The Margins

The other day I was playing out front with the kids when an African American man stopped in our driveway to chat with us for a while. As he stopped in front of one of the kids, he looked at me and asked: “Do your kids like Black people?” I assured him that yes, they did, and I took the opportunity to share with him a bit about our church here in the neighborhood.

As I was talking, I spotted an LAPD cruiser coming down our street. As it got closer, I recognized our Senior Lead Officer. We made eye contact and I waved with a smile. We had been gone for two months and so it had been a while since we had talked or seen each other at block club meetings. I continued my conversation with the gentleman in my driveway, and in a matter of seconds, the cruiser was back. His door opened and he stepped out of his car and walked over. I greeted him warmly, assuming that he had stopped to say hello and check in with us on how things were going.

He hurriedly greeted me, then turned to our visitor: “Do you live around here?” he asked in a tone that felt less than friendly. “Yeah, I live around here,” our new friend answered. “Where?” the officer asked sternly. “Down there,” the man answered, waving a bit broadly toward the north. “29th and Kenwood?” the officer asked? “Yeah, around there,” the man replied. I thought it was a bit strange that the man was being so obscure about where he lives, but then again, maybe if you are black in South Central, the last thing you would want is for the police to know where you live.

The officer then turned to me and warned me about a series of break-ins happening just south of us, and told me to be sure to call him if I needed anything or saw anything unusual or concerning. He began moving back toward his car when the gentleman with me called out: “Can I call you too?” The officer returned and handed him one of his cards and said “of course.”

As our Lead Officer drove away, the gentleman immediately commented on how as soon as he saw him he knew he was going to stop. I assumed that he was making the point that he, a black man, would be viewed automatically with suspicion by the police. I told him that I was sorry that that was the way things were for him around here, and that it is wrong. I tried to justify the officer’s stop by telling him that I know him and that he hadn’t seen us for a while. He shook his head at that explanation and said: “He saw me in the alley and I knew he was going to come back. The only reason he didn’t take me in was because I was here with you.”

As he was talking, I began to smell a heavy dose of alcohol on his breath that I had not noticed when he first approached. I also began to feel a little bit of concern. There is an alley running east/west at the end of our street, and I can assure you that it is a place reserved for some very specific activities. No one on my street just “walks down the alley.” His comment about “being taken in” struck me as well. I suppose if you are black here, that kind of thing could likely happen for no reason. But he seemed awfully sure of that outcome in a way that seemed a bit odd.

Life here is so often like this encounter: multiple possibilities and interpretations for what is going on in people’s lives around you. And always, the invitation to assume, to judge and to fear. It is often hard to discern how to be love and light here with wisdom. But I guess, really, whether he was a neighbor who likes to drink a bit or a transient who buys drugs at our local crack house, he is still my neighbor who I am called to love. Tricky. Messy. Hard.

We are doing a preaching series on racial righteousness, and part of my message this Sunday will be on forgiveness. I happened to pick up the latest Thielicke book I am reading last night, “Christ and the Meaning of Life.” One of the chapters I read looked at the story of unmerciful servant: the man forgiven an extravagent debt who then turns and witholds forgiveness of a pittance from his brother.

Thielicke makes the point that, as forgiven children, we stand with one hand grasped by the mercy and grace of our Father. Our other hand is thus free to extend that same grace to our neighbors. He writes:

“Don’t you feel your hand in the hand of God? But what is your other hand doing? Is it a clenched fist—or is it stretched out toward your neighbor so that the divine circuit can be closed and thus allow the current of creative power to flow into you? Our left hand is capable of doing something very different from our right hand (in the same way that we may be schizophrenic in our minds and souls and belong to two masters). And this can split and break us. It can send us staggering down the wrong road and make us miss the gates of the Father’s house.”

I am so struck by this image, and my heart is convicted of the ways I sometimes hesitate to forgive. How truly ludicrous that must appear to God. And how despicable.

God has very recently brought a few people into my life who are giving me the gift of encouragement. I cannot begin to describe the impact of words that say: “I care for you; I appreciate you; I see your struggles.” It is easy to let life happen around us and to stop taking the time to speak these words to one another, and so I am exceedingly grateful for the voices of a few women in particular who are regularly taking the time to encourage and affirm me.

One of my personal challenges with being a part of an actively missional congregation is that I can sometimes feel like my needs dare not occupy prime real estate of our life and work together. And this is not some issue about my self-esteem. It is reinforced often enough when we talk about an apparent hierarchy in terms of who is worthy of being needy. Because really, how can my concerns and difficulties compare with those of a church member who was shot a few weeks ago, or one who just entered rehab for yet another attempt at sobriety? But the fact is, I am needy. And I perhaps see that now more clearly than ever.

