murals in the desert

“You may stand the strain of the most intense labour, coupled with severe suffering, and yet break down utterly when laid aside from all religious activities; when forced into close confinement in some prison house.”–Streams in the Desert

As I walked past the countless murals on the street, I recognized myself: a colorful, hollow attempt at redemption. Paint splashed on bricks to make it all seem new; wide-eyed, good hearted people bounding in to help. But murals don’t change neighborhoods; neither does my showing up.

I am reminded by Psalm 103 to remember the miracles that the Lord has done. In this lonely, awake place I remember what has pointed to the divine in my life. It is my family: my precious, baby-that-almost-wasn’t, my husband, so young and brave and handsome. It is my friendships, so surprising and challenging, with people so unlike me, my Somali and Bhutanese friends. It is the way I continue to plod along after this great love I have heard about and experienced in so many tiny ways; it is the way I feel relentlessly pursued by this love, how it has pushed and pulled me outside of myself. It is the way I have been brought to this place, outside of all of my religious activities, my labours and sufferings, and am finally alone enough where I can recognize how I am a colorful, painted tomb.

I don’t want this to sound depressing; I debated all day on what I should or shouldn’t share, on how honest I can be. I find this odd space, this time of complete newness and being emptied out, to be exhilarating in every sense. I am alive, I have eyes to see, and ears to hear. How often have I been able to say that? Recognizing my own flaws, be they a propensity for pride, self-righteousness, acedia, or melancholy, is a true and vital step in becoming whole. In living life awake, asleep neither to the realities of the world or the realities of my heart. This is where I am supposed to be, and in this moment I am holding it close.

 

Linking up with SheLoves Magazine today, for their synchroblog on the word “awake”. Come join us?

Mutuality: Not Just a Buzzword!

So, part of my angst after the Justice conference spilled out into my newest column.

It feels good to have written it down, and to have a reminder of what my expectation vs. reality often is. But as I was writing, I started to get mired in all that is not right, I could feel the sad stories start to eclipse the hope. Then, the soul-crushing guilt comes rolling in, telling me I am not doing enough, that the good years are behind, that the future is always in flux, never in solid relationship.

 

And then, two nights ago, we left the door unlocked and the refugee kids creep in, looking for a friend, content to just sit and play for awhile.

Yesterday, we go to our neighbors house to have chai and delicious Nepali food, to sit and talk about babies and the sunshine and possible small business ideas.

Last night, a former student of mine, a sweet, nearly toothless Vietnamese man, brought bags and bags of food to school for me. This is the second time in a month; he never says much. Just smiles and shoves the beautiful, ornate, smelly food in my hands and walks away, takes the bus back to his house.

 

And all of this is so unexpected. Nobody wants anything from me. They want to be friends. I know this sounds strange, but this might be the weirdest part of my life right now. I feel uncomfortable with my friendship, like I must offer something more in order to be worthwhile. English class, small business opportunities, a play group. But my friends and neighbors just smile and nod politely and go back to cooking me food (I am racking up a delicious food debt so high there is no hope of ever paying it back–I must cut my losses right now and declare grace in the realm of cooking hospitality).

In a season of questions, I am being blessed by the people I thought somehow needed my help. It is blowing my mind, this mutuality, this risk in only being friends.

 

 

Justice Conference

So, I had the amazing opportunity to go to the Justice Conference yesterday. Like most things in my life, I had no idea what was going on or even if I was going to get to go (the tickets are super pricey!) but in the end I was given 3 (!) passes, which I shared between the hubs and sis and neighbor. Thanks to Heidi and Cate for scoring the passes!

I had been in contact with some people from the Simple Way (the intentional community in Philadelphia that Shane Claiborne started) a couple of weeks ago to get permission to quote Shane. I casually asked if they would be in Portland for the Justice conference. They were! I ended up helping decorate the booth and got to have coffee with an amazing woman who has been living in intentional community in a marginalized neighborhood for 30 years (also, so random, she has been my editor for Conspire! magazine).

