The Difference a Table Makes

Common knowledge tells us that food is central to hospitality and community.  What I hadn't given much thought to before now was the importance of how and where we eat together. 

Our house has been without a table for about 4 months.  Even before that, our former table (and its chairs) became uncomfortable after not very long.  (Which is why it was banished, in spite of lacking a replacement.)  Eating largely took place on couches and counters, sitting in chairs and balancing plates on knees.  Taking a meal out to the patio was about the best we could offer our guests.  Hospitality waned.  We didn't invite people as much.  When we did, it felt makeshift and apologetic.

I also have a theory that even individuals eat differently at a table.  There is something reassuring and stable about not having to hold onto your plate of spaghetti or bowl of cereal.  Sure, it's fine for a camping trip or a meal on the go, but every meal, every day?  Not great.

Last weekend, I gave in.  Throwing my reticence about buying and owning stuff that won't fit in a Corolla to the wind, I plopped down $40 for a well-worn table at a junk shop.  Wood, with an insertable, folding leaf. We got it to seat 10, so far. 

As we washed dishes later that night, my roommate and I observed how different that gathering was from any other we'd had.  At one table, we could have one conversation for the entire group.  Discussion could ebb and flow and fracture and come together again.  There was no awkward switch to the living room afterward, so eating was leisurely and long.  It allowed for courses and seconds and a changeover for late-arriving guests as they joined.

It reminded me of Jesus' fondness for banquets and admonition about how to do hospitality in Luke 14.  Now that there's a table, there are lots of people to invite! 
"But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

How to start a morning at a California traffic school: Siempre dando gracias.  (Always giving thanks--- at least that's what the banner says in the front of the room.)  These are the places of incredible short story potential: waiting rooms, doughnut shops, and a room of chairs filled with law-breakers.

It's a Friends Church, - Quakers - "whatever that means," shrugs our instructor.  For us, it means that smokers must cross the street and keep their cigarettes off church property.  And we can't use the nice cushioned chairs in the room.

We're becoming friends, in a way.  By telling the stories of our tickets and bemoaning the state budget crisis, a camaraderie builds.  Certain people become types and characters.  Angry immigrant woman drives something like a van, big, oh what color is it... whatever, it is definitely not able to go that fast at the stop light.  She has tried.  She has children; of course she wouldn't speed past the school.  Young rebel man insists that he can drive while high.  It's never bothered him.  The police just asked him to extinguish the joint.  Military man heading to Singapore ships out Monday, won't be able to go to traffic court.  He drives a fast motorcycle fast.  All around me are college students, teachers, mothers, managers, criminals and head cases.  We gossip about conspiracies (how the state is out to get our money) and corruption, court trials (how to keep our money) and tragedies.

What may be most striking, though, is how docile the room full of us can become.  By some strange agreement, we allow this instructor to rant on her pet issues, separate antsy young-folk from their phones, and make jokes at our expense for 8 long hours.  We pay our $35 and make the most of it.  We don't make much.  The man beside me scored the tests of his 1st grade class.  I finished 2 Ken-Ken puzzles and wrote this reflection.  We were the only ones with pens in hand.

A Good Day

Drizzly early morning.  Delicious green tea. Dry autumn afternoon.  Dear, precious friends. 

Yet, what makes me pronounce the day a 'good one' is balance and scale, a sense of completeness and permission for unanswered questions.  In work and in leisure, this day let me flex and stretch and enjoy.

I woke up early to work on translation of a small portion of a report on violations of indigenous people's rights in Peru.  I don't claim significance or even particular skill in doing it-- just a few pages of English translation to help a friend.

Running late, I hurried across the dripping drying streets of City Heights to join a friend for some Bible study.  We asked questions and enjoyed insights from Acts 1-- final words on Judas, casting lots, and filling the apostolic leader board.  We let God do new things, show us fresh flicks and twirls of the Holy Spirit through the ages, and furrow our brows on things we thought we knew.  We prayed together.

I came back home for a ripe mango with lunch.  I dialed in for an Urban Mosaic conference call.  We updated one another, asked questions, and prayed for work and life.

