Fellow Traveler

It’s been a little quiet here, but it doesn’t mean my life has been like that.

Since January, when I decided to stop writing about my every day life, I have experienced a profound change. I love letting this blog go. I love pouring out my angst into safer vessels (my journal, husband, and *gasp* even Christ). I love giving up a piece of myself that I was finding just a bit too much identity in. And identity, and vocation, have been very much on my mind as of late.

I started the War Photographer series because I had a lot of questions in relation to my identity as a writer; what I got instead was a collection of thoughtful, hopeful treatises on the inherent value of our neighbors, and an admonition to do absolutely true by them. To love people well, to write about them second. To live life together, and out of the overflow of relationship speak. In the end this is what I discovered: I don’t think we are ever truly meant to be a War Photographer–it is a vocation borne out of the brokenness of our world. The true ideal is much simpler, much less grand: we are called to be neighbors, not transients reporters.

The reflections on War Photography have changed and moved me, and I am grateful to the myriad of voices that contributed. I still have a few more guest posts in the works that you will not want to miss, and then this series will be done. I created a tab at the top where you can find the entirety of the series, in the order that they were posted.

I wrote a little bit about this journey for my good friend J.R., over at her excellent blog. Here is an excerpt:

I am currently in a season where it is not valuable to write about my life; relationships are still in infancy, my own emotions are all over the map. In the future, there may be a possibility of doing it well. But for now I am in a place where I am learning to dig deep wells, both within myself and my community. I am in a place of seeking solitude, of sitting with my questions, of discovering who I am and what I believe. This is not a time to produce, to be subject to the whims of the crowd. This is a time to dig deep, to enter into the wilderness with no knowledge of when, or how, I will ever come out. Like Buechner says: “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” By stepping back and allowing some silence into my writing life, I have found the antithesis of fear. I have allowed love to open up my thoughts, words and actions. I have given up the right to represent people, to use them, and to process through them. I am trying to give up my idols of being understood, of being recognized, of putting the entire burden of the world on my small and stooped shoulders. Instead, I am busy pursuing reality, and it is more beautiful and terrifying than I ever imagined.

 

Go on over and read the rest. 

 

 

But: just because I will not be writing about my specific context doesn’t mean I won’t be writing.

Stay tuned for some exciting new stuff.

 

On Mother’s Day

me and my tiny, tiny, little sack of sugar.

I’ve written a little bit about motherhood before, and I am always amazed at how this holiday continually knocks me off my feet. Motherhood isn’t for sissies; remembering isn’t for the faint of heart; life isn’t for the easily cowed.

 

I watched a movie yesterday, one a friend recommended some time ago. I didn’t know it then, but this might be the most perfect Mother’s day movie I have ever seen. Pray the Devil Back to Hell shows what happens when a group of mothers got together to protest for peace during the civil war  in Liberia. The documentary chronicles how these women, Christian and Muslim alike, came together to pray, worship, and disrupt the cycles of violence. The width and depth and scope of their protest is astonishing. The personal costs were staggering. But they all got the chance to say, when their children asked them what role they played in the conflict, that they were ambassadors for peace. They did it for their children; they did it for the children of their neighbors.

 

 

The scene that stood out to me was one in which the women gathered around a candle-lit vigil, praying that the president and the rebel troops would agree to come to a peace table together. You could see the small children, clinging to their mother’s skirts, watching them push the candles into the dirt, the holy process of both surrendering to God in prayer while firmly believing that the world is not right. The children watched, and they were being taught every moment by their mothers, that another world is possible.

 

My own parents loved me into the kingdom of God. My mother especially, she taught me that God speaks to us, all the time. It was such a living, breathing, faith that I grew up watching, the most normal, all-encompassing spirituality. I learned that life is hard, and that beauty is to be celebrated. I watched with eyes wide open as my own mother planted her candles in the dirt, as she taught me both that things were not right, that there was always something to be hoped for. Long before I learned the words in Bible college, my mother taught me about kingdom come.

 

Now, I have my own daughter. What is she learning from me? I have some hopes, my own flames I set off in the night. That there are things more important than security, a yard to play in, friends who only look and think like us. But more than that, I want to stake my flag in both worlds at once. I want to never forget that Jesus can be found all over my neighborhood; I never want to forget that he is found in the face of my daughter.

 

 

 

The world is not all right, and the mothers know this. Let us keep on teaching, through our words and actions, that another world is possible.

 

To my own mum, who gave me the keys to the kingdom:

thanks for teaching me, every day, what it means to hold a candle-lit vigil against the evils of our world.

 

 

my mom and my daughter. two of my greatest blessings.

 

 

Happy Mother’s Day. 

How To Be A War Photographer

Today is part 2 of Darren Prince’s post on mutuality and accidental distances (You can read part 1 here). Today, I asked Darren to bring it–and he did. This is the post I wish I had read years ago, one I wish all bloggers, writers, photographers–heck, anybody trying to talk about their lives with integrity–would read and absorb.

In the next couple of weeks I will be talking about how my writing habits have changed dramatically, and what that means. It is challenging, exciting, and energizing to write in the small, mustard-seed ways. It is the hardest, and most rewarding thing there is to step back and allow space for reflection–which allows the small signs of the kingdom to bloom and sprout and be shared. 

Thank you, Darren, for writing out a very practical guide for all of us. 

How to be a War Photographer

Now then, how about we pull up to 30,000 feet and indulge in a little metacognition together? By which I mean, let’s talk about what we’re talking about when we tell the stories of our neighborhoods. Got it?

I’m not much of a blogger and don’t have anything by way of an internet following. But I’ve lived in two major cities, befriended dozens of people (rich and poor alike), and communicated vision, purpose and just plain “updates” via good-old-fashioned newsletters for over fifteen years now. I’ve seen a thing or two and have learned to sniff out those moments, sometimes while the ink-toner is still drying, when I’m about to cross the line from creative to creepy.

The last thing I ever wanted to do was be “that guy” who posts a “Top 7 Ways You Can XYZ!” on the internet, but hey, at the special request of our host, I’ll empty my pockets for you. Besides, if I had kept it I’d probably drink with it anyway.

1. Grow Up Already

Look, the metaphor gets overused, but somehow we still forget it. Jesus himself incarnated as a baby into a particular family, in a particular culture, at a particular time in history. He then weaned, waddled, teethed and toddled his way through childhood into awkward adolescence. Finally, he gets around to kicking off his public ministry at the vigorous age of thirty.

