"Say among the nations, 'The LORD reigns.'
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
He will judge the people with equity.
Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;
let the sea resound, and all that is in it;
let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them.
Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy;
they will singe before the LORD, for He comes,
He comes to judge the world in righteousness
and the peoples in His truth" (Psalm 96:10-13).
It's morning in Athens -- and I'm sitting on my bed looking out at french doors onto my balcony and out into an alley (I laughed when I first walked out onto my balcony yesterday - it looks just like Newsies!). The apartments here are stacked like tuna cans, with heavy canopies and slatted wooden doors covering the balconies in front and back that block the sun and keep the air moving - it's very hot. We (Laurie, my flat-mate, and I) have already had some great adventures coming home from the metro yesterday evening and making dinner in this new world. She is so great - she works at a Junior High also; she's a social worker for 5th-8th grade students in Connecticut. Despite jet lag, we stayed up for hours talking last night - what an incredible woman!! We're leaving for Nea Zoi in just a bit -- so excited for a whole day here! I slept like a ROCK (and had hilarious dreams), so today I feel like a brand new person.
I think we're going to get to see the Acropolis today also -- it's only TWO BLOCKS from our flat! Crazy that people LIVE here. I keep thinking about Mrs. Reiske, my 4th grade teacher - who pounded Greek history and mythology into our heads. I still remember!
Reflecting this morning on God's goodness in providing JUSTICE for His people. I'm struck again by how prevalent oppression is throughout the earth - and how much of it is so tightly linked with racism. Praise our God who judges with truth and equity - who doesn't look at skin color, heritage, or economic background to determine right and wrong, but in fact stands for TRUTH and weilds a sword on behalf of the oppressed. More on that later . . .
Monday, June 29, 2009
I'm here!!
Dear mom (et al) -
I've arrived safely in Athens!! I'm pretty tired so I can't really think of what to write . . .
But, I got to my apt - took a shower - went to the bank - went grocery shopping - rode the metro - now at Nea Zoi for staff meeting and outreach tonight. Can't wait to sleep . . .
LOVE my room-mate and Nea Zoi staff - haven't met anyone else except some funny people on the plane. And some Jehovah's Witnesses tried to convert me in New York City . . .
Anyway -- have to go to the meeting. I'll write more once I get some kind of converter to plug my lap-top into a European electrical circuit.
I've arrived safely in Athens!! I'm pretty tired so I can't really think of what to write . . .
But, I got to my apt - took a shower - went to the bank - went grocery shopping - rode the metro - now at Nea Zoi for staff meeting and outreach tonight. Can't wait to sleep . . .
LOVE my room-mate and Nea Zoi staff - haven't met anyone else except some funny people on the plane. And some Jehovah's Witnesses tried to convert me in New York City . . .
Anyway -- have to go to the meeting. I'll write more once I get some kind of converter to plug my lap-top into a European electrical circuit.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
"Which to Bury, Us or the Hatchet?"
A week ago today, I was down in Tacoma for a family reunion of sorts. One of the girls that I work with through New Horizons invited me to come to her little brother’s 3rd birthday party. I’ve mentioned her before – we’ve been working together for about a year and a half now, and, though she is still repulsed by the thought of “becoming square,” she has grown so much from the time when I met her weeping on the side of Pac. Hwy. in the middle of a January night. Her experience has been littered with trauma – but there is a certain resilience in her that fights to dream and to hope.
She had the courage about two years ago now to stand against the man who was pimping her and consistently abusing her – he was put in prison for 10 years, but she is currently trying to earn the right through the courts to go visit him. She and I have been through some crazy adventures in the courts – in emergency shelters in the middle of the night – in telephone conversations at all hours. More than once, I’ve thought I lost touch with her for good as she seems to experience more cell phone tragedies than any three people I know. It was she that went down to Children of the Night in February (for the – was it 5th – time?) and returned less than two weeks later, overwhelmed by the structure, accountability, and authority. I was still sending letters to her for a few weeks after she’d returned – unaware that it hadn’t worked out. Time after time, she’s enrolled in various schools and transitional housing programs. Time after time, we’ve both had high hopes . . . but it hasn’t been easy. I’ve learned so much from her about boundaries – about patience and faithfulness – about culture and other-ness. And over time, she’s come to mean so much to me.
On Easter, she and I went to church together in Tacoma. She’d gotten out of the hospital a week before, where she’d had a severe injury to her throat after a man she’d been involved with attempted to choke her to death. She has hard time in large groups of (square) people; I think she came mostly for me, because she knew how much it would mean to me. But she ended up loving the service – feeling like she was meant to be there, like the pastor was speaking just to her – like Jesus was tracking her down. Seriously. So, she kept going back. In fact, a few weeks later, the pastor did speak directly to her, and she felt like she belonged. She got involved in a community group and she made a friend there. She shared a bit of her story, and it turns out there’s a girl there who reaches out to girls working in strip clubs. They had a commonality, and they hit it off.
Not only that, but the church found out she is passionate about writing. They want her to write her story – they want to publish it. (Jaded as I am, I’m a bit nervous about the opportunities for exploitation that present themselves in that promise, but I’ll try to lay aside my occasionally bitter understanding of church evangelistic glory.) Further, she’s decided to enroll in a Work Source program funded through the government in which she gets paid to finish her diploma, begin vocational training in a particular job arena, and then work. She’s decided that she wants to be a Criminal Investigator. However, that decision isn’t recent – it’s one of the few things that has remained stable in her life nearly the entire time I’ve known her. She’s got a dream, and she will have it.
I love her. For me, meeting her family felt so right. I’ve spent some time with her mom, step-dad, and little brother before – but this was family from all over the state. Literally. I felt like I understood her so much more. And I felt like I got another snap-shot into an American sub-culture that is so foreign to me. They see my foreign-ness, and they accept me – and I felt the same sense of belonging that she must have felt at church that day. We had a dance party in the living room . . . even her grandma joined in.
And before I drove away, she said to me, “Hannah, remember how we met? Can you believe how far we’ve come – how close we’ve gotten? It seems like that was a different world. I’m unna miss you – be safe in Athens.” (That’s my translation – but I’d say it’s pretty accurate.)
She called me two days ago so excited. “Hannah, guess where I just came from?! I went to an appointment with a Christian counselor at my church. He even gave me homework! I thought you’d be excited!”
As I said, she loves to write. She gave me her 5 most recent poems before I left – I told her I shared one of her poems with some friends (it was a while back) before, and she was so proud. She wanted me to share again . . . this is her favorite of the five.
Which To Bury, Us Or The Hatchet?
How can I look at you
And tell you its OK
When I can’t tell my own self that?
It’s not something I can believe
The complexity of the situation
Is so much deeper than you thought
Its way more than just smoke and mirrors
Than abuse, masks, an dying
In the core of my emotions
In the center of it all
Lies the ruins of an abused child
Who is stuck in emotional turmoil
As the child grows older,
An adult she becomes
The outside looks bigger
But the inside never grew
The masks are what I wear to function
In this sick and twisted world
Where the little girl inside me
Feels no safety, no comfort, no protection
I wish I could get over it
I wish it would go away
But since the path I choose
Had a snowball effect on shaping
The reality I live in, I am forced to cope
I propose to you a question
One to which you might know the answer
For the sanity of my soul
Is hanging in the balance waiting . . .
Tell me, when all hope has been lost
And everyone you know has told you
You are unlovable, and acted towards you
As if that were the truth,
How do you function in a society that
Tells you to get over it?
How do you erase the scars of the past,
The pain of abuse, the never ending cycle of stories
That replay scenes similar to those in a horror movie
In your head over and over and over.