I dealt with a few dozen emails.  I added things to my to-do list without crossing anything off.  I biked over to some friends' apartment, visited, hurried home before the early dusk.  I made dinner with a former roommate on the phone; I washed the dishes while catching up with a dear former co-worker. 

My day spanned 2 continents.  Touched people in 5 cities.  Bridged macro, micro and meso scales.  It doesn't make me a superstar - it just makes me happy.  It particularly makes me content that this is who I am and what I do.  Today.  (Ha, remind me in a few weeks that I wrote this.  I'll need the refresher.) 

For those of you who believe in me and what God's invited me into, I thought often in the later part of the day that you should know what this is like.  What a privilege and joy, what a beautiful invitation to say, yes, God is doing a new thing.  A new thing in Christ's bride, the Church.  A new thing springing forth from the desert.  A light in the dark.  A brightness for worn city streets.  A day that is varied and smooth and very good.

Marijuana

About two weeks ago, Mexican authorities intercepted a record 134 tons of weed in Tijuana.  They burned it - seen in the photo above.  (You can read more about it here.) 

Tuesday, statewide voting on Proposition 19 in California rejected legalization of marijuana-- but not by a large margin (54% voted against legalizing it).

I have friends who enjoy smoking, who draw inspiration ("thinking outside the box") from smoking, who view marijuana as no more harmful than cigarettes.  It shows up on their camping trips, after parties, in the back yard.

I vividly remember posters on the walls of our elementary school and even a few anti-drug campaign cartoons that offered terrifying depictions of what pot would do to your brain, your life, your relationships, and your perceptions of the world around you.  Horror, dude.  Absolute horror.  In contrast, what I see of marijuana among friends and neighbors isn't so scary.  They smoke, they talk, they have normal-seeming lives.  It is widely claimed that marijuana possession is unevenly prosecuted, with the brunt of arrests falling on young African American men.  (Note: none of my recreational weed-smoking acquaintances who happen to be white have encountered law enforcement around this issue.)  What is truly frightening, however, is the criminal web of money and violence that surround the drug.  No, it's not scary in the way that heroine or cocaine are, but when I think about the industry, about hundreds of lives lost directly or indirectly in its fiery wake... it's sickening.

"Marijuana destroys slowly but thoroughly was the consensus," writes David Foster Wallace from a Narcotics Anonymous group in Infinite Jest. 

I don't tout some kind of naive, drug-free pride (solid D.A.R.E. graduate that I am...), but neither do I want a detached anything goes attitude about something that is, when it comes down to it, destructive.  Aside from medical and legal arguments against marijuana, I've begun to wonder whether people who smoke recreationally have considered the use of marijuana as a justice issue?  It's not so absurd.  People consider purchases based on animal rights (change meat/ dairy/ egg- buying habits) and human rights (watch out for sweatshops and exploited laborers).  The drug trade is killing hundreds and hundreds of people, particularly along the border of the U.S. and Mexico.  Why participate?

These aren't particularly well-formed thoughts here, but I was moved by the drama of that photo and its back story.  I'm filled with sorrow when there's another drug- or gang-related death (and string of deaths) in places like San Diego, Tijuana, Juarez, etc.  I'm tired of it being a low-key, joked-about issue.  As with so many areas relating to Mexico, I'm frustrated by a lack of holistic, critical thinking.  Where are my fellow liberal arts grads with economic and international relations know-how!?  Let's talk about jobs and money and drugs and people and assumptions that cross the border every day, and let's stop pretending we're not all bound up in their causes and effects.

Today's Workload

That's right: the joys of paperwork.  I was trying to get all my lists of people straight and kept uncovering new lists... turns out I have at least 6 (so far!) working spreadsheets.  Oops?

Canoeing Mountains

This was the premise of a training event I just attended here in San Diego.  Solid insights from a pastor and strategic thinker.

