The Margins

“Why does Aaron think there are dragons that live at Ronald Bog?”

“Oh, they don’t live there. They only sleep there at night.”

“Why does he think this?”

“Well, because I told him.”

“You told him that Ronald Bog is full of dragons?”

“Only at night!”

“Why did you tell him this?”

“Well, he didn’t want to leave Pioneer Club on Wednesday night and he was really starting to throw a fit about not wanting to go home so, in a very calm voice, I told him that I didn’t have to take him home; I could drop him off at Ronald Bog for the night, but he might startle the dragons who sleep there and sometimes when they get startled they sneeze out fire and…”

“I can’t believe you told him that…”

“It worked.”

A few observations about life in the Pacific Northwest:

-As I find myself out and about during the day with the kiddos, I notice that around here a lot of Dads are home during the day with their children. I remember noticing this when we here on vacation last year, and now that I live here I notice it even more. There are also a lot of parents who share working and caring for their kids during the day, which is what Doug and I are now doing. This feels like a very normal thing here.

-Doug and I went out for our first date here, and as we sat here sipping yummy Belgian beers we noticed the distinct difference in how people dress here. Lots of hoodies under shirts. Lots of black. Tons of tattoos of course. And as I looked around, I could not find a single blonde in the crowd (and not because we not among a largely Anglo crowd). Women had lots of shades of browns and reds and darker hues, and I realized how accustomed I have grown to the unnaturally blonde haircolors seen so often in L.A.

-It’s hard to find the non-organic sections of the grocery store. They are by far the smaller percentage of any given aisle.

-Composting here is part of regular trash service. We had to post the garbage guidelines on our refrigerator because they were so extensive. Mercy has learned how to compost and she knows what foods from her plate can be dumped into the compost trash can. I didn’t realize that Aaron was watching her do this and I couldn’t understand why I kept fishing plates and forks out of the compost trash can. He saw Mercy dump her plate in that trash, but apparently didn’t realize that the entire plate was not going into the can.

-Conversation among strangers is totally normal here. I have started allowing more time for errands because of this.

-As I have met people and mentioned that I am a pastor, I wondered how that would be received around here as Seattle is famous for its unchurched-ness. So far the reaction I have received is one of people hearing that and wanting to talk about any number of things relating to faith or society or their health or families. I have not yet felt any prejudice against me for being a Christian or serving as a minister.

-The economy is hitting our region hard, with lots of Microsoft layoffs and insecurity at Boeing. In our church family, a number of people are being hit with unemployment as well as having to make tough decisions at work letting other employees go.

This is a brilliant photo essay. Thanks Shawn.

I am trying to get to know my way around a new computer, and as I was figuring out how to search within my emails, I stumbled across an old email (Doug regularly harasses me for keeping volumes of old emails, which I persist in doing) from Doug that had one of his papers from a Fuller class we took together attached. I stopped and read a portion of it and decided to share a few of the closing paragraphs. The paper was a reflective assignment and the class was Writings, taught by John Goldingay. Doug writes:

In C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are describing Aslan to Lucy, Peter, Susan and Edmond:

“Ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he–quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”

“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,’ said Mrs. Beaver, “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King I tell you.”

Is Yahweh in the Writings a safe God? No, not safe, but good. And if creation is built upon the character of God, I can also say that life is not safe, but good. There are no safe places: not Jerusalem or Babylon, dispersion or kingdom. Faith cannot be put into any of the things on earth. There is nothing safe under the sun and the only good is from Yahweh. And in life, even when things are terrible, I would still rather have a good God than a safe one.

Brueggemann has made the argument that Psalm 1, with its dependence on God’s faithfulness in ordering and sustaining the world in predictable and coherent ways is intentionally placed at the beginning of the Psalter. He argues that this is done because Psalm 1 is obviously ignorant of the realities of life but gives us a clear picture of what life should look like if we live obediently. He then states that Psalm 150 “is the most extreme and unqualified statement of unfettered praise in the OT” and that “it is located theologically at the end of the process of praise and obedience, after all of Israel’s motivations have been expressed and no more reasons need be given.”

He makes it sound like there is a journey to be had between Psalm 1 and Psalm 150 and that this journey will be hard. But once we arrive to the place where Psalm 150 is we will have made it to the place of unfettered appreciation of God. When I read the Psalter today, and take the journey from Psalm 1 to Psalm 150, I must conclude, with the help of the Writings, that Psalm 150 is not praise refined and perfected. It is the words of a people exhausted from trusting in things other than Yahweh. And year-by-year these ‘things’ in which they have put their trust have let them down and faded away. Yahweh is all that remains. Yahweh is all that has survived.

