Charity

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

I got home this evening with enough time before dark to shovel the three inches of snow that had accumulated during the day. Armed with shovel and broom, I made my way outside.

About five minutes into the job, a woman came by with a shovel and started talking my ear off.

“I’m just coming by to say hello, know what I’m sayin’? What a pretty dog you have there! I have a dog too, a little terrier named Pepper. She got a brown patch by her eye and a red one on her back, you may have seen her. There’s quite a lot of snow isn’t there? I came home today and had to do just what you’re doing here now. Now I’m just going around and saying hello, preaching the word ya know, and I got this shovel here, but I don’t mean to shovel no snow. I’m just going around spreading the message. I live over on Portland near the Mayor’s house, but my real home is over at Bethel Baptist, at all the Lord's churches really. You can ask anyone there, they all know Sister Mini. Have you ever seen my dog? Her name is Pepper. That way if you ever see her running around you’ll know who she is...”

As she proceeded and I wished she’d hurry up and ask me for money so I could get back to work, I had time to prepare my response.

“...so I’m wondering if I could shovel your sidewalk for a little money,” she finally finished.

“I got this under control,” I told her. “But ya know, the folks next door are two single mothers with a ton of kids, and I’m sure they’d appreciate it if someone would shovel their place for them. I'd pay you for that.”

“Oh, I can do that!” Sister Mini beamed. “I’ll get their driveway and porch and shovel the sidewalk on both sides so the kids can get to the bus.”

“How much do you want for that?” I asked, quickly assessing that it was about a half-hour of work.

“Ten dollars,” she chimed right away. Ten bucks, huh? I decided not to be stingy, and agreed to the price. It was more than I’d expect to earn for a job like that, but I’d consider if a gift to my neighbors and to the Sister Mini at the same time.

Finally able to get back to work, I proceeded to shovel my porch, sidewalk, and driveway in the amount of time it took her to do the neighbors’ driveway. As she worked, she rattled on and on about her ministry and children who were all in higher education (though one was apparently in jail, which is why she needed twenty dollars to send him) and about how she wouldn't normally do this except that she could help a sister in need, allowing me occasional moments to say nothing more than “Yeah” in response to her “Ya know what I’m sayin’?” Her work was delayed every couple minutes when she stopped to talk to anyone who walked by.

When I was finished with my shoveling and she was just getting to the porch, I decided to shovel the empty lot beside me to be social. Finally I went inside as she was just starting the sidewalk.

In a couple minutes the doorbell rang. “I’m done,” she announced. “I’m ready for my twenty dollars.”

“It’s ten dollars,” I said. “You’re done already?”

“Yes ma’am I’m done,” she said. “But look ma’am, that snow on the porch was real deep, and I need twenty dollars. I gotta send it to my son, ya know what I’m sayin’?”

“We agreed to ten dollars,” I maintained. “You really did both sides of the house? You got the other side too?”

“Yes ma’am, I did,” she maintained. “Look, I really need twenty dollars.”

“Let me go see,” I said, walking over to the corner while she rattled on about what a good job she had done and how deep the three inches of snow had been. When I arrived at the corner, I saw that she had not touched the other side. “We agreed to both sides of the house,” I said. “You haven’t done the other side like you said you did.”

“Oh, my bad,” she said as she headed around the corner. “I got it.”

I returned inside, not at all amused (or surprised), and planned my response to her inevitable demand for a double-payment, twenty dollars for a job that took 45-minutes.

When she returned asking for her twenty dollars, I was ready. “We agreed to ten dollars...” I began before she cut me off.

“Yeah, but that snow was real deep,” she insisted. “How ‘bout we split the difference and call it fifteen?”

“We agreed to ten,” I repeated, “but ya know, the house on the other side is abandoned, so no one’s gonna shovel that sidewalk. If you get the sidewalk from the alley to the other side of the house, I’ll give you twenty.”

“I see you’re a sharp businesswoman,” she complemented me. “You got yourself a deal.”

Not too sharp a businesswoman, I grumbled as I went back inside. She gets an extra ten dollars for an extra ten minutes of work? She’s making a killing on this. I don’t even get minimum wage.

I had hardly sat down and picked up my books when she knocked on my door again. “I’m going home,” she proclaimed. “I want my twenty dollars.”

“You already got that sidewalk?” I asked dubiously, knowing it was impossible to have done it in two minutes.

“Yes ma’am,” she said firmly, “and I’m going home now to let my dog out. I didn’t want to shovel no snow at all today, I was just doing it to help a sister and proclaim the word.”

I looked at the sidewalk and saw that she had managed to clear a shovel-width path. It was not at all worth what she was getting for it, but at least it was something. By this point I was too annoyed to argue, and thought it worth paying the full price just to get rid of her.

“Here,” I said, handing her the money with obvious frustration.

“You’re welcome,” she chirped with deliberate cheerfulness, adding a bow for dramatic effect. “This isn't Egyptian slavery, ya know? Ya know, I wasn’t even plannin’ on shovelin’—I just came by ‘cause I always admired you. Have a nice day.”

“Thank you,” I said too late as she left.

“Goodbye,” she called to my dog. “You know, I always liked that dog of yours better than you.”

“Bye,” I said with the edge having left my voice now that the damage was fully done. “You really did a nice job at my neighbor’s house. Have a great evening.”

After she was gone I sat on the porch and admired her handiwork next door. I hoped the neighbors would appreciate it, which would salvage at least the other half of my ill-fated ‘good deed.’ Whatever point it was where I went wrong, it was clear to me that as far as Sister Mini was concerned, I had given a gift without any love behind it. It was also clear to me that she had known it. And it profited me nothing.

Et tu, Brute?

One of the great advantages to being a single person living alone is that you get to feel like a mostly good person. It’s great: when your only interactions with other human beings are by your own volition in the times you’re feeling most on your game, it’s quite easy to be generous, friendly, and hospitable. The single life is a fantastic nurturer of oblivious pride and almost inevitable self-centeredness, and you can look like a saint in the midst of it. It’s quite the ego-trip, let me tell ya!

Married people, on the other hand, have to work their schedules and desires around another person, and their selfishness is bound to bump into the selfishness of the other person. By the time kids come around, there is no longer the faintest vestige of that rather appealing facade that the single person takes for granted. As a loving aunt, I remember holding my infant nephew in my arms as he wailed with colic, and I found myself filled with an inexplicable urge to throw the miserable baby across the room. It’s amazing what other people’s needs bring out in generally amiable people. Seriously—parents never cease to amaze me!

But recently, due to a hapless whim of generosity a couple months ago, I have been finding my single-person facade begin to crumble from beneath me.