Alternative Family

I was reading today: “By relinquishing a most certain way of knowing and loving and creating a family [in marriage], the celibate for the sake of the kingdom proclaims the validity of other ways to knowledge and community.”  I see that so clearly in others’ shock at how shamelessly I’ll draw people together.  I don’t do it out of any profound theological conviction as much as a survival tactic.  I’ll meet and eat and stay with strangers (friends of friends, usually) because that’s what I’ve got as a ‘stranger in a strange land’—whether it’s California or Cambodia.  I believe it’s worth risking and connecting as brethren/ sistren… what other option is there? 

Even though it seems obvious and completely practical, I can also acknowledge that this is not how the world operates.  People live alone and lonely because that's what they're told you do if you're not married.  People stay in hotel rooms, eat by themselves, and watch lots of TV because we do not live as though we have been born into a new and limitless family in the kingdom of God.  Give it a shot.  It's real, true, necessary, and so so good.

Who we are, for now and not yet

I received this in a pastor's weekly devotional email this morning:

"In the course of his remarks, Bishop Walker made the point that we should not “judge people on their right now.”  Rather, we should “judge them on their not yet.” 

       I thought this was extremely well put.  Just as we should take a plastic bottle and not see it littering the ocean but rather envision the shopping bag or park bench it can be so we should not condemn anyone for simply having difficulties just now.  We should not judge the awkward, uncertain college student on their right now.  We should look at them and see the confident, mature individual  they will become.  We should not look at the disheveled and angry addict and condemn them to that state of being for the rest of their lives.  We should look at them and see the sober, productive individual they will be after they change.  When we join in our prayer of confession every week we should not resign ourselves to being the fallen, sinful person we know we are.  We should look ahead and celebrate the free, forgiven person God is going to make us.

       Let us thank God that God does not judge us on our right now.  God knows we are fallen and need saving.  God judges us on what we will be: holy children of God sitting around the banquet table in the eternal kingdom.  And then God treats as if our not yet were already right now.

      Thanks be to God we are not condemned to our right now.  And let us help others reach their not yet."

Even as I appreciated their wisdom, I had some reservations about these words.   I often (though not as often as I should...) pray to see people as Jesus sees them.  Jesus sees who we really are-- who we were created to be.  Yet, Jesus sees who we really are right now, too.  It's true that he does not judge that state we're in, but he does not deny it, either.  The reason for my squirming, I suppose, is that I just don't want us to hop out of the mess too quickly.

  

I don't want us to console ourselves only with airbrushed, sanctified versions of the not-yet.  We don't ever need to judge, but we do need to make decisions.  All our decisions have to wade through both the now and the not-yet-- of other people, of our world, and of ourselves.  And so I do not tell myself, "Okay, I would be able to speak more kindly to this guy if he had the means and motivation to wash his hair" -- but I tell myself that Jesus speaks tenderly to those without homes and hygiene. 

We don't celebrate or worship who we (or those around us) are becoming, but we are filled with awe at the One who can make it so -- who can forgive and transform us into the men and women who will bring God honor and praise.  Thank God our identity is not how we present ourselves, but who You say we are.  How You love us.  How you transform us.  Our identity is being your disciples, your little children, your beloved.

"They Mattered Less Than Love"

I do not say that there were no misunderstandings, discontents and hurts.

I would it had been so.

Strange, how the heart sometimes assents

To angers that the will asserts;

But these we learned to live above.

I do not say there were no hurts—

I say they mattered less than love.

-Jane Merchant

What (Whom) Weddings Bring Together

Enjoying a fine Baltimore dining establishment after Angela's wedding... a long way from Park Street in Williamstown! 

"Talking about people who don't have any power"

Taken from Stephen Colbert's longer testimony on Capitol Hill.

