The Margins

We just arrived in Portland this morning to the most perfect wet and gray Portland day. We are thrilled to be here and Mercy and Aaron are both enthralled by how different the Pacific Northwest looks and smells. The sky, the trees, air that you don’t see…

There is a particular feature that lends much to Portland’s charm as a city. The city straddles the Willamette River, and there are a series of fantastic bridges that connect one side of the city to the other. Mercy LOVES bridges. She sings songs about bridges, claps ansd squeals when she sees bridges, and builds bridges whenever she can with blocks or train tracks or any other toys she may find. Only she can’t quite say the word correctly. Much like “fox” and “stick”, “bridge” is a word that, when your daugher shouts it at the top of her lungs in public, people turn and stare. It is that pesky “r” that isn’t easily pronounced.

I have a very dear friend here in Spokane. The other night she stopped by for a brief visit with us, and it was so great to reconnect and reminisce. As often happens when we get together, we traipsed down our own very quirky and amusing memory lane. We happened to live together during a very strange time, filled with unusual circumstances, remarkable experiences, and as a result, many delightful and amusing memories. As we sat in my Grandma’s living room, I remarked that it had been a while since I laughed so hard that it hurt. She is just that kind of friend.

After she left, I realized that there are not many people in my life in L.A. who make me laugh until it hurts. I realized too that I have been so fortunate that every city I have lived in has been marked by exactly those kinds of friendships. Maybe it’s the life stage in L.A.–it’s most often the kids that have Doug and me laughing the hardest.

As I thought about missing those kinds of friends, I realized something: my grandma who just passed away was one of those people. I had the opportunity to live with my grandparents here in Spokane for three months in my mid-twenties. It was a random time in my life, and because I intended to only spend three months in Spokane I really did not seek out relationships or involvements outside of my work. As a result, my grandparents and I were quite the little family that summer. We ate our meals together, we played games, we watched TV or read. My grandma used to watch out her window as I would go jogging around Franklin Park after work to make sure that I was okay. And every weekend we would pack up our things and head out to Newman Lake for rest and projects around the cabin. I remember quite clearly assisting my grandpa, who by then was legally blind, with his very large table saw. I remember climbing the roof to clean out the eaves and hanging out windows to scrub them down, all per my Grandma’s careful instruction. I remember so many days and nights that were filled with that deepest, most gratifying laughter.

As a family we are doing a lot of remembering this week. As I think about my Grandma’s life, I am so grateful for those three months. I am grateful for that once-in-a lifetime chance to live with my Grandma and discover in her the friend who makes you laugh until it hurts.

I miss her.

It was two years ago that we last visited our families here in the Pacific Northwest in the winter months. I was very pregnant last December so we could not do our usual travel north for the Christmas holiday. After that last trip two years ago, I put three of my favorite wool sweaters into a plastic shopping bag in my closet. They needed to be dry-cleaned, and that was where they ended up. We didn’t necessarily have a dry-cleaning budget (and I no longer had a dry-cleaning life), so the bag sat in the closet forgotten. It is possible that I would have missed the contents at some point last year (there can be a sweater day in L.A.), but I was at the end of pregnancy during the colder months and those nice, fine gauge fitted merino wool sweaters were entirely out of the question.

A few days before our trip, I asked Doug to please take my sweaters in to the dry-cleaners across the street from Fuller. He had a coat that needed cleaning as well, and he took our items in so we could have them ready to take with us. He picked the dry-cleaning up the day that we left, and I literally ripped my sweaters out of their plastic sheaths and shoved them into my suitcase without even looking at them. Except for one of them, the charcoal gray crewneck, which I quickly threw on over my t-shirt as we headed out the door for the airport.

It was after we landed in Spokane, when I took Mercy into the airport bathroom there, that I noticed that my beautiful sweater was full of little holes running down both arms of the sweater. And what I had thought was a giant snot marking on my shoulder (Aaron was congested and had cried a fair amount at the beginning of our flight) was really my white t-shirt showing through another gigantic hole on my shoulder. I was devastated. It was then that I remembered pulling out another sweater favorite from that plastic bag in the closet and, seeing a series of holes around the neckline, put it back in thinking, “wow, I don’t remember that sweater falling apart so quickly…”

Apparently, storing fine wool sweaters in a plastic bag in your closet for two years is not a good idea.

This morning I went to get dressed for the family graveside service for my Grandma. I put on my dressy black turtleneck sweater knowing that it would help me stay warm in the cold and the rain. I tried for the rest of the day to ignore the string of holes on either arm.

