The Margins

Today we accomplished what I thought was the impossible: successfully posing all five Haubs for a family portrait. My mom had a portrait package at Yuen Lui, so she gave us the chance to go and have a free sitting and get a a free 8X10 as part of the deal. After almost calling and cancelling the whole thing this morning (we were forty-five minutes away from our appointment, Elijah was still in his sleeper, Mercy and Aaron were in the bath, and Doug and I were trying to hunt down the Carney-family hair clippers to give him a trim), we ended up making it to the Lynwood studio on time, AND our sitting was smooth and without any incident!

Elijah never cried once, and unlike the time when my sister and I tried to have portraits of her son and Mercy taken, there were no fits, escape attempts, or attachments to dumb photographer props to contend with. Since it is all digital now we were able to preview our proofs and while the number of actually good pictures was small, we only needed one to turn out. We ended up with about three good ones to choose from, and we went ahead and placed our order. Truly a miracle in my book.

The photography studio is located nearby a large mall, and so for the first time this season I found myself in the heart of retail-dom. We thought about actually going into the mall (which would probably be the first time in over a year for any of us), but ended up in the nearby Red Robin instead. But we talked about our Christmas shopping lists and what we needed to buy and for whom.

I have heard more than a few people comment on abstaining from or reducing the amount of store spending for gifts this year, perhaps favoring hand-made items as gifts or using the time, energy, and money that shopping and giving requires and putting that toward service opportunities instead. Great thoughts, of course. All of our rituals deserve to be regularly examined, and the ease by which they can quickly become co-opted by powerful, and often well-disguised, forces should not be taken lightly.

But as Doug and I discussed our plans for gift-giving this year, I realized that the act of shopping and selecting gifts for our family members does not feel driven by any list of “isms”. Rather, it is that chance to use a material gift to express our care and joy. It doesn’t seem to me that there is anything wrong with that sort of symbolic gesture. It would seem to me that what makes Christmastime gift-giving feel creepy is what is happening, consumption-wise, the rest of the year. I read something recently that said there were people who, in some fashion, shopped every day. I found that suggestion inconceivable and scandalous. But after thinking a bit, even of people I know, I realized that that might not be as impossible as it sounds. And with that as a back-drop, of course shopping for someone feels absurd!

I am not a shopper, and our family budget does not even have line items for clothes for us or the kiddos. With those realities, the giving that happens at birthdays and Christmas is a fun way for us to get the couple of things we do need each year. But again, it is the backdrop of a commitment to simplicity the rest of the year that makes those material gifts at Christmas feel completely appropriate and quite welcome. I wonder, then, if it isn’t much easier to talk about reigning in our impulses to consume over these next few weeks rather than deal head-on with the ways that we bow to materialism the rest of the year? Again, I applaud the initiatives I have heard promoted recently. May it be that they not be relegated to holiday trendiness but rather become the trends by which the rest of our lives can be ordered when consumption and materialism are off the collective radar.

My dad took the morning off today to take the kids swimming at a great pool and recreation center in nearby Mountlake Terrace. It is the same pool where my sister and I took swimming lessons growing up, and the place is filled with great memories for me. Our kids love the water, and Doug and my dad were great playmates while I sat on the side with the camera and Elijah. It’s always fun to see the places of significance from my own childhood through adult eyes: the thing that struck me today was looking at all the moms with locker keys pinned to the straps of their swimsuits. I so clearly remember that as one of the definitive features of mom-hood at the pool, and today I realized that I am now one of them. I don’t know if this is true for all parents, but I feel like I am still coming into the understanding that I am “the mom” now. And moments like this morning, looking around and seeing the club I now belong to, can still startle me!

As I sat on my little poolside bench, I noticed a few regional differences of note:

-Mom’s of all ages, shapes and sizes with big tatoos. I think there were maybe two moms I saw without them.

-A high percentage of dads there, on a weekday morning, with their kids.

-Lots and lots of white people. The exceptions were one Asian mom and one African American dad there with their kids.

-Normal-looking people. There was one dolled-up mom who came through at one point, but there was otherwise a very laid-back, relaxed character to those of us gathered. In L.A. I am always aware of the costumes of expensive shoes, enormous handbags, and fancy hair (not to mention the refinements of knife and needle). Not a hint of that here.

Ever since I was a child, I can remember seeing the following phrase used on various publications from our church: “The people who are Shoreline Covenant Church.” As a kid, I can remember thinking that the language seemed a bit clumsy or strange. In every other context where I heard the word “church” used, it clearly indicated a structure; a building. I am grateful that, from early on, our pastor was intentional about teaching me theology.