Remembering the Vocation

The excerpt below was written the week after I entered my current position in CRM... I was looking through some old newsletters today and I was struck by the clarity I had before I even got here!  Good to remember: 

Why am I doing this?  And what exactly will I be doing, by the way?  =)  These are common questions I face.  Since I graduated from college, God has been pointing my heart toward ministry, listening to and caring for people, with a particular passion and frustration for the work of the Church.  Though I’ve begun to consider ordination in the PC(USA), I don’t feel ready to say that God has called me to the pulpit—or to parish ministry.  Instead, with Urban Mosaic, I want to walk alongside church leaders and pastors who are figuring out how to be missional, how to lead, how to care for their congregation and their community, how to imagine what “God’s kingdom come” might look like for San Diego.  It’s some of what I do with the Global Urban Trek, when I invite university students to take God’s words about justice seriously and prioritize their lives accordingly.  It’s some of what I did in Miami, when I encouraged a small congregation to pursue its dream of opening an immigration clinic.  It’s some of what I do in my home church when I lead and go to Bible studies, retreats, or prayer services—planting seeds and watering ground for my brothers and sisters to grow in God’s good will.  Who can say for sure what God will have for me in San Diego, or for how long?  (This is a job without distinct service “terms.”)  I do hope it will involve lots of cups of tea, conversations, prayers, hard work and full laughter.  I hope I’ll meet many people and draw them together.  I hope I can show God’s heart for the poor to the isolated sorrow of the rich, and I hope for righted relationships to renovate the Church.  Those are not small hopes, but I don’t think we were called to follow Jesus with a couple of achievable goals on a to-do list.  I won’t get everything done, but I’ll do something, and I want to do it as well as I can, with as much love as I have.

Not Strength but Tenderness

"Spiritual and moral tenderness, an awareness of our own frailty, is what allows us to survive in these ambiguous places."

I idolize strength. I think, "this person or that person is not strong enough to be able to handle these rough environments." It is not our strength that allows us to survive. We will crumble when it is our strength. Knowledge of our own frailty allows us to depend on God. Spiritual and moral tenderness will allow us to live with those who suffer despite not having an answer to give them. Grace, not strength, makes life on the desperate margins possible.

(taken from a distant blog)

These words hit the spot tonight as I returned home from a few hours in a hospital room.  I joined a friend visiting her mom, who is recovering poorly from extensive abdominal surgery.  The mom seems to have some serious cognitive setbacks as well as physical ones, and they're not sure why she rants and yells and calls for faraway people, even now that she's off the hard-core painkillers.  She asked the same questions, she begged to go home, she threatened to smack us, and she writhed in pain.

We did pray for her.  And I continually prayed for my friend in the room.  All the while, I was aware of the rigid strength it must take for my friend not to cry.  I was on the verge of tears as her mother railed against her and clawed at her clothing.  As we got into the car afterward, my friend and I talked about strength.  We talked about depending on Jesus.  But after reading this, I realized that what we offered in that room for a couple of hours wasn't any kind of superhuman or even divine strength.  What we relied upon was tender love.  What kept us upright was tender mercy for a woman in pain and confusion.

Strength can become a burden and obligation-- it means you're the one to do the heavy lifting, right?!  Tenderness, however, is altogether different.  I can't be resentfully or reluctantly tender.  I can only offer simple tasks to the best of my ability.  It was mercy, not muscle, that laid damp cloths on a writhing woman's slack skin.  Strength makes good superheroes, but tenderness is the stuff of shepherds and servants.

"Fund-raising is a very rich and beautiful activity. It
is a confident, joyful, and hope-filled expression of
ministry. In ministering to each other, each from the
riches that he or she possesses, we work together for
the full coming of God’s Kingdom."   -Henri Nouwen

Two days of CRM support-raising workshop start tomorrow!  Getting excited.  =)

What I learned at CCDA

A little over a week ago, I went to the Christian Community Development Association's (www.ccda.org) annual conference in Chicago with 3,000 other wonderful people.  I attended a handful of workshops.  I faithfully made it to most plenary sessions and all of the Bible studies.  There were PowerPoint presentations and handouts, books and pamphlets galore.  All of that was secondary, though.

What struck me as most significant, from the first night onward, was the common theme of friendship.  When John Perkins (CCDA's wonderful, wise, endearing founder) spoke about the significance of this association, he talked about his friends.  He spoke of the people who had come together to share their joys and burdens.  They formed CCDA, apparently, because they needed one another.

