The Margins

I missed our block club meeting on Monday night, so when I saw Lauren the next day I asked her what had been discussed. She gave me the update on police activity over the past few weeks, and it turns out that they did finally catch the two guys who were raping and robbing women on our street. While I felt this huge sense of relief hearing the news, it was also devastating to learn that it was a pair of kids, sixteen-year-old gang members, targeting the moms and grandmas of our neighborhood. My stomach still feels sick over this.

She also shared that there had been a pretty major bust within one of the local gangs with something like twelve or eighteen arrests. That would explain the flurry of police activity we have been seeing during the recent weeks. “Things should be quiet now…at least for a while,” was the word from our Lead Officer. As I write this, a helicopter circles overhead.

And so it goes.

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 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.

On Friday the phone rang and it was a friend up the street who was calling me from the hospital. She just lost her husband a few weeks ago, and her own health is a concern as well. She was at Good Sam being treated for Pneumonia, and she wanted us to know. This meant her boys were home alone. I promised her I would cook dinner for them and bring it over.

I was taking care of Mercy’s best friend all day Friday, and as the dinner hour approached, it was no small amount of chaos in the house as I tried to cook. It ended up that I could only pull off one nice dinner, and that was the dinner that got packed up into Tupperware containers and stacked on the dining room table. My kids got scrambled eggs and some fruit and vegetables.

As Mercy and Aaron gazed longingly at the noodles and muffins that were packed away, Mercy turned to me and asked: “Mommy, I would like to have some of that food.”

“We are sharing this food with some kids whose Mommy is sick and can’t take care of them tonight,” I replied.

“But I want those muffins,” she continued.

“I know. I do too. But we are going to give away all of these muffins. We are being like the little boy John who gave away EVERYTHING he had instead of just giving a little bit like P. Benjamin Methuselah (from the Walt Wangerin re-telling of the story of the Widow’s coin in the Arch book series). God loves it when we give all that we have instead of just giving a little bit.”

Mercy paused and thought about this.

Then she looked up at me with a big smile: “I know, Mommy! God can heal their Mommy and then she can go home and make food for her kids…and then we can eat these muffins.”

Apparently my daughter has a robust theology of healing, especially when blueberry muffins are on the line.

One of the consistent things in our neighborhood is the very steady flow of ice-cream trucks up and down our street. In the six years that I have lived here, I have never bought ice-cream from any of them. Until yesterday

I can’t remember the occasion, but I had told the kids last week that I would set a dollar out and the next ice-cream truck we heard, we could go outside and spend our dollar. Well, we never heard one that day (hard to imagine), but yesterday the kids remembered what I had said and when we heard the familiar music, asked me if we could go. Something truly remarkable had just happened in our home: all three kids took afternoon naps. At the same time. And so I was happy to allow them this special treat.

We ran down our stairs, without shoes, and out our front door but we were too late. The truck had already crossed 30th and I wasn’t going to cross the street barefoot. “Let’s sit on our step and wait to see if there will be another one,” I suggested. The kids were thrilled to run around in the grass and build little twig houses and blow dandelions while we waited. And sure enough, a few minutes later we heard another truck

We met the ice-cream truck (van, actually) on the corner of 30th and Kenwood, and Mercy very quickly pointed out the pink ice-cream cone she wanted. After realizing that just about everything else pictured on the side of the truck cost more than a dollar, I asked the man for the pink ice-cream cone. We walked back to our steps, and the kids giddily sat down to share their treat. They took turns with bites and licks, and their soon-pink faces and big smiles gave me much joy. Doug arrived home from his study session while we were still out front, and he was given the bottom of the cone filled with melted pink to eat.

While we had been out front waiting, we had made friends with two little kids riding scooters on our street. I had not seen them before, and they motioned a few houses south of us when I asked them where they stayed. When we heard the ice-cream truck, they ran home to get some money, but by the time they made it back the truck was gone. I assured them that another one would likely come soon. When it did, I was horrified to see these two kids running after the truck, begging it to stop, while the driver accelerated and drove away. And I could not help but wonder if it was because of the color of their skin.

About the same time we had heard the first truck approaching, a cruiser had come racing up our street. Having just seen a flurry of young men on bikes and on foot, streaming from 30th, I had that moment where I had to decide if we should turn around and go back inside. For whatever reason I decided to keep going and so we walked, barefoot, Elijah dangling from my arms and the two big kids holding hands, to a corner that has been the center of so much violence in our neighborhood, with the black and white cruiser creeping slowly next to us. A second cruiser came from the opposite direction and the two met just north of us on Kenwood, parked their vehicles, and entered the property of one of our neighbors. And we picked out our ice-cream.

