The Margins

Mercy has an Aladdin doll that is the size of a Barbie and is jointed and she loves to put him in different positions and pretend that he is everyone from Peter Pan to Hakim (some minor character in a Jasmine movie she saw). Lately, though, Aladdin has been God. And her little Eric (the prince in Little Mermaid) figurine from one of the many different Disney princess doll sets she has been given is Jesus. If you ask her why Eric is Jesus, she will tell you that it is because he has black hair: like God.

Yesterday Mercy came over to my desk where I was working: “Mommy, will you play with me?”

“Sure, baby.” I answered.

“You be God and I will be Jesus,” she said, handing me Aladdin.

“Okay,” I said, turning toward her and holding up the big naked Barbie man.

“When the whole bible is over, you are going to come with me,” the little Disney Jesus said.

“Where are we going to go?” The Barbie God asked.

“We are going to go through the whole world and take away all the people who are old.”

“Where are we going to take them?”

“We are going to bring them to your home.”

“Okay.”

Last Thursday, one of our very close friends here was robbed on the street. She has a baby the same age as Elijah and she was pushing him along in his stroller when two men ran up from behind and grabbed her purse off her arm, tipping the stroller over in the process. Thankfully, baby was strapped in and was not harmed. My sister was with her, pushing my two nephews in their stroller. Thankfully, my sister wasn’t touched and it was a grace that the boys slept through the entire attack.

When I got the call from my sister, my heart raced in that mix of terror at what had happened and relief that they were all okay. Tears stung my eyes as my heart felt all over again the violation of being attacked. There can be a temptation in circumstances like this to brush it off almost because everyone was okay and the crime itself wasn’t major. But I know that the pain of being attacked is more than the actual physical pain of bruises or cuts.

The thing I cannot shake is this: these women were pushing strollers with babies in them. I confess I have often told myself that I am safe out and about when I have my little ones all around me. Because what kind of monster attacks a mother carrying her children? But last week reminded me that crimes of desperation are just that: desperate. And while I never walk around with a purse in general, I am already thinking about how I will behave differently when I am out walking with my babies.

It is interesting to have my different false clams to security dissolve here. Like the realization that living on the second floor doesn’t mean that bullets can’t enter. Or now that pushing a stroller with a baby in it is not a reason for someone not to attack.

The other night, Doug and I were almost asleep when our apartment was filled with the sound of angry screaming coming from the street. It was around midnight, and we ignored it at first until the tone and language became so clearly violent. As we peered through our blinds, we saw a half-dressed young man walking wildly down the street screaming in rage. Another young man walked with him, and a cluster of young women walked at a distance behind them.

“You’ve never had your mom tell you you ain’t sh–. You’ve never had your dad wish you were dead.” And he went on, screaming through tears and punching the air.

“We’re in the middle of the street. You need to be quiet. Someone around here will call the cops,” one of the girls said, gently.

“Fu– them. Fu– the cops. They can come. I don’t care. They can kill me. I don’t care…”

My heart broke for that boy that night. I’m not sure how old he was, but he seemed so vulnerable. A child desperately wanting his mother and father’s love. A child who knew too well the language of despair. I remember the many conversations I had with young men in Chicago who genuinely doubted that they would live to see their eighteenth year. And I remember around the time of Jamar’s funeral finding out how many of them did not. This boy seemed to hold his life loosely in that same way: “I don’t care.” “It doesn’t matter.” “Fu– ‘em.”

There is so much that makes the system here what it is. And while I can point to all the great ways we are involved in the community; while I reflect on our afternoon spent swimming next door with a family whose son has been in and out of the juvenile system; while I consider the light that is our neighbor Elliot who is unflinching in his love for the youth of our street, I still struggle to not despair.

Just yesterday I was reading Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places where Eugene Peterson writes that creation is not something that God did in Genesis, but rather the thing that God keeps doing in our midst: “it is not confined to what the Spirit did; it is what the Spirit does.”. He makes the point that the verb to create is used more times in Isaiah’s preaching to God’s people in exile than in the whole creation narrative: “The Spirit of God created life out of nothing in the Babylon of the sixth century B.C. just as he had done in the formless void when the ‘darkness was upon the face of the deep’.”

Hollowness. Darkness. Chaos. These words can describe our community, a community than can feel almost exilic. And when I think of my friend watching her baby tipped over in front of her; when I hear the cries of a youth’s broken life; when I consider the addictions and desperation that fuel gang wars and rapes and robberies, I can only drop to my knees and cry out for a new creation.

In our worship service on Sunday, Doug led us in a song based on Habakuk 3:2. We sang:

“Lord,
I have heard of your fame and I stand in awe of your deeds

Lord,
I have heard of your fame and I stand in awe of your deeds

Oh Lord.

Renew them, renew them
In our day, and in our time, make them known

Renew them, renew them
In our day, and in our time, make them known

In wrath…remember Mercy

In wrath…remember Mercy.”

In short, we do not believe in God, become humble, and then learn to pray, but in learning to pray we humbly discover we cannot do other than believe in God.

Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom

“I’ll take ‘Threes’ for 1000, Alex,” says the contestant. Alex reads the answer: “Yellow, Blue, and Red.” Contestants frantically buzz in. The one with the quickest thumb responds: “What are the three primary colors?” And so the game goes. Jeopardy has been the most popular game show since its syndication in 1984 (24 years!). Its familiar format has reached beyond the TV audience. You find this on their website:

Jeopardy!’s unique answer-and-question format has become a popular motivational tool adapted by a variety of national educators. In 2002, Educational Insights premiered “Classroom Jeopardy!,” an affordable electronic version of the famous quiz show, which can be tailored by educators to suit their specific curriculum, while bringing the familiar sights and sounds of Jeopardy! (buzzers and all!) directly into the classroom.