I am sad about my sweaters. I am annoyed that I did something so stupid. I am frustrated that I am here now, in freezing weather, with tattered clothes.

I could not help but think of the verses in Matthew’s gospel that warn us against storing things up for ourselves here on earth. I usually think about those verses in terms of hoarding, or seeking to create a sense of security by accumulating stuff. But, as I look down at my Swiss cheese sweater, I realize that it is as much about letting things sit idle. I wasn’t amassing some great wealth of sweaters; I simply failed to do the one thing that would preserve them: wear them.

I preached a sermon on treasure this past year and I made this exact point: moths cannot eat what is in use. Whether it is money shored up in investments and savings or talents stuffed away, waiting for the right time or opportunity, there is something about taking what God gives to us and putting it out of circulation; setting it aside; ignoring it; forgetting to use it. There is something about that that Jesus is speaking to when he gives us an alternative: “but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.”

I feel a bit haunted by this right now. There was no self-seeking or malice in my decision to stash a bunch of sweaters in a closet. Just lack of money, pregnancy, and some plain old ignorance. I think that Jesus’ listeners probably had any number of good reasons for doing what they were doing too. Don’t we always?

…on the Alaska Air flight from Los Angeles to Spokane with the screaming infant sitting behind him?

He would twist uncomfortably around to draw near to the screaming; he would shove his hand between the seats, and wiggle his fingers at the infant while making strange noises; he would somehow appease the overtired, congested baby and make him laugh hysterically for ten minutes.

He would show love to that baby and to his frustrated mother.

Thanks, 8D.

At our Servant Partners staff meeting yesterday, we spent some time discussing how community organizing and church-planting can relate to one another. We talked about a holistic view of people and salvation; we talked about redemption that is both physical and spiritual; we shared stories about how our work in community organizing in urban poor communities had been transformational, for us, for our communities, and for our churches.

At one point in our meeting, our executive director shared a story from his own experience in Pomona. He said that, as they gathered neighbors together to share concerns for the neighborhood, the single issue that everyone agreed on was the need for adequate street lighting. As one who lives on “the darkest street in the neighborhood”, I can attest to the ways that insufficient lighting can totally impact a street and a community. It is not a coincidence that so many are killed on my street.

He shared that, as they brought this concern to the different “powers that be” in their city, they were told that all of the budget for street repairs/lighting was being directed to improvements on White Street, one of the main streets running through the city, which leads to the fairgrounds, a place that draws many visitors to the city each year. The representatives of the city were clear: making White beautiful and usable was the thing that would most benefit Pomona. It was the “face” of the community so to speak; if White looks good, then the city will too! Yet the residents were unanimous: we don’t care about White; just please give us street lights.

It struck me that so much energy and resource is given to creating and sustaining weekly Sunday worship. It is the “face” of the church, for sure. It is often the first impression people have of who we are. Yet in my context, I know firsthand about the gritty realities of people’s lives; people struggling against powerful forces of darkness ranging from hunger to gangs to unemployment to affordable housing. While we work so hard to landscape and resurface our main street, could it be that what people really need are street lights?

I just enjoyed a few rare daytime minutes alone with my husband (thanks Lauren!) out in Pasadena. As we were walking past the Fuller Seminary student parking lot, Doug made a comment about the collection of hulking SUV’s, the smattering of luxury vehicles, and the presence of lots of shiny, new, good-looking cars. (Are we the only ones who struggled financially to get through seminary???) We asked ourselves this question: should our parking lots be a witness? Should what we drive somehow speak to or represent what we believe about God and creation and the kingdom? Should Fuller’s parking lot, or those of our churches for that matter, look any different from the parking lots at Houston’s or The Paseo?

Or is what we drive “gospel neutral”?

This past weekend Doug was busy preparing our worship service for Sunday, in the midst of cooking breakfast for his family and playing with his kids. At one point, he set his guitar down in the dining room, propped up against one of the chairs. A few minutes later Mercy trotted over to her instrument basket and picked up her pink guitar and carefully situated it next to her dad’s.

Dallas Willard speaks powerfully of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. He is fond of employing the language of being an “apprentice”; of being a person devoted to learning and imitation.

As Jesus’ disciple, I am his apprentice in kingdom living. I am learning from him how to lead my life in the Kingdom of the Heavens as he would lead my life if he were I…

My entire life is to be caught up in the life that Jesus Christ himself is now living on earth and will continue throughout eternity. And that is why being his apprentice is the greatest opportunity any human being ever has.

Scot McKnight is doing a series of posts on Psalm 119. His comments today reminded me of what a mystery it is for us to come to a place of “understanding” when it comes to scripture and the things of God.