It all started on a(n unseasonably warm) Sunday in April when I sat on my porch to enjoy some Sabbath rest in the midst of crunch time. A chorus of neighborhood girls on the porch next door were singing a gospel song and choreographing a rather involved dance to go along with it. I rocked on my rocking chair and enjoyed the sunshine and song, smiling at them whenever they looked my way, and it suddenly dawned on me that I had a package of Oreos in the kitchen that someone had left at my house. Never a fan of Oreos, I decided to offer them to the girls in appreciation for the performance.

I was swarmed by vultures as soon as I did. The five girls shouted into the house and a veritable army of (about ten) children emerged. I allowed them each two cookies, and returned to my house feeling generous.

What I had not planned on was the inevitable change in my relationship with my neighbors that came as a result. I went from the nameless lady next-door to a vending machine, and when any of the children saw me outside from that point forward (and with ten children in the small house, several are always outside), my presence would never again go unnoticed. Eventually I gave them all my Oreos. Then I came up with a few boxes of granola bars I had bought on sale but didn’t like. Then as the attention continued and I neglected to refill my pantry, I had to start getting more creative. I made Chinese tea for them, cringing as the squirmy kids precariously handled my fragile pottery. I invited them inside to make brownies or popcorn. I got out my colored pencils and let them draw. I let them “help” me mow the lawn and weed the garden. And sometimes, my hospitality quotient waning, I merely let them jump around on my porch while I tried to continue reading.

One evening last week, contentedly finished with my Greek homework, I made some couscous and put it over a bed of salad greens, contemplating taking my dinner out to the porch to eat. When I heard the shouts of rambunctious children on three sides of the house, I thought better of it and decided to eat inside. But before I could sit down, the voices unmistakably congregated on my porch, and right as I was deciding to pretend they weren’t there, the doorbell rang.

I identified the ring-leader as a girl who lives around the block whom I had met the day before via the kids next-door. She was distinctive in my memory because she was always filthy—filthy like a country girl, almost caked in mud. I also remembered her because she had tried to keep the neighbor girls from telling me that she hadn’t had dinner because her mom was too drunk to cook. This evening four equally filthy children were with her, and I was not in the mood to be compassionate.

“Can they see your house too?” the dirty girl asked with hardly any greeting.

“No, not right now,” I tried to say in a friendly voice. “I’m just about to eat dinner.”

“Oh, well, we haven’t had any dinner. Is there anything we could have?”

“No, I don’t have much of anything.” It was close to the truth, unless they wanted the last of my salad and couscous that I was trying to stretch for another week.

“Do you have any other snacks?”

“No, I haven’t been to the grocery store, and I don’t keep many snacks on me normally.”

“Can we have some tea?” She was clearly getting desperate, and there was no way I could claim to be out of tea. But I was not in the mood to referee another tea party with my fragile Chinese pottery, so I turned her down again.

“Can we sit here and have you read to us? Can you play some Irish music?”

In my college years I used to fanaticize living in the intercity with children gathered around me, reading and drawing and cooking and playing music. But that evening, with the muddy children gathered on my porch and my dinner getting cold on the table, with the next day’s homework entirely finished and with no other looming projects, I turned them down. I could not pretend not to have tea or books or Irish music or time. This time, it was generosity that had become depleted from my shelves.

The image of the children peering through my porch windows as I began my dinner until I closed the blinds haunts me. The kids next-door have provided many opportunities in the proceeding days for me to exercise my weakened muscles of hospitality, but the dirty kids from around the block have not returned. I hope I get that chance to read to them on the porch one day, but in the mean time the memory haunts me.

Husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, you have my undying respect, as I slowly learn the humility that you can’t sneak your way around. Ironically, hospitality is one of the best teachers of ones own selfishness, and I too am selfish. Here’s to the hope of redemption, redemption that requires the gift of humility to begin.

Old School

When I bought my home last year and took on the responsibilities thereof, I decided I wanted to find a old-fashioned, reel push-mower for the lawn. My mother, a veritable magician when it comes to second-hand shopping, found one at an estate sale a block away from my new home, and the owner of the antique machine was shocked that anyone was purchasing it. I think she paid ten bucks for it.

The old contraption always elicits a reaction from passersby:

“You need to get a power mower!” is a common reaction, which always makes me feel insulted.

“You need help with that?” one fellow asked when I was nearly done mowing one Saturday. Clearly, I don’t.

“That’s the old school!” brings out a smile on my sweaty face.

One neighbor flexed her biceps as she passed, and I responded by thumping my chest. Yes, I am strong!

“Can I try?” children always ask, which gives me a short break whether I want one or not, but does not save me any of the work.

But one interesting reaction this past weekend came from a neighbor who has a push-mower herself. “Wow, that one is pretty heavy-duty! Ours has a hard time handling this grass. Look how low it cuts too!”

It was an interesting reaction because it made me look differently and my ten-dollar estate-sale find. Suddenly, it went from a useless item from someone’s basement to a gem of push-mowers, a vestige from a time when people built machines to handle real work, machines that last.

It was especially interesting because it made me react differently to the next comment, made by old Harold who comes by from time to time asking if he can earn a few bucks with odd jobs. “That cuts really good!” he exclaimed. “Can I borrow it when you’re done?”

Things walk off in the neighborhood. In my first few days here, I had already had my little garden statue of St. Patrick stolen from my front yard (who steals statues of saints?!). I don’t know what antique-gems-of-push-mowers go for at pawn shops, but suddenly, by his mere proximity to my discovery of the merits of my specimen, Harold seemed like just the type to try to find out.

Nevertheless, when my doorbell rang a couple hours later and Harold appeared, asking if he could borrow my mower, I reluctantly handed it over, saying a quick prayer that I would see it again. I knew that the fact that he was poor was no reason to suspect vice of the old man, and I felt a little ashamed of myself for being worried nonetheless.

While I waited, I got back to my reading:

He that sheweth mercy, lendeth to his neighbour: and he that is stronger in hand, keepeth the commandments. Lend to thy neighbour in the time of his need, and pay thou thy neighbour again in due time. Reap thy word, and deal faithfully with him: and thou shalt always find that which is necessary for thee.

Many have looked upon a thing lent as a thing found, and have given trouble to them that helped them. Till they receive, they kiss the hands of the lender, and in promises they humble their voice: But when they should repay, they will ask time, and will return tedious and murmuring words, and will complain of the time: And if he be able to pay, he will stand off, he will scarce pay one half, and will count it as if he had found it: But if not, he will defraud him of his money, and he shall get him for an enemy without cause: And he will pay him with reproaches and curses, and instead of honour and good turn will repay him injuries. Many have refused to lend, not out of wickedness, but they were afraid to be defrauded without cause.