That purpose continues to drive the ethos of the organization.  A number of speakers and panelists strongly asserted that the greatest outcomes from such conferences were relationships-- not just your standard business networks, but finding friends who know what your life is like.  It's true: there's something unique about being at a gathering where you can figure a lot of other people might shake hands with people who live and beg on the streets everyday (for example).  Or, they might know how to put up a fight on any number of neighborhood issues, from speed bumps to crime.  And, they've probably got some ideas about intersecting theology with lifestyle choices, hospitality, real estate, buying habits, and any number of other things.  So no, it's not your standard conference crowd.

Having said all that, though, I'm still not a mass-market befriend-er.  I didn't even come home from CCDA with a new business card collection.  I might have added one or two facebook friends.  However, the preaching of friendship and the evidence of its impact in these leaders' lives did provoke fresh gratitude in me.  I remembered when I was in college, just entering conversations about racial reconciliation, social justice and community development (largely introduced by reading John Perkins' Justice for All, appropriately enough), and I remember older mentor-folk asking repeatedly, Where are your 'safe' places?  Who are your friends?  (Meaning: make sure you have them!)  Remembering that, I started to see afresh the depth of friendships carrying and sustaining me.  I felt an overwhelming gratitude for who [you] my friends are-- this miracle and gift God has given me. 

Even if I didn't need CCDA to be my friend-factory, I needed it to highlight this beautiful thing God's been doing in my life.  I learned to see with renewed thankfulness.  I also picked up a couple of spiffy brochures.

Word Power

This is a bit of a throwback/ nod/ reflection on my time in Asia this summer.  Some of you will remember my excitement about being in a place where I had zero fluency in their primary language. Until this trip, all my travels outside the U.S. had been to places that either spoke English or Spanish-- both languages in which I have functional ability.  As I looked forward to the time in Malaysia, Cambodia and Hong Kong, I told a number of people that I wanted to see what it was like to be language-less.

Several friends did look at me a little funny.  Some of them tilted their head and nodded or shrugged.  Sure, it's an adventure to go somewhere new, try different things, break away from the standard codes of life that surround us.  But yes, being mute is an unusual goal.

I’m not sure this makes the objective less weird, but I think the prospect of escaping English for me was less about getting away from familiar (as with WalMart or Starbucks) and more about testing my sources of satisfaction and control.  Part of what gives me such joy in Latin America is the forced dependence on God that comes when I don’t know what else to do but pray and let others help me.  Another thing that makes me really happy is speaking Spanish.  So as a horribly under-controlled experiment—would the thrill of helplessness (go ahead, laugh away...) be amplified without language skills?  Granted, it’s a drastically different setting to spend a week as a tourist, versus a month as a helper/ worker/ visitor/ friend in a slum.  But I think I really just love people, wherever they are, whatever language they speak.  I get pumped about the conversations that come with actual fluency, but even without that, I can taste (yum!) and see and smell life with folks.

 As it turned out, lots of people spoke English in the regions we visited.  It was never a problem.  Actually, it was more of an adventure to get a dress hemmed by a Vietnamese seamstress here in City Heights this week than it was to hire a taxi to cross Phnom Penh.  Ah, the impact of colonialism and the tourist dollar.  I suppose the quest for the brink of linguistic desperation hasn't taken hold of tourist market share.  Surely we're missing out!

Back from Big City

It's a courtesy post, to say that I'm back, to say that my trip in Chicago (and a little bit of Indianapolis) was great, and to say that I'll say more soon.  =)

Early sunlight as I walked along the Chicago River.

Want to go to Paris?

One of my remarkable roommates could offer the chance you've been waiting for!

Visit www.cargoofdreams.org to get a ticket!  It's a $10 donation, designated "First Class to Paris"  Buy for yourself, for friends, for family, and tell anyone else who might be interested!

Here's some of [my roommate] Gabrielle's story:

"I am excited to say I am working with an amazing organization called Cargo of Dreams. The faith-based non-profit uses peoples talents and passions here in the US to convert shipping containers into clinics, schools, community centers, and so on, for impoverished communities worldwide. It is an incredible network of people helping people and I feel blessed to be apart of it.

