According to Loriene Roy, president of the American Library Association, it’s a matter of principle versus reality—”the philosophy of serving all people,” she says, “and the reality of what happens when we do.”
From a Newsweek article titled Too at Home in the Stacks reporting on the rising trend of homeless individuals spending their days in public libraries.
Doug is in the midst of jury duty selection this week, so his schedule has allowed for him to be home in the mornings. Yesterday I had a doctor’s appointment and because he was home I went by myself while he stayed with the kids. When I returned, he had all three kids out front: Elijah on a blanket trying desperately to eat some grass and Mercy and Aaron running gleefully up and down the driveway. I pulled the car in and joined the party out front.
As we were sitting there together, a young girl came walking down our sidewalk. She was holding a plastic container with dollar bills stuffed inside. It was obvious she was selling something or raising money, maybe for her school or her church. We said hello as she passed, and almost surprised she stopped: “Would you like to make a donation for my brother? He was shot four times and is now blind.”
I looked at her, speechless. I have clear memories from my childhood of walking the streets of my neighborhood asking for money: for school walkathons, or because I was selling Girl Scout cookies, or going door to door with my mom on behalf of the Cancer Society. “I am so sorry,” was all I could think to say.
Doug and I rarely have cash on hand, but my purse was sitting next to me having just returned from my trip to the doctor. I fumbled around inside and found a dollar. “Here,” I said awkwardly extending the bill toward her plastic jar which I could now see had a photograph of a boy taped to it.
“Thank you,” she replied with a huge smile. “Have a blessed day,” and she resumed her journey down our street.
As I watched her walk away, I was overwhelmed with how absurd my gift was. A dollar? It felt so insulting, really. And it reminded me how inadequate I so often feel here faced with so many profound needs. Like today when we saw David asking for money on the off-ramp for our exit. Doug opened our stash of beach-quarters (for parking) and filled David’s cup.
I had to memorize the Beatitudes in Greek when I studied Matthew’s gospel exegetically at Fuller (I was pregnant with Mercy at the time and could barely remember my own phone number so this was no small feat). Blessed are those who mourn…those who hunger. These words haunt me as I marvel at how radically different God’s lens is when he looks at his creation; when he sees South Central. And I cannot help but consider how regularly we reject the gospel because we simply do not believe that such crazy things can be true.
I was just down on the floor changing Elijah’s diaper and when I leaned
forward, part of my back was exposed. Mercy was standing behind me.
She reached down and scratched on a place on my back:
“Mommy, you have a nickel!”
I had no idea what she was calling a nickel–I don’t have any moles or
anything that would be round like a nickel, and I thought that was a strange
choice…I’m not even sure she knows what a nickel is!
After looking closer, she said: “No, Mommy, it’s not a nickel. It’s a
boo-boo.”
I realized that when she said “nickel” she was thinking of “freckle”.
I laughed.
And then she clarified: “Boo-boo is Spanish for owie.”
Of course.
Doug kicked me out of the house last night. In a good way.
While he was sitting in a courtroom somewhere downtown yesterday afternoon (having been summoned for jury duty) I got this text: “So, where are you going tonight?”
We had talked recently about how I needed to get out regularly, away from the house and kids, and do things that feed my soul. And when I received the text, I realized that I had been a bit crabby the last few days and Doug was probably right in thinking some time away would be restorative.
It was funny how hard it was to actually leave. As much as my spirit wanted to go, I kept looking around at this or that unfinished chore or mess and thinking that I just had to take care of one more thing…
“You’re still here?” was all Doug said when he came out of the kitchen to finish clearing the dinner table. I finally made the break and grabbed keys, phone, purse and a book and walked out the door, not exactly sure where I would end up.
I drove to our neighborhood Starbucks, and as I stepped out of my car I dialed a good friend and invited myself over for a visit. Then I went inside to get a latte. As I stood in line, I realized how awkward I felt. It was like I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I had a hard time holding on to the things I was carrying and kept shifting things from one hand to the other. And when I paid for my latte with one of my Christmas gift cards, I stood there like a dork long after she had rung up the sale, a long line of people waiting behind me. “Oh, am I done?” I asked, and she smiled graciously and nodded.
I felt a bit like that student athlete whose schoolwork is excellent when they are in a sport, with all of the demands of games and workouts and practices, but whose grades suffer when they do not have such rigorous demands on their schedule.
And as I approached the door to leave, I felt that wave of stress come that normally accompanies every time I have to get my crew (in some combination of walking, strolling and carrying) through a doorway and then I realized I could just slip out with ease. No production. No stares.
I ended up spending the evening with our dear friends who just had a baby in December (and no, the irony of this is not lost on me). I had the chance to hold little Evan (or baby Even, as Aaron calls him) and talk to him and hear the stories of their journey into parenting and we spent the evening talking about breastfeeding and sleep schedules and diapers and how insanely much we love our children. It was a perfect night.
My daughter, the bilingual one
Mercy came walking up to me in my sister’s backyard this afternoon with her mud-caked hands proudly extended:
“Mommy, my hands are FILTHY.”
And then she turned to her brother: “That’s Spanish for dirty.”
