All is not Lost.

I wore last week like an overcoat. A heavy one. Know what I mean? I often write some similar description, because that is when I sit still just long enough for thoughts to settle and spill out.

The human heart is a fickle thing. It leads. It betrays. We hide it and we hide ourselves from others' hearts. We shape it and name it Love, and that Love feels like chains one day and wings the next.

* * * * *

We do see what we are looking for so very often, don't we? We look for the beauty, we see it in sunsets and babies' faces. We look for pain, it is there, like our own shadow, we're unable to shake it off. We look for emptiness, we see chaos. Look for meaning, and you will see cosmos and design, leaves fashioned like fingerprints, an apple tree as sustenance.

I choose how I view my life, how I see the people around me.

* * * * *

There has been much conversation about how our little town should deal with the homeless that wander our streets. After last week's three-part series in the newspaper that was picked apart, labelled as racist and insensitive by some, I have this sense of stirring. It is not the flurry of emotional responses that create change, but it is a slight shift of awareness, a wondering. Change stirs the pot slowly, evenly, careful not to splash. (The last of Justin Glawe's articles is here: http://www.bemidjipioneer.com/content/homeless-bemidji-no-easy-answers-homeless-their-advocates-and-city)

My husband, who has worked with the homeless for the last seven years, spoke wisely. We are just people. We all wear the same flesh. We all bear a human heart.

We learn about the human heart when we try to understand one another, especially those unlike ourselves, those that are labelled and misunderstood. We learn about the human heart when we see a brother suffering and allow our own hearts to break with theirs. When one suffers, we all suffer. And I soothe myself with this truth, as though saying it out loud will provide a shoulder to lean on or nourishment for the hungry.

And is it by chance that the same morning that this article was printed and left on the doorsteps of the masses in their separate pretty box-houses with spare rooms that sit empty all winter, is it by chance that just when his voice was heard, if only in print, that Andy, another homeless man featured, photo and all, was hit by a car in the early morning hours, in the heart of a city that doesn't quite know how to help it's most vulnerable?

I don't believe much in chance.

Andy was Butch's friend. I've talked a lot about Butch, the homeless man I encountered right before his body washed up on the beach. (Butch's story found here: http://prodigalstories.blogspot.com/2013/06/when-jesus-goes-by-butch.html) I've talked and talked and talked... at least we're talking, when we don't know how to help, we talk. We communicate. Even that is hammering a brick out from the walls built before our time. We talk. We hammer. We feel helpless. We're reminded to be hopeful. Grateful for the hands that do the dirty work.

It seems like yesterday that I met Andy on the sidewalk. He stopped me when I said hello, held up a card full of logos and asked if he could use that card at McDonalds. I nodded, yes. He said, "Good. I really need food. I'm  hungry." Everyone who spends any time downtown has had these encounters. And just recently I handed a sandwich to another man I didn't know sitting with a prosthetic leg on a busy street corner. It was blustery cold that morning and he was wrapped in a dirty blanket. He smiled graciously as he took it and thanked me. Then he said he was walking across the country for homelessness, and would I please remember him by his name? "I'm Kevin. Don't forget my name." I won't be able to forget.

It takes courage to believe that all this human suffering matters to the Creator of the galaxies. It takes courage to beg the question, and to not offer a pat answer. Courage to right the wrongs. Yet more courage to see these streets as holding us all together, one and the same, whether running or sleeping on them. And it will take courage to face a complex issue with complex but tender human hearts in the balance, with grace and longsuffering and persistence. It takes courage to be there in the messy places, instead of the comfort and bliss of ignorance.

For me? I don't take this timing lightly. It's a drumbeat that has been low and steady. A rhythm of grace. Of human hearts beating, one and the same.

As long as someone cares, all is not lost.

Rest in peace, Andy.

* * * * *

Why would you ever complain or whine,
saying, "God has lost track of me.
He doesn't care what happens to me"?

Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you been listening?

God doesn’t come and go. God lasts.

    He’s Creator of all you can see or imagine.

He doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch his breath.

    And he knows everything, inside and out.

He energizes those who get tired,

    gives fresh strength to dropouts.

