You say the decision to write a book was not an easy one for you.
There is always a tension between living life authentically small, but also making something accessible to the many who are yearning for something more in Christianity. I want to communicate the journey I made from a suffocating, judgmental culture to experiencing a lot of grace—I know how it has changed me and I see how it has changed others. You know, I look at Jesus and others I admire and they didn't say much, but the way they lived is compelling. I have sometimes felt resistant to speaking and writing, but I was changed by seeing over and over how powerful stories are.
You write about Jesus' radical economics and note that you will apply this vision to earnings from The Irresistible Revolution.
These are not my stories. They belong to the people in my neighborhood and to those who shared their lives with me, and so I want to share the benefits of the book. My community has already set up a separate account we are calling the Jubilee Fund—the name evokes the biblical year of Jubilee designed to dismantle inequality. And we will share the earnings with other communities of ordinary radicals.
Christianity Today recently featured you on its cover, calling your movement "the New Monasticism." What do you think of that label?
That language communicates to a certain group of people who can identify with those terms. If I said "new monasticism" to my neighbors, they'd say, "what's that?" But what is healthy about that language is that it locates us within ecclesiastical history. Historically, when the empire of the day begins to act in God's name, individuals like Francis of Assisi have sprung up to offer renewal in the abandoned places of the empire. For us, those places are not the desert—they are the inner city.
Do you feel like a monk?
I've been called an "urban monk" all the time. In some ways I do—I identify with Francis of Assisi. To be monastic just means being single-minded, falling in love with God. Monks live simply and have mystical, even erotic, encounters with God. I definitely feel connected to the spirit of monasticism. But we're not superhuman saints. I love Dorothy Day's saying: "Don't call us saints; we don't want to be dismissed that easily." That's why I use the term "ordinary radicals."
The joy in your writing is infectious and you mention that you went to clown school. How often do you get to use those skills in your ministry?
[laughs]Not as often as I would like! I think what I love about the circus is that it taunts death. The resurrection was maybe the greatest circus act ever.