I remember it was Easter Sunday our first year living here when we experienced our first homicide on our street. I remember standing on our front porch watching while the area was taped off and and the LAPD worked the scene. I remember watching the coroner’s van arrive to take away the body of the man who had been shot and killed while sitting in his car. I remember what a sober ending it was to our day of celebration.
It has been a tense week here in the neighborhood. The graffiti is shouting war right now, and the heavy presence of police helicopters, sirens, and occasional gunfire confirm it. Early in the week Doug was working hard on a final project for his class at Fuller, and as he sat typing, we watched and listened while a helicopter painted an area a few blocks from us for close to two hours, and every manner of law enforcement vehicle, some we had never seen before, flew down Jefferson with lights and sirens blazing. “We have the area surrounded” a voice declared over a loudspeaker about an hour into the ordeal.
We had the joy of spending the day today with a very dear friend of mine from Chicago. Annabeth was a young girl who lived a few blocks from North Park’s campus and who became like a sister to me during my years there. She witnessed much during her childhood, and we were companions through the loss of one of her best friends, a young man I loved dearly, who was murdered: shot at close range while sitting in his parked car.
Tonight Annabeth and I shared memories of Jamar, and talked about even recently ways that we have grieved his death. Mine was catching a brief movie clip last week on Oprah of a funeral procession winding through a manicured cemetery: alone, I started to weep uncontrollably. For me, it was our arrival at the cemetery to bury Jamar’s body that had pierced me with the finality of his death. After the burial, I remember standing in a sea of an almost surreal green, being held up by Jamar’s best friend and crying louder than I knew was possible. I remember wondering if I would ever catch my breath.
This morning Doug offered an invocation where he shared a story about Aaron. This past week, Aaron was sitting at the dining room table when out of the blue he declared: “I love God…God is a train.” Doug shared how, for Aaron, he wasn’t as much describing God’s being as he was ascribing worth and delight. For Aaron, a train is the most majestic thing he knows. Doug commented that Aaron was doing what we all do when we seek to describe what God is through our always limited understanding.
And then Doug told the story of Mercy accidentally painting a cross on her paper this week, and how horrified she was when I pointed it out. And he contrasted Aaron’s desire to ascribe to God that thing of greatest value and glory that our imaginations can muster with the thing that God chose to ascribe to himself: the cross…something which makes us recoil in disgust.
Tonight I find myself considering the darkness around me, past and present, and desperately clinging to that crucified God. Tonight I find myself longing to touch the hem of that kind of love. Tonight I find my spirit remembering words sung with awe this morning:
Of all the songs sung from the dawn of creation
Some were meant to persist
Of all the bells rung from a thousand steeples
None rings truer than this…
It’s all God’s children singin’
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
He reigns…
He reigns.
And all the powers of darkness
Tremble at what they’ve just heard
Cause all the powers of darkness
Can’t drown out a single word.
Where the controversy arises is from the fact that Obama’s narrative (his racial and cultural background, his Christian faith, his intellect, his conciliatory manner) are foreign to most white Americans, especially when it comes to presidential candidates. His story requires white Americans to deviate from the standard script too much. With President Bush, it was enough for us to know that he was a reformed alcoholic who had a Christian conversion late in life. We knew that he came from a wealthy family, and that he is a sporadic churchgoer. We didn’t need to probe too deeply into the specifics of his personal beliefs or obtain transcripts of his pastor’s sermons. What more was there to know? His personal narrative was familiar and safe…
From Edward Gilbreath’s Reconciliation Blog
Mercy has a toddler Bible and we have read through it a few times now. Both kids are very intrigued by Jesus’ death, and they often ask me to tell the story of how he died. They also know that Jesus did not remain dead but became alive again.
The other day we were painting on our easel in the kitchen and Mercy had two heavy strokes that came together to form a cross. I pointed to her paper and said happily: “Mercy, you painted a cross!” She looked at me in horror, her mouth immediately turning down as her eyes widened.
It was a good reminder for me of the outrage and scandal of the cross: the gruesome act that sits unapologetic at the center of my Christian faith. The cross is not something pretty or appealing, as I seemed to suggest to my daughter when I admired her artwork. Mercy understands that it is something terrifying; appalling. May it be that today we remember that.
“I’m tired of sleeping.”
“And I’m tired of you NOT sleeping.”
“Well, let’s figure out that problem…”
I have mentioned a couple of times here that a tragic accident took the life of someone very dear to many of our friends on January first of this year. I never had the privilege of knowing the Mikasa family, but I have been deeply touched by the pain of their loss through my community’s grieving.
I found out recently that the husband and father who survived the accident has started a blog where he is writing with great vulnerability about his loss. It is a bit like reading A Grace Disguised by Jerry Sittser but reading it in the moment as the immediate journey through suffering and grief unfolds. His posts offer a powerful witness to what it means to trust and love God in the midst of what I can only call an impossible grief.
Here is an excerpt from today:
As I read this today, I am reminded that the world indeed is broken and dark. Death and pain are all too real, and while we can be fooled to believe that comfort and control are ours for the taking, it can only be said that our every breath comes to us as gift. In the black church, folks have always prayed: “Thank you Lord for waking me up today in my right mind.” That is the kind of perspective and gratitude that should inform and guide us all.
