Being Steve, the gnome

After a great trip hiking up and down the Grand Canyon with my friend Stephanie from college, I had her drop me off at a Pilate truck stop ten miles outside of Flagstaff, AZ, so that I could hitch a ride out to LA. I was so tired I spent the first four hours getting breakfast and sitting reading in a comfy chair at a McDonald's. I finally got the guts to step outside the door and begin my routine. After several hours and no ride, I was feeling rather bummed. I kept on telling myself to be patient, but it wasn't working. So, to comfort myself, I started calling up a bunch of people in my cellphone. So some of them got to see an inside look at my hitchhiking style as I temporarily paused the conversation to ask someone coming out of the store "Excuse me sir, are you headed west?" The most common reply was a quick no, or a "yes, but I can't take a rider with me." Most major trucking companies have insurance policies with them so that they can't take riders with them. Finally, after four more hours of asking, and taking breaks in between, i finally got a ride at about 8 pm, just as it was getting dark. A guy named Josh told me he'd give me a ride, and I was so overjoyed I offered to buy him dinner, but he said he was cool. He was waiting around the stop for his other trucker buddies to catch up to him, but he finally decided to leave the stop because it was getting crowded. So I ran ahead and got my backpack and we were off. He is a hawler of livestock, and apparently livestock truckers are known as the "badasses" of the trucking world. But he is a friendly, kind of small guy about my height, who wears "preppy" clothes. On the CB he sounds like a man in his late forties, with his South Dakotan draw, although he is only 26. He was going to play a trick on his trucking buddies by tricking them into thinking I was his troll friend "Steve" on the CB radio. He plans to come back to LA to visit me with his girlfriend later on.

Reflection on joy and satisfaction

I just read an article by Larry Crabb and he brought up some interesting ideas about why we sin. His friend was having an affair, and the article explains the anguish Larry feels at seeing his friend make this bad choice, and why he thought he did it. In the western church we seem to have this idea that trully following Jesus is going to alwaysbproduce in us a greater soul satisfaction and joy than living in sin. But sometimes, as perhaps in the case of an affair, living in sin might actually at certain points produce more satisfaction to the felt needs of our souls than following Jesus. I want to learn to follow Jesus not just because following him makes me feel good but because following and loving Him is the only sensible response to His overwhelming love for us.

Juanita

As I was entering the yellow line station up in Pasadena after spending a wonderful hour at the Zepher (a coffee shop with lots of character) with my friends from Chicago, I met an interesting lady in a wheelchair, who appeared to be in her fifties and was brimming over with happiness. After sitting down next to her in the train, she proceeded to share her life after giving praise to God. Perhaps a little of her youthful joy was due to the fact that at the age of eighteen she had an accident and lost all of her memory. All of it. She had to relearn how to walk, how to talk, and essentially lived a new life, in a new country (when her parents moved to Spain) so that she legally had her name changed from Janet to Juanita. As she grew older, she prayed for a husband and gave God very specific requirements--he had to be a man of God, care for her in her condition (without thinking of her any less because of her affliction), and God answered her prayer with a man who met her right in front of her door.

Consolation?

"I believe that the religion of the middle class was always tempted to use Scripture primarily to dispense consolation. But the Word of God, like a mirror, must first confront us with ourselves. Second, it has to challenge us to live in a new way, to lead a life of authentic brotherlyness and sisterlyness--economically, politically, socially, and spiritually. Only after the Word of God has confronted and challenged us do we have the right to take consolation from the word of God as well. But we've drawn consolation from the Bible before we changed our lives!"
--Richard Rohr, from Simplicity

I am also reminded of an example Kevin used in his sermon last week--about a friend of his who would suddenly shut his Bible with a loud clap, explaining to anyone who asked that he couldn't take any more in until he was obedient to what he already knew.

Dishes?

I've been reading from Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove's book called New Monasticism, and I'd like to quote from it. He quotes from Chris Rice--"It is enough to get the love of God into your bones and to lice as if you are forgiven. It is enough to care for eachother, to forgive eachother, to forgive eachother, and to wash the dishes." He is responding to our tendency to want to change others around us to be more like what we think they should be like. But what strikes me about the quote is the last line, which sticks out like a sore thumb against the beautiful idealism of what i think loving eachother looks like, or so I sometimes think. Perhaps washing dishes, such a commonplace act that seems so routine (or distasteful, or both) encapsulates what love looks like in action better than most activities. Indeed, perhaps it is in the "commonplace," the banal activities of life that our love (for God and others) is truly tested. I'm also reminded of dear brother Lawrence, to whom dishwashing was such a chore until the constant "practice" of God's presence turned this simple activity into a holy sacrament.

