To Steve. With Love.

A little bit ago, I saw the guy who took your place walking down the street in my neighborhood. When I spoke to him, he looked at me and smiled a little and hurried on down the street. I looked down at my clothes. They were dirty from the garden. I hadn't had a shower. A dirty baseball cap hid most of my dirty hair. I laughed when I realized what had happened. Oh, I thought. He thinks I'm about to ask him for money. I laughed. Maybe a little bit because I thought it was funny, but the heft of my amusement came from knowing I must have done that a hundred (a thousand?) times. That's what the neighborhood teaches you. When you judge the book by its cover, you've only got a fifty-fifty chance of being right. But this isn't his neighborhood, so he doesn't know that. You would have laughed your ass off.

Can you see how much things have changed here? Do you get to fly up and down and around the streets where you used to walk and really take note of things? I saw your journal entry about Tommy and I wanted to tell you that he's still here. He's getting older and grayer and he doesn't try and kiss the pretty girls like he used to. Maybe someone slapped him and maybe he just got too old for it. He doesn't go to church anymore, but he isn't alone. The church is gone from here and he can't see you, but people are still taking care of him. The Neighborhood People do it. And it is good to see.

To see it now, you'd think our entire community had just been beamed up by aliens and taken away. There isn't any archaeological evidence of our time here. Well, our Mexican restaurant went out of business when the church left and I bet that's no coincidence. There's a new church here now with a new pastor who sends his kids to the public school. People from there came into the neighborhood right before Easter and handed out flyers. They were so surprised to see us here and maybe a little disappointed, too.  I laughed. I'm hopeful for them, but I'm a realist too.

What made us think it was going to work? What made us think that we could just buy up the houses and live in them and somehow (by osmosis?) transform this place. This place has always been like this. And it always will be. We might as well have dipped our big toes into a pool of still water. We made some ripples for a little bit, but now that the church is gone, no one even remembers it was ever here. 

And I know they don't because I'm still here. I'm not wearing it as a badge of courage. I've tried to leave before and I'm getting ready to try again. But this time, something feels different. The last times I prayed that God might give me one more Five-Points spring. One more summer. Or Christmas. But this time, it really does feel like that time is getting short. I don't sense that we're moving to anything bigger or better, I just feel like the days of this experiment are drawing to a close. After eight years it's going to be culture shock all over again. How funny is that? Do you think it will be hard to adjust to the suburbs again? Are you proud of us?

Yesterday, one of our neighbors got drunk and felt chatty so we talked to him for a long time. He told us about when he took care of the tigers in the circus and how sometimes the elephants cry. He told us about his wife and her addictions and the mom who abandoned him and the eighteen months he slept on the roof of the old AA building off Highland. He told us what he knows about true love. And we just listened. I laughed because after eight years of this, all we can do is listen to the stories of the people in this neighborhood. Before we might have tried to find some "help" for our neighbor by following the painstakingly constructed process the church gave us to deal with "situations" like this. Now we just realize we come to this neighborhood like we come to the Eucharist—empty handed and full of hope. This neighborhood is where I learned how to give the gift of listening without feeling like I hadn't done my part. But we listened and we weren't afraid. We didn't feel bigger than him or more stable. We didn't feel like we were the ones bending down from the mountain to offer the words of God. We just felt like the neighbors of a drunk guy who wanted to talk.  Don't you think that's something? Progress even?

This neighborhood is the rock I broke myself against. And in that sense, the experiment didn't fail.

Can you understand how beautiful it is that God's plans shoot through the world like tentacles of light illuminating the world person by person. Our churches fail with the sad machinations of abandoned idealism or they explode and are destroyed with the brilliance of a star that's burning out. Either way, the highest hopes we can hold for them is that they'll provide us with some light. If only for a little while. Can you see from where you are that God's plan didn't fail? Can you see us and how we've grown? 

I heard one of the survivors of Jonestown say that you don't join a cult because you expect to commit suicide in the jungles of Guyana for no apparent reason. No, she said, you join a cult with people like you. Good people. People you like. And you join with the hope that you're gonna change the world. I think that's true. We came here because we had the hopes to change the world. God sent us here because he wanted the world to change us.  I'm learning that nothing is all good and nothing is all bad. It's ok to take what's valuable and throw the rest away. So, that's how I'm taking what you taught us. The good and the bad.  And I hope you don't mind.

I'll see you in the morning, my friend.


P.S. I totally should have taken that guy's money, don't you think?

Because we wanted to live deliberately

I knew what was up as soon as I saw the police cars.  I think the Holy Spirit told me two nights before as I walked past his house. It was hot and the house was dark and silent. Houses with electricity aren't silent on evenings in Alabama. The sun was down for almost two hours and the thermometer in my car still registered 95.  So, I knew.  But it was already two days too late. 

