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.

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