For even young people tire and drop out,

    young folk in their prime stumble and fall.

But those who wait upon God get fresh strength.

    They spread their wings and soar like eagles,

They run and don’t get tired,

    they walk and don’t lag behind.
(Isaiah 40)

When a homeless guy gave me a voice

It's been a month since I posted about my encounter with a homeless man named Butch. I didn't think all that much of the post when I wrote it just to get the weight off my chest. But that is usually how the truest stories are told. Well, this particular story took all my theological rants and questions and tossed them in the air like dust and isn't that really where it all starts anyway?

Here it is if you missed it: http://prodigalstories.blogspot.com/2013/06/when-jesus-goes-by-butch.html

And when I say 'encounter' what I really mean is my lack of encounter and the conviction that followed. This isn't a story I'm particularly proud of. Acknowledging that you missed something, that you're sorry, that your instincts are often self-protecting, these are vulnerable places, the dark corners you'd rather hide. I'd rather hide.

But something happens when we open ourselves up to each other, I'm finding. Something happens that stirs us down deep. Some kind of wonder- a communal head nod, an understanding that this is bigger than just me, that below the designer shoes scattering on concrete our roots are intertwined and we are at our core dependent on one another if we want to live well. Whole-hearted. Unafraid.

* * * * *

We went to Butch's memorial that same evening after I posted. I had to know more about who he was, and maybe give myself permission to feel so strongly about a stranger. My husband has worked with the homeless in our town for the last 7 years, so this world was nothing strange to him, but for the stay-at-home-mom and her kids to enter into it, well, you better believe I felt awkward. For about 3 minutes. Then one older man cried and leaned against me and said that Butch was like his brother...he looked into my eyes and told me not to ever forget and did I know how much his heart hurt? I'm undone. All these people who loved Butch, who walked with him every day, who were his family, they poured out their hearts in stories and tears and showed grace to the outsider and I stood there, on that bridge, bleary-eyed and humbled and speechless. Even my kids were quiet, taking it in. Someone else told me not to feel guilty, that my honesty was important, that it was brave love. Then we lit candles and put them on tiny rafts and said a prayer together and watched them float off into the water as night came and gently wrapped its cloak around our shoulders.

* * * * *

It's been a month and now I'm thinking my voice matters after all. I'm thinking I'm not alone in feeling helpless and overwhelmed at the broken world at my doorstep, and not alone in wanting to do something about it. Right where I am. Kids in tow. Owning my simplicity and awkwardness until it's not awkward anymore.

If I believe it all matters, that we all matter, then my role IS important, and maybe this is my role. To speak out for the ordinary people, to make space for the conversations so that extraordinary changes can be made in ourselves first, and our community next. I'm finding there are pockets of people who are far ahead of me here, and I want to learn from them.  What is your role, I wonder?

Whole-hearted. Eyes wide open. It's time.

Thank you, Butch.

On listening when it's awkward

It happened in the back of the grocery store. I was simply trying to grab some chicken for company that night. I was an hour behind, frazzled, company was already waiting at the house and supper would be late. Again. One of those situations. You know the kind. I am quite sure I looked the part.

But she was looking for me, I think, for someone, anyone. It really shouldn't have been me. Not that day at that moment when I was consumed with my own shortcomings and guests and busyness.

She shook her head first as I reached across the corner of her mostly empty cart for that chicken. I tried to keep to myself, I did. But I heard her say, "I can't even afford to buy food anymore. How are people supposed to eat?" I get it. I ask that myself with 3 growing kids and a 10-year-old boy-man who needs a full meal at least every hour. (Well, thankfully now he recognizes he doesn't 'need' it like other people who don't have enough. He is a tender soul who often reminds us of our exaggeration. Even when we think we need to eat, we won't starve, he points out. Not unless we do that for a month. Not like in Africa, he says. Truth.)

I nodded and smiled in understanding, placed the chicken in my cart and tried to keep moving. I failed.