This afternoon we packed the kids up and journeyed the three blocks up to my home church building to visit my mom. It is always a highlight for the kids to play in the play-yard there (giant sand-filled box filled with trucks and snorts and scoops: need I say more?), and indoors as well in the various rooms used for pre-school and nursery programs. As my mom and I stood outside while the kids played (and Doug made a latte run to our favorite Richmond Beach Cofee), I marveled at the way the yard there felt a bit like an extension of our home. So much so that my mom has doggie “play-dates” with one of the preschool moms who brings her poodle over to run with my brother’s boxer during the lunch hour. I am pretty sure this is a bit unusual, and I credit much of that to the fact that my mom has worked here for so many years and that our own home is so close.

But then I stopped and thought a minute about all of the ways I see other folks from our church function in their relationship to the building. Whether it is Lisa who comes and paints rooms or Chuck who stops by to fix stuff or Candace and Sam who would bring their three-year old to practice on the drums in the sanctuary (the kid is amazing, by the way), I realized that our family is not really that unique in treating the space like it is in some way our own.

My church in L.A. does not own a building. With real estate what it is down there, and with our demographic as a church, I am not sure what kind of miracle it would take for us to do so. There can be a kind of “spirituality” to our building-lessness. We can be quick to pat ourselves on the back for not investing our resources in land and walls but rather in justice and souls. But watching my home church relate to the building they own, I am less quick to see ours as the superior path. I see a people whose lives spill out into a place that works somewhat like an overflow room for their own commitments to hospitality and service.

When my parents first moved into the neighborhood here, my mom was in the process of starting a girl scout brownie troop for girls in the community. My parents were not active in any faith community at the time, and as my mom searched the area for a meeting space for her girls, she found herself talking to a lot of stewards of church buildings. She describes coming to what was then called North Seattle Covenant Church, meeting the pastor, and basically being handed a key on the spot. My mom’s brownie troop started meeting there, my parents decided to check out a Sunday worship service, and the rest is what they call history.

The people who are Shoreline Covenant Church. There is a way that because this is understood, because from the beginning a pastor was clear about identity, the building is free for the kind of use that deserves the name “church”.

There is a tradition in Portland, as in many cities, of celebrating the lighting of the giant Christmas tree in the center of town. Having never seen it live, Auntie Sarah and I decided to brave the elements (I forget how cold it is up here!) and head downtown with all three kids to see the tree-lighting. I expected it to be a bit chaotic and crowded, but I did not even begin to imagine the craziness that met us the moment we stepped off the train. Huge crowds of people, big dogs, way too many strollers…after walking less than a block we reached the point where people were no longer moving and we realized this was as close as we would get.

Of course the tree was barely visible to me, and completely out of the realm of the kids’ sight, and we were Daddy-less so there were no giant shoulders for kiddos to perch upon. I had Elijah bundled up in the Bjorn so I could not lift either of the kids (I mistakingly tried to lift Aaron, and the combination of his weight and the slipperiness of his down coat made for a disaster as I tried to hold him on one hip), and of course Mercy had to go pee right before the big moment so she and Sarah missed it anyway. Basically, it was a disaster.

Having skipped dinner to make the ceremony, we were in urgent need of a meal so we headed to the food court of the big downtown mall a few blocks away. It was a good idea except for the fact that every other family decided to do the same and people were circling like vultures trying to snag tables and chairs. It was around then that we began to really feel the two adult to three needy children ratio. Sarah summed it up this way: “I don’t know how you ever do anything.”

Auntie Sarah is a trooper. She is not only brilliant and imaginative in how she relates to our kids in conversation and in play, but she is endlessly patient and kind with them. I had lost my cool before we even arrived at the food court, and it was her strength that sustained us through the meal and back to the train. I was honest with her, saying that it often isn’t worth trying to do stuff like this because it just ends up being so hard. She nodded and understood.

In most areas of our lives we want things to be clean and easy. We don’t want to ever get too cold or wait too in too long of a line or get pushed beyond our dinner hour. It annoys us when we have to stand at the periphery. And we really don’t want to be outnumbered by demanding, needy ones. I see this in how we want church to function. We so often do anything in our power to eliminate the messy, the unpredictable, the uncomfortable. We want things to work in ways that suit us, accommodate our particular list of needs, and make us comfortable and happy. And as much as many of us talk about self-sacrifice and living mission-driven lives, we still feel entitled to see the tree.