But yet towards the poor be thou more hearty, and delay not to shew him mercy. Help the poor because of the commandment: and send him not away empty handed because of his poverty. Lose thy money for thy brother and thy friend: and hide it not under a stone to be lost. Place thy treasure in the commandments of the Most High, and it shall bring thee more profit than gold.
-Ecclesiasticus 29:1-14

Harold did come back with the mower within half an hour. By that time I felt sufficiently humbled for having been hesitant to lend to my neighbor in the time of his need, for being tempted to send him away empty handed because of his poverty. After all, I knew that the fear of losing the thing lent was more old-school than my mower itself, and was taken into account when we were commanded to lend nevertheless. After all, I was reminded, I shall always find what is necessary for me.

I pray I become more willing to lose my money for my brother and friend, and that I learn to place my treasure in the commands of the Most High. In the mean time, I’m glad to get the mower back.

Language Barriers

A teacher at the local elementary school was once given a large donation of hundreds of bicycle helmets to distribute to her students. She was grateful for the gift, but was unsure of how many of her low-income students owned bicycles in their quickly-shifting lifestyles that often found them attending three different schools in a given semester.

“How many of you have a bicycle?” she asked a classroom of students. In response, a mere two students raised their hands. Though she was prepared for a non-universal response, the paucity shocked her.

“Are you serious?” she asked incredulously. “None of the rest of you have a bike?”

“Oh, you mean a bike!” the stupefied students responded. “You didn’t say a bike!”

A long-time teacher in this neighborhood, she was shocked at the language barrier she had just stumbled upon between her and her students. How many times had she unknowingly spoken over her students’ heads? How many times did they dumbly nod, chirping “Yes, Ms. Smith” without any idea what she was saying, too embarrassed to admit they were entirely lost? It was a sobering realization, one that still brought her to tears years later when she related the story to me this week.

Having learned from her error, she went into the next classroom prepared to meet this new challenge. “How many of you have a bicycle or bike?” Still, only one or two students raised their hands.

“Are you serious?” she asked again. “You mean that none of the rest of you have a bike?”

“We don’t have them here!” the students responded. “We took the bus!”

Obstacles to communication are endless, even outside the context of some of the drastic cultural and educational barriers she was facing that day. God give us the grace to learn how our words sound to those on the other end of them. God give us graciousness to handle the confusion that mounts in the mean time.

Cornrows

“I will be found by you,” declared the Lord,
But all I saw were lines of cornrows in
A child’s hair that glistened as she warred
The heat with mud, and so I looked again.
Her brother’s hose created seas upon
The shattered sidewalk as if on earth’s third day,
And her shrill screams outdid the birds in song
To chime that it was good. And who’s to say
That they won’t touch you with their muddy toes
While my well-educated fingers hoist
A heavy page, or that they chose
The better part who never got a choice,
While he who hovered on the waters and on men
Has giggled off for me to seek again?

Two Kinds of Gentry

“Why don’t we talk about the meeting last night for those who weren’t there?” a neighbor suggested as eight of us sat in her living room after a community dinner. My feelings about the event in question were still rather jumbled, so I passed the torch to another neighbor who had also been there.

The night before, over 25 people had crammed into a small nearby living room to discuss the kids of our urban, low-income neighborhood. As the various teachers, professors, non-profit workers, and councilors introduced themselves, I realized something: not only were only three of them male, but only two of them were black. As a white woman in the room, I felt like a statistic.

Many ideas were shared—a summer ceramics class, more publicity for our community garden, some kind of Saturday school—but I had an eerie sense that we were crippled from the start by our status as outsiders, a bunch of white women who sit around eating hummus, teaching art classes, and wondering why these urban kids aren’t flocking to our community garden.

“...There was a lot of good energy in the room,” my neighbor concluded as I was jerked back into the postprandial dinner conversation. “There are good people moving into the neighborhood, and I think they’ll do a lot of good.”

“Speaking of that,” another neighbor interjected, “did you hear the neighborhood association is considering raising the income requirements?”

“No!”

“I know. I hope it doesn’t happen. I don’t want to see gentrification happening here. I want it to keep its native culture.”

I scratched my head again. Had no one else noticed that of the eight white people in the room, all were college graduates, most had masters degrees, and several were working on PhDs? I assumed whatever was meant by “gentrification” involved a different class of folks, ones with larger paychecks who wanted lower taxes, not our over-educated selves who taught ceramics classes and planted community gardens and experimented with vegan recipes and bought energy efficient appliances.

Either way, I knew both kinds of “gentry” were equally far culturally from the kids we longed to serve, and I didn’t know how I could point my finger and cry “gentry” at other folks. I will try to help my neighbors serve the kids who walk our streets, but I know we do so rather perilously: we respect some aspects of the urban culture, but to serve the neighbors with the tools we have we unknowingly call them away from that culture.

We are of course well-meaning, and can only give what we have to give. For now, that’ll be ceramics classes and community gardens. I hope we can meet our neighbors somewhere in the middle.

By this we know love

Late one night last month, a few days after the earthquake in Japan, my phone rang. It was my dear friend Benedict, the formerly homeless man I met in college. My heart leapt a bit, worried that a late-night phone call might forebode an emergency, and Lord-knows he’s had more than his share of those.

“Hello there!” I answered with masked cheerfulness, bracing myself for the worse.

“Hi,” his voice on the other end was serious, his gravity unburdened with pleasantries. “Em...” he struggled, and couldn’t continue.

“What is it, Benedict?” I asked, my voice sinking to match his somber tone.

“I was just watching the news tonight,” he explained, “and I saw what’s happening, and I remembered...” he struggled again... “what country was it where your family moved?”

A rush of relief flooded me. “Oh, Benedict,” I assured him, “it wasn’t Japan. They’re far inland in Asia, nowhere near Japan. Don’t worry, they’re quite safe.”

His voice on the other end let out an immediate gust of relief. “Ahhhhhhhhh! Okay, that’s what I needed to hear. I just couldn’t remember, and I was so afraid. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight until I knew they were safe.”

And after we chatted for a few minutes about the whereabouts of my Asia-residing siblings and nephews, family members whom he has met only a handful of times in the past seven years of our friendship, I hung up the phone feeling quite humbled. In his love for me, Benedict has adopted the trials of my family as his own, despite his host of ever-gnawing trials.