Yes they are stories, but they are true stories
That have been shifted and molded, time tested,
Ingrained, shaped and fashioned into current reality
If you think about it ideologically and
In a philosophical manner, those stories were
Memories, those memories were events that happened, those events shaped,
Molded and defined me into the current me
If I were to ‘get over it’ and
‘let it go’ with what would I replace ‘it’ with? And what
Is ‘it’ that I am replacing? What would become of the past,
If not a distant memory, than a blank page, how many years of blank pages does one need to have?
Would you erase, get over and let go of your whole life?
Allow for a blank page to become your new life and tear down the mask that defines you?
You must understand,
That does mean the old you dies . . . right?
No more excuses, compulsiveness,
Obsessiveness,
Co-dependence,
Mind games, and unforgiveness.
Would you? Could you? Let it all go?
For the sake of getting over ‘it’ or is ‘it’
So painful and hard to let go of that
You choose to live in your sick world
With your coping mechanisms
And behind your own mask so that you
Don’t have to face yourself and your stories?
She had the courage about two years ago now to stand against the man who was pimping her and consistently abusing her – he was put in prison for 10 years, but she is currently trying to earn the right through the courts to go visit him. She and I have been through some crazy adventures in the courts – in emergency shelters in the middle of the night – in telephone conversations at all hours. More than once, I’ve thought I lost touch with her for good as she seems to experience more cell phone tragedies than any three people I know. It was she that went down to Children of the Night in February (for the – was it 5th – time?) and returned less than two weeks later, overwhelmed by the structure, accountability, and authority. I was still sending letters to her for a few weeks after she’d returned – unaware that it hadn’t worked out. Time after time, she’s enrolled in various schools and transitional housing programs. Time after time, we’ve both had high hopes . . . but it hasn’t been easy. I’ve learned so much from her about boundaries – about patience and faithfulness – about culture and other-ness. And over time, she’s come to mean so much to me.
On Easter, she and I went to church together in Tacoma. She’d gotten out of the hospital a week before, where she’d had a severe injury to her throat after a man she’d been involved with attempted to choke her to death. She has hard time in large groups of (square) people; I think she came mostly for me, because she knew how much it would mean to me. But she ended up loving the service – feeling like she was meant to be there, like the pastor was speaking just to her – like Jesus was tracking her down. Seriously. So, she kept going back. In fact, a few weeks later, the pastor did speak directly to her, and she felt like she belonged. She got involved in a community group and she made a friend there. She shared a bit of her story, and it turns out there’s a girl there who reaches out to girls working in strip clubs. They had a commonality, and they hit it off.
Not only that, but the church found out she is passionate about writing. They want her to write her story – they want to publish it. (Jaded as I am, I’m a bit nervous about the opportunities for exploitation that present themselves in that promise, but I’ll try to lay aside my occasionally bitter understanding of church evangelistic glory.) Further, she’s decided to enroll in a Work Source program funded through the government in which she gets paid to finish her diploma, begin vocational training in a particular job arena, and then work. She’s decided that she wants to be a Criminal Investigator. However, that decision isn’t recent – it’s one of the few things that has remained stable in her life nearly the entire time I’ve known her. She’s got a dream, and she will have it.
I love her. For me, meeting her family felt so right. I’ve spent some time with her mom, step-dad, and little brother before – but this was family from all over the state. Literally. I felt like I understood her so much more. And I felt like I got another snap-shot into an American sub-culture that is so foreign to me. They see my foreign-ness, and they accept me – and I felt the same sense of belonging that she must have felt at church that day. We had a dance party in the living room . . . even her grandma joined in.
And before I drove away, she said to me, “Hannah, remember how we met? Can you believe how far we’ve come – how close we’ve gotten? It seems like that was a different world. I’m unna miss you – be safe in Athens.” (That’s my translation – but I’d say it’s pretty accurate.)
She called me two days ago so excited. “Hannah, guess where I just came from?! I went to an appointment with a Christian counselor at my church. He even gave me homework! I thought you’d be excited!”
As I said, she loves to write. She gave me her 5 most recent poems before I left – I told her I shared one of her poems with some friends (it was a while back) before, and she was so proud. She wanted me to share again . . . this is her favorite of the five.
Which To Bury, Us Or The Hatchet?
How can I look at you
And tell you its OK
When I can’t tell my own self that?
It’s not something I can believe
The complexity of the situation
Is so much deeper than you thought
Its way more than just smoke and mirrors
Than abuse, masks, an dying
In the core of my emotions
In the center of it all
Lies the ruins of an abused child
Who is stuck in emotional turmoil
As the child grows older,
An adult she becomes
The outside looks bigger
But the inside never grew
The masks are what I wear to function
In this sick and twisted world
Where the little girl inside me
Feels no safety, no comfort, no protection
I wish I could get over it
I wish it would go away
But since the path I choose
Had a snowball effect on shaping
The reality I live in, I am forced to cope
I propose to you a question
One to which you might know the answer
For the sanity of my soul
Is hanging in the balance waiting . . .
Tell me, when all hope has been lost
And everyone you know has told you
You are unlovable, and acted towards you
As if that were the truth,
How do you function in a society that
Tells you to get over it?
How do you erase the scars of the past,
The pain of abuse, the never ending cycle of stories
That replay scenes similar to those in a horror movie
In your head over and over and over.
Yes they are stories, but they are true stories
That have been shifted and molded, time tested,
Ingrained, shaped and fashioned into current reality
If you think about it ideologically and
In a philosophical manner, those stories were
Memories, those memories were events that happened, those events shaped,
Molded and defined me into the current me
If I were to ‘get over it’ and
‘let it go’ with what would I replace ‘it’ with? And what
Is ‘it’ that I am replacing? What would become of the past,
If not a distant memory, than a blank page, how many years of blank pages does one need to have?
Would you erase, get over and let go of your whole life?
Allow for a blank page to become your new life and tear down the mask that defines you?
You must understand,
That does mean the old you dies . . . right?
No more excuses, compulsiveness,
Obsessiveness,
Co-dependence,
Mind games, and unforgiveness.
Would you? Could you? Let it all go?
For the sake of getting over ‘it’ or is ‘it’
So painful and hard to let go of that
You choose to live in your sick world
With your coping mechanisms
And behind your own mask so that you
Don’t have to face yourself and your stories?
- Steph
Lord Jesus, forgive us for telling people to just "get over" their pain - and expecting them to move on like the trauma never happened. Teach us to suffer long beside our sisters and brothers - teach us to mourn. And thank You that we can trust You to heal.
Carboard Hands
My hands feel like cardboard and reek of ammonia. Within hours, my apartment seems to have forgotten entirely all of the days and dreams I have shared with it. I feel tired – and satisfied. Most of the time, I enjoy transition.
I’m not particularly nostalgic about leaving Kirkland – but in the past 5 years, I’ve buried and built a lot of identifiers. The Hannah who drove up at 19 to begin nursing school with a burning vision for refugee camps and evangelism leaves tonight very changed. Perhaps I’m in some ways jaded and feeling more confused than when I came, but in many ways I own deeper passion, more solid vision, and a more full-bodied understanding of ministry and Kingdom building.
I find it ironic that a girl who dreamed of smuggling bibles into closed countries is leaving in two days to smuggle condoms into Athens. It makes me wonder who I’ll be 5 years from now. Too, it encourages me to consider: what are the dreams I am willing to sell – and which ones will I fight to manifest?
I’m too tired for big thoughts right now . . .
Monday, I finished packing my classroom up – I finished my 1st year of teaching AND I LOVED IT!! (Even better, I know I have a job lined up for next year. Praise the Lord!)