I just came across (via Bill Kinnon) this terribly valuable reminder of what lies at the center of our life as Christ-followers:

Overall the gospel is the grandest Yes to human aspirations in all history. But the gospel’s No’s are plain, unvarnished, and impossible to duck. There is challenge as well as promise, warning of costs as much as offers of rewards, and talk of sacrifice as common as invitations to the party…

In an age when comfort and convenience are unspoken articles of our modern bill of rights, the Christian faith is not a license to entitlement, a prescription for an easy-going spirituality, or a how-to manual for self-improvement. The cross of Jesus runs crosswise to all our human ways of thinking. A rediscovery of the hard and the unpopular themes of the gospel will therefore be such a rediscovery of the whole gospel that the result may lead to reformation and revival (Os Guiness).

In thinking about my own faith community, how many things are there to which I say: “It’s not worth it. It will just end up being too hard.”

Justice is what love looks like in public.

Tavis Smiley quoting Cornel West (from Christine Scheller)

Rudy Carrasco, our neighbor to the north, wrote a great piece in the Pasadena Star-News in response to the recent wave of gang violence in his community. He writes this about the need for intervention as well as the more common prevention initiatives:

But doing gang intervention is not as easy as it sounds. In an area youth workers meeting following last December’s shooting across from King’s Villages that started Pasadena’s present wave of violence, one youth worker pointed out that past initiatives to stem youth violence have the curious quality of helping everyone except the very gang-involved young people who are most unreachable and most likely to commit crime…

The reasons for the deficit include the difficulty in finding and funding people who are not only effective, but also credible to both gangs and the community at large. I’ve also heard, at community meetings, an underlying tone that suggests, “You can’t win them all,” and therefore we are somehow justified in writing off the gang-involved…

But these cannot be the principles on which we approach the situation. As a Christian, I claim to follow a savior who left 99 sheep so that he could find one sheep that was lost. Common sense says that if you reached 99 out of a 100, you did a good job, and by the way “you can’t win them all.” But I profess beliefs that don’t let me off the hook that easy. In my own life, I believe I have benefited at the hands of people who shared the mentality of leaving the 99 to go after the one.

When I lived in Chicago, I worked in the area of prevention: providing after-school programs for urban youth that gave kids the opportunity to sing in a gospel choir or dissect frogs or shoot pool in a drop-in center after school instead of lingering on unsafe streets or in unhealthy homes. We gave kids mentors through our big sister/big brother program; we went roller skating and to the zoo; we taught the Bible and shared and prayed with the kids in small groups. We were effective in giving kids an alternative to the gangs that ran their streets, and not a day went by where I did not see how vital and necessary that work was in the lives of our kids.

But I have other memories as well: memories of the kids already connected and committed to the nations and families of the streets. Kids who stole cars, carried and used baseball bats, and brought guns to school: kids in the seventh grade.

I learned early on that most of the gang members would either leave me alone or watch out for me on the street. And while it sounds like that predictable scene from the movie about the ghetto, older gang members were often grateful to see other kids have alternatives and options that they did not, and they would encourage their siblings or cousins to stick with me and stay out of trouble.

There were others, however, that I feared: four to be exact. They were the red-haired twins and the F. brothers, interestingly all Anglo, and they genuinely scared me. The brothers trashed my car with metal folding chairs one night. My sin? Driving to their home each morning to pick up J, an eighth grader who stayed with them because his mom had left him and his dad was in jail. I would leave early for work and drive the twenty minutes to their house, pick J up, often having to wait for him to get ready, and drive back to our neighborhood to drop him off at the junior high next to our campus. The brothers had other plans for J, and my intrusion was not welcome.

As poverty moves to the suburbs, I wonder how the landscape of gang activity will change. I imagine that people who have long been able to ignore and dismiss the tragedies of this urban reality will suddenly find themselves confronted by it, and I wonder what the response will be? Schools can install metal detectors, but what will churches do? How will those apprenticed to Jesus respond to these kids?

When I look back on the kids in gangs that I did invest in, the thing that stands out is so absurdly simple: I engaged them in a relationship. I called them on the phone, I talked with their teachers, I visited their homes, I took them places, and I was direct and honest about their situation and the options and alternatives that could give them an out. But for all the labor and prayers, we were rarely successful, and that is the shadow and sorrow cast over my years in Chicago.

But even I was selective in which gang members I chose to love, and I gave up on some. When I think about the Twins and the F. Brothers, and the hundreds of kids we did successfully serve, I would never have left the hundreds to save those four. Not a chance. But Rudy is right. We are called to both, and someone, many someones, need to step out and do exactly that: waste their every energy and talent and hope on those lost causes.