Indeed, John tells us, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, as we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” And though the opportunity to die a hero’s death does not present itself to many of us, I suppose that just as Christ showed us love by entering into our sufferings, we also ought to enter into the sufferings of others. Benedict at least has been willing to enter into the potential sufferings of my family as if they were his own.

That, coming from a man who knows what it is to suffer, was one of the most startling expressions of love I have heard in a while.

True Fasting

This is a bit of an early Lenten post, but since it’s about time to start preparing for Lent, I thought I’d share some thoughts.

“Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.
For day after day they seek me out;
they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
and seem eager for God to come near them.
‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,
‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
and you have not noticed?’

“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers.
Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
and expect your voice to be heard on high.
Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
The LORD will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.
Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

“If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the LORD’s holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,
then you will find your joy in the LORD,
and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.”
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

* * *

A few weeks ago I was up late working on a paper when my doorbell rang. As a woman living alone in a rough neighborhood, red flags immediately went up, and I froze for a minute or two, hoping whoever it was would leave. When the doorbell resounded I decided to go downstairs and see who was there, though I did not open the door.

“It’s Johnny!” I heard from the other side.

“What is it, Johnny?” I asked in a friendly tone that disguised my sinking heart and cringing face, knowing very well that this homeless man was looking for money.

“I noticed the snowplows left a pile in your driveway, Ma’am,” he said. “I wanted to clear it off for you.”

“Oh, that’s okay Johnny,” I reasoned helplessly. “I’m not driving anywhere tomorrow.”

“Well, it’s just that, I can get it out of there for you for five dollars.”

“Johnny,” I insisted with an exaggerated cheerfulness, self-conscious of the fact that I had no intension of opening my door, “I can take care of it tomorrow. It’s a little late for shoveling.”

“But, Ma’am,” he struggled painfully, “I don’t have anywhere to stay tonight. For a couple dollars, I can stay with a man down the road.”

It was a familiar enough story I remembered from my college days with my homeless friends by campus. But I was no longer a college student in a well-lit, well-patrolled campus; I was a single woman living alone in a high-crime neighborhood. And thankfully for me, I had no cash on me.

“I’m sorry Johnny,” I yelled with that exaggerated pleasantness that felt quite hypocritically thin that night, “but I don’t have any cash on me here.”

There was a pause. “Well, do you have just a little change?”

I realized I did have some outside in my car, but I wasn’t about to announce the fact. “No,” I lied, “I don’t have any. I’m sorry, Johnny.”

The incident disturbed me for the next 24 hours or so. I do not know a single person who would suggest to me that I should have done otherwise that night, and I didn’t necessarily think I had made the wrong decision to keep my door locked as “the least of these” stood outside in the cold (don’t worry, Mom!). Perhaps all I could have done that night was to turn Christ away in the form of a homeless man, but there was no way I could have felt good about it.

And now, as we prepare for Lent, I am remembering some words my rector’s wife shared with the women of my church last year. A healthy season of repentance is not only characterized by a time of fasting, she explained to us: the Church has historically understood the discipline of repentance in terms of fasting, prayer, and alms-giving.

As I prepare for Lent and think about ways to include fasting, prayer, and alms-giving into my lifestyle, I am remembering that night with Johnny. We do indeed live in a time that generosity is plagued with the concern of enabling addictions and unhealthy lifestyles (not to mention personal danger). Indeed we do. So did the people to whom Christ initially spoke the radical words from the Sermon on the Mount.

Remembering that night with Johnny outside my locked door, I plan at least over the course of Lent to have cash on me, and to be prepared to “give to the one who begs from you,” as Christ commands us. I rather hope Johnny comes back (during the day!); I hope to be ready for Christ when he does.

Cowboys and Indians

When I was about three or four, my older brother and I were playing with our plastic Cowboys and Indians in the sandbox.

“Wawawawawawa!” I cried as I held the rigid body of an Indian to his horse, threateningly aiming his arrow at the kneeling cowboy in my other hand.

“Bang, bang!” I shouted as a response from the crouching Cowboy as his otherwise stiff figure shook from the backfire of his weapon.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” I gasped from the equestrian native, who began sliding off his mount in defeat.

Suddenly my older, wiser brother interrupted my reenactment. “Em, what are you doing?!” he scolded me in alarm. “Do you realize what really happened in the New World? The Indians didn’t do anything wrong, and then the cowboys came and took away their land!”

Confused, I looked at the plastic toys in sadness, trying to allow this new information from my six-year-old elder to sort itself out in my shaken worldview. Their rigid figures had become strangely complex, and an afternoon adventure in the sandbox had been robbed of all its simplicity.

Suddenly, in a burst of inspiration, I put the cowboy on the horse, repeating the same scene in inverse.

“Hahahahaha!” shouted the evil settler as he charged toward the innocent native, and “Twang, twang!” fired the arrow of his foe. A potentially confusing afternoon was saved.

All that to say, I remember when the world was simpler, when there were clear-cut good guys and bad guys, and all a kid had to do was figure out which were which. I remember being able to talk about political issues without ever knowing anyone on the other side, or being able to talk about theology when I had only ever been in one kind of church. Like I had been that afternoon in the sandbox, I was as confident about evil as I was of good, and confident that I knew how to identify both.

On the other hand, I also remember developing some kind of a Christian agnosticism in which one could never know anything for sure beyond God, Jesus, and the Bible (the interpretation thereof, of course, was anyone’s guess), and I would not suggest that position either, at least not to anyone with a similar propensity to despair.

But I do need to keep reminding myself, as I slowly gain the courage to believe God has not left us to muddle through moral and theological ambiguity alone, that confidence divorced from humility creates travesty as monstrous as the one I enacted in the sandbox. May I learn the courage to believe in knowable truth, but never lose the humility to imagine I might be mistaken about it.

With both lungs

I learned once that Billy Graham and Martin Luther King Jr. had been good friends, and that they had originally thought of going into ministry together. For whatever reason, whether for disagreements or mere differences in vocational leanings, they did not. “You stay in the stadiums, Billy,” King (or “Mike,” as Billy called him) wrote to Graham, “because you will have far more impact on the white establishment there than you would if you marched in the streets.” Perhaps he did. Perhaps.

But their divergence was not only strategic; it was certainly somewhat ideological. Graham was unsure of King’s methods of civil disobedience, saying that “No matter what the law may be—it may be an unjust law—I believe we have a Christian responsibility to obey it. Otherwise you have anarchy.” King responded with the words of St. Augustine: “an unjust law is no law at all.” Over time as King began to speak out against the Vietnam war and poverty in a time when Communism was a looming threat, the divergence between him and his old friend became more pronounced.