Doug made a comment to me the other day about how people make a big deal about where we live but “it’s not like we are saving the world or anything.” My response to him was that while that was true, there is a constant level of fear and tension that we live with that most others (at least those who have a choice) do not. I was especially struck by this on our trip to Denver when I was standing in the backyard of Aunt Kristin’s house where my kids were playing, and I caught myself constantly looking around and looking behind me and I realized: wait, I don’t have to do that here.

It’s hard to quantify: the fear that hovers over little decisions like buying ice-cream. It’s hard to quantify: the ever-present shadow of young men, murdered. It’s hard to quantify: remembering all of the kids who were out playing the night someone was shot, and choosing to walk outside with your own.

My sister was kind enough to take Mercy to the downtown library last week, and Mercy and Aaron are so excited to have new books in the house. Aaron is addicted to a Thomas the Tank Engine storybook collection (he finds the page with the Troublesome Trucks story every time and wants to read it), and Mercy is fascinated by two books about a Knight and some dragons.

My favorite book of the bunch is a book called Billy’s Bucket. In this book, a little boy asks for a bucket for his birthday. The parents think this is weird, but they go ahead and indulge him and they go to the bucket store and let him pick one out. When Billy gets home, he immediately fills his bucket up with water. He starts to describe for his parents all the things he sees inside his bucket: a submarine, a mermaid, sea lions, and a shark. His parents go along with it, laughing at him. Thinking they are funny, his parents ask him if they can borrow the bucket for some work projects around the house. Billy gets very serious and forbids them from ever borrowing it. His parents wink and chuckle and put their son to bed.

The next morning, Billy’s bucket is missing. Dismayed, he walks outside to look and there in the middle of the street, atop cars and light posts, sits an enormous smiling whale. The text reads:

“By the time Billy found his dad, he was too late!

‘I told you not to borrow my bucket,’ said Billy.

It took Billy’s mom and dad six hours, three fire engines, four cranes, and a shoehorn to get the whale back in the bucket. They never ever borrowed Billy’s bucket again.”

I love this story for the artwork, the whimsy, and the way the smug parents get put in their place. But I also love it for the ways it resonates with how I can feel about the Kingdom sometimes. Like I am gazing into something fantastic, beautiful, majestic in scope, hidden inside the ordinary, unseen and unimaginable to most. And the parents’ mockery feels a bit familiar as well when I consider how absurd the things I believe can appear to those around me. Love across cultural divisions? The sacrifice of status, money, advancement? Material simplicity? Peace in South Central?

Scot McKnight posted a letter he recently received from a young future pastor wrestling with what it really meant to preach in the local church today. “What is preaching? Who is it for? How do we learn to do it? How do we judge if we’re doing it well?” were his questions, and Scot opened up the comments for his readers to respond. I started to leave a response a couple of times that day but never finished it, but I think that what I would tell this future pastor is that preaching is a lot like Billy looking inside his bucket and describing the amazing things that he sees.

This past week, a dear friend mailed a sweet package to Mercy, and in it was a tiny envelope bearing my name. Inside was a card with this verse written on the back: “Your road led through the sea…a pathway no one knew was there (Psalm 77:19).” These words brought tears to my eyes as they do even now in writing this. How marvelous and mysterious are the ways of God. Oh Lord, please give me the eyes to see.

When talking with various people about our church, our conviction regarding being a “parish” church is often the greatest stumbling block for folks. Especially here in the land of car and commute, making claims on where one lives and how that relates to where one worships can seem offensive to many.

This past week I repeatedly saw a man lingering on and around my neighbor’s property across the street. At different times in past weeks I have seen the same man on the porch trying the door handles of the four apartment entrances; another time he was crouched behind a pillar on the same porch looking through papers; still another time, he was down the driveway checking out the latch on the fence that protects the cars and toys kept in the back and looking around. I have called dispatch twice. Both times, he wasn’t doing enough to warrant a patrol car being sent out. Two apartments in this building are occupied by members of our church; the other two by good friends.

The other night I had fed my kids and we were beginning our evening clean-up in the living room when I caught a glimpse of him again. This time he was on the non-driveway side of the building looking up into the living room window of one of the first floor apartments where two single women in our church live. I grabbed my phone immediately and dialed 911. I probably would have just called dispatch but I could not find my cell phone and that is where I have that number stored. The 911 operator said that they would send someone over immediately after I described what I was seeing, as well as the pattern of this man’s behavior on the property. It was a few minutes before six o’clock, and I knew that our dear friend who lives in that apartment would be coming home from work (on foot) any minute. I also knew that her roommate had just left for a trip to Hawaii and that our friend would be coming home to an empty apartment.