Maybe he needed time to learn language, figure out how to address his elders, or practice culturally relevant storytelling in an agrarian society. (My bet is that he spent time learning to laugh at himself). All I’m saying is he showed up, grew up, and then did his thing. And he didn’t even write about it. He left the writing to others.

I think a lot of the damage is done when we’re new and we don’t know any better. We can’t help seeing things from our own frame of reference; but in our enthusiasm to dispatch updates back to the home office, how can we be sure we aren’t merely reinforcing the same tired stereotypes?

The solution? Give yourself time. You’ll see things differently in six weeks, six months, six years. You’ll chuckle to yourself when you realize in hindsight what that awkward moment was all about at the party four months ago. You’ll wince to realize that the connection you thought you were making was actually just another deep disconnect.

And you know what? That’s okay. Growing up from zero was good enough for Jesus. It should be good enough for us. Just don’t publicize it all. You know, like those parents who post to Facebook every poo-poo little Johnny makes? Don’t be like that with your inner cross-cultural child. Let her grow up with some dignity intact.

Keep a (private) journal instead. Write letters to mom, or call a friend. Find a community (a local one, even if you’ve found a virtual one) to journey with you through the hard stuff. Invite them laugh and lament with you.

And for crying out loud keep your vomiting off the interwebs for a little while. The medium matters. Google is real and your quirky little anecdotes about your neighbors are searchable, indefinitely archived for future civilizations to scratch their heads at and wonder.

I have a friend who says don’t post or send anything you wouldn’t be willing to hang on the refrigerator for your neighbors to see. Do it for the dignity of your future best friends.

2. Re-Shape Your Readers’ Expectations

The point of my previous ode to mutuality was this: if genuine friendship invites us to step into the war-photo, we begin to care even more about how the lighting looks. When we’re personally invested in the story of what God is doing in our neighborhood, we want to make sure that story gets told well.

This means writing without exaggeration or added drama. We can leave stories which exploit for page views (or donations?) to other media outlets. (Must. Resist. Linking example offenders here.)

And besides, it’s boring. Story distortion goes all the way back to Eden where the Serpent conveniently misquotes the Maker. Half-truths and mistaken attributions are old-school enemy tactics; Kingdom storytelling can do better.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing for unflinching photo-realism here. But the truly great stories you want to tell about your friends or your community – the happy stories and the hard ones alike – if they’re truly worth telling, they won’t need anything added or embellished.

In a world where somehow we’ve allowed fog machines, stage lighting, and even zip lines to super-size our worship services, it’s time we taught our readers the pleasure of a simple story told well. I wrote an entire newsletter once about missing a bus (and the miraculous conversation about Jesus which followed). Another update featured our family practice of inviting friends over for Saturday morning pancakes. Not exactly shovel and pith-helmet material here folks.

Some of us are torn between our desire to communicate with integrity and a readership - sometimes, a donor base (?!) - which is eager for results or infatuated with the brightest, shiniest new thing. But life in a mustard-seed kingdom starts small and grows slow. People who choose to accompany you for that journey need your help recalibrating their expectations. “If you’re looking for earth shattering headline news, look elsewhere. Or come back in twelve years and let me show you around.”

Yes it’s fashionable, even expected, for non-profits to have a slick plan and a fail-proof strategy; I’ve got nothing against that. But on slow news days it’s so much easier to write a tragic story in which we get to play the white-knight-to-the-rescue.

In reality, sometimes the best we’ve got to report for this month is, “Here’s how we’re muddling along.”

My solution? Remind people that you’re still in a posture of listening and adapting. The world needs more “Here are a few things I’m learning, but I might be wrong” posts from those of us laboring for the common good. Writing with humility reminds our readers that there are humans involved, even humans who make mistakes out of a desire to help. Writing with mutuality in mind prevents “the poor” from being objectified as problems in need of a solution.

As you describe your own journey, warts and all, your discoveries become your readers’ discoveries. Their view of your context reaches upwards, stretching to fit yours as they watch your “growing up” right in front of their eyes.

3. Run It By Somebody First

To summarize what I’ve said so far: Give yourself time to “grow up” and see things differently before you start writing about it. But if you have to write, do it with integrity–a kind of faithfulness to the whole story–including your part in it!

But before you release that colorful piece of reflective writing into the wild, first consider running it by a trusted friend. Invite them to be a check against your tendency to embellish the facts or add sizzle to something in a way which might exploit or diminish.

I’d love to believe we could all be trusted to do this for ourselves, but sometimes we just need another set of eyes. Our stubborn writing habits and lazy inconsistencies are experts at hiding out in our blind-spots. Nothing clears the cob-webs like the honesty of a secondary read-through. Followed by a straight-talk chaser. Find this person and you’ve discovered gold.

Better yet, share a draft of what you’ve written with the very person you’re writing about. Beyond just asking for vague permission, ask them if what you’re sharing is okay with them. Do they remember the story differently? What would they change? Do they find it honoring or diminishing?

I realize this suggestion tests the full mettle of what might be a blossoming mutual friendship. But each time I’ve done this the responses have been everything from flattered to deep appreciation and joy. There’s a sacred moment to be savored when we realize – no, when we accept - that our story is important enough to be shared with others. I watch in awe as this realization creeps across the faces of my friends. We are both left wide-eyed at the wonder of it all.

When I asked my friend Joe if he would like to preview an early draft of yesterday’s post about him, he wryly responded:

“Darren, are you telling stories about me again? Well, don’t let the pen get more mightier then the sword! Hah. Well, send me some of the dirt as they say. And I will shovel it out.”

Then when I sent him a close approximation of what you read yesterday, he emailed back his approval with two quick lines:

“It sounds about right as I recall. Thanks for the memories “

Here again, in the sacred space of our friendship, we’ve formed an alliance around the sharing of the story we hold in common. The story of his transition off the streets into permanent housing, and of my “growing up” on the streets under his mentoring and kindness. Our story of mutual transformation; the one in which God grants us both the unexpected gift of a life-long friendship.

Darren is a former Californian living in London, married to Pam and raising three increasingly British-sounding children. Since 1997 he’s been part of InnerCHANGE, a Christian order pursuing merciful action, transformative contemplation and prophetic justice in urban centers and slums around the world.

He enjoys single-origin coffees, reading for pleasure, walk-and-talks with friends, and geeky tech podcasts. Sometimes you’ll find him picking up toys before a family dance throw-down in the living room.