I looked for the ambulance to come and join the police cars. It didn't, and my knowing was more complete. I ran down the sidewalk. Other neighbors came out too. I saw J. again for the first time in five years. He looks different. Older. A lot. (Does that mean I do, too?) H. was there, too. Because he always is. I noticed the door was off the hinges. And J. put words to what I knew.  Later, the morgue unit came. And that was that. 

His car sits on the curb like it always did. The police even cleaned off the porch. Maybe they got enough information from his VA records to find his brother in California. He was 83 years old. And now, we're the people on the block who have been here the longest. I can't believe it.

Room to rent, fifteen cents.

Do you remember that scene in the Robin Williams movie What Dreams May Come when Chris Nielsen begins his journey into hell and finds himself walking across a sea of faces that talk and talk and talk but don't make much sense? He sees faces he thinks he recognizes, but once he stops to talk to them he realizes they aren't who he thought they were. The more time he wastes talking to these faces he thinks he knows, the more he is diverted from his goal and the closer he comes to becoming insane and being trapped in hell forever. Isn't that a riveting concept?

I feel like Chris lately. I feel like wherever I go I meet people who are shouting at me. I go downtown to the library and come across the last vestiges of the Occupy Birmingham protesters. Their signs don't make any sense and one dogged little man always seems to be waving the Norwegian flag. It's a little Non sequitur-ville populated by a few very passionate people who might as well be shouting about their undying passion for mint chocolate chip ice cream and fluffy bunnies rather than rattling off trader-lingo they picked up from Fox News and don't quite understand. And it takes up space in my brain.

Those of you who are my Bookface friends (which I assume is almost all of you) know that I've been nursing a low-level obsession with Christian blogs lately. I started with the gateway blogs. You know, the Christian Housewife types, but I quickly moved to the hardcore fundamentalist varieties that I think I kept reading for much the same reason I paid to see the World's Largest Horse at the Jefferson County State Fair one year. Some of them (like the one that insists women remove their shoes in the house) have a freakshow aspect that I find completely engrossing. Much to my chagrin, in fact. (The horse, by the way, wasn't really that big. Maybe 18 hands or so. And he bit a plug out of my shoulder.)


I listen to NPR in the kitchen and in the car Voices. Voices. Voices. And while those are voices I can't see myself ever giving up, they often rattle my cage... get my dander up...engage the part of my brain that wants to argue, argue, argue.

I need a break. I think Jesus is probably speaking in there somewhere too, but I miss him because my mind is chewing on all of the other ideas I've allowed to be dumped there throughout the course of my day. My dad said something wise to me a few years ago. He said "Don't let someone rent space in your head." That's what I've been doing. My mom said (while we were pushing my kids on the swings at the park) that I need to discipline my mind and never go to those blogs again.  It's bad news, she said. And she was right.

So I'm challenging myself to be more vigilant about the ideas I entertain. And it's hard for me because I don't often censor ideas. I like to consider every possible aspect of a situation and try to understand how they all fit together.  But I think it prudent (thanks, Dana Carvey) to think my own thoughts for a while. So, I'll chew on that.

Boogity, Boogity, Boogity Amen. 

Summer Reading

This summer, we're reading every Caldecott Medal Winner from 1938-2012. I'm excited and plan to report.

Coming Out Part Two.

 

This is actually the Cahaba River, but it looks a lot like Bishop Creek. (Photo, I think taken by Beth Young.)

I had grown up in the church and I was familiar with all of the inconsistencies and ugliness and mean-spiritedness that can be a part of a Christian life. I didn't want to play the game. I knew I couldn't be "good" and that if I tried, it would only be phony and hollow. I thought I needed to be good, like the other little girls at my Christian school were good, to know God.

When I was in the sixth grade, for some reason I can't remember, I said "bullshit" at lunch. My teacher Mrs. Edwards (who I loved dearly) called my mom and said "Will you ask Susan if she knows who said 'bullshit' at lunch?" My mom asked me and I told on myself (doh!) and got in some serious hot water. Then, I knew for absolute sure that I wasn't capable of being good.  My mom was embarrassed that I said that I know, but just the other day, Dad teased me about it and laughed.  I said shit in the sixth grade and Dad has been laughing and giving it to me ever since.
 

When I was about twenty years old and a Junior at Auburn, I developed a condition that required surgery on both my legs. I was engaged and hoped to get married when I graduated. I told people I was a Christian and I believed in God, but I still clung to the notion that I needed to be good. And I knew I couldn't. Once I went to a Bible study by a relatively well-known "Bible Study Guru" at Auburn. She lectured this group of 20-something single women about how important it was to be a good wife and mother. She suggested we apprentice ourselves to a large family following graduation so that we could learn to be submissive and take care of children. I walked out of that Bible study and bawled my eyes out. I thought "Seriously? Jesus died for this? No thanks."  I was looking for Jesus. I was desperate for Jesus. And all I got from the church at that time were behavior modification techniques and, well, weirdness. I stopped at Tiger Package on the way home and bought a pint bottle of black label Southern Comfort.