I'm not sure I could even begin to explain the extraordinary details this woman poured out to me about her life at that exact and inconvenient moment. Not a moment as in a minute. More like an hour. Right next to the frozen chicken and blocking traffic on a holiday weekend. Smooth it was not. I learned about her husband dying 5 years ago from the medication that has now been recalled. I learned about her house that's been on the market for nearly that long, all about the new deck, the realtors, borrowing even more money for a fence to maybe block the messy neighbors. I saw the desperation in her eyes as they welled up with tears. She leaned in uncomfortably close and told me she does go to the food shelf when she has to, but she doesn't want to tell anyone else because her children don't know how bad things really are. She'd hate to be a burden.  I learned about all her children, their names and her grandchildren's names and hobbies...the time her daughter almost died because of alcohol...how she found sobriety and God...the abuse in her childhood...the very specific timeline of her travels and moves across country to nowhere-ville Minnesota, "right up next to Antarctica", she said, and laughed out loud. And when this woman talked about her husband, I tell you what. Her tired face lit up like Christmas morning. "He wasn't the romantic type," she explained, tearful and quiet. "But he was my partner in life. He never left me. And I loved him."

My heart swelled with admiration, with sadness, with longing. And my eyes filled with tears, too.

There were a few very brief lulls between her rambling thoughts and I tried to close the conversation by checking my phone and the time, remembering everyone waiting for me at home. I turned my grocery cart the other way, as if to slowly wrap it up, offer goodbyes and blessings, move on from this stranger. On to more pressing matters. Like chicken. And company. And glorification of BUSY.

But I couldn't do it. She intrigued me with her earnest outpouring, her vulnerability and honesty. For reasons I won't ever understand, she picked me. At first I was slightly annoyed by this hangup, catching glances from people scooting around us, odd looks, curious looks. They didn't phase her.

"I believe in Life! I believe in God! Don't ever stop praying for your children," she was almost dancing now, "but they all have to learn their own hard way. Even when you think it might kill you!"

Now she had completely captured my attention, disarmed me. And now, of course, she was ready to say goodbye. She introduced herself, even gave me directions to her house. She grabbed my hands, looked straight into my soul, thanked me sweetly for listening, and turned to leave.

And I wept. For what, I'm not positive. In front of the company. And it was good.

* * * * *

I have prayed for eyes to see people, for opportunities outside of my small community of friends to allow these strange and fleeting lives to intersect, for moments that glimmer with purpose. I've prayed that somehow maybe I could make a difference, make the world a little less lonely. And when I didn't genuinely have the desire, I asked for even just the desire for the desire. Sometimes that is all I can honestly offer. I believe the Giver has honored that feeble and fumbling heart request I call prayer. It was answered in an awkward moment, at an awkward time, with a sort of awkward stranger. And I'm fairly confident it wasn't for her benefit, but for my own. One encounter at a time, breaking down the barriers I'm realizing I have erected. Opening the eyes of my heart by paying more attention to those around me, those fragile and divine and messy and beautiful people. Because we're all together in this chaos.

It's all very awkward. The best sort of awkward.

 There are no strangers here; only friends you

 haven't yet met. -- William Butler Yeats

* * * * *

I know I'm not alone. Have you had a similar experience? What did it teach you?

When Jesus goes by 'Butch'

I can't sleep.

My mind is slipping in and out and then drips right through my tired fingers and I'm not sure I can save it this time.

It's that sort of night, though. The kind where the rain on the window is telling a story you forgot you heard as a child. The kind of night that slows the clock- as real as when you're sitting in the dentist chair and that fifteen minutes may as well have been fifteen dreadful hours. That sort of magic happens on these nights. And it appears so commonplace. You should have noticed it there yesterday like the smudge on the bathroom mirror, right between the eyes.

Drops keep falling. Falling and falling and speaking a language of deeper truths. Truths about how things should be. How they were meant to be.

I saw him last Thursday, down by the lake shore. I was picking up my ruggedly handsome and sunburned husband and middle son and friends from their canoe adventure up the Mississippi River. They were back, survivors of the wild twisting and turning 67 miles by canoe. And it was Matt's birthday. The pies were waiting fresh on my kitchen counter.

He staggered a bit as he walked, head down and eyes quiet. 

All the littles were running around, joy-filled shrieks and windblown hair. There were seven of them altogether. Our two families tend to combine, and we relish those moments.

