Fabric Podcast

One big reason you need to find your own living room is to help others find theirs. When we focus on protecting rather than creating space others get pushed out with nowhere to go. This isn’t just figurative, folks. People who haven’t had a seat at the tables of power are cut off from the stuff of life. If God is about anything, it’s about including, loving, making space for everyone. And you don’t have to lose your space to give it to others. In fact, you will only truly find yours when you share it.
In this episode, Chris Lillehei shares his thoughts, stories, and experience to help us make living room for others.
Find the outline and related resources at https://www.fabricmpls.com/scraps. Also watch for our regular "scraps" podcasts where we talk through other ideas and parts of the message that ended up on the cutting room floor.
You can support Fabric as a community and help to bring messages and experiences like this to more people at https://www.fabricmpls.com/give. Thank you!

There are fewer and fewer places you can’t be reached. Fewer and fewer experiences, events, happenings not being reported to the world via social media. And that’s just because of your smartphone! There is also your job, school, friends and family who all expect they can reach you whenever, wherever. Psychologists and therapists are telling us this inescapable availability is creating the most anxious generations ever. Let’s talk about your living room.
Find the outline and related resources at https://www.fabricmpls.com/scraps. Also watch for our regular "scraps" podcasts where we talk through other ideas and parts of the message that ended up on the cutting room floor.
You can support Fabric as a community and help to bring messages and experiences like this to more people at https://www.fabricmpls.com/give. Thank you!

"Lent" has been used as a tool for beating up on ourselves, but is there something helpful to glean from practices of self-denial, discipline, and space-making? Greg, Chris, and Melissa dig in to the ways that they're using this season to build practices, capacity and focus. 

Why be welcomed to your own living room? Maybe because you haven’t found it yet. Seriously, something about the world these days gets us so wrapped up in great stuff that our room to live is squeezed out. So much so that Greg Meyer is willing to start this conversation rolled in in a box. It's so easy for life to become all about keeping up, packing it in, making the most of, and not being left out. What gives way for all that to happen? You!
Find the outline and related resources at https://www.fabricmpls.com/scraps. Also watch for our regular "scraps" podcasts where we talk through other ideas and parts of the message that ended up on the cutting room floor.
You can support Fabric as a community and help to bring messages and experiences like this to more people at https://www.fabricmpls.com/give. Thank you!

Terry, a longtime friend of Fabric, has been turning people's thinking upside down his whole life. His books “Blue Collar God / White Collar God” and “Surprise Me, God” did it. He then turned generosity on its head starting Free Bikes 4 Kidz in 8 cities giving away 5-6000 bikes a year. Just this month Terry stood us all on our heads publishing “Jesus asks America to kindly ‘cease & desist’ in using his name” in City Pages. In this episode, we get to relish the challenge and do a little paradigm adjustment with stories and wisdom from Terry Esau.
Find related resources at https://www.fabricmpls.com/scraps. Also watch for our regular "scraps" podcasts where we talk through other ideas and parts of the message that ended up on the cutting room floor.
You can support Fabric as a community and help to bring messages and experiences like this to more people at https://www.fabricmpls.com/give. Thank you!

There is no doubt that living in a small “t” truth world is harder. Nothing is ever settled once and for all. We have to keep thinking and considering how what we believe applies right now. But for all that trouble it can also breathe grace into unforgiving rules, return suppleness to rigid systems and open space in too tight to fit categories. This episode asks how better questions, curiosity and movement can make the shift and bring life.
Find the outline and related resources at https://www.fabricmpls.com/scraps. Also watch for our regular "scraps" podcasts where we talk through other ideas and parts of the message that ended up on the cutting room floor.
You can support Fabric as a community and help to bring messages and experiences like this to more people at https://www.fabricmpls.com/give. Thank you!

It’s one thing to talk about the different worlds of Big “T” Truth and small “t” truth, but the real challenge is becoming fluent and comfortable in the small “t” world.  In this episode, we take a little time to cultivate space for truth. 
The text from the original poem that Chris Tripolino shares in this episode can be found here:
 
Today I had the courage to come to your house
I would have been mostly content to stand upon the threshold
But something within me reached out
And rang the bell
 
You came and welcomed me in
as a friend
Without a thought of the arrogant things I’ve said
about you
And right away I could see 
I was wrong anyway
 
These weren’t the sterile halls
Glass and polished ivory
There is life here; wisdom, and magic
 
Your house is full of children
Their songs and laughter echoing sweetly through the corridors
Elders sit at your table
and sometimes speak
But break the silence reverently, reluctantly interrupting a friend
 
The poets play in your fields
The scientists know to stay nearby
The theologians sit on the fences beyond
An interesting view, an uncomfortable seat
An unprompted vow to abstain
from experiencing these lands firsthand
 
Yes, there are many who live far beyond
The politicians in their perches knowing when to speak your name
The pundits, editorializing, obscuring
selling tickets as if the view was the main event
 
The rest, perhaps content to live on the borderlands
In the shadow of your gates
A s I was 
For a time
 

Chris Tripolino and Greg Meyer talk about some of the ways that society (especially Western Christianity) has gotten good at petrifying some of the profound parts of life. It's worth noticing where it happens to make it easier to avoid and keep focusing on the places full of life!