For Job, Yahweh was all that mattered in the end. In Ecclesiastes, Yahweh is all that retains meaning. In the psalms of lament, Yahweh is the one addressed even when Yahweh is the reason for the complaint. The Writings say, “trust God or doubt God but make sure it is this God.”

Having voted in this past election while a resident of Los Angeles, and while living among many African American neighbors, today felt a bit strange to watch the inaugural events in a very different kind of community and context. I am sure the day was significant for many around here, but apart from my Facebook updates and one friend who brought by some free Krispy Kreme doughnuts that were being passed out today, I just didn’t feel that same sense of energy and import to the days events.

I was grateful for Maurice Broaddus’ reflections posted on his blog, attempting to describe for someone the scope of significance held in what took place today. He writes:

I watched an old black woman laughing. Crying. Laughing and crying and saying joyfully “I’m glad I lived long enough to see this! Oh God! I’m glad I lived long enough to see this!”

They looked like people taking their first breath and really enjoying it. I didn’t see the haggard, submissive expression. I saw enthusiastic joy, free from restraint. If you saw it, if you heard it, there’s no way that a human being couldn’t be touched by it. How many people last night and this morning took their first real breath?

A friend of mine recently commented that she’s “just a white girl from a small town” but she just doesn’t get the near-messianic expectation surrounding Barack Obama being black and elected. Not why people broke down and cried, not why folks danced in the streets, or stayed up so late. Or why my cell phone blew up election night as every black person in my directory called or got called, all sharing a similar refrain. It boiled down to four words “not in my lifetime”…

No, President Barack Obama won’t redeem white people from the sin of racism (or whatever else some folks might imagine the import of his election might mean). But he represents a beacon of hope and the promise of change. His election might portend a true shift in our culture and how we see and treat one another. That is the root of the expectation: the hope of a better tomorrow in light of our many tragic yesterdays. Something many of us never thought we’d see in our lifetimes.

On election day, we lived in a community that cried and danced and shouted in the streets. I missed that today. I wept this past weekend watching a random video Scot McKnight posted of the Obamas going to church on Sunday at a historic black congregation in Washington, D.C. I was overcome by emotion as I saw them shaking hands with fellow parishioners as they made their way out of the sanctuary, for some reason feeling this very great and real and earthy context for the significance of Obama’s election.

We heard enough about “the Black church” during some tense weeks of the campaign, and we often quote the line about Sundays being the most segregated hour in America, but somehow seeing the Obama family there, surrounded by an all-black congregation, seeing them pass through parishoners hoping for a hand shake, something about that grounded the magnitude of his election beyond Facebook frenzy and cool Obama posters and into wooden pews and fancy hats and a choir of children’s voices. And it just felt so very intense and real. And I was overcome by awe at what I too had dared to hope to ever see in my lifetime.

The following post was written last year, the Sunday before Martin Luther King day. I thought I would re-post it here today, as I sit in a very different living room in a very different city…

Last night Doug was working on planning the worship service for today while I finished cleaning up the day’s play in the living room when suddenly our apartment was filled with the sound of a helicopter circling overhead. Our living room was shaking, we could hardly hear each other speak, and I went to the front window to see where they were searching. I couldn’t see the helicopter or the light until I was bathed in it.

“What are they looking at?” Doug asked.

“Us.” I answered.

The helicopter continued to hover over our apartment, and the light was shining through our windows when all of a sudden I heard people running right below the window I was looking out, down our driveway to the back of our house. They were shouting and swearing and running very fast. Moments later I could see guys on foot behind them with flashlights: “Drop the gun!” I heard someone screaming, and I realized our apartment was now surrounded by police. I hit the ground, and yelled at Doug to do the same.

“They’re right outside our windows!” I shouted. I crawled closer to Doug and we sat there, huddled in the middle of the living room floor, paralyzed. “Did you lock the back door?” Doug asked me. I had just been finishing laundry and was sure that I had. Our third barrier, a kitchen door that locks between the kitchen and dining room, was open and I told Doug to go and lock it. And then we sat, holding hands, on our floor. I started to cry.