In addition to taking on the role of Director of the Department of Architecture, Cargo of Dreams will be a platform to do a pilot project of the construction system that I believe God laid on my heart during my thesis year. This is an amazing opportunity to see the potential of the system as it is implemented in areas of great need, but further, a way to show God’s love in a very tangible way. The construction system is quite simple, self-interlocking metal baskets [steel cage units] that can be filled with materials from in and around the project site.

The next few months are going to be quite exciting and I want you all to be apart of it too! We are raffling off 2 first-class, round trip tickets from NYC to Paris valued at $10,000. The funds raised will go directly toward designing, testing and implementing the hybrid construction system of shipping containers and steel cage units and will further continue the work of creating better conditions for those in developing countries."

Having seen Gabrielle hard at work in the throes of her thesis, and even having scavenged for materials for the prototype of these units myself, I am SO thrilled for this opportunity she has to put her design into the hands of folks who can run with it.  This raffle makes that work possible-- AND it gives you the opportunity to win 2 first-class tickets to Paris.  Your chance to win is 1 in 1,000.  The winner will be announced December 5th. 

Who wants to be my potential travel buddy?

Consuming Catastrophe -- & Amazement at Children

“Consuming Catastrophe: The Comedy of The Heart; A Play in Ate Parts”.

Kids wrote that.  For real.  Little kids.  Titling their art show at a local (Nashville) church.  Based on the parable of the mustard seed and the kingdom of heaven.

If you're in Nashville, you should go and tell me how it is!!!  Art Crawl.  Sept. 4, Downtown Presbyterian Church, 6pm.  Isn't the title intriguing enough?

It makes me want to think and write and reflect on the depth of what they're pointing to.  Really pretty incredible.  Much of what we take in (consume) is disastrous.  The awful manufactured foods we've gotten used to eating (watch "Food, Inc.").  The stuff we use as entertainment, whether it's fear-mongering or demeaning or doubting.  I'm thinking of the news and the movies, the magazines and TV shows.  We bring so much mess into our very beings-- some inadvertently pressed upon us, but most of it a voluntary response to our gnawing hunger for connection, significance or understanding.

It's a comedy in the same way Shakespeare constructs humor.  It's ridiculous to an extent that is truly sad.  I think of "The Taming of the Shrew" (hoping to see it at San Diego Shakespeare festival in a couple weeks!), and really, it's an atrocious concept.  In desperation to marry off the eldest daughter, a father pays a man to do whatever it takes.  The suitor/ groom takes a turn as a virtual ogre to turn a shrew into a lover.  Come on, it's absurd.  It's tragic.  It's an out-and-out brawl with human hearts and sensibilities at stake.  It's also pretty funny.  So, too, are our hearts engaged in comedic consumption.  We're a mess, concocting ridiculous solutions for ourselves.  Yet, we look at that mess, and as followers of Jesus, we somehow believe that the ending turns out well!  It's even a CLASSIC comedy, ending in marriage of Christ (the bridegroom) and his Church.

Hilarious as that is, we really don't need to take ourselves so seriously.  God invites us together to play and to eat the broken bread that truly nourishes.

I wish kids wrote things more often.

Life Humming, Blog Sputtering

The sun slides down to quietly close another day.  The weather is phenomenal-- I can almost imagine the dry air is part of autumn.  Palm trees mess up that image, but oh well.

Another day, and my to-do list still looms.  Instead of becoming the rare event of the month, it's now common to have several days a week completely full of meetings: churches, pastors, co-workers, friends.  Planning, praying, talking, exploring.  Here are some of the things on the docket (and my HOPE is to offer deeper profiles and information for you in future posts)----

-City College, with InterVarsity
-Third Avenue Charitable Organization (TACO)
-City Heights charter school & community center
-Bible study with some other young women nearby
-planning & leading a weekend prayer retreat
-supporting leadership at 2 local Presbyterian churches

Continuing to watch some irons in the fire: in Tijuana, at a local hospital, and with the Global Urban Trek. And renewing my energy for raising the financial support to keep it all going!