Nevertheless, their friendship remained intact, and Graham took some radical stances for desegregation at his crusades. He invited King to join him on the pulpit and paid his bail to have him released from jail, and King’s famous declaration that “Eleven o’clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America” is actually a quotation from an article of Graham’s.

Years later Graham confided to some Civil Rights leaders that he wondered what would have happened if he had taken to the streets with his friend, and I suppose we cannot know the answers to questions like that. What indeed might have happened if the iconic figures of liberal and conservative Christianity, figures whom both sides respect even if they disagree, had found a way to share their ministry? What kind of ministry would it have been? It might of course have been a loss to the great good that both of their ministries accomplished, but I cannot help but wonder if it might have muddled some of the sharp distinctions between liberal and conservative Christianity that I have grown up among.

Pope John Paul II, when calling for reconciliation between the eastern and western divisions of Christianity, spoke of the need for the Church to “breathe with both lungs.” Here in America, I am reminded of our lop-sided breathing in every walk from my poor neighborhood to my rich university, every transition from conversations with my Mennonite friends to my Catholic, every Sunday morning stroll by a white church to a black.

I’ve been told many times that Church unity is something we will not see “until heaven” (as if “heaven” were so ephemeral as to be identified by a time rather than a physical place). Today on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which happens to come the day before the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins, it seems as good a time as any to remember that our Lord has taught us to pray that his Kingdom come and his will be done “on earth as it is in heaven.” Amen. Come Lord Jesus!

The Intersection of Peril

The day after a record-breaking snowfall, I asked a friend if I could make socio-economic assumptions for why the city had not even begun plowing the roads in my neighborhood. After another day had passed, he said I could consider those assumptions to be conclusions. By the fourth day, I had ceased to care.

“Do you think she’ll make it?” I asked my friend as he slowed his car as we approached the intersection before my house. A car was swimming in the snow in front of us, thick and gelatinous after the three feet of snow we received four days earlier which the city had still not gotten around to clearing from my neighborhood.

“Well, she’s still moving...” he observed, wavering between his choices to stop his car or veer around her. “No, her tires are just spinning now,” he finally concluded. “Do wanna help her?”

“Yeah, let’s do it.” My friend stopped his car in the middle of the road before the slushy intersection and we got out.

After a few unsuccessful attempts to push her car either backwards or forwards, I volunteered to run home and grab my shovel, and my friend moved his car away from the chaos.

By the time we started shoveling under her tires, another stranger approached on foot and joined our rescue attempts. The three of us shoved, pushed, slid, sunk, and shushed for several humorous minutes, and eventually the hapless car was free.

Of course, by that time, another vehicle was stranded in the same intersection, and our makeshift rescue team turned to investigate. “You have four-wheel drive!” a man in a van behind her laughed. “How can you get stuck?”

“I don’t know how, but I sure am suck!” she retorted. Before we could help her, the fellow in the van behind her offered to bump her with his vehicle, and we watched the heroic effort. While he did manage to free her, our cheers turned to laughter when his tires spun to reveal that he was now stranded in the intersection of peril.

“Are you gonna help me too?” he laughed.

That afternoon, after I had said goodbye to my friend and my collection of rescuers and rescuees and was nestled on my couch getting reading done, I learned to identify the sound of spinning tires out my window. Each time another car got stuck, I looked out the window to see a collection of passers-by helping the victim. I remembered my experiences of Irish hospitality and Southern hospitality, and was warmed to find that it had followed me out to the cold Midwest.

The city did get around to plowing my neighborhood that night, though by that point I had learned that good neighbors are more reliable than public service. I am grateful to live where people are simple enough to have time to be good neighbors.

'Tis better to give than to give

In my last year of undergrad I spent a lot of time with the homeless people near my campus. I knew many people’s names and alleged stories, had given many rides to church or doctors or grocery stores, and had even been a guest in one woman’s tent. I bordered near despair in those days, knowing that my greatest service to these new friends of mine was hardly more than a drop in the ocean, but began to imagine that the sanctification of my own soul was on the line as much as theirs, and that culturing a giving spirit was only Christian way I could think to respond to poverty.

On Valentine’s Day as I was on my way to my coffee shop to get some studying done, Barbara heralded me. “I want to ask you for something,” she said, and my heart sank (as it always did) as I prepared myself for another of her elaborate expensive tragedies. “It’s Valentine’s Day,” she said; “I was wondering if I could have some money for some candy.”

Without going into any detail about the host of mixed emotions and conflicting values that went into my interactions with Barbara, I will say that I was straining to come up with a way to be generous when candy was a luxury I didn’t even buy myself in those days. Fortunately, I didn’t have to strain for long; I remembered that my parents had sent me a box of chocolates that I happened to have with me, and I gave it to her without another thought.

It’s probably all for the best anyway, I consoled myself as I walked away, bereft of my little luxury. Now she will get to feel special on Valentine’s Day, and I will not fill my empty stomach with chocolate.

But then I saw Benedict standing at his usual corner, and my heart rose (as it always did) to see him. After our usual joyful greeting in which I asked him if he had had anything to eat and he insisted he was fine even though I knew he wasn’t, he announced that he had something for me.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Here,” he said, handing me a small bag of healthy treats—granola bar, apple, raisins, nuts—along with a homemade Valentine’s card apparently made by a school child. I assumed it came from the homeless shelter. A homeless man was offering me food.

“Benedict, I can’t take this!” I protested. “This is for you.”

“I want you to have it,” he insisted.

“How ‘bout I just take one thing,” I compromised desperately, reaching instinctively for the raisins because they were my least favorite item.

“No, I want to give it to you,” he insisted. “Please take it.”

I did take it. All these years later, I remember that as the day that I learned that, because it is indeed better to give than to receive, part of compassion involves giving others the chance to give. Benedict did not want my money or my things (as indeed Barbara did); Benedict wanted friendship, which for him in particular required an opportunity to give to me. The only loving thing I could provide him that day was to receive from him.

In the six years since that day, I have tried to culture a receiving spirit to match the giving spirit I’ve always been urged to have. I allow the generous friend to cover the meal without immediately planning a way to pay her back. I accept whatever odd gift my grandmother finds for me at a garage sale. I proudly display the doll my poor neighbors give me because it reminds them of me even if it was not what I would have chosen for my dining room. True friendship, after all, cannot be one-way, and the only gift I really know how to give anymore is friendship.

It is indeed better to give than (then?) to receive. Let me not be greedy with that gift.

The space between our houses

It took a while to get to know my neighbors next door on the west side of the house. Eventually I managed to find one them outside long enough for me to say “hi,” but it wasn’t until the second such meeting that I managed to pull out a conversation with the fellow. We chatted about a number of things: how long he had been in town, how much he hated the neighborhood, and our respective occupations.