Tuesday, I met my new house-mates following my trip to Athens – my friend Denice (from New Horizons) and I are moving into Green Lake to live in community with 2 other wonderful women. Yay!
Thursday, move out of my apartment and go to class for the last time until 3rd semester finals. I can’t believe I’ve almost made it through my 1st year of grad. school. (Can I briefly acknowledge how excited I am to continue writing papers while in Athens – and start finals the day after I return to the US? That’s sarcastic.)
Sunday, leave for Athens – but I feel like there are still 8 billion things to do between then and now.
I was having a conversation with my friend Joanna the other day – I can’t decide if I love dreaming or organizing for the dreams more . . .
“You have to open a path in the thick forest – and sometimes you have to do it in the deep night, in a dark storm. And you have to do it yourself – because in the beginning, mostly no one will believe in you. You have to believe in yourself and God; once you start to walk it out, people will follow. You have to look at Jesus and you have to be flexible. Create and you will pay the price.” – Christian Comedian in Turkey
I’m not particularly nostalgic about leaving Kirkland – but in the past 5 years, I’ve buried and built a lot of identifiers. The Hannah who drove up at 19 to begin nursing school with a burning vision for refugee camps and evangelism leaves tonight very changed. Perhaps I’m in some ways jaded and feeling more confused than when I came, but in many ways I own deeper passion, more solid vision, and a more full-bodied understanding of ministry and Kingdom building.
I find it ironic that a girl who dreamed of smuggling bibles into closed countries is leaving in two days to smuggle condoms into Athens. It makes me wonder who I’ll be 5 years from now. Too, it encourages me to consider: what are the dreams I am willing to sell – and which ones will I fight to manifest?
I’m too tired for big thoughts right now . . .
Monday, I finished packing my classroom up – I finished my 1st year of teaching AND I LOVED IT!! (Even better, I know I have a job lined up for next year. Praise the Lord!)
Tuesday, I met my new house-mates following my trip to Athens – my friend Denice (from New Horizons) and I are moving into Green Lake to live in community with 2 other wonderful women. Yay!
Thursday, move out of my apartment and go to class for the last time until 3rd semester finals. I can’t believe I’ve almost made it through my 1st year of grad. school. (Can I briefly acknowledge how excited I am to continue writing papers while in Athens – and start finals the day after I return to the US? That’s sarcastic.)
Sunday, leave for Athens – but I feel like there are still 8 billion things to do between then and now.
I was having a conversation with my friend Joanna the other day – I can’t decide if I love dreaming or organizing for the dreams more . . .
“You have to open a path in the thick forest – and sometimes you have to do it in the deep night, in a dark storm. And you have to do it yourself – because in the beginning, mostly no one will believe in you. You have to believe in yourself and God; once you start to walk it out, people will follow. You have to look at Jesus and you have to be flexible. Create and you will pay the price.” – Christian Comedian in Turkey
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
"Twilights of Dew and of Fire"
I was spending time with the Sammamish River again today; the movement of water and foot feeds my soul in a meaningful way. My time with water has evolved into a habitual routine over the years, deeply intrinsic to the fabric of my identity. I feel occasionally like the waters are more home to me than the walls I sleep between, particularly because housing seems eternally transient.
I especially love my time with water in the spring time. Today, I was struck by the brush on the river bank. Only weeks ago, I forged a path between the reeds and they wept in my wake – clutching at me with twisted, arthritic fingers yellowed and dried by the harshness of winter. This afternoon, verdant growth erupted around my heels and stretched nodding heads up to beg grooming from my fingers. I encountered the One who calls death into life, who makes from dust a new creation. I borrowed from the hope that the grassy bank offered, and felt fresh, green life surging in my limbs.
And I thought of a friend I met on the street corner some time ago . . . a friend I’ve named Twilight. She saw me standing on the corner and ran to me – like she knew me from another life. She threw herself at me and exalted that we’d seen each other, “It’s been so long!” she cried, “You remember me, don’t you?”
I tore through the attic of my mind trying to find her face in a picture book somewhere – dumped over old boxes in a split second and found her . . . nowhere. “It’s so good to see you! I feel like it’s been forever!” Deceitful? Kind of.
She introduced herself to the team-mate standing beside me, explaining of me, “We’ve known each other for years. She saved my life,” turning to me, “You remember, don’t you? The night that man came with the bottle?” She turned back to my friend, “I was so pregnant then – he smashed that bottle against my baby. Bleeding everywhere. She saved me. She saved me!”
I felt confused and flattered – didn’t have the strength to deny my supposed identity, not because I wanted the credit as much as I wanted her to feel connected to someone. Our conversation continued and I was able to draw out some idea of who she was. She hadn’t been in Seattle for a while – working in other cities, travelling around, and clearly using (though I wasn’t sure what).
In the early hours of morning soon before my team packed up for the night, she stumbled back to me – crying, but not in a quiet and endearing way. Snotty and teary-eyed, broken and heaving for the world to hear her pain – she gurgled the story of a bad date. A man had taken her into his car, promised an agreed upon sum, and she had serviced him – then he took all of her money by force, threw her out of his car and dragged her for a ways along the pavement as she struggled. He took her forehead and beat it several times against the cement sidewalk – then drove off and left her. What brings a man to that place?
Her forehead held the marks and the bleeding. I held her and I broke with her. I ached to see her off the streets, and I thought of another I’ve known whose forehead was crowned with blood. The blood cried out against sin – the blood of suffering the punishment of others – the blood that prayed for another way – the blood that feared abandonment, but did not shrink back. The blood that chose this girl, and stood for her even this night. I want that deliverance for her.
A few weeks later, she and I walked the track together – I in a large poofy red jacket, wearing nine layers of clothing and still freezing – she half naked and drunk, weaving among the street lights.
I was honest. More open than I often am. I felt driven to honesty by my hunger for her freedom.
“Why are you here?”
“Where else would I be?”
“What did you dream of when you were a kid?”
“I’ve been on the streets since I was 7. My mom brought me here. I don’t know anything else. And I’m good at this. I’m doing ok. I’m surviving.”
There is a side to cruelty that leaves me breathless and wordless. And all I can say is, “I’m here for you. Call me.”
In my limited literary analysis, Yeats records in “The Blessed” a young man Cumhal searching out an elderly, blind hermit named Dathi to glean from the old man “blessedness.” Typical of old, wise men, Dathi cuts poor Cumhal’s heart with an enigmatic answer, “Blessedness goes where the wind goes,/ And when it is gone we are dead.” I feel in myself the same longing that drove Cumhal – blessedness as prosperity, the promise of security, perhaps not even wealth as much as the absence of fear or worry. It is the same drive that binds the women – that forces them back to the streets and a deceitful cycle of violence, abuse, and exploitation.
Like Cumhal and the women I serve, my initial ideas of blessedness stand in stark contrast to Jesus’. He explains that the blessed are “the poor in spirit,” “those who mourn,” “the meek,” “those who hunger and thirst for justice,” “the merciful,” “the pure in heart,” “the peace-makers,” “the persecuted.” If that’s what it is to be blessed, I’m not so sure I’m in by choice. I don’t like the pieces of my life where I have to grieve, or face regret or mistakes, walk through fire, be hated, get hurt. There has to be something deeper that makes it worth it: the promise of a Kingdom. An unshakable Kingdom – where mourning doesn’t happen anymore, and neither does war, persecution, hunger, or oppression – all of the things that create blessedness in our crazy world. Perhaps it was not Yeats’ intention to draw my eyes to this Kingdom when he closes, “While time and the world are fading away/ In twilights of dew and of fire.” (But it worked, Yeats, it worked.)