Darren has contributed to “Sub-merge: Living Deep in a Shallow World” by InnerCHANGE founder John Hayes, as well as “Living Mission: The Vision and Voices of the New Friars.” Though he would much rather do this stuff than talk about it, maybe one day soon he’ll start a new blog, where he will most likely not write about himself in third person. You can follow him @darrenprince

Don’t you think Darren should have a blog? I do!

As a reminder, the War Photographer series seeks to ask and somewhat answer questions of representation. How we go about sharing stories that aren’t our own–specifically the hard stories? How do we put a spotlight on some of the forgotten stories of our age while still giving dignity and respect to the subjects?

For more in the series, please click here.

War Photographer: Darren Prince

I am beyond thrilled to introduce today’s guest post, because it is perfect for where we are at in this conversation. Darren is an excellent writer, a large-hearted thinker, technology geek, coffee snob, and all-around cool guy. He is someone who has been living and working amongst the poor for a very long time, and he has some deliciously concrete thoughts for us. Today, he is going to share a bit of his story and thoughts on War Photography, and tomorrow he will be back with some practicalities (a list!) for those of us struggling with how to share these stories well.

 

 

On Mutuality and Our Accidental Distances

Photo of Joe by Caroline

My first decade of urban life was spent unlearning patterns and habits I’d picked up in the saccharine safety of my suburban upbringing. This was made abundantly clear when my homeless gutter-punk friends in San Francisco gently suggested I no longer wear my college sweatshirt. The metamorphosis of downward mobility is agonizingly slow and sometimes painfully embarrassing. Now, in hindsight, retiring the “blue and orange” for a tattered black hoodie was the easy part.

My mentor in the ways of the street was a middle-aged homeless man named Joe. By the time I met him he’d spent half his life as a wandering nomad. The most permanent address he had ever held was a foxhole so deep in the woods of Golden Gate Park that gardeners and police would never find him. I was occasionally invited back to visit him at his camp spot. It was the only place in the city where you could listen to crickets and watch the fog roll in.

Joe and I became good friends. He introduced me to his street pals and I occasionally had him over to the house for a meal or a shower. Then there was the time he orchestrated a “learning exercise” for me and a few others: a real-life, multi-day homelessness “taster” Joe had named “First Hand Experience.” The title was blunt and uninventive, but there was a kind of mischievous glee in his voice as he announced it. (By the way, as much as I loathe most “homeless excursion” attempts out there, you really can’t beat one that is constructed and supervised by a real homeless person on real streets for multiple days.)

By this point in our friendship Joe had moved out of the park and into the room next door to me in our home. But we shared way more than a wall. Looking back on it, this was an ambitious undertaking. He was my homeless street mentor and I was his housemate. We were like two cultural anthropologists attempting to do field studies on one another, but with neither one of us in our natural habitats. It’s a good thing we were friends or we probably would have killed each other. [1]

I glimpsed the irony of it all on the morning of day four or five of Joe’s craftily arranged “First Hand Experience.” We were camped out in the park through several sleepless nights of rain and heavy fog, bedded down on cardboard Joe had taught us to scrounge. We relied on leftover handouts and shared food from the underground food co-op Joe brokered amongst his other homeless friends. I woke up tired, sore, and desperately in need of a hot cup of coffee.

That’s when Joe walked up. Smiling. Freshly showered and perky from a great night of sleep at my house. He claimed he was just stopping by to check up on us; just him and the steaming hot cup of Starbucks he was holding.
—-
There is a story about C.S. Lewis which I heard once but haven’t been able to verify anywhere official [2]. But since this is the internet, I’ll let it stand on its own even if it blurs the line between fact and fantasy [3]:

Lewis was once out on a stroll around Oxford with one of his fellow professors, as was his regular custom, when they happened upon a beggar asking for change. Lewis reached into his pocket and dropped everything he had into the beggars hat.

“Why would you give money to that man?” Lewis’ friend asked incredulously. “You know he’s just going to use it all for drink.”

Lewis replied, “If I had kept the money, I’d have used it for drink as well.”

Many people ask me what they should do when homeless people approach them for money. Honestly, I don’t have a stock answer because I don’t think every person or need is the same. But I do love telling that Lewis story. I find his honesty disruptive, his humility unflinching. And I love the way that triangular interaction between Lewis, his skeptical friend and a beggar, peels the curtain back to reveal our common humanity.

Sadly, we are often so consumed by the differences we see in the “other” that we forget all the glorious and inglorious things we hold in common. Our mutual love of coffee or disdain for cats. Our potential misuse of money which isn’t ours to begin with. The quiet ache for far-away family. Our secretly-nurtured insecurities and harbored fears.

Pushing past “mission” to find genuine mutuality is more than just a postmodern catch-phrase like “incarnational” or “community.” It’s the basis for transformative friendships like mine with Joe. Somehow, in that painstaking journey from “client” to “friend” we stopped viewing one another as bags of assorted issues that needed fixing. I abandoned the notion that Joe take off his boots before getting into bed now that he was living inside. And Joe stopped reminding me that life wasn’t run by what I kept in my Franklin Covey day-planner.

Somewhere in there we laid down our armaments of mutually assured condemnation and discovered the beauty of generative friendship. Mutuality broke through like sun piercing San Francisco fog.
—-

So my only problem with war photography as an image for this series is the distance it suggests. Like somehow I’m supposed to pull back, stand at a distance, and hold a lens between me and what I’m observing.

I already come from a long tradition of inherited distance from the poor and marginalized. I’ll be honest, I reek of privilege: middle-class, college educated, heterosexual North American male. I can’t apologize for it, but I can learn to acknowledge how privilege influences my view of the world: like a distortion lens on every photo I want to take.

So in my nearly twenty year quest to see things from a different vista, I’ve become growingly aware of the accidental distances I create to preserve myself. Not to mention the distances created for me by others.

But what happens if I set the war-camera on a tripod and step into the picture myself? Not in an artificial or nuevo-colonial way, but to the degree that I’m invited in by my neighbors who have become my friends? What happens when “their neighborhood” becomes “ours?” When that troubled school down the street becomes the place I entrust my children to? Where the “unsafe streets” are places where we’ve both made our dwelling?

This is where friendships formed around mutuality become a life-line, closing the distance between my unchecked cultural assumptions and your reality. We can no longer hide behind the masks we’ve fashioned for ourselves – or assigned to one another.

Mutual friendship is how the stories we tell about others – and about ourselves – become truer at the core. When we’ve stripped back the embellishing Insta-filters we place over the stories we tell, and let the raw exposure peek through, a quiet integrity emerges. It’s the integrity that comes with the realization that this is our story, the story of us.