I have quoted this before here, but it seems fitting to do so again. Doug wrote the following after a killing on our corner a few years ago, and it is an appropriate and sober conclusion to my thoughts today:

There is nothing about the tragedy of what happened that night that does not disturb me. But the thing that haunts me the most is something our neighbor shared with us the next day. He told us that when the LAPD arrived on the scene they asked everyone to back away and cordoned off the intersection. They asked everyone to back away - even those who were engaged in CPR. I was recently recertified in Medic First Aid Basic response. You keep up CPR until help arrives and removes you to take your place. The neighbors engaged in CPR stopped and moved as they were told; but the police just stood there and did nothing. And Carlos died.

Chances are he would have died anyway. He was shot twice in the head and three times in the chest. He was probably drowning in his own blood. Even chest compressions won’t help if the body is denied air, and his airway was disturbed by blood. Because no one had barriers and he was bleeding a lot, mouth to mouth was not being administered.

Perhaps the police thought he was a lost cause because of his bleeding, his massive wounds, his deteriorating state. Perhaps the officers simply made a mistake or did not know the appropriate protocol. Or perhaps they felt he was lost long ago; signs of his losing etched all over his body in the form of gang tattoos.

And so, alone and unattended, Carlos laid in our street and he died.

May God show mercy.

An almost flawless trip up here. The kids were so delightful during the trip that I never even opened what I thought would be my back-seat survival kit of toys. Other than a handful of books the kids looked at, the landscape, animals, music and mom’s antics were sufficiently entertaining.

The way that two families opened their homes to us and made space for our family on our way up here. At the first house we arrived, travel-weary, at the front door and were greeted by four little girls who wanted nothing more than to play with, fawn over, and completely adore our kids. While Doug and I sat down for some Shiraz and great conversation, our kids played blissfully. Aaron met his soulmate–a girl who was thrilled to play an endless game of catch. And Mercy, who to date did not know that so many dolls, Barbies, princesses, and glittery accessories could exist in one home, walked from room to room in a girly delirium. At one point during the evening, she turned to me with wide eyes: “Mommy, what is this place called?”

The fact that I have family that I genuinely love and enjoy. In telling people that I was leaving to spend six weeks with our extended family up north, a fair number would furrow their brows and ask: “Is that a good thing?” It is a very, very good thing and I realize that not everyone can say that.

McMenamins Russian Lullaby Imperial Stout.

Fires in the fireplace and a husband who knows how to build them well.

Peet’s Holiday Blend.

Woods and trails and ponds to explore with my kids. Every day since arriving here, we have bundled up and headed outside as a family to walk and tromp and play. I went to Fred Meyer’s and bought some “Stompers” for the kids: heavy, mostly waterproof boots that allow them full access to all the soggy Northwest has to offer. Aaron looked like Frankenstein the first day he tried walking in them, but he has since adapted and they are now his friends. Just today, the kids spent a good hour in this swampy part of a nearby park, “fishing” with their sticks (Aaron was catching octopus, he informed us) and playing dinosaurs.

My kids’ imaginations.

The first season of Heroes on DVD courtesy of Auntie Sarah.

Our van: the means for us to come up on this trip, and our way of getting around once we are here. It is no small thing that we were given the ability to purchase this vehicle. It is a reminder of answered prayers and undeserved gifts, and every time we pile in, I am reminded that no need of ours has been too great for God’s provision.

A family leave trip not marked by ER visits, sick kids, fingers in heaters or fallen trees.

I am writing this from Doug’s father’s house in Portland, Oregon. After three days on the road, we were grateful to safely arrive last night, and we are thrilled to be back in the land of fleece and green.

I really appreciated Julie Clawson’s honesty in looking at the issues surrounding the choice to pay pastors for their work within a faith community. I have had many conversations with many people about whether the whole “professional clergy” model is worth keeping, and whether using a community’s resources to support a paid pastor is the best stewardship of the church’s money. I talk to a lot of people who hold onto an ideal of the faith community functioning with no pastor, and while I often appreciate what they are reacting against, I am not always comfortable with their conclusions.

As a theologically trained individual who would love to serve the church vocationally, I know I am not coming at this totally objectively. I would not have done what I did in pursuing seminary studies if I did not think service to the church as a paid minister was a valid calling. That said, neither Doug nor I have received paychecks for our ministerial work for years now, nor have many others who serve alongside us at Church of the Redeemer. So I do relate to the other side of this argument as well.