Doug and I have good friends, John and Ann Goldingay, who often entertain students in their home. Ann suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, and is confined to a wheelchair. She long ago lost the ability to communicate through speech. At times she will make eye contact and noise, and respond to people’s presence. At other times she is silent. The first time we were guests in the Goldingay’s home, we were there with our Pentateuch class from Fuller Seminary. Prior to our coming, John had taken some time in class to share about Ann and their journey together, and the ways her MS had clearly impacted their lives. He also shared with us very practically about how we should interact with her when we are in their home: greet her, speak with her, touch her. She may not be able to respond verbally but that does not mean that she is not able to comprehend and receive. He shared with us that with language, it takes a certain amount of work to “decode”, to take something in, to digest it. It takes a much greater amount of work to “encode”, to be able to put thoughts and words together and send something back out. So, while Ann’s “encoding” abilities are severely deficient, there is no way to know what her ability remains for decoding. “Talk to her as if she understands you,” he said.

It was beautiful that first night to see my classmates sit beside Ann, talk with her for lengths of time, laugh with her, etc. I so appreciated John helping us to know how to be her guests that evening.

What does this have to do with Psalm 119? Scot’s comments today remind me of my own inability to see things “unveiled”; to hear and read with understanding. I can often feel like I am stumbling around with my eyes sealed shut, unable to truly see the things of God. And I think that perhaps all of us are a bit like my friend, Ann, in this way. We have great capacity for decoding: do we not feast on sermons, books, journals and the like? I know some people who listen to multiple sermons online every week! We are good at ingesting. But the remarkable work comes when the things that we hear take on life inside of us, and we are empowered to encode them with actions and “words when necessary;” with lives that bears witness to the Mystery.

Doug and I found ourselves sitting in our living room yesterday afternoon with some good friends from our church. They are a couple that has been on a journey of healing and restoration in both spiritual and very tangible physical ways. Since we have known them, there have been maybe a handful of times where they have not been in a place of desperate need. We have come alongside them in different ways to assist them and counsel them, to pray with them and feed them. Our hearts ache with longing for them to find a place of stability and provision, and we are practical in talking with them about the kinds of steps that could lead there.

There is a distinct temptation to grow tired of the chronically needy; to get “fed-up” with their inability to get their acts together; to tire of continually devoting your resources (or those of your church) to a situation that just never seems to really improve (or at least not by your definitions and judgments). I remember a while back when Doug was out of full-time work and we were in a fairly desperate situation there was a person in our church who said: I would be excited about suggesting that our church help you guys out for a little while, IF… and then they listed what we would have to do in their minds to “qualify” for the church’s generosity. So I speak on this from both sides: there are certainly times when I am the “fed-up” giver. But I have also sat on the other side, deep in desperation and need, unable to meet the expectations attached to someone’s gift.

In Bob Lupton’s book, Theirs is the Kingdom, he has an especially brutal chapter that addresses this titled: “The Truly Worthy Poor.” Let me just give an excerpt:

A truly worthy poor young woman: lives in public housing but only temporarily; has illegitimate children conceived prior to Christian conversion; is now celibate; tithes her welfare check and food stamps; is a high school dropout but manages well with limited resources; places a high value on education and nutrition for her children; walks everywhere (grocery store, church, school, welfare office) with her children to save bus fare and keeps her sparsely furnished home spotless; occasionally runs out of food by the end of the month but will not beg for “handouts.” Will not accept more than twenty-five dollars per month in help from friends even if her children are hungry because this violates welfare rules.

A truly worthy poor family: Is devout, close-knit. Has a responsible father working long hours at minimum wage wherever he can find work. Has a mother who makes the kids obey, washes clothes by hand, and will not buy any junk food. Lives in overcrowded housing; will not accept welfare or food stamps even when neither parent can find work. Always pays the bills on time; has no automobile. Has kids that do not whine or tell lies.

I want to serve truly worthy poor people. The problem is they are hard to find. Someone on our staff thought he remembered seeing one back in ‘76 but can’t remember for sure. Someone else reminded me that maybe to be truly poor means to be prideless, impatient, manipulative, desperate, grasping at every straw, and clutching the immediate with little energy left for future plans. But truly worthy? Are any of us truly worthy?”

I went in there wondering if Bono was a Christian, and I came out wondering if I was.

Overheard at a Willow Creek pastor’s conference session featuring a video presentation of a discussion between Bill Hybels and Bono.

From the November 13th Newsweek, “An Evangelical Identity Crisis”

(I realized I did not provide a link to the full article which some may find helpful: here it is)