I especially love my time with water in the spring time. Today, I was struck by the brush on the river bank. Only weeks ago, I forged a path between the reeds and they wept in my wake – clutching at me with twisted, arthritic fingers yellowed and dried by the harshness of winter. This afternoon, verdant growth erupted around my heels and stretched nodding heads up to beg grooming from my fingers. I encountered the One who calls death into life, who makes from dust a new creation. I borrowed from the hope that the grassy bank offered, and felt fresh, green life surging in my limbs.
And I thought of a friend I met on the street corner some time ago . . . a friend I’ve named Twilight. She saw me standing on the corner and ran to me – like she knew me from another life. She threw herself at me and exalted that we’d seen each other, “It’s been so long!” she cried, “You remember me, don’t you?”
I tore through the attic of my mind trying to find her face in a picture book somewhere – dumped over old boxes in a split second and found her . . . nowhere. “It’s so good to see you! I feel like it’s been forever!” Deceitful? Kind of.
She introduced herself to the team-mate standing beside me, explaining of me, “We’ve known each other for years. She saved my life,” turning to me, “You remember, don’t you? The night that man came with the bottle?” She turned back to my friend, “I was so pregnant then – he smashed that bottle against my baby. Bleeding everywhere. She saved me. She saved me!”
I felt confused and flattered – didn’t have the strength to deny my supposed identity, not because I wanted the credit as much as I wanted her to feel connected to someone. Our conversation continued and I was able to draw out some idea of who she was. She hadn’t been in Seattle for a while – working in other cities, travelling around, and clearly using (though I wasn’t sure what).
In the early hours of morning soon before my team packed up for the night, she stumbled back to me – crying, but not in a quiet and endearing way. Snotty and teary-eyed, broken and heaving for the world to hear her pain – she gurgled the story of a bad date. A man had taken her into his car, promised an agreed upon sum, and she had serviced him – then he took all of her money by force, threw her out of his car and dragged her for a ways along the pavement as she struggled. He took her forehead and beat it several times against the cement sidewalk – then drove off and left her. What brings a man to that place?
Her forehead held the marks and the bleeding. I held her and I broke with her. I ached to see her off the streets, and I thought of another I’ve known whose forehead was crowned with blood. The blood cried out against sin – the blood of suffering the punishment of others – the blood that prayed for another way – the blood that feared abandonment, but did not shrink back. The blood that chose this girl, and stood for her even this night. I want that deliverance for her.
A few weeks later, she and I walked the track together – I in a large poofy red jacket, wearing nine layers of clothing and still freezing – she half naked and drunk, weaving among the street lights.
I was honest. More open than I often am. I felt driven to honesty by my hunger for her freedom.
“Why are you here?”
“Where else would I be?”
“What did you dream of when you were a kid?”
“I’ve been on the streets since I was 7. My mom brought me here. I don’t know anything else. And I’m good at this. I’m doing ok. I’m surviving.”
There is a side to cruelty that leaves me breathless and wordless. And all I can say is, “I’m here for you. Call me.”
In my limited literary analysis, Yeats records in “The Blessed” a young man Cumhal searching out an elderly, blind hermit named Dathi to glean from the old man “blessedness.” Typical of old, wise men, Dathi cuts poor Cumhal’s heart with an enigmatic answer, “Blessedness goes where the wind goes,/ And when it is gone we are dead.” I feel in myself the same longing that drove Cumhal – blessedness as prosperity, the promise of security, perhaps not even wealth as much as the absence of fear or worry. It is the same drive that binds the women – that forces them back to the streets and a deceitful cycle of violence, abuse, and exploitation.
Like Cumhal and the women I serve, my initial ideas of blessedness stand in stark contrast to Jesus’. He explains that the blessed are “the poor in spirit,” “those who mourn,” “the meek,” “those who hunger and thirst for justice,” “the merciful,” “the pure in heart,” “the peace-makers,” “the persecuted.” If that’s what it is to be blessed, I’m not so sure I’m in by choice. I don’t like the pieces of my life where I have to grieve, or face regret or mistakes, walk through fire, be hated, get hurt. There has to be something deeper that makes it worth it: the promise of a Kingdom. An unshakable Kingdom – where mourning doesn’t happen anymore, and neither does war, persecution, hunger, or oppression – all of the things that create blessedness in our crazy world. Perhaps it was not Yeats’ intention to draw my eyes to this Kingdom when he closes, “While time and the world are fading away/ In twilights of dew and of fire.” (But it worked, Yeats, it worked.)
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Money makes it hard to save the world.
Father, tonight I feel really nervous about finances.
I make bad decisions sometimes and I do stupid things – I try to keep my budget and sometimes I don’t do that great, and then unexpected expenses throw themselves in my path, like hospital bills and car accidents.
Money makes it hard to save the world.
I don’t want to just ask You to provide for me tonight or get me out of tough breaks, even though I know You can do that. I want to make a declaration to You – that I TRUST You: that I trust Your character, that I trust Your Word, and that I trust Your call on my life.
I want to proclaim tonight Your faithfulness over my situation – even over my stupidity. I want to say tonight I that I believe You when You promise that I am of greater worth than the sparrows. I know that Your eye is on this sparrow, because I’ve experienced that in my life so deep:
I should have died in that car last summer, but I’m alive.
I deserve to pay for my sins and my mistakes, but You chose to set me free and give me life.
Who am I to second guess whether You are perfect in Your care for me, in Your protection of me, in Your goodness to me, in Your deliverance of me? You are Perfect.
I have seen Your provide for me relentlessly – in so many crazy and unbelievable, undeniable and all-sufficient ways. I have seen You meet me in my deepest brokenness and pull me out of the pit of death. I have seen You meet my friends when I thought it was impossible for their hearts to be softened. I have seen You manifest Yourself in so many ways and at so many times that to disbelieve would be more than just wrong – it would be foolish, ludicrous.
I trust so deep that You see me. Not only that You see me, but that You have predestined me for glory – and that You also have seen the pain that I would walk through before I even tread those paths. I know You have known my hurts before I’ve spoken them to You – because You have prepared me and spoken to me in advance numerous times. I haven’t figured out Your Sovereignty; I don’t know whether You ordain suffering or You just allow it. Either way, I know You know what’s coming before I can see it – I know You’re faithful through it – I know You build in me the things of Your Kingdom as I overcome.
And I trust, Jesus, that You are ALWAYS triumphant in my life. Always.
You have never abandoned me. Never. You have never turned Your face from me – even when I have found myself unable to throw myself on You. You have never been too busy for me; You have never said I wasn’t good enough or important enough. You have never rejected me because I needed to be punished for my wrong choices. It’s funny that sometimes I fear You will do that – I know Your character.
I love that You are relentless in showing up in my life. I love the way You teach me to pray, Holy Spirit, and then You answer those prayers. I love the way You heal me in hurts that I deny. I love the way that You’re willing to take the long and hard way . . . and be patient with me . . . when I would rather rush through, because You know I just need to be with You.
I love so much about You, Jesus, that because I know this is who You are in my life, I can also trust that this is who You are in everyone else’s life. Sometimes, I think about kids who suffer all around the world, and my heart doesn’t know how to hold that pain. I don’t know why it feels so close to me sometimes.
And I want to go to them so bad – to hold them and just to say, “I love you. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. I’m not sure what to do, but I’m not gonna leave.” And sometimes, I feel so frustrated – because it’s the choices I make that keep me from those kids.