So the story of my generosity in response to your need is only one angle; what about the part where we’re both just as likely to spend the money destructively? What about the part where you’ve welcomed me into your home just as much I’ve welcomed you into ours? How do I account for the unnumbered ways you’ve taught me more than I could ever imagine teaching you?

---

photo by Peter Anderson

Not far from where we now live in London, a stone statue rises in memory of William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army. It’s always been a peculiar statue to me, in part because of its posture, but also for what it’s missing.

There stands Booth, tall and commanding in his army-like attire, with a stern look on his face and one boney pointer finger raised in the air, like a preacher in mid-sentence or a judge about to lay down the law. For all the good Booth did for the poor of east London during his era, it seems odd that his sculptor chose to memorialize him as the fiery street-preacher he was in his early days. But that’s not the part that intrigues me.

This memorial statue has been mounted atop a short half-flight of stairs, as if William Booth somehow ascended his soapbox one day, raised his preaching finger in the air and froze in time forever. Is it a warning? A welcome? A reminder? (I so want to tie a string around that finger someday, my subversive act of vandalism for the social good).

But here’s the thing. Months before the London Olympics in 2012 a second set of steps was erected immediately across from Booth’s statue, a subtle counter-point to Booth’s memorial.

Only, it’s been left empty. Six steps lead up to a vacant platform.

And I find myself wondering – who was that platform built for? Perhaps it’s for Booth’s wife, Catherine, who though unmemorialized, was equally a co-conspirator and co-founder of the Salvation Army’s work among the poor. Where is her statue? (And what would her frozen-in-time posture be?)

Maybe the newly added steps to nowhere are an open invitation for the future Booths of our community to ascend and carry on in prophetic urban mission. A kind of permanent casting-call for would-be figures of William and Catherine’s stature.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s a public artist’s ode to mutuality. Where anyone can rise and be at eye level with our neighborhood’s greatest hero, pointy finger and all. Where perhaps the poor of our community can stand up and finally tell their own stories for themselves.

---

1. Correction: It would be generous to suggest that I’d stand any chance against this guy in a cage match.  ↩
2. Maybe here?http://cslewis.drzeus.net/papers/son.html  ↩
3. It should be noted that this is perfectly acceptable when it comes to the likes of C.S. Lewis.  ↩

Darren is a former Californian living in London, married to Pam and raising three increasingly British-sounding children. Since 1997 he’s been part of InnerCHANGE, a Christian order pursuing merciful action, transformative contemplation and prophetic justice in urban centers and slums around the world.

He enjoys single-origin coffees, reading for pleasure, walk-and-talks with friends, and geeky tech podcasts. Sometimes you’ll find him picking up toys before a family dance throw-down in the living room.

Darren has contributed to “Sub-merge: Living Deep in a Shallow World” by InnerCHANGE founder John Hayes, as well as “Living Mission: The Vision and Voices of the New Friars.” Though he would much rather do this stuff than talk about it, maybe one day soon he’ll start a new blog, where he will most likely not write about himself in third person. You can follow him @darrenprince

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for installment #2 of Darren’s post!

The War Photographer series seeks to ask and somewhat answer questions of representation. How we go about sharing stories that aren’t our own–specifically the hard stories? How do we put a spotlight on some of the forgotten stories of our age while still giving dignity and respect to the subjects?

For more in the series, please click here.

call the midwife

I have long wanted to write about the television series Call the Midwife (and also the books it is based on) because to me it is far and away the best thing in pop culture we have in regards to all these issues of representation we keep talking about.

So I did.

It is funny to me that I find myself writing about pop culture once or twice a month these days. I guess I like doing it because for now, I am still very committed to not blogging about my own life, and am in a season of learning from others. And it seems that every where I look there are places to learn from (both positives and negatives). I actually identify greatly with the heroine of Call the Midwife, as she bumbles about, gets disappointed, shocked, overwhelmed  but generally feels like the luckiest girl in the world to be where she is.

If you haven’t seen the show, I highly recommend it (the first season is on Netflix streaming, and the second is currently free on PBS.com). Trigger warnings GALORE, however. If you (like myself) have experienced a traumatic pregnancy, or if you have any fears about pregnancy, or if you might be pregnant or possibly plan on being pregnant in the future . . . well, bring your tissues, and be prepared to peek between your fingers. It can get pretty rough and raw, but that is the reality of our world, eh?

 

image via Pinterest

Here is an excerpt from my piece:

 

 

In her book, Jennifer Worth describes a conversation she had with Sister Monica Joan, the oldest (and not always lucid) nun in the convent. Nurse Jenny asked the sister about her decades-long ministry with the poor in the East End (Sister Monica Joan grew up in an affluent aristocratic family in which she felt bored and stifled). Wondering about the underlying reasons for her work, Nurse Jenny asked Sister Monica Joan, “Was it love of people?”

“Of course no,” she snapped sharply. “How can you love ignorant, brutish people whom you don’t even know? Can anyone love filth and squalor? Or lice and rats? Who can love aching weariness, and carry on working, in spite of it? One cannot love these things. One can only love God, and through his grace come to love his people.”

 

 

For the rest of the article, please go to Christianity Today’s Out of Ur blog.

 

What about you? Any television/movies/music/books that you think have done a good job in representation?

War Photographer: Kelley Nikondeha

Kelley is the loveliest, in real life and in her writing. She may or may not be the next Walter Brueggemann. I asked her to do a special post for this series on how she talks about adoption–specifically with her kids. I have long been uncomfortable with some of the ways adoption language gets tossed around, but Kelley has always shown such grace and aplomb. Plus, she is brimming with wisdom and theological depth, yet she still remains resolutely planted in “real life”–which includes some very challenging, messy, and glorious places. I view her as a friend and mentor, and I am privileged that she chose to share in this space. 

photo credit: Ellen Olive Photography

Tandem Stories

While I haven’t birthed my children, I’ve birthed their stories. In the early days our adoption tale felt legendary, laced with Spirit-whispered promises and just in a nick of time departures and a medical miracle for good measure. To tell these stories was to tell my story of deep formation during the adoptive arc, revealing my eventual status as an accidental mother of two Burundian babies only possible in the imagination of God.

I had to tell these stories of how God created a mother ex nihilo, how God healed a baby found on hospice watch, how an adopted child became an adoptive parent. These came from my own belly.

I beamed as I held my browned babies, as I held my glowing stories. Speaking them out was the most natural thing to do, testifying to a great goodness done unto us.