I saw him. And then I did it.

I whispered to my friend that he was walking toward us and we should really gather the kids. You know, someone was mugged down there just the other day. 

The words slipped out. Slipped just like my mind did tonight. 

I gathered the littles and still looked him in the eye and smiled as he passed. Said 'Hi there' and thought I meant it. 

We scurried along. We sang Happy Birthday. We ate pie. We listened to stories of fishing and storms on the river and campsites and wildlife from excited and tired little boys. 

: : :

The next morning I saw the headlines. A body had been found washed up on that same beach. A homeless man.

My gut knew before I even looked at the man's picture. It was the same eyes, the same long ragged hair. Except he had a name this time. On the streets and with his friends at the church where he often stayed and ate he was known as Butch.

: : :

I've been shouting from the rooftops for awhile now that Jesus is found in the outcast. I've studied this. I've thought and prayed and read and talked a lot about this. I've stepped outside an inner-circle church community to focus on living this. And now here I am, reading the news, seeing his face, learning his name, and all I hear is my judgment. Better safe than sorry, especially with kids. I can easily justify my concerns. And hey, I did smile and say hello. What more could I have done? I mean, really, what could I have done?

I'm naive. Admittedly. But slightly less than I used to be. I know it wasn't a moment where I could have prevented a tragedy. Maybe. Maybe the tragedy wasn't even that I judged someone I knew nothing about out of unfounded fear. Maybe the tragedy wasn't that it happened.

Maybe the real tragedy is that it happens.

We talk a lot about love. Especially loving the unlovely. And in a moment, old habits return and fear rules our hearts once again. We miss the miracle in the common or ugly or unknown. We miss Jesus.

I did. I missed him. And I mean it. I'm grieving a complete stranger, wishing I would have looked a little deeper in those eyes, asked him if he was enjoying the summer sunshine at least, connected. I missed something there and I feel it now, that loss, that groan for a life, for God to come fix all this mess and my fearful heart and turn it into something useable. Something closer to the way things were meant to be.

People are meant for knowing one another and for knowing their Maker. Sometimes you find that you meet Jesus in the grocery store line, on the street corner, or walking down the beach. Often he or she doesn't look a thing like the blond-haired blue-eyed painting we've bought and sold as gospel. We're meant to share life with one another, inter-connected instead of independent. Tearing down walls and labels and stereotypes and injustice and poverty one day at a time by inviting people over or in conversation instead of building fences and installing security systems and keeping our children safe from strangers.

We were meant for so much more than this. And I am sorry.

: : :

The rain is still falling, still saturating the earth, still scattering across the glass like ants whose hill was barbarically stepped on. It is this story of Life and the groaning and suffering and longing for our world to be made whole again, a return to Eden. I am pulled back to my childhood, back when I knew everything was alright in the world. When stories were true.

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.

Whenever you did one of these things to someone 

overlooked or ignored, that was me— you did it to me. - Jesus

: : :

I hear that Butch had many friends, that he was a kind and gentle man, that he had lived here for many years. He is loved and missed.

     ***Due to the response of this post, and after going to  Butch's memorial service, I wrote a follow-up post here:  http://prodigalstories.blogspot.com/2013/07/when-homeless-guy-gave-me-voice.html

The Theology of Soup

I am making soup tonight.

The process is an art form (channel your inner VanGogh with me for a minute). Saute onions and fresh-chopped garlic in rich, yellow butter...

At this point you can choose to just stop and eat, because this is perfection in a pan, right  here, people. My love affair with onions gets a little out of hand, I'll admit. I can't resist.

...otherwise, you can add some other veggies like carrots, mushrooms, peppers, cook and douse with seasonings. Add some homemade chicken stock you cooked the day before (this is a MUST for anyone who cares about flavor, health or their pocketbook- that covers everyone, right?) and simmer. Simmer. Simmer some more. Then you get to lean over the pot, breathe in the deep aromas, feel like you brought world peace and solved the earth's hunger problem all with a handful of vegetables.