But then I remember Your character: that You love them more than I do. That You are perfect in Your provision and in Your timing. That if You wanted me to go tomorrow, You would make a way. You would make a way. You would make a way. You would send me a check in the mail that covers all the debt I have – You would speak to me about a place, You would provide the contacts, You would equip me, You would send me out.
But I didn’t get that check in the mail today, Jesus – so I’m going to trust that where I’m at is exactly where You want me to be for today. And I’m going to love relentlessly – or as relentlessly as I can. And when I get hurt so bad, I’m not gonna run away. I’m going to face it – I’m going to walk through the fire, and I’m going to learn to love deeper. Thank You that You won’t send me out without finishing Your preparation in me. Thank You that You won’t let me go until I’m seasoned. Thank You that You are dealing with my heart in things that I wouldn’t face if You didn’t force me to. Thank You that You care about my freedom more than I do.
Thank You that You would give me a car payment that I feel bound to only to keep me where You need me to be so that You can finish Your work in me. Thank You that You will place in my path the relationships that You want for me right now, and You will teach me to love and to be loved deeper and more authentically. Thank You that You will protect me from all things and all people that could prevent me from walking out Your call on my life.
Thank You that this faith walk is not about me fulfilling my dreams – it’s about me being obedient to a God who has a specific purpose for my life that I am mostly unaware of. Thank You that You are the contentment of my heart – that You are my resting place and my soul food. Thank You that You are the one who satisfies every one of my needs – that You are the fulfillment of loneliness and the peace in busyness. Thank You that You speak, and the more I walk with You the more I come to recognize Your voice and KNOW that I can trust You, because You are always right.
Thank You that it’s not about me saving the world – it’s about me worshipping Jesus, whose Kingdom is near. Thank You that You have saved the world – and that You are not far off. Thank You for my students, for my classes, for my neighbors, for all the people in my life . . .
Thank You that You spoke to me about Greece and are now sending me there when I didn’t believe You and thought it would be impossible for me to go. Thank You that You have also spoken to me about my housing situation, my car situation, and my job situation – and I can trust You to work every one of those things out.
Thank You that You care about my worries, but that they don’t worry You. Thank You for not being angered or threatened by those things, because You are who You are and You love me.
I am Yours. There is no other for me but You. Sometimes I get scared because of my own unfaithfulness – I get scared I’ll fall away from You or forget You or turn my back or just do my own things. But look at who You are. Look, wow! I see in my life the truth of what You have spoken – that You will always call me back. That You have called me by name and I am Yours – that no one can take me from Your hand. I know it’s true, Jesus . . . and I know that even if that means You have to carry me through 437 car accidents just to bring me back to Your Throne room and give me enough debt to keep me trusting You, that You’d do it.
And I rejoice in that. But I also just want to acknowledge that hopefully I can go without all the rest of the car accidents for the sake of other drivers :).
I am Yours, Jesus, and I trust You.
Holy Sonnet 14 (John Donne)
“Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”
I make bad decisions sometimes and I do stupid things – I try to keep my budget and sometimes I don’t do that great, and then unexpected expenses throw themselves in my path, like hospital bills and car accidents.
Money makes it hard to save the world.
I don’t want to just ask You to provide for me tonight or get me out of tough breaks, even though I know You can do that. I want to make a declaration to You – that I TRUST You: that I trust Your character, that I trust Your Word, and that I trust Your call on my life.
I want to proclaim tonight Your faithfulness over my situation – even over my stupidity. I want to say tonight I that I believe You when You promise that I am of greater worth than the sparrows. I know that Your eye is on this sparrow, because I’ve experienced that in my life so deep:
I should have died in that car last summer, but I’m alive.
I deserve to pay for my sins and my mistakes, but You chose to set me free and give me life.
Who am I to second guess whether You are perfect in Your care for me, in Your protection of me, in Your goodness to me, in Your deliverance of me? You are Perfect.
I have seen Your provide for me relentlessly – in so many crazy and unbelievable, undeniable and all-sufficient ways. I have seen You meet me in my deepest brokenness and pull me out of the pit of death. I have seen You meet my friends when I thought it was impossible for their hearts to be softened. I have seen You manifest Yourself in so many ways and at so many times that to disbelieve would be more than just wrong – it would be foolish, ludicrous.
I trust so deep that You see me. Not only that You see me, but that You have predestined me for glory – and that You also have seen the pain that I would walk through before I even tread those paths. I know You have known my hurts before I’ve spoken them to You – because You have prepared me and spoken to me in advance numerous times. I haven’t figured out Your Sovereignty; I don’t know whether You ordain suffering or You just allow it. Either way, I know You know what’s coming before I can see it – I know You’re faithful through it – I know You build in me the things of Your Kingdom as I overcome.
And I trust, Jesus, that You are ALWAYS triumphant in my life. Always.
You have never abandoned me. Never. You have never turned Your face from me – even when I have found myself unable to throw myself on You. You have never been too busy for me; You have never said I wasn’t good enough or important enough. You have never rejected me because I needed to be punished for my wrong choices. It’s funny that sometimes I fear You will do that – I know Your character.
I love that You are relentless in showing up in my life. I love the way You teach me to pray, Holy Spirit, and then You answer those prayers. I love the way You heal me in hurts that I deny. I love the way that You’re willing to take the long and hard way . . . and be patient with me . . . when I would rather rush through, because You know I just need to be with You.
I love so much about You, Jesus, that because I know this is who You are in my life, I can also trust that this is who You are in everyone else’s life. Sometimes, I think about kids who suffer all around the world, and my heart doesn’t know how to hold that pain. I don’t know why it feels so close to me sometimes.
And I want to go to them so bad – to hold them and just to say, “I love you. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. I’m not sure what to do, but I’m not gonna leave.” And sometimes, I feel so frustrated – because it’s the choices I make that keep me from those kids.
But then I remember Your character: that You love them more than I do. That You are perfect in Your provision and in Your timing. That if You wanted me to go tomorrow, You would make a way. You would make a way. You would make a way. You would send me a check in the mail that covers all the debt I have – You would speak to me about a place, You would provide the contacts, You would equip me, You would send me out.
But I didn’t get that check in the mail today, Jesus – so I’m going to trust that where I’m at is exactly where You want me to be for today. And I’m going to love relentlessly – or as relentlessly as I can. And when I get hurt so bad, I’m not gonna run away. I’m going to face it – I’m going to walk through the fire, and I’m going to learn to love deeper. Thank You that You won’t send me out without finishing Your preparation in me. Thank You that You won’t let me go until I’m seasoned. Thank You that You are dealing with my heart in things that I wouldn’t face if You didn’t force me to. Thank You that You care about my freedom more than I do.
Thank You that You would give me a car payment that I feel bound to only to keep me where You need me to be so that You can finish Your work in me. Thank You that You will place in my path the relationships that You want for me right now, and You will teach me to love and to be loved deeper and more authentically. Thank You that You will protect me from all things and all people that could prevent me from walking out Your call on my life.
Thank You that this faith walk is not about me fulfilling my dreams – it’s about me being obedient to a God who has a specific purpose for my life that I am mostly unaware of. Thank You that You are the contentment of my heart – that You are my resting place and my soul food. Thank You that You are the one who satisfies every one of my needs – that You are the fulfillment of loneliness and the peace in busyness. Thank You that You speak, and the more I walk with You the more I come to recognize Your voice and KNOW that I can trust You, because You are always right.
Thank You that it’s not about me saving the world – it’s about me worshipping Jesus, whose Kingdom is near. Thank You that You have saved the world – and that You are not far off. Thank You for my students, for my classes, for my neighbors, for all the people in my life . . .