I don’t know how long we sat there. Eventually we could hear mostly police radios and the voices of officers, and we could see their flashlights sweeping all parts of our property. Deciding that the danger had passed, we looked out the front window and saw that they did have a guy in cuffs up against the cruiser, and there were officers walking up and down our driveway, and searching our front and back yards. They took the guy to a different cruiser, and there was a call over the radio and someone said something about “around the corner” and everyone took off.

Maybe fifteen minutes later, there was knocking on our door, and we went, together, to talk to the officer at our door. He wanted to know what we had seen and heard, and he informed us that they had been chasing a gang member with a gun. They had been able to apprehend the guy and it turned out he had dumped the gun around the corner from our house on Raymond.

When he was questioning us, he asked how long we had lived in this apartment. “Six years,” I answered. “Ever had any problems?” he asked? Doug and I both just stood there, looking at him: “Um…yeah. Lots.” I said, wondering if he was ignorant or checking to see if I was. “I mean, here on your property specifically,” he clarified.” “No, not right here.” I answered. He told us he might have to get back in touch later, we thanked him and said goodnight. At some point during our exchange, our landlord drove up into the driveway and stopped when he saw us in the doorway with an officer. He got out of his car to find out what was going on, and I felt better knowing that he was home.

We went back inside and Doug resumed work on his powerpoint and I finished cleaning, but with a distinct heaviness in both our spirits. It was hard to go to bed last night: that tension between wanting to listen for every sound and wanting to stop hearing noise outside long enough at least to fall asleep. Lots of sirens continued throughout the night, and I dreaded my middle of the night feeding with Elijah that would put me out in the living room alone.

Today we are honoring the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. in our worship service. I am at home with the kids, all of us sick, while Doug is there leading. Before all of this happened last night he had asked me: “what should I do for my invocation?” I am wondering what he chose to say to invite our community to enter God’s presence this morning. The words that haven’t left my brain this morning are the title to one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s books: “Why We Can’t Wait”, a theme so poignantly addressed by King in his famous Letter From the Birmingham Jail.

As I think about Doug and me last night, overwhelmed and overcome by fear of gunfire outside our windows, I think of those words: why we can’t wait. As I think of the young man, armed, running through the streets, I think of those words: why we can’t wait. As I think of my kids, sleeping gently in their bedroom while police officers scurry beneath their windows, I think of those words: why we can’t wait. As I think of our church, a church in and for this community, gathered in Jesus name a few blocks from here this morning, I think of those words: why we can’t wait.

In a recent post, David Fitch tackles head-on the issue of why the Missional and Emerging Church movements are so white. I resonated with some of his experiences and observations and thought I would share a few of my stories as well:

I remember being at a justice and compassion conference hosted by my denomination a few years ago, and one speaker shared a series of thoughts about “living simply” or choosing to have less materially for the sake of mission and discipleship. After he had spoken, the mostly white audience nodded approvingly, but a pastor of an inner city church that has significant impact on its urban community stood up. “It’s one thing for all of you to get up here and talk about what you should give up, what nice car you shouldn’t drive, what vacation you should forgo. It’s one thing for you to say this; you’ve had your chance to have these things. My people are still climbing to get to that point. So it’s one thing for you to say that we should give those things up. It’s one thing for you because you’ve had them. We are just now getting that same chance.”

I remember a few people around me cringing at his words; judging him for what seemed like a selfish, stuff-loving orientation. I felt differently that day, though I struggled to assess why.

More recently, within our church community in L.A., there were places where I felt judgment run strong between ethnic groups in the area of money and how it was spent. Our church had some of the most generous, committed givers I have ever known. Many of these people came from families that had money and they themselves made really good money–and they gave a ton of it away. They were committed to supporting the ministry of the church and they valued living without certain things they could afford for the sake of being generous among others. That said, they were also the folks with high-paying careers or home-ownership or investments or whatever that, while not necessarily affecting their daily finances certainly existed as a backdrop of wealth to their simple lifestyles.

Others in the church who came from immigrant backgrounds were certainly inclined toward building wealth that their family had never had; providing for their kids what they had lived without. These were individuals not unfamiliar with hunger, limited opportunities in terms of education, and rarely home ownership. It was more common to see the latest electronics gadget or bigger TV in their homes, while the “simple living” folks had hand-me-downs.

But again, retirement accounts, college funds, families with money, and a home, not to mention career/education assets that could be applied toward earning more money, change the overall picture of those choices a bit.