There is an element of magic in making something out of nothing. Whatever unused produce is in the fridge. Left-over meat or rice. Turning it into a full and appetizing meal and filling my kids' bellies with nutrients. It's a primal ritual. Satisfying, not only to our stomachs, but right down deep to the soul.

Soup-making and people-feeding has become the core of my faith and every day life. I could recommend more than a handful of amazing books that have helped me put these ideas into words and works- books like Take This Bread by Sara Miles and Bread & Wine by Shauna Niequist top the list. I'm apparently not alone in my sentiments. We have dubbed Thursday evenings 'Soup Night', when I make a big pot and welcome anyone and everyone to join us for a simple supper. It is good to practice what you preach. I'm taking baby steps in this department.

Tonight I plan on using up some potatoes and squash, a bunch of cilantro that has lingered a few days in the crisper. My goal is to let nothing go to waste! Why throw it away when you could turn it into a new meal? I aspire to be as passionate about resourcefulness and stewardship as I am about flavor and nutrition. I suppose that requires discipline and practice as well, like any good thing.

When Jesus fed the five thousand, he took the few loaves of bread and fish and distributed to everyone and they were satisfied. As if that weren't miracle enough, afterward he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.”  So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the leftover bread.

God always uses the bits and pieces of us that we think are useless, that we would otherwise just throw out. But God is Master Artist and Chef- the Creator of all good things- and nothing, I mean NOTHING is wasted. Not even our flaws. Not even our garbage. Instead, God makes things new. Breathing life into dust. Speaking light into darkness. Beauty from ashes. You get the picture.

Make something simple and beautiful today, share it and be nourished.

* * * * *

God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it. --C.S. Lewis

We are the Created

  How I treat a brother or sister from day to day, how I react to the sin-scarred wino on the street, how I respond to interruptions from people I dislike, how I deal with normal people in their normal confusion on a normal day may be a better indication of my reverence for life than the antiabortion sticker on the bumper of my car. ~Brennan Manning

We are messy creatures, we humans. 

We bear the image of our Creator. Complex. Marvelous. Emotion-filled. We are little creators ourselves, having been given the mandate and the innate passion to imagine and build, to sing and learn, to birth new life and tell our stories. We are the Created. And here we are creating, because it is what we were made to do.

And all of Creation is called Good.

Check out this photo montage called 'Created Equal'. Do it. Right now.


http://www.ufunk.net/photos/created-equal-les-contrastes-de-la-vie-magnifique-projet-photo-de-mark-laita/


Did you look through them all? Did you see their faces? The stories behind them? Did you recognize something in each of these people that is also written in the mirror?

We are messy but intriguing creatures. And we may be Good, but we do not always do good, spread the good, create goodness. Often we choose to not really see one another, to disengage. We pass people by in favor of maintaining our idea of today's success. We try not to look into the stranger's eyes because it's awkward. Or maybe because we don't want to feel the conviction of knowing we should say something or do something to help or just to know them. We are far from the reality of the many people we encounter every day, aren't we?

I'm missing out not knowing these folks, especially those different from myself. Missing the chance to listen to their story and learn from them.

But if I say I believe that all of us, ALL of us, however crazy or smelly or intimidating, bear the image of our Creator, then I have to force myself to step outside of my own self-protective bubble and look into the stranger's eyes, engage when it's uncomfortable. I am craving the connectedness- the community of Creation that I know it was purposed to experience together.


**************


It was a rough week. It really was. Like, want-to-hide-in-the-closet-and-cry sort of rough. I'm guessing you know the feeling. Few of us can evade the human experience. I was saddened and shocked at the lack of redemptive creativity in the people I expected it from, and equally surprised by stunning acts of redemptive creativity from those I hadn't. Wait- what?! I totally didn't expect her to speak that kind of truth into my life!

I'm finding that just when I think I have someone figured out, labelled and tucked in a box neatly on a shelf, I put expectations on our relationship- whether complete stranger, close friend, spouse, barista... but that is exactly when I am surprised by the people around me, surprised when I see the authenticity of Jesus in someone unexpected, or have the opportunity to show a person some needed dignity by looking them square in the eyes and greeting them with a smile.

Dignity changes things.

Listening opens up the doors for creative community with those we least expect.

These are good surprises.