 

I was really bummed to miss out on all the good stuff on Friday, but I couldn’t get out of my classes. Then, I invited all the Simple Way people over for coffee and food today, but they could only do the morning and the hubs and I are working with the 2-3 year olds for the month. I was seriously feeling sorry for myself (I could have had coffee with Shane Claiborne!) but then I had to laugh: I was too busy teaching ESL and serving the church to have coffee and talk about justice. I think it is probably best this way.

I also met up with an old high school friend (which was magical), wandered the booths, soaked in the speakers, and saw a bunch of people I knew.

I totally thought I was supposed to go to this conference and God would tell me what is next. Our future has a giant question mark in it, and I feel like I am missing  a piece of that puzzle. So I went with high expectations (seriously, I couldn’t sleep the night before–I felt like I was going to Disneyland!).

So I was completely unprepared for what actually happened:

I sat in my seat and thought some bitter thoughts (the term “slackavist” may have rolled around my brain). I felt depressed, anxious, and rather like a failure. I felt cynical, and weird for sitting around talking about justice yet again. I couldn’t get over myself.

I had coffee with my editor from Conspire!, and she just listened to me talk for awhile. Then she reiterated what I had just said, which was basically that no one from our church lives in intentional community with us, no one is fully partnering with the refugees with us, we don’t have a parachurch organization, the hubs is not as involved as I am, and we have a demanding baby.

Yeah, I said.

She looked at me, and said: You know? That sounds hard, and that sounds lonely.

And as my eyes welled up with tears, I realized that is just what I needed someone to say to me.

 

I was talking with my old high school friend (still a soulmate) and I told her that I think I write so much because I don’t have any community in which to process things. And it clicked, and it made sense, and it also depressed me.

My sister wrote down a quote from John Perkins at the conference. He said (about working with the poor): “All you need to do is value the dignity of that person. The Holy Spirit will do the rest–convicting of sin and all that. All you have to do is affirm their dignity”.

 

I was affirmed simply by having someone say that sometimes it all seemed difficult. I left the conference being touched in a way that I was completely not expecting–and somehow more encouraged for the future.

 

Not to mention Francis Chan brought the house down at the end, bringing his hammer down full force on our pleasant and convenient interpretations of the Bible. I will probably have to process everything he said at a later date, but basically he reiterated the fact that there is a reason I feel like I am missing out– because I am!  Most of us are. God’s children are starving, God’s children are being prostituted, God’s children are in dire need–and we live like this doesn’t affect us. But it should.

 

I think that question mark in our future just got a little sharper.

Neighbors

Sometimes, when you live in intentional community, you get dissapointed.

Like last week, when I slaved over  a bunch of indian food for a bunch of Bhutanese people and they didn’t show up (headaches and working and at their aunt’s house in Beaverton, respectively).

 

And sometimes, you are blessed.

 

It’s the strangest, littlest things. Like the hubs, making small talk with the big bear of a man in the elevator: “Nice haircut.”

“Yeah,” said the guy. “I was starting to look like an ax murderer.” [note: he really was] “I looked at myself in the mirror and thought: ‘that’s not who I am, man’”.

We all nodded in agreement. The baby blew kisses at him. Just making strange small talk, just making strange neighbor friends.

 

Or like the past couple of days, when some of our neighbor kids have started to come over after school, to hang out and ask all sorts of questions. They seem to delight in making my cranky baby giggle, and they even have contest to see who can clean up my living room the fastest. I know! It all started when we stopped remembering to lock our doors. It sounds so awful to type it out, but it is true. And I am loving the interruptions these days.

Yesterday, one of the kids hanging around asked me a question: “what do you feed chickens?” It was Ani, a feisty ten-year old Bhutanese refugee, who asked. I stammered out a reply about birdseed (?) and stale bread. “Why are you asking?”

“Oh,” said Ani, “because we have a chicken.”

“What?”

“We have a chicken.”

I was floored. “A chicken? Where do you keep it? On the balcony?” (they live on the second floor).

Ani looked at me like I was crazy. “No, it stays in our living room. We tie a rope to its foot and keep it by the couch.”

I just stared at him. He went on. “We eat the most delicious eggs, and it is so great.”

I wanted to go check out this chicken situation, which is the stuff of refugee urban legend. But alas, it was not to be. Ani’s younger sister came over an hour later, and I asked her about the chicken.