But as my children learned to feed themselves raspberries, turn on lights, unlock doors and move from me at increasing speeds my sense of things changed. They were growing up and already moving away from me, starting that long process of differentiation. I knew they wouldn’t always be mine to corral and control. And neither would their stories.

Before we even celebrated our first Adoption Day together I began holding their stories closer, giving fewer details about how they were orphaned and then brought home. I spoke less of my daughter’s former illness, lest I surrender too much to strangers before she could comprehend her own healing. I began wondering if I’d already given too much away.

I realized that telling our children’s stories is a complex endeavor because they are also our stories. At what point along the umbilical cord does mother diminish and child increase, mother ending and child becoming a separate individual with a unique story? I found it worthwhile to consider where my story ends and theirs begins.

//

In truth, it will be years before my children understand the fullness of their adoption narrative. There will be many winters and summers before they can give me permission to share about these intimate experiences that happened to all of us. Along the way they’ll discover the details, feel the emotions, construct frameworks for understanding and, if I’m so lucky, share with me how the story unfolds from their vantage point. So I do reflect on this interim period.

I confess some struggle as I cross their storyline now and again. At first it was the adoption chronicles, but nowadays it’s the daily-ness of growing up together. My kids do intriguing things, especially as bi-cultural children straddling fall in the States and spring flights to Burundi. They offer alternatively simple and stunning insights into these cultures and places. And when my son reflects on Jesus stories and makes connections to justice and dreams of bringing equity to Africa – I want to write about it all! I hesitate, though. What I want is a clear easement, to know that I have the right to cross over their story and share some of it alongside my own. I’m constantly wondering who holds the copyright on these tandem stories.

//

When I write or speak, I do so as a woman who is wife, lover of justice and jubilee, friend to the poor, an adopted child and a mother of two robust babies. My own thinking is shaped by motherhood as much as my seminary degree, recently read books, global friends or my bi-cultural life. Maybe in this season, mothering shapes me most. When I speak about the fullness of my life without mentioning my children my own story feels incomplete. (This is when I feel that phantom umbilical cord still connecting us.)

And here’s another thing – my children are teaching me how to be more human. So if I write about my own plodding transformation, I must mention my young mentors and the lessons they offer. It’s my children who challenge me to be more kind, embody grace, practice forgiveness and let go of anger. It’s increasingly impossible for me to describe my journey without mention of my fellow companions, to speak of transformation sans the catalyst.

But I’ve decided to write with them in the story and in view. I’ve accepted the invitation down this harrowing road, navigating between mine / ours / theirs. Since it will be years before they can offer true permission or input in the telling of these tales I feel the need to tread soft and slow.

So with each piece I stop and think about what to say, what to leave out, what to leave ambiguous. I try and leave room for them to grow beyond my descriptions, to someday annotate them when they’re able. For example, I try not to say my son is an angry child, but to talk about how he’s learning to handle those hot emotions. I imagine him seeing this as a true statement, one filled with a mother’s confidence that he will, in fact, master those outbursts. And I hope he feels I represented him within a redemptive and maturing arc, not locked into forever being an ‘angry child’ by my pen. I pray when he reads my story, it will echo with truth from his own experience. Then the story will truly be ours.

In the meanwhile I must write with a long-term lens. I consider how this story about my son, my daughter read ten or twenty years from now. If I hit it right, then years from now my children will see how I attempted to love them well, learn from them and for them. They will see then how I always believed in them and knew goodness would grow in them with each episode, each season. This means I tend to write these stories in my journal and hold on to them awhile, not rushing to post. I want to make sure each story told can withstand the test of time – a few weeks, some months and then maybe years beyond today.

//

photo credit Ellen Olive Photography

I hope to write about adoption someday, about the redemptive energy that circulates in and from the company of the adopted. I want to unpack the theology, make some connections and suggest how adoptive people can offer unique gifts to a fractured word in need of our kind of healing. But to write this out will require a bit of honest memoir, describing both what it is to grow up adopted and mother adopted children. I’ve been harboring this in my heart for months, because any words in print have to be written to last. And I’m not sure if I’m ready to write our story just yet, I carry this fear and trembling every time I think about it.

Because as my children grow, this is no longer just my story of bringing Burundian babies home. My story is maturing into our story, something we hold together somehow despite our age difference. And I never want them to regret my written record of our story, to accuse me of misrepresenting them. I hope they never feel I (even unintentionally) exploited their experience. So I wait, because my children matter. I hold on a little longer than I want to out of deference to them. I will write, but only when I sense we are ready.

//

The question looming – how we do this living, learning and telling together while respecting one another? Obviously I carry the weight of this question now – as mother and chief storyteller. I wonder if motherhood gives me such wide jurisdiction over their unfolding stories or not, at what point do I consider them as fellow humans with a shared history? When do I cede to their copyrights over these jointly held stories?

Yes, I do think about privacy when I write about my kids. I try not to be too revealing, I try to share more redemptive episodes and not create a record of their youthful folly. I consider protecting them, and so try not to use their names often or too many details that would identify them. But most of all I consider their humanity, their own history and their right to own and tell their own stories. I aim to honor them as we (and our shared stories) grow together.

 

 

 

Kelley Nikondeha is a thinker, connector, advocate, avid reader, mother of two beautiful children, lover of God’s justice & jubilee.  She co-leads theological conversations at Amahoro Africa and is chief storyteller for Communities of Hope. Kelley and Claude do life in transit between Arizona and Burundi. She’s in transit between continents but also in terms of her own experience of motherhood, discipleship, theological engagement and living into God’s dream for the world. She savors handwritten letters, homemade pesto and anything written by Walter Brueggemann. She is fueled by space and snacks (and Diet Coke). Blog: kelleynikondeha.com Twitter: @knikondeha

 

Psssst: isn’t that the coolest tattoo? You can read the story of that here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The War Photographer series seeks to ask and somewhat answer questions of representation. How we go about sharing stories that aren’t our own–specifically the hard stories? How do we put a spotlight on some of the forgotten stories of our age while still giving dignity and respect to the subjects?

For more in the series, please click here.

War Photographer: Sarah Bessey

Whenever I just want to be done with the internets for good, Sarah Bessey is what changes my mind. She has been doing her own thing in her corner for a long time, and her writing is beautiful, aching, honest, and more poetry than prose. She is supremely talented at both being an advocate AND creating safe spaces for dialogue–all the while moving you to tears. I am more than honored that she is sharing in this space today. What she writes here is very near and dear to my heart, and is a game changer for describing how we ought not use others for our own purposes. Please check out her gorgeous blog (and get ready for her book, which i can’t wait to get my greedy little hands on). 