Thank You that You spoke to me about Greece and are now sending me there when I didn’t believe You and thought it would be impossible for me to go. Thank You that You have also spoken to me about my housing situation, my car situation, and my job situation – and I can trust You to work every one of those things out.
Thank You that You care about my worries, but that they don’t worry You. Thank You for not being angered or threatened by those things, because You are who You are and You love me.
I am Yours. There is no other for me but You. Sometimes I get scared because of my own unfaithfulness – I get scared I’ll fall away from You or forget You or turn my back or just do my own things. But look at who You are. Look, wow! I see in my life the truth of what You have spoken – that You will always call me back. That You have called me by name and I am Yours – that no one can take me from Your hand. I know it’s true, Jesus . . . and I know that even if that means You have to carry me through 437 car accidents just to bring me back to Your Throne room and give me enough debt to keep me trusting You, that You’d do it.
And I rejoice in that. But I also just want to acknowledge that hopefully I can go without all the rest of the car accidents for the sake of other drivers :).
I am Yours, Jesus, and I trust You.
Holy Sonnet 14 (John Donne)
“Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”
Monday, June 8, 2009
"To what hail do you hark, Ellery?"
In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, dear Annie Dillard writes of the haunt of migration resonating through a fishbowl:
Inside the house, my single goldfish, Ellery Channing (who but Dillard names a goldfish Ellery Channing?! I'm delighted.), whips around and around the sides of his bowl. Can he feel a glassy vibration, a ripple out of the north that urges him to swim for deeper, warmer waters? Saint-Exupery says that when flocks of wild geese migrate high over a barnyard, the cocks and even the dim, fatted chickens fling themselves a foot or so into the air and flap for the south. Eskimo sled dogs feed all summer on famished salmon flung to them from creeks. I have often wondered if those dogs feel a wistful downhill drift in the fall, or an upstream yank, an urge to leap ladders, in the spring. To what hail do you hark, Ellery? - what sunny bottom under chill waters, what Chinese emperor's petaled pond? Even the spiders are restless under this wind, roving about alert-eyed over their fluff in every corner" (p. 50).
I feel that same yearning in my soul - for migration, or adventure? My ancestors must have been nomadic, like the Indians roaming bare-foot the plains. I feel restless in the spring and hungry for life. Who in my soul moves me to migration? I feel the urge of the sad, obese hens - longing to be released from gravity and fly.
But it's not a place I want to fly to - I'm not fool enough to think that travel will satiate my soul-pangs (though my excitement for Athens increases ten fold daily) - I want to fly to freedom. For myself - for these women who've changed their street-names 10 million times until they forget their identities. I'll dream names for them all: Desiree, Jaya, Ruby, Stella, and Hope. Just those five for tonight. Be free!
Inside the house, my single goldfish, Ellery Channing (who but Dillard names a goldfish Ellery Channing?! I'm delighted.), whips around and around the sides of his bowl. Can he feel a glassy vibration, a ripple out of the north that urges him to swim for deeper, warmer waters? Saint-Exupery says that when flocks of wild geese migrate high over a barnyard, the cocks and even the dim, fatted chickens fling themselves a foot or so into the air and flap for the south. Eskimo sled dogs feed all summer on famished salmon flung to them from creeks. I have often wondered if those dogs feel a wistful downhill drift in the fall, or an upstream yank, an urge to leap ladders, in the spring. To what hail do you hark, Ellery? - what sunny bottom under chill waters, what Chinese emperor's petaled pond? Even the spiders are restless under this wind, roving about alert-eyed over their fluff in every corner" (p. 50).
I feel that same yearning in my soul - for migration, or adventure? My ancestors must have been nomadic, like the Indians roaming bare-foot the plains. I feel restless in the spring and hungry for life. Who in my soul moves me to migration? I feel the urge of the sad, obese hens - longing to be released from gravity and fly.
But it's not a place I want to fly to - I'm not fool enough to think that travel will satiate my soul-pangs (though my excitement for Athens increases ten fold daily) - I want to fly to freedom. For myself - for these women who've changed their street-names 10 million times until they forget their identities. I'll dream names for them all: Desiree, Jaya, Ruby, Stella, and Hope. Just those five for tonight. Be free!
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Pinioned Hope
(With the following single line, I embrace all of the surging eccentricity welling up in me – for which my littlest sister, the angel of the family, acquiesced to the fundamental logic of my career as an English teacher – whether for three years or thirty – because it is a profession which, in her eyes, necessitates that same characteristic eccentricity.)
I am husbanded by Word.
Our love affair began rather slyly. So slyly, in fact, that I would liken it to Hmong tradition. My capture was entirely unforeseen; I was kidnapped in a blind tangle of dusty smelling sack-cloth . . . betrothed. And, like the Hmong brides, I never screamed for freedom. Rather, I blushed with pride and exultation. Me?! . . .
Sometimes, when I make life space, Words come leaping out of me in the mornings like hunted animals – an eruption of pheasants flinging themselves bodily out of the bush. Or Words well up and overflow, spilling out of me like a cow’s milk – my pen, the farmer’s hand. They fall onto the page frothy, warm, urgent, and raw. And when I don’t make space for them, Words dry up and crack inside of me like old, sun-chipped car paint. Then, the spindly webs banistering my insides burn like chapped lips with no salve but wildness and ink.
The urgency is real – so much so that I keep a journal and lamp within a breath of my pillow. I am driven by a fear that if I move my legs in the morning before writing, Words will skitter off like pigeons in a fluster of feather and lost voice, like Doig’s dreams in the half-light before waking. The loss is painful, because it whispers of a beauty almost had and never retrieved, Plath’s “Stillborn.”
Sometimes I feel hunted by Words. Other times I claim the bow and become the hunter. Always, we seek one another.
I run to the mountains to find the stillness that breaks open silence like a cracked egg, and there I find the hidden symbols of speech and light. I hide myself in river clefts until the waters forget I’m there and start to laugh again. I listen to their speech and mix the wetness of my salt-stained cheeks with the whelming joy of trillions of thundering droplets.
Sometimes I go to the street markets to pilfer Words like bread. I’m a thief and a hunter – one who ransacks, without pay, Words that fall from every table, lip, eye – Words that rise from every color, scent, texture. I vividly remember the first time I walked in the market and SAW Words – and was appalled that I’d never seen them before, surely like Elisha’s servant must have been.
It was a blustery day and the wind was blowing rinds of fruit, paper cups, cigarette buts – and Words. They were skipping beneath car wheels, wrestling in the gutter, laughing over the cobblestone and hiding between wooden slats of molding crates. And suddenly the sight seemed so natural I was stunned that the masses were blind to this explosion of Words.
I longed to catch the Words that fell down all around me and make them into a sort of mural, an image stuck in space of the motley conglomeration of street people all about – skin-clad Words. And for the first time, I wondered if that’s why Woolf’s heroine Lily paints: to pin the Words down, hide them from the wind.
My eyes welled up out of love – for the people, or their Words? For the people who are Words – and I imagined myself a laughing toddler swathed in fuzzy memory-stains – flitting about to catch flying bubbles before they sunk to the pavement, unredeemable smatters of soapy water. Lost Words.
Maybe that’s why John’s image of Christ as Word is so powerful to me. Christ as skin-clad Divine Utterance . . . blood vessels and hair follicles reaching out to cover over and make tangible the rich Letters of God’s mouth, the reality of holy love (when I don’t even deserve the wretched kind).
Maybe that’s why I fall down in humble awe at the image in my mind – God abandoned the Law that dwelt with him in the beginning, before he invented skin, to hang dressed in shame, blood, spit, and vinegar on a wooden rod – for his pottery to mock. And there he remained, still perfect and unbroken but exposed and vulnerable – like the pulp of an orange when its cover has been shorn away.
