Ebook A Riff of Love Notes on Community and Belonging Greg Jarrell Jonathan WilsonHartgrove 9781532633256 Books

Download As PDF : A Riff of Love Notes on Community and Belonging Greg Jarrell Jonathan WilsonHartgrove 9781532633256 Books

Surprising teachers. Tragic losses. Unexpected gifts. Every neighborhood has stories, and ways of singing the stories of their place. Start digging in, and you find all sorts of music. In a neighborhood skilled in improvisation, like Enderly Park, you also discover new ways to sing those songs, and a choir of new kinfolk to sing them with.

Since 2005, author and saxophonist Greg Jarrell has been learning the songs of Enderly Park, his Charlotte neighborhood. A Riff of Love explores the riffs and melodies that comprise the life of the neighborhood and of QC Family Tree, the hospitality house where he lives. Though neighbors there face significant economic and political barriers, they still thrive. Funny, heartbreaking, and challenging in equal measure, these stories and essays about life in Enderly Park will surely inspire new improvisations towards community and neighbor-love for everyone who reads them.

Ebook A Riff of Love Notes on Community and Belonging Greg Jarrell Jonathan WilsonHartgrove 9781532633256 Books

"Jarrell’s soulful and nuanced “riff of love” about his family’s time and his ministry in an African American neighborhood is elegantly written and convicting for white folk. Grounded in the making of jazz and a very real following after Jesus of the gospels, Jarrell leads the reader into a fullness of life in a Charlotte, NC that captures a joy and a heartbreak in urban life as well as rebellion against injustice and a compassion that does not give up. He lays out a description of white privilege in a manner that engages without being strident. He relates the deaths of two young people in a heartbreaking way yet he also surprised in describing the gentrification of his neighborhood in a gripping manner that also may prick the hearts of many an urban professional. Highly recommended!"

Product details Paperback 166 pages Publisher Cascade Books (October 12, 2018) Language English ISBN-10 1532633254

Tags : A Riff of Love Notes on Community and Belonging [Greg Jarrell, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove] on . <span>Surprising teachers. Tragic losses. Unexpected gifts. Every neighborhood has stories, and ways of singing the stories of their place. Start digging in,Greg Jarrell, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove,A Riff of Love Notes on Community and Belonging,Cascade Books,1532633254,Biography Autobiography/Religious,How-to/Do-it-yourself,Inspirational/Devotional,Non-Fiction,RELIGION / Christian Life / Social Issues,RELIGION / General,RELIGIOUS,Religion/Christian Ministry - Discipleship,Religion/Ethics,United States

A Riff of Love Notes on Community and Belonging Greg Jarrell Jonathan WilsonHartgrove 9781532633256 Books Reviews :

A Riff of Love Notes on Community and Belonging Greg Jarrell Jonathan WilsonHartgrove 9781532633256 Books Reviews

• Greg Jarrell has written an amazing, beautiful book. He and his wife,Helms, have been an inspiration to me for years--they have been living their message in community in Charlotte. But this book, with its beautiful, musical language and its kind, if searing, message is a powerful addition. As a lover of music (but not a musician), I find Greg's writing to be evocative of sound, of sight, of smell. He talks about food--the way food brings people in. His stories about shared food in community are Jesus-like in their take on what communion really is, what the table really means. His passionate call for personal and social reform, for understanding what we have been doing, particularly in regard to the gentrification of neighborhoods where there are people living, makes me think of John the Baptist--no holds barred and the protection of people he loves behind it. Everyone should read this book. Sit down and breathe. Take it in. Believe it. Let it take hold of you. Ask yourself this question, "What if he's right? How would my behavior change if this man--whose credentials of where and how and why he has lived his adult life offer enormous validity to his words--if this book is right? Repentance is a beautiful thing, because the other side of it is healing and forgiveness. And, most importantly, community, which we all need very much right now.
• Jarrell’s soulful and nuanced “riff of love” about his family’s time and his ministry in an African American neighborhood is elegantly written and convicting for white folk. Grounded in the making of jazz and a very real following after Jesus of the gospels, Jarrell leads the reader into a fullness of life in a Charlotte, NC that captures a joy and a heartbreak in urban life as well as rebellion against injustice and a compassion that does not give up. He lays out a description of white privilege in a manner that engages without being strident. He relates the deaths of two young people in a heartbreaking way yet he also surprised in describing the gentrification of his neighborhood in a gripping manner that also may prick the hearts of many an urban professional. Highly recommended!
• Greg's book is deeply personal, but the themes he discusses and the truths he uncovers are universal for communities across our country. It it is short and pithy- well suited for a discussion group, as it is timely and relevant.
• I've long thought that busyness is physically, mentally, and spiritually damaging, though you would not know it by my life. I just read Greg Jarrell's new book, A Riff of Love Notes on Community and Belonging, and it caused me to reflect again on what I - and perhaps others - miss in the epidemic of FOMO (fear of missing out) that rages through relatively affluent communities across the country. Greg describes a commitment to neighborliness that luxuriates in time and is boundless in grace. I ponder that this intimate commitment of care and concern for others that Greg fosters in Charlotte, North Carolina's Enderly Park is lost in our more affluent homes and neighborhoods. It's challenging to consider how to build bridges across foundation cracks that have yawned over decades differences in the capacity to sustain life or to thrive, across race, culture, and creed. Tommy Tomlinson, in his review of Greg's book, talks about the threads of jazz music and Jesus that are woven throughout the narrative as the educated, white Greg explores his place in the poor, predominantly African-American Enderly Park. Jazz may be the answer - rooted in discipline but its fullness found in creativity - as we seek to become beloved community. This is a challenging book but worth the effort. I will read it again and will give away copies.
• A Riff of Love is brilliant, illuminating and beautifully written. Greg Jarrell's stories bring a community to life -- a community that is all but invisible to many -- a community with deep sorrows, vibrant joys and resilient people. I recommend this book to you without reservation.
  
  Greg has a LOT to say worth hearing -- and he says it beautifully.
  
  I highlighted so many things that it is hard to pick just a couple of highlights, but here are a few
  
  Abundance, in Christian theology, is built into the foundations of the universe. God exists as an abundance, so over owing in goodness that God can only be described as mathematical nonsense— three-in-one and one-in-three. Out of this abundance, God improvises something new, a creation of land and people, of persimmons and snow leopards, of sweet gum trees and sand dunes. God creates it all for friend- ship, between people and the land that sustains them, between God and people, between God and the peculiar creation that ows out of God’s extravagant existence. In this world of bounty, there is enough—enough stu to care for every neighbor, enough time to make enemies into friends, enough imagination to re-envision the world.
  
  Without naming and interrogating the hard truths of the past, there is no way to get free in the present. The hard parts of the story are the ones about which there can be no more silence.
  
  Friendship is a place to start in the work for justice. But friendship in a complex society is not enough. My friends needs justice.
  
  Power tends to work in those who have it by breaking the bonds of solidarity that otherwise would unite neighbors in mutual care.
• I wasn't sure what to expect when I got my copy, but I sat down one afternoon to get a feel for it and found it remarkably difficult to stop reading. Greg carefully weaves loving narrative with passionate insistence and musical themes. I knew I'd be rereading this one when I got to chapter 6 ("Backwater Blues") and found not only a story that spoke of the loving bonds of community, but also an insightful look at the social geography of a place that Greg clearly loves. It's worth reading and I plan to do it again.