 

 

 

In which I am (not much of) a war photographer

It’s been more than ten years since I was introduced the terminology of “missional church.” Hey, what do you know? we are meant to live out the Gospel in our daily, walking-around lives, as missionaries in each and every context. Amazing, right?

As a refugee from the mega-church movement of modern church life and fame-seeking Christian celebrity marketing, the missional living conversation was a timely lifeboat for my journey. I loved Jesus, I struggled with the circus, and this was a call out of a churchy-ghetto, and into the real world with a message of Love. Now my life, even here in a prosperous corner of Canada, is a missionary life, a life of embodying God’s hope and good news. Justice and mercy, hope and goodness, love and peace, are desperately needed. My friends were not going to church and were suspicious (even hostile) of labels like “evangelical” but I was going to my friends, and so the idea of missional living made sense in my context.

I was reading books from seminary academics and interacting with emerging church thinkers and theorists. But it all felt rather like an ivory tower to me, divorced from real-life application and living out. I often thought to myself, well, that sounds great but what does it mean in my real life?! At the time, there weren’t a lot of bloggers writing about missional living (well, in those days there weren’t so many bloggers, period), story-telling hadn’t become the saturated scapegoat medium of Christian writers, and the terms “ordinary radical” and “missional” hadn’t jumped the Christian publishing shark.

So I decided to start writing about how this whole “missional thing” actually looked in my life, right here, in Vancouver. I was full of ideas – I would write stories about my interactions with my neighbours! with my co-workers! with my friends! with strangers at the park! with the poor and marginalised in my city! I would be the “voice on the ground” from the front-lines of this whole missional life, these stories would be valuable and needed. I could share real-life conversations with real-life people. Church people would learn from my arguments disguised as stories. I had an agenda for justice! and maybe I could be, like, the VOICE of missional living in real life! People would learn and understand how to actually apply the theories now!

Charge!

Clearly, I had missed the point. But I wrote a few posts over the period of a year or so. Then I stopped writing those stories. I ended up deleting every single post.

The very nature of arguments require simplification. When we are arguing, we go to our base lines. We turn people into props, interactions to proving grounds, theology into theories, because we have a point to prove. We make arguments for good reasons – I have no doubt about that.  And arguments have a place, perhaps. We have an end game in mind: we want to raise money, we want to do good, we want to change the world, we want to make a difference, vivé la revolution of love! But agendas turn our lives into arguments and proof-points, instead of invitation.

Arguments and agendas require simplicity. Relationships make room for complexity and nuance.

Arguments and agendas require a clear story arc: setting, conflict, climax, resolution. Relationships allow for ebb and flow, for intimacy and redemption, for non-sexy work of showing up over the years, for the working out of God’s goodness already worked in. How does it glorify God or embody the Kingdom of God to use people as props “for the greater good.”

I deleted those essays because the more enmeshed I became in the actual “living” part of the missional living theories, the more I realised one thing: these are my friends. These are my neighbours. These are my co-workers. I loved them. And when I loved them, I didn’t want to use them as props anymore.

I hadn’t written anything terrible, anything revealing. But I had written about them as if they were props, I had used them to make an argument. In my rush to tell stories about missional living, I had dehumanized my friends and my neighbours.

Talk about missing the point of the Gospel.

I remember the day someone found out what I had done. She came across my blog by chance. She was devastated by my “stories” from the “front-lines” recounting our conversations. Understandably, she felt used and she felt betrayed by me. And she has never forgiven me. I lost a friend. I still can’t think about this without a deep sense of guilt and grief. I was absolutely in the wrong.

All of these things were in my mind when I was invited to join the Help One Now blogger trip to Haiti last year. Too often, we bloggers and writers use the excuse of storytelling to advance our own agendas and arguments. That feels false to me, both as a writer and as a follower of Jesus. We can all tell the difference between a real story and a creaking morality tale: we can all tell the difference between a friendship of mutuality and a clumsy attempt at following the agenda. There really isn’t a way to make someone feel loved and valued while simultaneously using them as a prop for a purpose.

I was afraid of extreme poverty, afraid of leaving my family, but mostly I was afraid of screwing up and hurting someone in my heart to do some good. It seemed easier to do nothing, than to risk damaging the dignity of Haitians. Yet I felt very clearly and strongly that God had wanted me to do this thing. So I went but I went in “fear and trembling” with a tremendous desire to honour Haiti, and a cautious sense of calling. I was committed to people, not arguments, even for a good cause. I wanted to learn from them. I knew the likelihood of my return to Haiti was small but that didn’t give me an excuse, not anymore. Even if my new friends in Haiti would never read my blog, even if they never saw a picture I took, even if they never heard a speech I gave on their behalf, I needed to write and blog and talk about them like they were sitting right here in the front row.

No more two-faced storytelling for the purposes of argument. That excuse won’t fly anymore.

I don’t know if I did a good job. Only the people of Haiti can tell me that. But I tried and I wrestle even now with relating these stories because aren’t I doing this very thing again? I don’t know. I tried to figure out how to do some good and even build a school from the standpoint of relationship instead of argument and agendas. I’ve learned by now that God is just as much concerned with the means as the end.

Even now, six months later, when I write about Haiti, or I write about Mercy Ministries of Canada, and particularly when I write about my own small life here in British Columbia, I wonder: relationship or argument? It’s a cheap use of my stories – let alone my friends or my family –  for the purposes of arguments. These are lives, not theories; souls, not vehicles for setting, conflict, climax, and tidy resolutions. I don’t always get it right. I make apologies often.

I want to be faithful to nuance and complexity, to the light and the shadows, in both relationships and story-telling. I am still learning to embrace wandering truth in favour of crisp arguments. I want to make it my ambition, as Paul admonished the church in Thessalonica, to live a quiet life of profound consequence, focused on embodying God’s kingdom way of life here and now and loving others well.

Because the very nature of missional living is indeed the embodiment of the Gospel. And the Gospel is good news, the news that God is for us and God is with us and God is Love and Life. So our living out of the mission needs to reflect the heart of our Sender: it needs to look like respect, like secret-keeping, like relationship instead of arguments, to even begin to hint at the vast love and affection of our Father towards us.