Perhaps Jeopardy can claim that its “answer-and-question” format is unique amongst game shows but it isn’t unique in the real world. Almost everything we do can have a question behind it. Mercy and Aaron make it painfully obvious to us frequently that they are learning things from us that we did not realize we were teaching so thoroughly. “Coffee!” they yell excitedly every morning when Erika walks through the kitchen door to the table for breakfast. We taught them that the black liquid was coffee, that it was hot, and that it was only for mommy. But we did not teach them to exuberantly celebrate the precious morning ritual. That they learned by watching. If this scene were on Jeopardy maybe it would go something like this:

“Morning rituals for 1000, Alex,” Mercy might say.

“Coffee!” offers Alex Trebek. And Aaron, being the more dexterous, presses his button the fastest and exclaims “What is the drink that makes mommy mommy in the morning?”

Our lives are full of these sorts of things. As adults we have taken them for granted and moved on to more nuanced (even esoteric) understandings of our actions. But our children remind us that there may be more that we are teaching without even knowing it.

In my last post I asked the question about what our underlying grammar was in the faith community. That post was driving at one aspect of identity making and understanding. I wonder what in our churches we are teaching without reflecting on the fact that teaching is actually happening?

In my younger life our church on Jeopardy might have sounded like this:

Answer: “Middle-class white people who can afford to dress up on Sunday.”
Question: “Who is welcome in our church?”

or

Answer: “Organ and a choir.”
Question: “What is good worship?”

or

Answer: “Grey-haired white male”
Question: “Who is allowed to preach?”

These questions, of course, do not reflect our current faith community but the same reflective exercise would yield its own good and bad results. All of life is a learning community. What subtle and not so subtle things are being taught in our congregations? How are these sometimes hidden or unrecognized questions defining reality?

If you were to reflect on your present (or past) faith community, what is being taught beyond the sermon/teaching? Are you surprised by anything, good or bad? Are you willing to post and share here?

I went to the Out of Ur blog this morning and noticed an advertisement immediately to the right of the day’s post. It read:

Men of Integrity
as little as $1.25 each
CLICK HERE

So last night at the gas station, my friend David (who lives under the freeway) told me that things were tough right now for him. He said that the cops were really hassling him a lot because of the upcoming elections. I wondered at the accuracy of his observation and considered how incredibly active the police have been in our community of late.

Just last night there was a little rendezvous with a cruiser and two motorcycle cops (who I never see around here) who were discussing a meeting location on 37th. Doug said that they must be getting ready for a bust. Sure enough, less than five minutes later, two helicopters painted an area just south of us (we are on 30th) and were there for most of an hour. This is one of many such busts we have heard about recently.

It is interesting to consider how many factors, seen and unseen, work together to influence how much we see the police and what kind of response is given to gang activity and crime in our community.

This past weekend, my alma mater granted two honorary doctorate degrees at their commencement ceremony. When I saw the recipients of these awards, I smiled.

Ivor Jenkins, a South African anti-apartheid activist, was the point-person for a study tour I took of that country months before the first free election in 1994. He guided us through our weeks there, opening doors for meetings with political and religious leaders and experiences with the South African people that proved life-changing for me. I am a different person because of that trip.

I met Brenda Salter McNeil my freshman year at North Park, and it was a conversation with her over lunch after she spoke in chapel one day that most deeply influenced my decision to not transfer: “God has something he wants to do with you here in this community,” she said. At the time I was only beginning my involvement in mentoring youth in that community. She spoke truly of what, years later, would become my most transformative ministry experience: founding a comprehensive community youth outreach based on North Park’s campus. I am a different person in ministry today because of her prophetic counsel.

What strikes me as I write this is how little we actually see or know about the impact our words and time have on the different people we meet. I think about my teaching and speaking opportunities and the individuals who seek me out for conversation or counsel; I think about the guest groups we host here in South Central; I think of the many interns who share a season of their lives with us here and I am reminded that every one of these can be used by God in that Ivor Jenkins/Brenda Salter McNeil/”I’m a different person than I was before” kind of way. Not because I am special or great or because our church is so amazing, but because God works that way.

What a burden and privilege that is.

The helicopters and sirens have been going all morning. I am aware of the ways this makes me edgy, in general, with my kids. As my anxiety increases, my patience shortens. I don’t think the solution is to just ignore and pretend there is nothing the matter with the fact that police and emergency vehicles are in a flurry around us. And yet I don’t want that to define who we are.

How does it look to live with the peace of Christ in the midst of chaos or fear?

Singing Happy Mother’s Day to Grammy, Grammaline and Lauren (who is visiting her family in Hookem, Texas) over the phone.

Preaching at Church of the Redeemer.

Letting the kids eat way too many sweets at the church brunch.

Taking a long nap with Mercy after church (well, I slept at least!)

Crunchy-lunch-dinner at California Pizza Kitchen with my wonderful husband and precious babies.

Rocking out with Aaron to Jack Johnson in front of the mirror in the girl’s bathroom at CPK.

A big cup of Starbucks Pike’s Place roast.

Mercy asking when “Daughter Day” was.

Patty-cake, knocking down towers and cuddling with Elijah before bed.

Not being pregnant.

Faith is not a reasonable act which fits into the normal scheme of life and perception. The promise of the gospel is not a conventional piece of wisdom that is easily accommodated to everything else. Embrace of this gospel requires shattering and discontinuity.

From Genesis, by Walter Brueggemann