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This entry was posted on 10/1/2006 6:03 PM and is filed under West.

Portland, OR
September 10

We arrived in Portland later than we anticipated, with the Civic-beach encounter and all.  It’s true.  Every word Alyssa wrote about my headstrong foray onto the Pacific coast beach is completely true.  I’m glad I did it, but I won’t be venturing off the asphalt any time soon.

Tiffany, another college friend, lives and studies counseling in Portland.  We spent a a day discovering her city and visiting her church.  The late service of course.  Tiffany belongs to a church called Imago Dei.  The church felt different than most I’ve visited.  In Portland, as in much of the Northwest, calling oneself a Christian is to take stance that is at least unusual and most likely unpopular.  Imago Dei was a church that appeared to be forging a relationship with a culture largely opposed to the idea of “christianity” via unconventional rhetoric and outreach.  I could admire a group of believers who were so intent on reaching their neighbors that they would not settle for the alienation that would quickly follow their ministry had they stuck with the usual terms and methods of evangelical christianity in the U.S.  

In Portland, where I’m told it is uncommon to be a Christian, and what’s more there is rarely such a thing as a cultural Christian, effective ministry calls for careful rethinking of how to communicate the gospel to a modern, affluent and oft-pagan setting.  I was impressed with this church’s efforts.  Since I am not familiar with the in’s and out’s of their ministry or theological underpinnings I can’t speak with any specificity.  But I am struck by how very much they wanted to see the gospel change their city and would craft the tools necessary to reach people with truth.  


[crafty mobile booth at Portland market]


[Guys playing nifty horn and "crystal ball dancing"]

After church and a trip through a downtown market for lunch, Tiffany cut us loose in the most enormous bookstore ever.  Powell’s Books is one city block, four floors high of books, books, books: used and new stuffed together in row upon row of towering, wooden shelves.  First thing you need in Powell’s is a map.  Then a game plan.  Then a long, lazy Sunday afternoon.  

If you need a book they most likely have it.  Alyssa scored a book on colonial history in Africa that had evaded her for years.  I, in typical fashion, compiled a huge list of books that I would have to check out of the library--for two reasons: I have too many books already and I am also too cheap to purchase even the most inexpensive used books these days. 



We reveled.  We rifled the stacks.  We wandered in euphoria.  We broke for coffee.  We wandered some more and left contented, an afternoon frittered away.  Portland was alright.  

Come Monday morning the road would call, but for now, our book-thirst well slaked,  we settled behind a gourmet pizza and then polished off a Harrison Ford suspense flick.


[View from a garden at Tiffany's school, Lewis & Clark U.]

 

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