 

 

Sarah Bessey is a writer and an award-winning blogger (www.sarahbessey.com). She lives in Abbotsford, British Columbia with her husband, Brian, and their three tines, Anne, Joseph, and Evelynn. Her first book Jesus Feminist will be published by Howard Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) in 2013. Sarah is an editor at A Deeper Story (www.deeperstory.com), and a contributor at SheLoves Magazine (www.shelovesmagazine.com). She is a happy clappy Jesus lover, a joyful subversive, a voracious reader, an unrepentant hashtag abuser, and a social justice wannabe.

 

(psssst, Sarah’s book can be pre-ordered here. Yay!)

 

 

 

 

The War Photographer series seeks to ask and somewhat answer questions of representation. How we go about sharing stories that aren’t our own–specifically the hard stories? How do we put a spotlight on some of the forgotten stories of our age while still giving dignity and respect to the subjects?

For more in the series, please click here.

 

Banging on the Door of Photojournalism

Peter Anderson (a pretty spectacular War Photographer himself) directed me to this essay by Chicago photojournalist, Alex Garcia.

Here is an excerpt:

 

The man was pounding on my door, angry drunk, slurring loudly in Spanish and imploring “Maria!” to come out of my apartment.

But Maria wasn’t in my apartment. I didn’t even know who Maria was.

He must have been on the wrong floor.

Like I said, he was drunk.

He kept banging, violent and insistent.  Although I was screaming back in Spanish, “No vive aquí!” he wouldn’t listen. Then I heard him trying to bust the lock.

The whole thing was escalating out of control.

Did he have a weapon? The thought of him breaking the door down was in the back of my mind. I didn’t know what I would do. I called building security. No one answered.

I called 911.

Minutes later, he mercifully stopped. But I still heard him fuming at the end of the hallway, in the stairway, as if lying in wait.

Finally, the police came.

When they did, one cop took down my record of what happened while the other rolled his eyes. I was insulted and called him on it. He didn’t care.

After all, I was living in a low-income apartment in a city that saw frequent violent crime. What did I expect?

 

 

 

Read the rest here.

 

Garcia’s personal story is fascinating–but the rest gets even better. I appreciate this essay primarily for the essential truth: your photos (or writing) reflect where you live.

This is a very close-to-my-heart concept, although a bit secondary in my case. I identify with Garcia in that I am sick to death of the same old stories, and long to hear and see news of the kingdom in all its mustard-seed glory. So how many of us are willing to be embedded?

 

 

 

War Photographer: Kevin Hargaden

Kevin Hargaden is a treasure of the internets. I just recently found out it was because he is Irish–none of that American Christian grimness about him, no sirree. He is funny, delightful, and heartbreakingly aware of just how bad things are on the ground. I’m so glad he agreed to write this post, but I am even gladder still for the life and calling he has chosen to live. Please do check out his always excellent thoughts over on his blog, and his be sure to follow him on Twitter as well.

 

 

For the last fifteen years in Ireland, living as a Christian has meant living through story after story after story of people abused horrendously within churches. I grew up and came to faith in that time. It has seemed as if every successive year there is another detailed report into the terrifying violence that took place within the church, which was conducted by leaders in the church, which was covered up by the people of the church. For this the church still has not acknowledged wholeheartedly and repented truly.

Invariably war photographers have to document carnage and brutality and their goal is that somehow by recording it – by broadcasting it, by capturing it – the stories of what has happened won’t be lost and won’t be forgotten. The war photographer hopes that by taking photos of war, they will contribute to the cessation of war. As an accidental war photographer of abuse within the church, I feel compelled to retell the story in such a way as to honour the victims, to expose the truth and to prevent it from happening again.

When trying to share these stories there is much to be avoided; the tabloid desire for prurient details, the brutish hunger to turn in aggression against perpetrators and most importantly the commodification of the stories so that they become an instrumental tool to achieve some other aim. The last concern is one about which I must be most alert. I feel like a war photographer who gets his work seen from an obtuse angle. If I present an academic paper that critiques pristine, abstract theological models of church, I will write it heavily influenced by the decrepit, actual crimes of our churches. Yet my address might only tangentially touch on the abuse scandal and instead appear to be preoccupied with the writings of Henrí de Lubac or Karl Barth. I imagine it is a bit like a war photographer who gets his pictures published in a botany journal. “Look! I found this rare orchid… Yes, well noticed. That is a war waging on in the background right behind the flowers.”

There is much to be avoided but there is one thing that I seek: to dignify the victims by honouring the truth of what has taken place.

My First Holy Communion

I had a very low intensity exposure to the church growing up. We had a parish priest called Fr. Vincent Keaveny. When he would visit our primary school, classes would be suspended and we would all be herded into our cramped little makeshift assembly hall. This man, who seemed as old as Abraham to us, with yellow skin, would stand on a little stage in front of us and teach us to sing, “See this little light of mine? I’m gonna let it shine” while performing actions that went along with the song.

It appeared to us as if Fr. Keaveny’s primary purpose was to inform us in many different ways that we were good and that we could do good. He had a curate, Fr. Rossa Doyle, a priest who moved with a deliberative patience that put us at our ease. He was a man who never confused us. When your job is to explain the mysteries of God to children, that is a remarkable achievement.

In recent years I have often thought back on Fr. Keaveny’s approach to pastoring a congregation and teaching young people. At the age of 6 or 7 he left me with only the vaguest impression of who Jesus was, barely a concept of what the Gospel was but absolutely no doubt that God thought I was good.

There is something saintly in that.

My father, growing up in 1950s rural Ireland was an altar boy into his early 20s. He later confessed to me that he would have considered joining the priesthood but he knew he needed a suit to go up to the seminary. His family could not afford that. I wanted to be an altar boy like my dad. How good it would be help Fr. Keaveny as he went around doing the good work of telling people they could be good.

Also, if you did a funeral or a wedding, sometimes the families would give you five pounds and I could spend that on World Cup Italia 90 stickers or put it towards some more Transformer toys.

The only truly negative experience that I had in a church growing up was to do with serving the altar. I was probably too young and I was definitely insufficiently trained. One summer’s morning I went down to the church and there were no older boys around to help. I had to do the job solo. I tried desperately to remember when it was I should ring this bell and when it was I should bring over that chalice.

I can honestly say I did my absolute 8 year-old best that day. And in retrospect, I can see that there were few more sincere, heartfelt acts of worship in my youth. When mass finished, I went into the sacristy and the priest followed me in and began shouting. He called me an embarrassment. He asked me what did I think I was doing out there? He told me I should be ashamed of myself.

At the back entrance to our parish church there is a gentle slope up to the road above. The footpath is lined by cherry blossom trees that would explode into bloom in late Spring. I realise now that their chorus of colour was a Psalmist’s cry, rendered in leaf and bud, ushering the parish into the everyday magnificence of Ordinary Time on God’s watch.