“And what does Veronica do?” I asked, referring to his fiancée who evidently owned the house but whom I had yet to meet.

“She’s a nurse,” he answered.

“Oh, over at the hospital down the road?”

“No,” he hesitated with a bit of a controlled pleasantness, “at the abortion clinic.”

I don’t remember how I responded; I probably managed to act naturally enough, straining to think of what I would have said if she said any other profession. In reality, I realized that, while I’ve managed to render my brain tied into too many knots to be useful regarding every other political issue, abortion was still one that did not have any ambiguity. And though I’ve counted plenty of pro-choice people among my friends and acquaintances over the years, I had never met one who actually performed the abortions we disagreed about.

I suppose they have to live somewhere, I found myself musing, as if it would have surprised me less if the entire staff resided in the abortion clinics whose insides I had never even seen.

Over the next few weeks in which I managed to meet Veronica at least once, I wondered what she and I might agree on, where we would be able to find common ground. Could I see her as someone who cared deeply about the plight of the abused or confused woman, someone whom—but for our difference in understanding the other human life at stake—I might be fighting beside rather than against? I did not know. I had no idea what I would say if the conversation came up. I almost hoped I wouldn’t get the chance.

As it turned out, the chance came on a Sunday afternoon, the day after I had attended a Saturday morning mass outside the local abortion clinic (hoping desperately that Veronica wouldn’t be going to work on a Saturday morning, which she indeed did not). I was doing some Sabbath pleasure reading on my front porch, and Veronica came out to put her dogs in the yard. I walked over to her yard, and we talked for quite a while—about why she hated the neighborhood, about her previous marriage, about my research, about the town.

“So are you Catholic?” she abruptly interjected with no lead-in twenty minutes into the conversation. The question was common enough so near a major Catholic institution, but I held my breath before saying yes.

“Yeah, it ended up working out that way,” I said awkwardly, treating the question as if related to the university rather than (as I assumed) the pro-life movement. “I didn’t come here for that reason though; I applied to 10 schools, and most of them were state universities.” By bringing school into it, I managed to change the subject quickly enough.

But as Veronica had introduced the topic without a lead-in, she did not have any trouble returning to it when we were wrapping up our afternoon chat.

“I want to thank you for talking to me, even though you know about what I do,” she said (she had evidently been upset at her fiancé for telling me where she worked, assuming that I would not speak to her as a result). “I didn’t realize when I moved here what a lion’s den I was moving into. Most people when they find out where I work don’t talk to me anymore.”

And after spending weeks wondering what I would say if the topic came up, I suddenly found my response came quite naturally, especially in a conversation in which I had squirmed a bit to admit my faith.

“Oh, I can imagine how hard it is,” I empathized. “Sometimes being a Christian in academia feels like that: it’s not anything I’m ashamed of, but I normally worry that if it’s the first thing people learn about me it could cut off some friendships before they start.”

“Huh,” she pondered, looking out into the yard thoughtfully, “I can see that...”

I didn’t have to strain to find common ground after all; as it turned out, we were two women with undisguisable allegiances that put us at odds with opposite halves of society. In that common ground of the no-man’s-land between the two entrenched armies, we both knew that we were on opposites sides, that we both believed our respective side was right, and that neither of us wanted to shoot each other. That afternoon in the space between our houses, our fear of alienation had united us.

The porch next door

I’m sure any faithful readers out there thought that either I or my blog had given up the ghost. Not so: the latter simply went into hibernation while the former went into the hyperdrive of moving across the country, settling into her first home, and fighting through the first two weeks of a PhD program. The former now hesitantly yawns awake...

Alas! The onion you are eating is someone else’s water lily.
-Presumably a Chinese proverb, taken from a fortune cookie

I fell in love with my neighborhood the first time I drove through it in late February on my way to the university recruitment day. I loved the colorful century-old houses, each its own unique design. I loved the front porch culture that reminded me of my beloved South I would be leaving behind. I loved the eclectic assortment of neighbors, from grad students to pastors to Wal-Mart employees to social workers to those whose cases they worked on. There was no doubt in my mind: if I were to accept the offer to the university, this would be the neighborhood for me.

My suspicions were confirmed three weeks ago when I finally moved into my cozy little house. My mother, sister, and I pulled in a little after sundown and prepared to move the mattresses and suitcases inside to hunker down for the night. Before I could get working, I was heralded with a “Hello, neighbor!” from the porch next door.

It was apparent right away that I would not have to work to get to know my neighbors, especially these ones whose porch was constantly occupied with a steady stream of friends and family members shouting similar greetings over the sound of their music. They keep my block a bit noisy, but they also keep it warm.

But this weekend when I had my first chance to try out my guestroom on two friends who drove up to attend the first football game of the season, I was struck by the difference in their reaction to my neighborhood.

“I was kind of worried when I drove up and saw all those people outside,” one of them said with concern. “Are they always out there?” Apparently what had been a selling-point for me was a worrisome deterrent for him.

Avoiding the temptation to make any racial or socioeconomic speculations about the reason for his doubts about my neighbors (as if I wouldn’t be caught doing the same in different circumstances, or as if initial concern is never valid), I will end with the mere observation that there was a difference. The neighborhood that had impressed me with its warmth and personality repelled him with its noise and activity (some of it, admittedly, being dubious actively).

It seems to me that the Christian story makes room for both responses, for the glorious and the terrifying sides of human potential, for my neighbors to gladden my soul for my six years in this house or to rob me out of house and home. But we are, even at our most terrifying, a twisted form of glorious, saturated with beauty and oozing with hope to return. I pray for the grace to see my neighbors through those eyes.

Nothing covered up

Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops.
-Luke 12:2-3

We felt like we were in a war-zone right away. On one side of the river we were welcomed into the city with red, white, and blue and a sign that read “Londonderry – West Bank – Loyalists Still Under Siege – No Surrender.” On the other we were greeted by green, white, and orange and a sign that read “You Are Now Entering Free Derry” to introduce a host of disturbing murals commemorating the victims of Bloody Sunday (1972) and the Troubles. The tension was almost palpable.

I had come to Derry to deliver a gift to a Franciscan friar, and had failed to connect the city I was visiting with the news of the previous week: 38 years after the shootings in Derry that had served as an iconic representation of the Troubles, the Saville Report had just been published a week earlier, and the British government officially recognized the killings as atrocities.

