goodbye to Mary.
I might not see her again, because in 2 weeks, a lot of women can come and go,
and she is moving out into her own apartment Jan 1.
And for a second, I didn’t want to go home.
And then for a whole minute I didn’t want to go home.
It’s lunch time and going home still seems bittersweet.
And by the end of today, I will have to say goodbye to ALL the women here.
I will be thankful for rest with my family and friends in Colorado.
and it’s only two weeks.
I guess I am exceptionally attached my Breakthrough family.
Mary, Mo, Tanya, Sara, Deanna, Gidget, Sharron, Clinique.
Praise G-d, for these relationships that have changed my life.