Doug and I were the “poor folk” among our peer group. We made choices to pursue school and have babies (well, we didn’t always make those choices, but the Lord blessed us) and commit our energies to our community as lay pastors. Our poverty was, in essence, a chosen one, and that made it a bit easier for me to live among peers who were buying and remodeling homes and eating well and, again, giving away A LOT of what they had. But there were times, if I am honest, where I would hear the discussion about simplicity among these peers and know full well that they had not lived on flour and water crepes filled with peanut butter because that was the best they could do. They had the choice about when and how they would go without something; within the broader scope of our “choice”, we did not enjoy that same freedom.

That said, Doug and I were always in the center of people who would not hesitate to give us a financial gift when we were met with two three-hundred dollar deductibles from my hospital stays associated with Mercy’s birth; or help us buy a minivan when we ended up with three little ones with not-so-little carseats that exceeded the capabilities of our Altima’s back seat; or send us a check from afar to cover a car repair that was necessary but totally beyond our means. I am aware that being white and educated and connected makes my “urgent difficulties” or challenges look soft compared to those of so many of our neighbors there.

I recall too Eugene Cho’s reflection on some amount of hesitancy he felt toward “Buy Nothing Day” as a response to the hyper-consumption of Black Friday:

Why my reservations?  I’m still moved by a conversation I had with a friend couple years ago that challenged my support for Buy Nothing Day.  This friend who is African-American said some interesting stuff [paraphrasing]:

Buy Nothing Day is basically a thing of and for White folks and comfy Middle Class folks who have had the privilege of consumption their whole life.  And now, they can afford to start things like Buy Nothing Day.  True, it speaks to the issue of overconsumption but how much of it is to appease their guilty consciences.  I’m also very skeptical and cynical of Christians  who’ve jumped on this bandwagon - the “enlightened evangelicals” who also come from a place of privilege.  Stuff like this sickens me because it has completely no idea about the plight of minorities and low income folks that are trying to survive.

The thing that got to me was the story he shared about some of his family and friends who simply NEED to make many of their major purchases on that day.  Specifically, he shared about his uncle and aunt.  They get in line every year in the frigid cold here hours before the retail store opens at 5 or 6 am because it’s the only way they’re able to get their kids the necessary tech gear to keep up.

I’m not dismissing the cause behind Buy Nothing Day.  We need to address this because us Westerners and particularly, Americans [including me] are just gluttonous.

But let’s be real here…Black Friday shopping mean different things for different folks. For many of us, it’s a game, a sport and an event we mark but for others, it’s a matter of necessity.  This is why I have reservations about Buy Nothing Day.  Perhaps, the majority of us should sincerely adopt Buy Nothing Day and let those who truly need the “doorbusters” be the first in line - for a change.

One final thought: in terms of Fitch’s observations. He speaks of “living beneath one’s means” as a high value for many in self-identified Missional/Emerging groups, and when I think back to so many individuals and families I have known over the years I think of single mothers working one or two or three jobs to support not just her kids but her sisters kids; I think of households made up of generations; and I think of the way those individuals would, without any hesitation take in another mouth to feed or another child to raise. This was a different sort of “living below their means” that considered their wealth and property to belong to a much broader community of individuals than I can ever remember seeing among any of my white peers.

So, I don’t have all the answers as to what is right or faithful or how we can all be in this together. I appreciate David’s discussion and would love to hear more.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time with my daughter knows that Mercy is HIGHLY particular about colors. From a very young age she loved pink, and at some point early on she developed a strong sense of what she calls “girl colors” and “boy colors”. And she is ADAMANT about colors being appropriate or correct. I think I am to blame for some of her neurosis. When each of the babies were born, they received a special blanket lovingly knit by their Grammaline. Mercy’s blanket is ivory in color; Aaron’s is blue; Elijah’s is green. At some point I began making a big deal about their respective “colors” like, “Oh look, there’s a blue car. That’s Aaron’s car because it’s blue!” or “Elijah gets the green ball because he loves green!” And from that, each child has developed a strong sense that they have a color that is particularly theirs.

And while Mercy’s blanket is white, she has always claimed pink as her color, so anytime we would see a pink house (which you do surprisingly often in L.A.), Mercy would shout: “It’s a pink house! It’s MY house!”; or when my sister would try to set the table with her set of little Ikea plastic dishes, the world would just about end if the pink cup went to someone other than my daughter (my sister actually got to the point where she just wouldn’t use any of the pink dishes if Mercy was there because of the potential for drama).