I wasn’t used to adults raising their voices at me. My parents were gentle and calm. My teachers tended to like me. My football coach trusted me. I went for speech therapy with final year students who practiced on me as part of getting their degrees and in my mind they were the most beautiful women God had ever put on Earth. Adults never shouted at me.

It must have been shock then, that allowed me to maintain my dignity and protect my pride by holding my chin up while I walked out of the sacristy and out of the church. But the moment I crossed the threshold the tears began to fall. My face stung as if I had been hit. There is an inner-city Dublin phrase to describe blushing; that you are “scarlet.” But the “t” goes silent so you say “he was scarleh.” That wouldn’t begin to describe me. Running up that hill felt like scaling a mountain. I sprinted as fast as I could for as long as I could until I was out of breath and then I walked as slowly as I could manage because I wanted to gather myself.

I needed to get myself together because I wanted to hide what had happened from my family. After all, it followed that if the priest was embarrassed by me, I would embarrass my family. If the priest thought I had shamed myself, I surely had brought shame on my family. I didn’t want to disappoint my dad. In my child-logic, that is what this would be. My grandparents were deeply, sincerely devout people. My paternal grandmother lived in the house next to mine. She appeared to pray constantly without any joy. My maternal grandmother lived on the other side of the country. She appeared to have turned joy into prayer. I didn’t want them to know how I had let them down.

For the last five years I have been in college with men training to be priests. From listening to them and from sitting through way too many Canon Law lectures and studying liturgy and the Catholic theology of Eucharist closely I can better understand why that priest lost his head with me. In the gracious providence of God I can report that he has mellowed over the years. Decades since he left our parish, he still checks in on my siblings and me, wanting to know how we’re doing.

I made it back to my house. I sat down to lunch as if nothing had happened. I let it casually slip a few days later that I didn’t want to be an altar boy any longer. Nothing more was said.

And I didn’t tell another soul what had happened until more than fifteen years later when I told my wife.

Protest art about church abuse on the streets of Dublin. (credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/infomatique/8010431147/in/photostream/)

 If I felt such shame for something so trivial – if the holy authority of church leadership unintentionally exerted such trauma on my conscience that I harboured a secret for the majority of my life over something so negligible and so forgettable as ringing a bell at the wrong time at mass – how hard must it be for victims to speak about abuse in the church? What courage must it take to stand up and confront their abusers?

In 2 Timothy, Paul seems to talk about passing on leadership in the church as if it is a relay race. Becoming a leader in the church is like receiving a baton from the older leaders as they finish their laps. For me and my generation, coming into leadership in the Irish church, the baton is damaged almost beyond recognition. It looks so different from the way it ought to look that it is natural for us to question if they are really handing us the Gospel at all.

The succession of investigative reports published since 2005 have revealed a culture of abuse that was “endemic within institutions where there was a systemic failure to provide for children’s safety and welfare.”# My suspicion is that we have not heard the end of this story. My hope is that no similar story will unfold within evangelical churches but my hope is faint.

As I receive the baton then, I feel it is an obligation on Christian leaders to point out the ways in which the message of Jesus and our witness to his Kingdom has been marred by the abuse of children God put in our care. We must continue to re-tell these stories of abuse, in ways that honour and respect the victims, because until we as church absorb them into our identity, justice has not even begun to be done. The astonishing good news that we declare in our churches must be tempered by an acknowledgment of the astonishingly bad things that have gone on in our churches. We re-tell these stories because justice is not opposed to grace, but an integral aspect of it.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, one of the most impressive voices for reform and repentance in the Irish church. (credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldeconomicforum/8417299148/)

Finally I think it is part of the vocation to leadership that we must tell these stories because the only way to stop abuse in the church is to widely disperse the responsibility to protect against it and expose it. In every ecclesial abuse scandal, in every church or institution, regardless of location or denomination, the key criteria at play was the unaccountable access that leaders had tos children and the unassailable authority that leaders had in the face of accusations. Only when we confront ourselves with the stories of the victims and the sins of the church we inherit can we hope to build a church that leaves no space for such violence to grow. Until then, the war photography cannot cease.

 

 

 

Kevin was born and bred in the Dublin suburbs. He has an Irish
aversion to writing bio-pieces since they invariably sound cocky. He
is training to be a minister with the Presbyterian Church in Ireland,
but is studying for that at a Catholic seminary. He can’t sing but he
does lisp. He loves the Simpsons, the parables and making lists but
perhaps not in that order. He blogs at www.hargaden.com/kevin about
faith in contemporary Ireland and he can be found on twitter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a reminder, the War Photographer series seeks to ask and somewhat answer questions of representation. How we go about sharing stories that aren’t our own–specifically the hard stories? How do we put a spotlight on some of the forgotten stories of our age while still giving dignity and respect to the subjects?

For more in the series, please click here.

Scenes from the Mall

Today I have a rather long piece up at The Other Journal, detailing some of my experience in that bastion of American consumerism–the shopping mall. 

 

It is one of the few pieces I have written since moving here in September that talks about my day-to-day life. I feel like I am constantly learning and growing in my ability to discern what is valuable and truthful, and what just feels good to write in the moment.  

 

In any case, this is a piece that spells out a certain arc in my life–the one that brought me to a place of realizing my own story was irrevocably tied up with the poor.

 

Here’s an excerpt:

 

I never used to know the poor, and this was such a comfort to me. I could envision how I had helped them, in so many small ways, just based on what I had bought that day, the kind of grocery store I frequented. I didn’t know their names or heartbreaks or triumphs or dreams or visions. But then I started to read the words of Jesus, and he kept talking about them all the time; David too, and all the prophets many times over. And they all said the same thing, in so many words: blessed, blessed, blessed are the poor.

And conversely, to everyone else, to those with their boots on the necks of the poor, the rich and ruling, to those who wined and dined while suffering and misery was outside their door, those who offered sacrifices to God but did not treat others with mercy or kindness, it was all woe, woe, woe. And there came a point when I couldn’t ignore it away anymore: in the hierarchy of economics, I most certainly was at the top. And scripturally, this wasn’t the safest place to be. I found Jesus telling me to sell everything, give to the poor, devote myself to a king and a kingdom that was not going to come through the normal, powerful channels. And in return he promised me real relationship with God, the blessings of seeing miracles, and the heartaches and joys of community based in mutuality.

 

 

Click here to go to The Other Journal and read the rest.