 I don't know why I bring up the surgery other than that it was the difficult circumstance that started making the jars rattle off the truck so to speak.


The relationship between my fiancé and me began to deteriorate rapidly following my surgery and I didn't really know why. He had gone through the really heartbreaking death of a dream a few months before and I later learned he was struggling with drugs during that time. We broke our engagement and I was confused and heartbroken. I remember lying on the floor of my apartment and asking God to help me. It was during this time that I discovered a few television programs produced by Charismatic ministers. I grew up in a church that was committed to the truth of the Gospel, but wasn't particularly Charismatic. I didn't understand these people, but I sensed that they really KNEW God. So, I listened and I heard about a God who is real and present and active in our lives.


During this time, I was working as an intern at a small newspaper to meet my graduation requirement. One of my assignments was to report on a mother and a daughter who were going to graduate from Auburn at the same time. The mother was finishing a PhD in psychology and the daughter was finishing a BA. I called to interview the mother and I asked her how she, a single mother who had a baby girl at fifteen, could be finishing her PhD. She said "I stayed in prayer. God is real. God changes things. He can empower us to do what we never thought we could do. I'm telling you, Susan, stay in prayer. God will hear you. He will help you." And I believed it.


I came home to my little apartment and I prayed. Ok, God. I said. I'm ready. If I have to be like the other Christians to follow you, I'll do it. And at that moment, I heard the voice of the Holy Spirit say Now, I can work with that.  And he told me that he wasn't going to fix the relationship I had with my fiancé, And he told me that he had someone for me and when I would meet him.  Three years later, almost to the day, I met my husband. Six years to the day after that, I gave birth to a Goofball. (Which wasn't really surprising to me since I knew there were some Goofballs in my family tree who had passed for Sane.) I've never been the same since that day. And I learned that I didn't have to be like other Christians after all. I just had to be like me and love Jesus.


And what I've learned since then, to greater and greater degrees is that Jesus Christ is all the good I can ever be. I don't have to fake it or pretend to be something I'm not to please Him. Because it isn't about behavior. It's about knowing Christ and allowing him to work in my life.


I've been learning lately just how personal a "personal relationship" with Jesus can be. It's a phrase I've heard all my life. It isn't about religion, it's about relationship. And we want a personal relationship with Christ. I didn't get it then, but I'm getting it now. As I walk through my life and see all the ways God touched my life and spoke to my heart. He has literally been with me my entire life. He's just giving me the eyes to see it.

I'm little. My purpose in this life is little. That has been revealed to me. I'll never have a big influence or a fancy ministry. But what work he has given me to do, I accept. Part of my work on earth is uncomfortable because it means having other Christians think I'm a heretic. Part of my work is uncomfortable because it means having other Christians think I'm a prude! Unfortunately, my work in this life hasn't involved a whole lot of other Christians being absolutely thrilled by my presence, but I'll be honest. There's been some of that. I've been loved.

Most of my work on earth is so small and so seemingly insignificant that I sometimes forget that it is important. But I don't ask Him to make me great on earth or in heaven. (Being great in Heaven involves a lot of hardship on earth I think!) I just ask Him to make me faithful and to let me be content to stand in my place in the ranks of all the saints and do the work assigned to me. There is a place for me in the Ranks of the Saints. I'm amazed.


This is my story of faith. This is my testimony to the faithfulness of the Lord.  This has been really hard to write! Amen.

This is Me. Coming Out.

Lately, as I've been spending time praying and meditating on the Psalms, the Holy Spirit has been reminding me of certain events in my very early childhood. I'll be reading and praying and then I'll be back in 1979 standing in my back yard again. From the time I was born until the time I was about eleven, my family lived in a house with a big back yard on Bishop Creek. Bishop Creek is fed by a little spring in Shelby County and it flows through Alabama until it meets the Cahaba River near Selma. One day, I overheard my parents talking in the kitchen. "Bunny," Dad said, "I know you won't believe me, but I saw an alligator in the creek." I'm sure Mom was nice, but probably didn't believe him. But sure enough, the next week the Shelby County Humane Society had Steve Irwin's redneck cousin Bubba standing on the Crosscreek bridge hauling a five-foot gator out of the creek. Dad installed a chain-link fence between my play house and the creek that summer.