When I stay my eye on that cross, I often catch my mind retreating to a distant place. I wonder, had I been there, if I would not have preferred to be at the temple in that hour. The temple – where the curtain was torn. I’m a Gentile. And a woman. I had no hope – couldn’t come anywhere NEAR, or I’d be killed by the justice of God. Now I enter in every day –
The Word was made flesh. He made his dwelling among us.
To think that he is so passionate – so irrational – so just and merciful! A proclamation resonates in my spirit, “I choose shame and mockery because I MUST HAVE YOU!”
And, somehow, I chew up and swallow those words – and my body is nourished by the cryptic message that the ALMIGHTY rescued me –
That he loves me, and that he is not ashamed to call me his own.
Dickinson owns a lark in her soul named Hope. This is my Hope offering -- my song of hope over a people that I’m struggling to hope for right now. I can feel the words beating . . . bleeding . . . soaking hope, hope, HOPE. Famous Chilean poet Neruda’s, “Word born in the blood, it grew in the dark body, pulsing . . .”
Christ in us – the hope of glory. The hope of GLORY. wow
Drivdahl says most articles are published not because of right information, but because of good writing. I submit myself to the rallying ground between fact and style – I play a song that joins the hands of charisma and truth in a dance of hope. Hope.
Seen or unseen, read or unread – I’ve snatched the Words and pinioned them. I harnessed, only to borrow, their power – and I woo from this source of Words a hope that whispers of my Lord.
I am husbanded by Word.
Our love affair began rather slyly. So slyly, in fact, that I would liken it to Hmong tradition. My capture was entirely unforeseen; I was kidnapped in a blind tangle of dusty smelling sack-cloth . . . betrothed. And, like the Hmong brides, I never screamed for freedom. Rather, I blushed with pride and exultation. Me?! . . .
Sometimes, when I make life space, Words come leaping out of me in the mornings like hunted animals – an eruption of pheasants flinging themselves bodily out of the bush. Or Words well up and overflow, spilling out of me like a cow’s milk – my pen, the farmer’s hand. They fall onto the page frothy, warm, urgent, and raw. And when I don’t make space for them, Words dry up and crack inside of me like old, sun-chipped car paint. Then, the spindly webs banistering my insides burn like chapped lips with no salve but wildness and ink.
The urgency is real – so much so that I keep a journal and lamp within a breath of my pillow. I am driven by a fear that if I move my legs in the morning before writing, Words will skitter off like pigeons in a fluster of feather and lost voice, like Doig’s dreams in the half-light before waking. The loss is painful, because it whispers of a beauty almost had and never retrieved, Plath’s “Stillborn.”
Sometimes I feel hunted by Words. Other times I claim the bow and become the hunter. Always, we seek one another.
I run to the mountains to find the stillness that breaks open silence like a cracked egg, and there I find the hidden symbols of speech and light. I hide myself in river clefts until the waters forget I’m there and start to laugh again. I listen to their speech and mix the wetness of my salt-stained cheeks with the whelming joy of trillions of thundering droplets.
Sometimes I go to the street markets to pilfer Words like bread. I’m a thief and a hunter – one who ransacks, without pay, Words that fall from every table, lip, eye – Words that rise from every color, scent, texture. I vividly remember the first time I walked in the market and SAW Words – and was appalled that I’d never seen them before, surely like Elisha’s servant must have been.
It was a blustery day and the wind was blowing rinds of fruit, paper cups, cigarette buts – and Words. They were skipping beneath car wheels, wrestling in the gutter, laughing over the cobblestone and hiding between wooden slats of molding crates. And suddenly the sight seemed so natural I was stunned that the masses were blind to this explosion of Words.
I longed to catch the Words that fell down all around me and make them into a sort of mural, an image stuck in space of the motley conglomeration of street people all about – skin-clad Words. And for the first time, I wondered if that’s why Woolf’s heroine Lily paints: to pin the Words down, hide them from the wind.
My eyes welled up out of love – for the people, or their Words? For the people who are Words – and I imagined myself a laughing toddler swathed in fuzzy memory-stains – flitting about to catch flying bubbles before they sunk to the pavement, unredeemable smatters of soapy water. Lost Words.
Maybe that’s why John’s image of Christ as Word is so powerful to me. Christ as skin-clad Divine Utterance . . . blood vessels and hair follicles reaching out to cover over and make tangible the rich Letters of God’s mouth, the reality of holy love (when I don’t even deserve the wretched kind).
Maybe that’s why I fall down in humble awe at the image in my mind – God abandoned the Law that dwelt with him in the beginning, before he invented skin, to hang dressed in shame, blood, spit, and vinegar on a wooden rod – for his pottery to mock. And there he remained, still perfect and unbroken but exposed and vulnerable – like the pulp of an orange when its cover has been shorn away.
When I stay my eye on that cross, I often catch my mind retreating to a distant place. I wonder, had I been there, if I would not have preferred to be at the temple in that hour. The temple – where the curtain was torn. I’m a Gentile. And a woman. I had no hope – couldn’t come anywhere NEAR, or I’d be killed by the justice of God. Now I enter in every day –
The Word was made flesh. He made his dwelling among us.
To think that he is so passionate – so irrational – so just and merciful! A proclamation resonates in my spirit, “I choose shame and mockery because I MUST HAVE YOU!”
And, somehow, I chew up and swallow those words – and my body is nourished by the cryptic message that the ALMIGHTY rescued me –
That he loves me, and that he is not ashamed to call me his own.
Dickinson owns a lark in her soul named Hope. This is my Hope offering -- my song of hope over a people that I’m struggling to hope for right now. I can feel the words beating . . . bleeding . . . soaking hope, hope, HOPE. Famous Chilean poet Neruda’s, “Word born in the blood, it grew in the dark body, pulsing . . .”
Christ in us – the hope of glory. The hope of GLORY. wow
Drivdahl says most articles are published not because of right information, but because of good writing. I submit myself to the rallying ground between fact and style – I play a song that joins the hands of charisma and truth in a dance of hope. Hope.
Seen or unseen, read or unread – I’ve snatched the Words and pinioned them. I harnessed, only to borrow, their power – and I woo from this source of Words a hope that whispers of my Lord.
Hooked.
For two years come August, I have spent time volunteering with the Late Night Outreach team at New Horizons, standing on a street corner two or three Fridays a month in the middle of the night – being present with women who live in a shadow world, callous to their basic human rights and their intrinsic worth. I have been honored during these two years to come to know countless women and their stories on various levels of relationship – a handful in particular very intimately.
I read a book a couple years ago about leprosy. It is incredible to me, in the time since, how many parallels I have seen between leprosy and prostitution. In Jesus’ day, the lepers were untouchable – quarantined from society, starved for human touch and community, forced to scream out in the market places, “Stay away! I’m a leper!”
The women I stand with are not untouchables. The message they are forced to relay standing half-naked on a cold street-corner with brazen faces and beautiful hair is quite different. Unlike the lepers, they have been touched in every way – exploited, abused, raped and sodomized, terrorized and beaten. But the isolation they endure is in many ways the same. The most striking similarity between the two is that lepers die not of flesh-eating bacteria – but of a nerve disease that causes them to lose feeling entirely, beginning in their outward extremities and moving centrally. In India, lepers lose fingers to rats who chew them off at night – cruelly, individuals does not wake to save their fingers because the pain is entirely absent. The women that I stand with are not privileged to experience pain. They have sacrificed body parts to the absence of pain – even more, numbness has allowed them to lay down their freedom, their dreams, their rights, their souls, and sometimes even their lives.