“Oh yeah,” she sighed heavily. “We DID have a chicken. But he’s dead now”.

“What?”

“Yeah, my dad put a big spike in his neck and there was so much blood in the kitchen and me and my cousins were screaming so my dad said we had to come to your house.” Her cousins stood behind, all little girls with thick black bangs cut straight across, nodding solemnly. “None of us will ever eat chickens anymore,” Ani’s sister said, sweeping her arms around.

 

It was all I could do not to laugh. I just counted my blessings, exalting in how strange they may be.

Super Short

An update:

Since I wrote about the baby not walking here on the internets, she has decided to prove me wrong. For the past several days she has been taking a few steps every day. We are still not running around, but that image is now a distinct possibility. Yay!

Also, after I got all spiritual about our ghetto workout room, of course my Somali friend had to come and egg me on when I was running the other day. She stayed and talked to me for 20+ minutes, about anything that popped into her head. My favorite: “You are getting too skinny. Your husband is going to run away from you. You will get so skinny he doesn’t even know you, so that is why he will run away.”

Thanks, I guess?

 

All in all this has been a pretty anxiety-filled week. Which leads to sleepless nights and bleary mornings and possibly eating-entire-pans-of-brownies (I’m just saying). Our future is still as uncertain as ever, and I get a little despondent when I don’t know what it is exactly I am supposed to be dreaming about. 

 

work it out.

ghetto. photo by the hubs, my favorite photographer.

This weekend I went to a missions conference here in the NW, which is always inspiring and overwhelming for me, a huge missions nerd. I have been going to this particular conference for 8 years (I might have missed it once or twice). In the beginning I went by myself, a lonely single girl with missionary dreams, wandering the booths and soaking it all in. Now, here I am, lugging a crazy toddler on my hips and stopping to visit with every other person, talking until I feel hoarse and worn out and happy.

The only workshop I made it to was one on relational apartment ministry–moving into apartment complexes for the express purpose of making friends and building the kingdom of God. This is ostensibly what we have trying to do for the past several years. The workshop was inspiring, of course, but I left assessing all the places I have not let my living be incarnational.

It made me think about what kind of neighbor I am. I am the keep-to-myself, pleasantly smiling girl. I have connections to many of the refugees families who live here, and I bend over backwards to talk to them whenever I see them. But everybody else . . . that is a different story. It is much, much easier to not get involved. To only live in the apartments, not to dwell there.

A great example of this is the “work out room” at our complex. I use the quotation marks because it is just a tiny, narrow room stuffed with malfunctioning workout equipment. It is on the third floor, right across from the elevator, with a big window so everybody can see you sweating and huffing. There is one tiny window with a view of the courtyard with half of the blinds stolen off. I have found lots of evidence over the years that makes me think people are doing a lot of stuff in that room, but they certainly aren’t working out.

I used to use the busted up old elliptical machine quite a bit when we first moved in. But I got tired of all the refugee kids spilling in and laughing at me, at the women giving me strange looks, of catching lurking teenage boys staring one too many times. I stopped working out, because I hated interacting with people. The Burmese mom who let her toddler tumble about the room. My Somali friend who wanted to discuss how fat I was as I was sweating away. The dude with the big bushy beard whose apartment reeks of weed who lumbered in to put money on his laundry card. The single mom screaming at her kids who were running down the hallway.  I didn’t want to talk to any of them. I just wanted to read my O! magazine and listen to my NPR podcasts and burn a few calories. I wanted to be separate.

I signed up to run my first race in March. It is a 15k, which is just far enough that it is scary, but doable. The weather in Portland has been almost Biblical as of late–snow, sleet, rain rain rain and now some flooding. So I have been forced to take my running indoors, back to the “work out room” where I must interact with people.

For me, it’s such a picture of my prejudice, my tendency to protect my privacy and individuality. It is a symbol of how different I feel that I am.

So here is my small change for the here and now. To use the workout room, and to redeem it. To engage with the neighbors, to use every opportunity for good, to not shrink into myself and my safe barriers (ipods, magazines, culture, closed apartment).

I can be a sweaty mess who still smiles and chooses to engage. This is the decision for even the ridiculous things to be intentional.