How now....

.... shall we live?

It was last week while I was running that I began to think of how much time we spend talking about how to change the world, instead of moving towards a new world. As I sloshed through the left-over snow in the middle of a hazy Joplin day my thoughts ran faster than my feet could carry me. We who are Christians create such deep divides between the physical and spiritual needs of humans. Humans are not considered to be in two parts, being only spiritual or only physical. No, one cannot live without being both. Just as a body is incomplete without a soul, no human soul can ever be human without its body. So, how now then do we bring truth to those whose physical bodies ache and fail? And how now do we bring rest to those whose souls cry out from hunger pangs of spiritual starvation?

We take the hope of Jesus.
We move the hope by truth and faith. The truth may be a word, the truth may be food, the truth may be freedom.
When they do not hear our words we continue to aid their physical pain.
If they reject our material sacrifice, we press on in feeding their souls.
We feed their souls by prayer, by a rousing cry among the saints to Power.
When they stop their ears to our words, when they close their doors to our hands...
We live.
As we live lives of radical love and revolutionary contrast to a world of tragedy and oppression, we win.
When they tire, when they anger, when they rise against this life...
We die.
And in our death, we birth another generation of hope.
When we die, we prove that we were not slaves to life, nor slaves to death, but owned by something more.
When we die, we give life.
When we die, we live.
So, how now shall we live?


Simply as Christ.

Briefcase.

"Interesting how moments that were once our favorites can be the ones we abhor the next day. and the ones that seemed so... meaningless are realized as pivotal points in our existence. Life... funny thing."

I love moments. I love to live them. I love those small seconds of the day that you know no one else noticed. They dangle and then dash away, leaving you breathless to describe them.

The day faded out and I sat on the bus, surrounded by familiar strangers on my way to Vancouver. We'd talked about Christmas, about families, how I feel about Texas and then laughed as I retracted my statements when approached by a Texan. We talked about writing and we talked about why we were on that bus. On the outskirts of Vancouver I wondered out loud why we had pulled over at a broken down gas station. It had a crooked sign, and the pumps were rusted. Through the window you could see the convenience store clerk looking bored as the last of the sunlight disappeared, doubting she'd have any customers the rest of the night. One pick-up truck was parked outside. The boy sitting next to me answered my wondering, facetiously asserting that this must be a stop. 

It was. 

From behind me an old man got up. He was wearing a blazer and a cowboy hat. He was no hillbilly though, but a figure emerge from a novel. He reached above his seat into the overhead storage of the Greyhound. He removed a single piece of luggage, a small, brown, square briefcase. Leaning slightly forward, he shuffled to the front of the bus. He descended the stairs and paused on the pavement below. I waited for him to move to the side of the bus to claim the rest of his bags which I assumed were underneath. Instead, he looked around, and then walked away. My head tilted in curiosity as I watched him move away from the gas station down an old road, one foot before the other on the asphalt, cracked and uneven. There were no lights ahead, no car to pick him up, nothing for miles. He turned quickly into a phantom. I turned to the boy next to me, and told him with the utmost respect for this man that I wished I could be so free as to travel holding only a briefcase. He replied, "How Kerouac..." 

I have no idea where the old man went. But in my mind he walked for miles, one of the few left from the Beat Movement. Still part of the anti-culture, still preserving adventure, still moving against the tide accidentally. Yes, it's moments like these that drive me back into my crazy mind, that unhinge me and send me hurtling back into the dreams of being On the Road. I'll never get over it. My life is one of those moments.

Faces

If you have not yet, please read the story of Kate Donahue and Jesus Sanchez. And if you pray, plead. Give if you can. But, listen to the story, because it is more than a story- it is the living, breathing pain of a family that has been hurt. It is more than a story, it is a reason to care, a jolt to stop being so hardened to the suffering of the people we are so privileged to love. 

Newspaper clipping from the Beat Museum
in San Francisco. Another product
of the Beat Movement. Thought it fit
the mood, and have been wanting to share
it for awhile now. 

I’ve been itching to write something quirky and lighthearted. Today is not the day I think. Quite the opposite from how I feel. Flying 40,000 feet above the earth I ache to look down and see a different world. Days like this make me wonder why I’ve decided to dedicate my life to uncovering pain and studying the causes and solutions. Social work does not promise happy endings. It’s days like this I see my mother in me because I feel such brokenness in the depths of my soul, I feel the burden of those I love.

If you’ve ever read The Secret Life of Bees the character May Boatwright best describes what I feel when I step out of my head and look at our world. The Psalms echo through my mind, words of pain and recognition of such depravity and tragedy in our world. It’s too much when we see it all, I become nonfunctional in the face of such great human suffering. From of our first breath, we cry. Pain is real, it is inescapable. Our friends, our family, our loves, ourselves… we confront daily incredible and real broken heartedness. The faces of my friends flash in my mind, those who are close to me. And they are followed by the children who have never been loved, whose faces are unknown to me, by the women who have only ever known touch to be abuse, by the boys whose own father’s face was their greatest fear... and by the humans who have fallen so far, who hurt so much that they lash out and become the abusers, create the abused. Create victims. Perpetuate pain. Break goodness.

I don’t want to see anymore. All of this makes me hateful and angry, tears of sadness turn to rage at the Creator who says He will be there to give us the strength to handle it all as we see how desperately we are. But why do we have to handle it at all? Why do I have to see the ones in my life I care the most for sit helplessly as an uncaring disaster attacks their beautiful hearts?

And then, that small, persistent reminder arises. A nudge at my temper. It will not always be like this. As simple as that. I wish with all that I am that everything was renewed now, that all of the perfection we beg for would take form in the life we live right now. I cannot even begin to fathom sitting in the seat of God, seeing and feeling every single thing that happens to hurt His beloved people, the crown of His creation. I would surely break my promise and wash them all away, simply to stop my own connection to the pain. But the promise holds fast: mercy. There will come a day. Despite darkness, despite the fight, despite rage, He is good. I was reminded yesterday, I do not know the whole story of God’s love for the world. I don’t need to know the answers to know that God still gives breath. And while I breathe I will know and I will see that God is good, that He is love, that He is better. So go the Psalms: tears to anger, anger to rage, rage to brokenness, brokenness to helplessness. Helplessness to praise. Redemption rises.