The killings had become burned in the Irish memory, a travesty of justice white-washed by the perpetrators which, even if extreme, was certainly an iconic example of what they suffered throughout the centuries. Over lunch on Sunday I was struck by two things: how present the pain still is (an Irish couple described the sheer terror they had experienced whenever they had to drive through the North and stood the risk of being shot if they failed to notice a road blockade), and how much an apology makes a difference nonetheless. Present pain not withstanding, there were seeds of hope and goodwill.

Though there is nothing pragmatic about it, no tangible removal of consequence, confession is nevertheless powerful. When a party can strip its pride and dignity to say “I was absolutely wrong,” can expose hidden (in this case, quite ineffectively) wrongs to the light, can do so even when they are decades old and even if the admission is not forced, there is a place for healing. Some wrongs cannot be “made right”; they can only be admitted to be wrong. And no wrongs are private wrongs; all are public, and can only be healed publicly.

This past weekend, I was given hope for that healing in Northern Ireland, and it was beautiful indeed.

* * *

A few recommended articles:

• BBC - for the raw facts of the Saville Report
• The Irish Independent - for reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants
• The Irish Catholic - for talk of healing from one of the survivors
  

If it had not been the Lord who was on our side

Every time I hear Psalm 124, I think of Lawrence.

I can almost count on one hand the number of times I saw him. The first was toward the end of my junior year of college when I was twenty one. I was on my way to a coffee shop, and he was sitting on the street with a cardboard box asking for money. On an impulse I asked him if he was hungry. The next hour involved chicken wings with ranch dressing, stories of his struggle with AIDS and loneliness, and plans to share a ride to church in the morning.

The next day involved picking him up in the parking lot where he was sleeping, letting him borrow my jacket when I noticed the wet man shivering in the air-conditioned church, telling him he could keep it since it fit so well, and promising to pray for him over the summer when I said goodbye. I left campus days later and spent the summer in Europe where my family was living. It rained a lot that summer, and I prayed for Lawrence every time it did.

The third time I saw him was my first Sunday back on campus my senior year of college. When the pastor invited us to greet those sitting near us, I turned around to see the cleanly-shaven, beaming face of Lawrence behind me, and I wept with joy and surprise. All summer as I had been offering prayers I didn’t expect to be heard, folks at my church had been helping Lawrence get off the streets.

“I would be remiss,” he told the Sunday school the next week, the week he also told me would be his last week at the large, middle-class, white, Evangelical church where he would never feel that he belonged, “if I did not sing you a song.” His eyes looked into the distance as if he were seeing God himself, and he sang in his clear, rich, gospel voice:

If it had not been
For the Lord on my side
Tell me where would I
Where would I be...

The last time I saw Lawrence was in my second year after graduation. I happened to be walking down the street near my old alma mater, and saw a man sitting on the street with a cardboard box. “No!” I almost shouted when I recognized him, tears welling up in me to see my lesson in answered prayer overturned so quickly. Lawrence’s optimistic promises that he would be off the streets soon rang hollow in my jaded ears, for I knew that while prayer was powerful, drug addiction was as well.

Every time I hear Psalm 124, I remember the whole story as one event: my young idealism, Lawrence’s loneliness, my gifts of raincoat and hopeless prayers, the church’s aid, the light in Lawrence’s beaming face, the joy of his song, and the cold power of cynicism when I saw him for the last time.

And when Psalm 124 came up again in Monday's evening prayers, I started to realize one of the reasons the Church has been praying through the Psalms over the centuries (or rather the millennia, I suppose, since praying the Psalms had been a Jewish tradition from before the time of Christ). In the body of the Church—the Church throughout the world and the Church throughout history—each desperate cry and joyful celebration in the Psalms exists together simultaneously, just as Lawrence’s entire story exists in my memory of that psalm. Thus even when we are joyful, we pray the words of those who are despairing; even when we despair, we pray the words of those who celebrate God’s salvation.

And on Monday evening, even though I don’t know if Lawrence is even alive anymore or whether he got off the streets again like he had promised me when I last saw him four years ago, I prayed “Blessed be the Lord who did not give us a prey to their teeth! Our life, like a bird, has escaped from the snare of the fowler.” In the Church, I know that the words are being fulfilled.

Sinister brilliance

Last month when I was in Venice, I happened upon a small stationary store and went inside looking for envelopes. The clerk apologized that he did not have the size I was looking for, but suggested as an alternative that he as an artist would be able to draw my body in his small studio around the corner. I wondered if my request had been lost in translation, but the nature of his alternative translated quite clearly.

“Oh,” he said sympathetically as I struggled to come up with a pleasant way to turn him down, “I see you are shy.” He sounded like he felt genuinely sorry for me.

Shy, I thought. Is that what they call it now?

Evidently any self-respecting, confident woman would take off her clothes for any stranger off the street who asks. Evidently it is only the “shy” ones who would hesitate.

Something strange has happened to our culture. There is a startling reversal that had my college friends protesting the objectification of women by staging skits wherein they present themselves as sex objects. There is a peculiar inversion that had the American lit class for whom I graded reading a short story that portrays prostitution as an act of power that allows women to rise above the slavery of marriage. There is a downright eerie scheme that I watched allow an American authority figure to exploit a vulnerable Muslim friend of mine last year and champion himself as her liberator for doing so.

Seriously folks, it’s brilliant. If we could trace this reversal to a single person, he would be a genius—a sinister, conniving mastermind. If someone can convince a woman that her freedom is found in treating herself like a cheap commodity, that her power is found in being exploited, that those who consume her like a fine wine (or a cheap beer) are her champions, then he would be a more cunning scoundrel than I could ever be.

It is times like these that I would love to write a satire on our culture, and then am saddened to realize I can’t. Our culture is already its own satire; some mastermind out there already beat me to it.

Sonny, in memorium

Sorry for a heavy note in the beautiful spring. I remembered this story as I read a freshman’s essay about a meaningful family reunion complete with a brief scare (and there was reason to be scared) when the police drove by.

Sonny was a beautiful boy. In my days in the intercity commune, before my life plans were side-swiped and found me taking a surprising detour into graduate school, I loved living across the street from the 16-year-old and his mother Ms. Carol.

He was a beautiful boy, transitioning into a beautiful young man. He was charming, polite, and welcoming to the white stranger who moved in across the street from him, and I tried to imagine what he was like among his peers. I was sure the girls at school must have loved him: his well-carved form, his gentle voice, his bright eyes, his energy and charm.

It was beautiful to see him playing basketball with the little kids on our block, giving the little African boy rides on the handlebars of his bike on a Saturday afternoon. It was almost more likely for to see him surrounded by children than by teenagers his age. They all loved him.