In my experience, there comes a time within a faith community where someone in the body is called to a particular area of service and leadership. That person may serve and lead for some time as a “volunteer” or “lay leader”. And sometimes that is entirely doable. When I was single, for example, I was able to serve as a lay pastor without receiving a paycheck for my ministry. I lived on nothing, my time was my own, and I was energized by the commitment. At this stage of life, that would not work for me and for my family to the degree that it did back then. Something about having to make sure there is actually food in the refrigerator…

Often it is also the case that the ministry of an individual serving as a layperson grows to the extent that it is the desire of the community to see them released from other obligations (the kind attached to paychecks, for example) so that they may more fully invest in the service to which they have been called. In the history of our church, for example, when it became clear that one member was especially gifted reaching out to youth in our community, it was the will of the group to pool their resources to cover some of her expenses so that she might be freed up to love and serve the kids of our neighborhood in some more formalized capacities.

I had a similar experience the summer after my freshman year in college. I came out to Pomona to participate in an InterVarsity summer urban project. Eighteen of us lived communally in an old Presbyterian church in downtown Pomona. Some of us worked full-time. Others of us worked part-time at the local YMCA, and taught ESL classes and ran youth groups with the rest of our time. Still others did not work at all and were released financially to pastor and lead our community for that summer. That was the first time I had ever lived out that kind of an expression of shared resources, and I was fascinated.

I think the questions being asked by those wishing to re-image church with new models of leadership and a lack of hierarchy are the right ones. I am eager to see the ways different communities explore the answers to them, and it is obviously a conversation that carries great weight for me in my own sense of calling. Ten and twenty years down the road, I wonder how the landscape of pastoral ministry will be changed.

The other day I made my first venture out of the house alone with Elijah. Doug was home with the big kids and I needed to buy a hairdryer so I decided to make the trip to Target. I am not a shopper. I will do almost anything rather than shop, but I really needed the hairdryer so I loaded the baby into the van and away we went.

When I got to the parking lot, I made my best guess as to how close I could get to the entrance and still find a spot, and turned down the aisle to look. I saw that there were a few spots available toward the end so I decided this was close enough to the entrance and I would take the first open spot. When I got to that first space to my right, I put on my blinker and slowed to a stop. It was at this point that I spotted the nice white Cadillac with the older gentleman driving. He had just driven into the spot opposite mine from the next parking aisle over, and I realized that perhaps he was cutting through to position himself for my parking space.

Not wanting to be rude and presume that the spot was mine, especially if he had gone to the effort to position himself so nicely to drive straight into it, I looked at him, pointed to the spot and then at him, inquiring if he was waiting for it. He proceeded to throw his hands up in the air and yell and curse at me telling me to just get out of his way. I backed up to let him through and he tore out of there, still yelling and gesturing wildly.

Doug will often remind me of the cost I don’t pay for living here (and one that he does): having to drive regularly in L.A. That afternoon at Target I realized how true that is. That man’s capacity for anger simply terrified me. But what also terrified me was how his anger triggered so much of my own. “Stop yelling at me!” I remember screaming at him from inside my van. I felt assaulted by his rage, and kicked into a totally defensive posture. I thought later of the words of Jesus: “Bless those who curse you.” I certainly did not.

Part of what was so offensive about this man’s reaction was that I had been acting with his interest in mind. I have had lots of parking spots taken from me here; spots that I had waited for, signaled for, whatever. People in L.A. are pros at the no-eye-contact-I’ll-just-act-like-I-never-saw-you thing, and this has always been maddening. So it is ironic that by actually stopping to make sure that another person did not have dibs on a space, I incurred more wrath than I likely would have if I had stolen someone’s. I realized that my little parking lot incident is a great illustration for what it feels like to be misunderstood: to have good intentions taken wrongly. I think that is why his anger flipped my own anger switch so quickly. It is a good reminder to me of how I react in other arenas of my life when something I do or say is misunderstood. It is far too easy to go down the path of anger, and to feel perfectly justified for doing it. But to what end.

Driving home, I was struck by the general insanity of L.A. driving. And having spent so much of this past year house-bound and disabled, I realized that my driving callouses are gone and I feel vulnerable. As I was traveling down Jefferson, I saw ahead of me a group of high school kids waiting to jet across the busy street as soon as a break in traffic appeared. They waited for the three vehicles in front of me to pass, but for whatever reason decided that they would try to make a run for it in front of me. This resulted in my having to slam on the brakes as two of them stepped out in front of my oncoming vehicle. They immediately all looked at me to see how the white lady in the minivan would react. I smiled and made a gesture with my hand for them to go ahead. Disarmed, they smiled back and crossed the street.