I was also inspired today by a fellow blogger’s profound transparency in openly sharing a specific personal struggle. And I was equally struck by the seeming rarity of such practice in much of what calls itself Christian community today.

What I know today is that I am thankful for the encouragers God has sent me. And I am challenged to think about how I can be present to those around me, both the visibly and the invisibly needy, as a person of transparency, encouragement and affirmation. Because I imagine that that will be the thing that has a greater and more lasting significance than any sermon or worship service ever will.

It is raining in Los Angeles tonight. Our windows our open as we absorb the sound of falling water as if into our very souls. We are lovers of rain, and nights like this are certainly the exception here. I feel grateful and peaceful; grateful for the way the rain dampens certain activities outside that cause me fear; peaceful because it feels like something threatening or oppressive is being cleansed or washed away.

Before tucking Mercy into her bed tonight, Doug read to her the story of God and Noah. And as I sit here listening to water fall, I can’t seem to shake the imagery of God sending water to purify and cleanse; to wipe the slate clean, so to speak. Perhaps God is speaking to me tonight through this rain. Perhaps God is reminding me of His power to wash all of His creation with living water that redeems. And maybe God is also reminding me that as much as the story is about floods and destruction, it is most importantly about the way a family was uniquely protected and preserved.

Before dinner, Doug suggested that we all go for a little walk. It had begun to rain earlier in the day but there seemed to be an intermission, so we all got shoes and socks on and headed outside. As we turned the corner by the school where our church gathers to worship on Sundays, Mercy stopped in her tracks and began pointing excitedly to the ground. “A rainbow, Mommy. Look!” The street was shiny with the day’s rain, but for all of my squinting and searching I could not see what she was talking about. Mercy is fascinated by the appearance of the rainbow in the Noah story and she understands what a promise is. Mercy is not immune to the fears and tensions of life here. I wonder if God was speaking tenderly to her tonight too.

What Ignatius and Green emphasize is the need to be hungry for God’s will in our life, and to give God a blank check. Yikes! That’s a scary thought. I like to consider God’s will within some conditions and frameworks of acceptability, not a blank check! Yet what both Ignatius and Green stress is that discernment is impossible when we seek “God and…” instead of “God only.” Until we are ready for God only, our discernment process must really take the shape of confessional prayer, to rid ourselves of the extra attachments we tag on.

From Don Johnson’s blog

There’s this thing that happens in our neighborhood sometimes. It is as if a tangible change takes place in the air (and I’m not talking about the pollution), and suddenly the environment feels tense and toxic. I call it feeling “prickly”. It is as if my skin is sensing or reacting to something, and the hairs on my arms are just a little bit raised.

It has become prickly here the last two days. There is a bunch of activity at the south end of our street that is strange and suspicious; there has been an increase in people out and about who we do not recognize and who seem to walk in some specific patterns; there are new drug dealers working out of a new corner across from our house. I know that at least three people were murdered in our neighborhood over the past few days, and yesterday I learned that just south of Jefferson is being hit really hard by burglaries–unsophisticated, likely addiction-induced according to local police.

My dreams have been affected, and even Mercy did not want to take her nap today because she said that something was trying to come into her room to eat her.

Yesterday I was out in front of our house playing with the kids like usual. Only now that Aaron is walking I am discovering that it is really stressful to be out there. Mercy has her little special places she likes to play: the dirt underneath the giant palm leaves next door (or, “the jungle” as we call it); “the cage”, which is the area behind the chain link fence between our property and our neighbor’s; the puddle that is almost always at the end of our driveway from Paul’s watering; and her “podium”, the cement slab that tilts ever so much when you stand on it.

I can trust Mercy to stay out of the street and to do what she knows is allowed; but that does not mean I ever take my eyes off of her. Now that Aaron walks, and has developed a fair amount of speed the last two weeks, I find myself whipping around, back and forth, trying to keep tabs on both. And Aaron does not have ANY kind of sense about him, so not only do I need to watch him, but I also have to be within grabbing/catching/restraining distance.

Now I realize this describes the life of every parent of multiple small children. But what is feeling hard for me right now is that when we play out front, I am also always shooting looks north and south in case something starts to happen that would make me take the kids inside. So yesterday, especially with it being prickly right now, it just added up to so much anxiety for me. How deeply I longed for a yard; a safe place outside to run and play. This is only going to get more difficult here, I have to realize. We go to the park often enough, but again, there is the constant watching for that moment when the number of gangbangers officially exceeds your comfort zone, or when the number of times a specific car circles the park begins to terrify. When your child’s playground is a place where girls’ faces get shot while playing basketball, you can’t be expected to do anything else.