And I stand with them because I believe those things can be redeemed. I believe that Jesus gives the gift of pain back to the leper and makes her body whole. I believe that Jesus not only accepts her in her pain, but that He chooses to sit with her in it – He chooses to endure it with her, and empowers her through His mighty love to walk into new life. I believe those things because I’ve walked that path with Him myself – different experiences, different pain, but the same Lord who heals magically and completely.
On that street corner, I have experienced the love, the power, and the presence of Jesus with a nearness that I have not known Him elsewhere. I have seen Him show up countless times in countless lives, I have seen Him grow my faith in the power of prayer and in the power of presence. I love Him and I love those girls.
A friend of mine recently said that God’s calling on our lives is like a hook – that He grabs us when we’re least expecting it, exposes our passions and feeds our dreams until we are captured unexpectedly but wonderfully. His call is entirely more gentle than a bleeding fish’s jaw, but I feel His sovereign leading in my life in such a way. And so I leave in three weeks to learn from and serve a Grecian ministry, Nea Zoi, in the Athenian brothels – because somehow this ministry that I bumped into accidentally has become so intrinsically knit to my heart that I feel bound – hooked – by it, by the love of Christ and His power to heal the broken-hearted.
Last week in my Social Justice class, a guest speaker named Mike McGill shared an invitation to a deeper place in bearing one another’s burdens. He said, “There’s a critical need to grow in our capacity to connect with suffering – both as individuals and as community, specifically the church.” He challenged us to trust Christ to meet us in places of hurt, and provide hope for the suffering.
In my own life, little I have experienced is more powerful than hope in the midst of extreme suffering and forgiveness in the midst of extreme injustice. A few memories along those lines stick out quite clearly:
A Nepali church perched on top of a mountain whose people had endured severe persecution on behalf of their faith in Jesus, worshipping with joy like a mighty waterfall.
My best friend, on the night her sister was killed, blessing the Lord through her tears and proclaiming her faith in His unshakable Kingdom.
A man who had lost his home, pieces of his face and abdomen, and his mental stability in a fire in LA – who wandered the streets for several years in search of something. He found what he was looking for, and now has brought the hope of Jesus to thousands of prisoners suffering in Uganda.
These stories – and myriads more like them – speak to me of a treasure that is greater than money or prosperity or comfort. They speak to me of immovable truth – of hope and life that runs deeper than pain, that burns hotter than fire, that withstands torture, violence, and all manners of injustice.
Since I was a teenager, I have known intrinsically that I would not stand on the sidelines in places of pain. Jesus met me unconventionally – not in a church or at a Billy Graham conference, but in the quietness of my own bedroom, by myself in Paul’s letter to the Romans. He invaded my brokenness and offered me a hope that has remained firm. I will not take that healing in vain. I will let it continue to steep deep in me – and I will run to the broken, so I can see His promises fulfilled in their lives as well. I will not shun their pain – I will be honored by vulnerability and messiness, because I know that it’s in brokenness that I see the treasure of Jesus most profoundly. He is the One who calls death out of life, and empowers the broken to walk in new life – away from social cycles, generational sins, and personal failures.
I want to live in the midst of Jesus’ hope and life and healing. I want to spend my days offering it to others. I want to receive it in my own wounds – so that I can pour it into the wounds of others. I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. (Phil. 3)
I read a book a couple years ago about leprosy. It is incredible to me, in the time since, how many parallels I have seen between leprosy and prostitution. In Jesus’ day, the lepers were untouchable – quarantined from society, starved for human touch and community, forced to scream out in the market places, “Stay away! I’m a leper!”
The women I stand with are not untouchables. The message they are forced to relay standing half-naked on a cold street-corner with brazen faces and beautiful hair is quite different. Unlike the lepers, they have been touched in every way – exploited, abused, raped and sodomized, terrorized and beaten. But the isolation they endure is in many ways the same. The most striking similarity between the two is that lepers die not of flesh-eating bacteria – but of a nerve disease that causes them to lose feeling entirely, beginning in their outward extremities and moving centrally. In India, lepers lose fingers to rats who chew them off at night – cruelly, individuals does not wake to save their fingers because the pain is entirely absent. The women that I stand with are not privileged to experience pain. They have sacrificed body parts to the absence of pain – even more, numbness has allowed them to lay down their freedom, their dreams, their rights, their souls, and sometimes even their lives.
And I stand with them because I believe those things can be redeemed. I believe that Jesus gives the gift of pain back to the leper and makes her body whole. I believe that Jesus not only accepts her in her pain, but that He chooses to sit with her in it – He chooses to endure it with her, and empowers her through His mighty love to walk into new life. I believe those things because I’ve walked that path with Him myself – different experiences, different pain, but the same Lord who heals magically and completely.
On that street corner, I have experienced the love, the power, and the presence of Jesus with a nearness that I have not known Him elsewhere. I have seen Him show up countless times in countless lives, I have seen Him grow my faith in the power of prayer and in the power of presence. I love Him and I love those girls.
A friend of mine recently said that God’s calling on our lives is like a hook – that He grabs us when we’re least expecting it, exposes our passions and feeds our dreams until we are captured unexpectedly but wonderfully. His call is entirely more gentle than a bleeding fish’s jaw, but I feel His sovereign leading in my life in such a way. And so I leave in three weeks to learn from and serve a Grecian ministry, Nea Zoi, in the Athenian brothels – because somehow this ministry that I bumped into accidentally has become so intrinsically knit to my heart that I feel bound – hooked – by it, by the love of Christ and His power to heal the broken-hearted.
Last week in my Social Justice class, a guest speaker named Mike McGill shared an invitation to a deeper place in bearing one another’s burdens. He said, “There’s a critical need to grow in our capacity to connect with suffering – both as individuals and as community, specifically the church.” He challenged us to trust Christ to meet us in places of hurt, and provide hope for the suffering.
In my own life, little I have experienced is more powerful than hope in the midst of extreme suffering and forgiveness in the midst of extreme injustice. A few memories along those lines stick out quite clearly:
A Nepali church perched on top of a mountain whose people had endured severe persecution on behalf of their faith in Jesus, worshipping with joy like a mighty waterfall.
My best friend, on the night her sister was killed, blessing the Lord through her tears and proclaiming her faith in His unshakable Kingdom.
A man who had lost his home, pieces of his face and abdomen, and his mental stability in a fire in LA – who wandered the streets for several years in search of something. He found what he was looking for, and now has brought the hope of Jesus to thousands of prisoners suffering in Uganda.
These stories – and myriads more like them – speak to me of a treasure that is greater than money or prosperity or comfort. They speak to me of immovable truth – of hope and life that runs deeper than pain, that burns hotter than fire, that withstands torture, violence, and all manners of injustice.
Since I was a teenager, I have known intrinsically that I would not stand on the sidelines in places of pain. Jesus met me unconventionally – not in a church or at a Billy Graham conference, but in the quietness of my own bedroom, by myself in Paul’s letter to the Romans. He invaded my brokenness and offered me a hope that has remained firm. I will not take that healing in vain. I will let it continue to steep deep in me – and I will run to the broken, so I can see His promises fulfilled in their lives as well. I will not shun their pain – I will be honored by vulnerability and messiness, because I know that it’s in brokenness that I see the treasure of Jesus most profoundly. He is the One who calls death out of life, and empowers the broken to walk in new life – away from social cycles, generational sins, and personal failures.
I want to live in the midst of Jesus’ hope and life and healing. I want to spend my days offering it to others. I want to receive it in my own wounds – so that I can pour it into the wounds of others. I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. (Phil. 3)
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