Recently, Mercy has expanded her color affiliations to include purple and sometimes red (okay, typing that last sentence made me laugh at the realization that my little South Central girl has grown up understanding that everyone has “colors”). I have been glad to see the pink obsession die down a bit, and I regularly talk about other colors that I love or that are beautiful to encourage this.

Last night Mercy attended her second week of Pioneer Clubs at our new church. We got home kind of late and her brothers were already in bed so she and I did the bedtime routine alone. As we were getting jammies on and teeth brushed, Mercy stopped and said to me:

“Mommy, I like brown now.”

I was VERY surprised by this as brown has always been a “boy color” and never a favorite.

“Mercy, that’s wonderful!” I responded. “Why do you like brown now?”

“Because it’s the color of the Holy Spirit.”

“Really!” I replied. “That’s great, Mercy. I love brown too.”

She went on to explain something about God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit having brown flesh. I am DYING to know what went on in her classroom last night.

Having just moved back to the community where I was raised following six and a half years in Los Angeles (and stints in Portland, Spokane, and Chicago before that), I am remembering some of the things I love about living here. As I type this, my two big kids are tromping around outside, running up and down the steps of our back deck, gathering any number of outdoor “treasures” ranging from fir branches to sticks to rocks. It is wet and cold and while I can’t say that L.A.’s mid-eighty degree weather of late has not felt enviable at times, I do love the way all of the green around me sparkles.

On Saturday we got up and had a family day. We drove to the Edmonds ferry and parked the cars and walked on for the short ride to Kingston. We got off and ate fish and chips at a little restaurant then made our way back to board the ferry home. The kids love going outside on the ferry decks while we are moving, and the wind and cold don’t seem to phase them at all. Elijah was hilarious to watch trying to keep his balance in the strong wind, and to his credit he never once fell.

There’s a casual friendliness here that I am starting to remember, and the “avoid eye contact” ways of L.A. are replaced by this very natural and normal engagement with the people around you that includes lots of smiles and little conversations and a sense of familiarity with one another. When at the grocery store, expect to spend a little longer in line because of conversation.

Oh, and I am really getting used to the nightly fires my husband builds for us. The smell and sound and romance of it reminds me of many a childhood night, curled up with a book or the dog, warming my feet on the stones. And a little glass of port finishes off the evening quite nicely.

I was talking with someone on Friday and the topic turned toward the importance of community. Our context was a discussion about the reading of scripture, and I shared something one of my Fuller professors once said to a friend who was not interested in participating in any local church community but was committed to pursuing serious study of God’s word. There was a particular passage in one of Paul’s letters that this individual was struggling with, and my professor said to him: “Oh, that’s all right. You don’t need to worry about that passage. That passage doesn’t apply to you.” Shocked, his friend asked why, and my professor responded: “Paul wrote those letters to communities of faith; to churches. They are not written for an individual to try and figure out how to apply to his or her life apart from that context.”

In our age of church-less Jesus-followers, I marveled at how stark his comment is in my own context of peers and family and friends who “love Jesus but not the church”.

I started blogging a few years ago, and one thing I noticed fairly quickly was that a lot of the voices that were seeking to dialogue over deep questions of faith were doing so apart from membership in any faith community. A lot of folks would talk about not having access to people who “get it”. Others had been injured by spiritually abusive faith communities and were in some form of recovery from that. Others were simply disillusioned by marketing practices or hype disguised as faithfulness. But by and large, I recognized an alarming “new normal”: thoughtful, faithful folk with more invested in virtual friendships and communities of the like-minded than in any sort of local expression of Christian life-together.

I have always loved the church. I have always been a part of the church. I have never flown solo, and I have never felt or been pushed away, abused, expelled, or rejected. I have never been in a perfect church, and have always been in fellowship with people I disagree with over any number of fairly significant things, be they theological, political, cultural, or whatever, so I don’t have a lot of understanding of the church-less journey. I actually feel a lot like my seminary prof in that I don’t know how to understand what this life is supposed to be about apart from the context of a real community. But I don’t say that lightly, knowing well that there are genuine, faithful folk for whom this has simply not been their experience.

I would be interested to hear more from those who have felt, for whatever reason, that their walk with God required them to separate from others. Or from those who float from this service to that study to some other retreat, picking and choosing parts of a community’s common life as they find interest. And if either of these are true, how then do they engage the scriptures that are written for communities? What would they say to my professor’s response to his friend?