It was beautiful to hear the brightness in his voice when I passed him on the street corner and he sang his cheerful hello to me, even if it was at night and he was with his friends engaging in questionable activity. I loved him.

It was beautiful to feel the love of Ms. Carol for him depicted in her motherly worry, her sighs when I asked how Sonny was doing, her shaking head and distant looks. She loved him.

“Did you see those police cars driving through the block?” Ms. Carol asked me one afternoon when I came home from work. She was standing in the middle of the intersection so that she could see down four blocks.

“No, what’s going on?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m telling everyone I see to get in the house. Have you seen Sonny?”

“No, but I’ll keep my eye out for him.”

“Please do. I’m staying right out here until I bring him inside!”

A year after I moved out of the neighborhood, I returned from my first summer studying in Latin in Ireland to discover that Sonny had ended up in jail. The charge was severe, the young man was entirely guilty, and I am almost sure that by the time he leaves prison well into his adult years the brightness will be gone from his face. I will miss Sonny.

There is a twistedness to the world: it is not the force of evil that has infiltrated our culture and our families, but a rather a warping, a warping that has Ms. Carol warning the neighborhood of the police like an invading enemy that tears children away from loving mothers and dashes their hopes. Who are the bad guys in a story like this? Sonny? Ms. Carol? The police? The absent father, once a boy like Sonny? Somehow we have all become the enemies just as we are all certainly the victims; creation has been twisted in upon itself.

Yet it is still Easter season, and we rejoice in a God who has come into the very twisted places of creation and has begun it again from the inside. The Resurrection has begun, and Christ is the first fruits of the New Creation. Then raise us with you, Brother; resurrect the families of my students, the protection of the police, the love of Ms. Carol, the brightness of Sonny. Our good has been twisted; come revive it!

Bless me father for I have sinned

During my time in college, the American racial struggles that had always seemed truisms slowly and definitively began to change. As I shared laughter, tears, and bread with people of other races, racial violence was no longer merely wrong, a sin against humanity; it had become personal, a sin against my brothers.

One of those brothers grew closer to me during my sophomore year, and eventually my roommate pointed out that I saw more of Kyle in a given week than of her. Kyle and I had a tendency to find ourselves in the thick of conversations about theology, sociology, history, the church, and our purpose in the world, and when we had to pause the conversation for an inconvenience like class it was not unheard of for one of us to invite the other to join.

“Kyle,” I said one night as I kept him company on his midnight shift in the residence hall office, “you realize if we had lived two hundred years ago, we would never have been friends?”

Kyle nodded sadly. As a black man who spent significant portions of his week involved in a mostly-white campus organization, I suppose he was used to this fact that was somewhat jarring to nineteen-year-old me.

“What if I had enslaved you?” I asked him, something deeper than guilt stirring in my conscience. “Or even if I didn’t have slaves, what if I mistreated you when I saw you on the street, or didn’t even notice that you existed? I know there were plenty of abolitionists in the South and I like to think I would have been one, but there’s no way to know that about myself. Maybe I wouldn’t have seen anything wrong with slavery. Maybe I would have thought that was just the way the world worked. Maybe I would have enslaved you.”

It was deeper than guilt because I was struggling with sins that neither I nor my ancestors (at least half of whom were too busy starving to death on the outskirts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time) had committed. I was struggling with the depravity that I knew was within me, waiting for opportune times to emerge. If those opportune times never came, the depravity would be just as present.

And rather than brush off my sins on the mere technicality that I hadn’t committed them or suggesting ways to ensure the monster inside me could never emerge, Kyle’s response shocked me, enough that I still remember it seven years later.

“Yeah,” the mused humbly, “I wonder about the same thing. If I had been given the chance to be a house slave, would I have taken it and looked down on my brothers sweating in the field?”

Momentarily, I was jarred as if Kyle had responded to my confession by changing the subject, ironically prefacing the subject-change by calling it “the same thing.” It was almost laughably comic: I had made a heart-felt confession that I might have oppressed him, and he echoed my confession by saying that, had he been oppressed, he might have accepted a lighter load. These were in no way congruous.

But slightly older than me and much more familiar with this kind of depravity that I was encountering as if it were foreign territory, Kyle had the grace to see the monsters living in his chest as the same monsters in the hypothetical oppressors. Rather than forgiving my depravity, he empathized with it.

He stumbled simply and casually upon a profound truth, like one who kicks a stone and finds oil pouring out of the ground. Not only did he manage to treat depravity as no less depraved for its being common, but he treated the common sin of humanity no less universal (and thus no more startling) for its being depraved.

Beyond that, I wonder if in his empathy he stumbled on the nature of Christ. While Christ may not have shared our depravity, he shared our frailty (perhaps different forms of the same thing, or at least near cousins?), and the author of Hebrews spends a lot of ink on the point that Christ is the Great High Priest because he sympathizes with our weakness, our temptations, our tears, and our unanswered prayers.

I wonder if Christ hears my confessions of frailty and depravity, actual or potential, and responds as Kyle had: “Yeah, I felt the same thing...”

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

Just a small blurb for the sake of shameless advertising, which I normally don't do on this blog, and I promise not to begin with any frequency: today begins the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity that happens every year January 18 through 25. Fittingly, this year it happens to begin on Martin Luther King Jr. Day here in the United States, where our racial history shows the tragic scandal of Church division most poignantly. If you are unfamiliar with this week of prayer or with the ecumenism movement as a whole, feel free to read up on it on the website for the World Council of Churches. In addition to the history of the WCC, you can find a brochure with daily readings to take you through this year's theme: "You are witnesses of these things."

During the 2010 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity we are invited to follow the whole of chapter 24 of Luke's gospel. Whether it be the terrified women at the tomb, the two discouraged disciples on the road to Emmaus or the eleven disciples overtaken by doubt and fear, all who together encounter the Risen Christ are sent on mission: “You are witness of these things”. This mission of the Church is given by Christ and cannot be appropriated by anyone. It is the community of those who have been reconciled with God and in God, and who can witness to the truth of the power of salvation in Jesus Christ.

We sense that Mary Magdalene, Peter or the two Emmaus disciples will not witness in the same way. Yet it will be the victory of Jesus over death that all will place at the heart of their witness. The personal encounter with the risen One has radically changed their lives and in its uniqueness for each one of them one thing becomes imperative: “You are witnesses of these things.” Their story will accentuate different things, sometimes dissent may arise between them about what faithfulness to Christ requires, and yet all will work to announce the Good News.

Whether or not you can get take the time to follow all the readings, consider yourself invited to spend the next week praying with Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic Churches around the world for Church unity.