Dad kept two hives of three-banded Italian honeybees in the back yard. Almost every-other week in the summertime, he would suit up and rob the bees. He had an old fashioned honey extractor with a handle on top. He'd load a few frames in that extractor and crank and crank and crank until the honey would run out a little spout at the bottom. I'd put my face under the spout and drink the honey straight. (I never had bad allergies!) Mom would make homemade brown bread and we'd have honey and butter and bread for supper.

I got honeybees in my hair from time to time. I always knew not to be afraid, but to find my dad and let him pick the bees out before they stung me. I would often step on a honeybee and be stung, but a little meat tenderizer always made it feel better. Honeybees, unlike wasps and hornets, have barbed stingers that literally pull the backside of the bee off when they get stuck in your skin. They can't sting more than once and then they die. If you ever get stung by a honeybee, scrape the stinger out, don't pull it straight out or more venom will go into your skin.

One of the memories I recalled recently was of a time I was playing in the back yard by myself. I was crouched down behind my playhouse underneath a white oak tree stirring a stew of leaves and sticks and mud in my mother's mop bucket. I remember feeling warm all over my whole body and instinctively holding very very still while this warm presence hovered over me and then was gone. It's almost as if the Holy Spirit was saying That was me, Su. That was me all along. I must have been about three years old.

I'm not what you'd call particularly "reformed." I'm not sure that I believe in predestination. But I do know that from my cradle,  Jesus has been calling me.

 When I was about seven years old, the P.E. coach at my school came to speak to us for a chapel program. He told us that we were all sinners and couldn't ever be good enough to please God. I was horrified. I wanted to please God and I wanted to be with him in heaven forever. But even then, I recognized my sinful nature. I knew I had this "sin" in me. Then Coach Young told us that Jesus, God's son, had come to earth and lived a perfect life. He told us that Jesus had been crucified on a cross so that we could know God. He said that if we would pray and ask Jesus to come and live inside our hearts, he would. And we could know God for ourselves. I was absolutely amazed. When Coach Young asked us to raise our hands if we wanted to pray to Jesus, I raised both of my hands.

Later, I realized how totally absurd this story was. I realized that the idea of a God sacrificing his only son for us was kind of weird and bloodthirsty. Surely that isn't true, I thought. Not entirely. Surely there had to be something...else.  I knew that I was just a child when I prayed that prayer. I wasn't all that serious about it after all. But, Jesus was. Jesus was serious about it. And he tracked me down some more.

When I was about 12 and living in an apartment with my parents while our new house was being built, I would lie awake and pray "God, have mercy on me and don't let me die. I am not ready to be one of your crazy Christians." I was starting to believe that I did need Jesus to go to live with God in heaven, but I was also starting to believe that to become a real Christian meant that I had to somehow stop being Susan. It was a battle I waged within myself for the next ten years.

Part Two.

Kitchen Meditation

I'm experiencing a little melancholy this morning. It's just a bitter little signal from my soul that implores me to listen up. Slow down. And pay attention. So I don't of course. I get busier and more restless and avoid the unmistakable call of Jesus to my spirit that lets me know he has something to say.

And in the practice of my avoidance, I come to Modobject at Home and see Christian's pictures of spinach leaves in a colander in her kitchen sink. I wonder, no marvel, at the beauty of their pink root-ends. And He catches me.

I'm sure I've written about it before at Answered Prayers for Owen Meany, but I spent two of my high-school  summers working in the kitchen at a camp for girls in Tuxedo, North Carolina. It isn't your average camp kitchen. The "kitchen manager" (quotation marks because I think you can safely say "chef")  graduated from Le Cordon Bleu and apprenticed with Frank Stitt here at Highlands Bar & Grill before coming to North Carolina. Like his mentor, he picked the freshest local produce he could find to feed the campers and I chopped and peeled and diced and sliced for about nine hours a day for ten weeks. This is where I learned to cook.

One afternoon, I sliced open a cantaloupe and stopped in absolute wonder at the rows upon rows of seeds suspended by tiny creamsicle threads in the middle of the melon. The order and design was a world unto itself. All the beauty of God's creation lay hidden in darkness until I opened it to the light. I began to marvel at the universe inside a bell pepper (don't you love to find those strange little tender bits that attach themselves to the stem inside?). I began to notice the world of beauty in the dimpled skin of a fresh strawberry. I became intoxicated by the smell tomato stems make when you get them just a little bit wet. And I began to consider what kind of God makes such beauty solely for our bodily consumption.

Is this not a kind of Communion? To ingest the beauty of a living God and feed upon it in our hearts with faith and thanksgiving?

At the end I write these words as my testimony and as the song of my heart to all of you who read it. I have looked upon the beauty of the Lord. He has taken me to the banquet hall and his banner over me is Love. All of my black dogs slink into shadow when his presence fills the temple and sings rejoicing over the works of his hands. Amen.