I could not call my friend who at that moment could have been on her way home to what may have been a dangerous situation. She is from Texas and has kept her cell phone number from home and because I did not have my cell (and since we don’t have long distance on our land line), I knew I would be unable to reach her. So I called Doug at work and told him to call her immediately. After hanging up with him, I called my sister who lives a few blocks away and asked her to give me the phone number for the tutoring center where our friend works. I got the number, called, but no one answered, so I was left hoping that Doug had reached her.

This friend does not have a car, so I called my sister back and asked her to call our other friend who lives across the street to see if he could drive down to the tutoring center and pick her up so that she would not have to walk home (she does not have a car). Again, his number is a long distance call and I both did not have the number (in the missing cell with the rest) nor the capacity to call it. So, while still wondering if Doug had reached Lauren or if Anna had managed to get a hold of Elliot, I saw my sister’s husband arrive across the street. He had Lauren in his car and was dropping her off. Elliot was on the front porch waiting for her. By this time the police had already arrived and were driving around looking for the guy who had since left the property.

Later that night I was struck by how crucial our physical proximity to one another is (I was also struck by how utterly dependent I am upon my cell phone), and what an incredible difference it makes to me to have neighbors and friends who are a phone call, a house, or a block away. I think I forget how remarkable it is to have a life where the members of your faith community all live on the handful of streets that surround you. It really is an amazing way to approach a corporate life and witness together.

Oh, and the police did catch up with the guy. He gave them some story about how he had had a fight with his girlfriend and was there at the apartment looking for his friend. Right. The story makes no sense, and I had to laugh a bit when I heard this as it is honestly the “dog ate my homework” answer guys give on the street. I can think of two or three times at our block club meetings where our Senior Lead Officer has followed up on some criminal behavior we have reported only to come back to our meeting with the explanation that “the guy had a fight with his girlfriend and blah blah blah…” Apparently it is an answer that the cops willingly accept.

So my hopes for a spiritual start to the Lenten season have been derailed by a total ant onslaught inside our apartment this morning. Living in an old house, we have numerous cracks in our walls and ceiling, and there is one such crack (where we experienced terrible flooding a few weeks ago) through which an entire colony of ants are now streaming. And I don’t get it: the more Simple Green (our weapon of choice) I spray, the more ants come pouring through. Wouldn’t you want to escape the poisonous, murdering substance and run the other way?

I am so disjointed and annoyed and a little high from Simple Green fumes that I have to laugh at last night’s post declaring my noble spiritual intentions for the days to come. And it is not gang warfare or vandalism or some injustice in my community that has deflated me: it’s the ant crawling on my keyboard.

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.

For a while now, Doug has taken over the bedtime routing for Mercy and Aaron. Bath, teeth, jammies, clean-up and stories read and told, this is his domain. Last night he was in their room lying in Mercy’s bed with her, telling them one final story in the dark. I have been successfully bumping Elijah’s bedtime earlier and earlier each night, and we are now at the point where I am doing his final soothing while Doug is finishing up with the big kids. Last night I was walking Elijah when I spotted something out of the corner of my eye.

My sleeplessness has decreased enough to where I no longer see dark, shadowy creatures that don’t exist scurrying through the apartment, but at first I was not sure if I had imagined what I saw. I stepped back and saw that no, indeed there was a gigantic spider, legs flailing, scaling the dining room wall. I stood there, paralyzed. It was too high up for me to reach, not that I would have had enough courage to do so. I knew that I needed Doug to help me, but I was terrified to walk out of the room in case the thing dropped and disappeared. The only thing worse than a big scary spider on the wall is when that spider escapes to God knows where in the house.

I can remember one night, I think I was in high school, when I sat in the hallway for more than an hour staking out a spider’s location, making sure not to lose it, until my dad came home. It was only recently that my dad confessed that there were indeed times when the spiders got away, but he would just pretend to catch them so that I could sleep that night.

I finally decided to go to the kids’ room and tell Doug that I needed his help. I rushed back to my post, and as I stood there watching the spider, it suddenly lost its footing and dropped to the floor. I jumped and inhaled so strongly that I made Elijah cry. Thankfully the thing just sat on the floor where it fell, and by the time Doug came out I was able to easily point it out and Doug quickly caught it and took it outside. Doug does not kill spiders. It is amazing that we are married.

After it was all over, I realized that I had felt especially afraid, so much so that I had almost started to cry. And I also realized that that probably had more to do with how stuff feels in the neighborhood right now and less about my actual fear of the spider. My ability to cope with feeling afraid is not very great right now. With the recent shootings, heavy cop presence, and the new threat of a rapist who has attacked twice, the outlet I found to express my anxiety was a stupid spider on the wall.