I memorized the 23rd Psalm when I was a very young girl, and I used to recite it in my head any time I felt afraid. I can even remember saying it out loud to myself as I was pulled behind the boat while learning to waterski on Newman Lake! Those are some very good words for me to remember today.

Will Willimon has a great post up right now called Divine Wisdom Among ‘Little Old Ladies’ where he responds to a negative comment somebody made about a specific group of churches: “There’s nobody left in the churches except for a few little old ladies.” As always he writes with warm humor and deep conviction, and as is his style, he deftly turns things around and shows us a God who is known for His affinity for reversals. It is a short little post that is worth the read.

It reminded me of something that happened to me in a Fuller Seminary classroom a few years back. I had arrived early for a class and was jotting down some notes in my folder when a young male student entered the classroom and took a seat in front of me. Next to me sat a young female student, and the two of them struck up a conversation. It turned out that they had both attended the same private Christian college not far from L.A., and they spent a few minutes reminiscing and reconnecting over their college days. At one point, the young woman told her college friend who her roommate was, and that her roommate was doing graduate work at USC. The young man looked at her warily: “You guys don’t live around there, do you?”

At this point I stopped writing and I cocked my head a bit, waiting for her response. You see, the “around there” that he was alluding to is my neighborhood, and I was curious to hear her response.

“Are you kidding me?” she said, with a laugh. “Two single women living in that neighborhood? That would be crazy!”

My eyes actually filled with tears at her words. Not only because I took offense at how she thought of the people I love and live with; not just because of the prejudice and fear so evident in her words; not simply because she and her friend, who were likely the products of so much privilege, could not see worth and beauty in the place I call home, but because our church was built on the backs of single women making just that choice.

Like Willimon’s post reminds us: we know and serve a God who delights in using “what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God has chosen what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are” (I Corinthians 1:27-28).”

Do we really want this to be true about God? Are we willing to allow it to shape the way we see our churches and our world? Do we have the imagination necessary to let this truth come into our life and change it?

I am lucky. I serve a church with a history of young, single woman who were given the faith to believe it.

This past week Doug and I were served up a pretty giant helping of grace. Our car was in desperate need of some significant repairs, and the scope of work exceeded our resources. I received an email from someone I had never spoken to before, someone halfway across the country, offering to carry this burden as if it were their own.

That is a thank-you note that you don’t even know how to begin to write…

As we faxed off the invoice for the car repairs yesterday, I thought to myself, what is the right response to this kind of generosity? My first thought was this: to live a life worthy of the gift. That seemed like a good and right perspective at first, but as the day progressed, something about that seemed incorrect, or at least incomplete. It almost felt like a cheapening of what this person had done for us. Their generosity flowed from who they are, and not from some balance sheet of our goodness, so for me to try to “live up to” their gift felt twisted.

I think the best way for us to honor this person and their sacrifice is not to somehow seek to earn or deserve it after the fact, but rather to let it be what it is: a beautiful gift of the very thing we could not do for ourselves.

Yesterday I read a great piece on grace (thanks, Bill Kinnon), and could not help connecting it with my experience this past week. The author makes this claim:

“the entire sixth chapter of Romans says act like God has graciously done everything necessary for your salvation and you can’t do anything to save yourself. Grace, not legalism, not works, is the great motivator of the Christian life. Every appeal in Romans 6 is based on what God has done that we cannot do, and the greatest obedience flows from the grace of God.

The reason for this is clear. Grace magnifies the giver.”

When Mercy first became mobile (and able to get into things she shouldn’t), Doug and I developed a strategy. If she would go to touch something, like the T.V. or Doug’s laptop or the fan, we would tell her: “Mercy, just say hi” and we would wave at the object. She would then imitate us and begin waving vigorously at the forbidden thing. This gave her an acceptable way to interact with whatever the appealing item was, and so on any given day Mercy could be found waving at different things in our apartment. It actually still works with her. Over Christmas, we stayed in homes filled to varying degrees with Christmas decorations. For those things that she was not supposed to touch, we simply told her to “just say hi.”

When Aaron became mobile, we used the same strategy. He seemed to have all the same affinities as his sister: the television on button; the shelf of my theology books; the remote control. However, the “just say hi” method has proven to be a little less effective with child number two. Aaron just looks at us while he goes ahead and touches whatever it is we are telling him to “say hi” to. Then, when we end up going over and picking him up to remove him from the object, he turns to us and waves furiously.

For those interested in the recent racial violence here in L.A. that I have mentioned in previous posts, here is an overview.