Service Necessary for Community

"Every church community that doesn't include an outwardly directed service for others, a service extending beyond itself, is simply not a Church, its not Christ. It's psychology or false transcendence. That doesn't mean that psychology is a bad thing; it just isn't the same thing."
--Richard Rohr in Simplicity

Sauce, my friend

Today I was walking back to my campsite, and I saw my friend Sauce panhandling outside a late night restaurant. I was so glad to see her--it had been about a week or more since I last saw her. She said that she had been staying at Venice beach--a nicer crowd over there. She doesn't feel as scared that she will be raped. But even here, she discovered that if she quickly hid inside a cardboard box so that no one saw it was a woman who got inside she would be safe from attack. She also mentioned that if she kept panhandling outside of the restaurant there was a good chance the cops would come to arrest her (she had just seen the owner of the restaurant come out and she said he had called the cops on her before. She told me more of her life--how when she was young her mother had hid her from the authorities because the Cambodian government was at war and was eliminating any one who could not be helpful to the war effort including handicapped people like her (she has withered hands). She eventually fled to Thailand via Vietnam, and married an American GI, who later in life became crazy and began to hit her, which is why she fled to the street. Yet she is one of the most gracious people I have met--she could have deep bitterness against all those who have ill-treated her, but her response to her pain in life is more like a deep sadness. Yet she does know God, and I had a blessed time praying with her.

Pain

I was helping out with the highschool kids, playing basketball, getting all sweaty, when one of the older kids, Jeremiah, jumped for the ball and then lay on the ground, moaning and giving out almost screams. Some of the kids thought he was playing, because he had the kind of cocky personality that would put on that kind of show. But he wasn't. Eventually, we took him to the hospital, after carrying him and his twisted ankle (perhaps dislocated) into the car. I was reminded once again that I have rairly faced much serious physical pain in my life. Dehibilitating pain. So that you can hardly think anything except perhaps little cries for help, like a baby. Perhaps someday I will understand this pain personally, instead of simply through watching others suffer, but I hope that nonetheless God will grant me some level of gut wrenching compassion ("to suffer with") for those who feel pain this way.

Dag

It is playing safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.
--Dag Hammarskjold

Self Deceit and Money

Last Friday, I went to a wonderfully delightful reunion of LAUP, (Los Angeles Urban Project) and it was great to see old friends. I was challenged once again by Kevin Blue's sermon from Luke 16 about the rich man and Lazarus. The context of the passage being that Jesus was addressing a group of Pharisees--the religious leaders of the day--those who were comfortable in their own salvation. In the section just before, he was addressing the subject of money, and they ridiculed him, because they were "lovers of money." And he responds to their hearts by saying "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God." Kevin pointed out something that still haunts me about this passage--that it is possible to be self-deceived. Indeed, "the heart is deceitful above all things." Which means that even those who outwardly appear to be faithful to God may be further from Him than most. It also means that I, who have recieved so much--so much good teaching, so many good examples of the walk of Jesus--I need to be examining my heart, and letting God continually change me. Even despite my current position of sleeping on the street--I am still tempted to overindulge myself on things I don't need, like expensive food, etc. Another point that Kevin made was that we should not compare ourselves with those above us economically to judge our discipleship in regard to money, but to those who are below us. In fact, all of us who are college educated in the states are rich (as rich as the rich man compared to Lazarus perhaps?) compared to many who live in slums and who are homeless.

Circles or Squares?

Yesterday I was helping a member of Central City Church (AJ) to help set up chairs in the main hall for church on Sunday after working with the kids earlier. Another guy was there who was setting up chairs for a Bible study he was having that night. He had one chair set up facing two other chairs, and when I brought out another chair to put next to the solo one, he told me to put it next to the other two. I then realized that he didn't want a perfect circle, but to have one chair (his) facing the others in a semicircle. I remember thinking "why not put them in a full circle--why do you have to be facing the rest just because you are the 'leader?'" Then I was reading a book called "Simplicity" by Richard Rohr, who always blows me away, and he was sharing how the 12 step groups always sit in a circle--not like a square or rectangle that most churches have, which focus in on one person or a group of people up front performing, rather than having everyone face eachother's brokenness as equals. "When people get together in solidarity and unity, not out of power but out of powerlessness, then Christ is in their midst."

Sorrow and Joy

How do we reconcile "he was a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering" with "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full." ?

More thoughts on Romantic love

Needless to say, I do have a desire to be married at some point, but that desire is matched and exceeded by my desire to be used by God among the little and the poor of the world. With the exception of Kagawa, most of the other ministers among the poor that I either know or have read about either never married or were married late (around the age of forty or later). I don't want to wait that long, so I suppose what I really want is to continue learning and growing in God's love through living with His beloved poor and to meet someone who is just as passionate to live similarly (if not a desire to sleep with the homeless than a desire to pour her heart out in the slums because of Jesus). I want a partner in this, but I also realize that my desire for simplicity and incarnational living must be values in her heart as well.

Thoughts on romance

I've been reading a biography of Toyohiko Kagawa by Cyril Davey that is blowing my mind (Kagawa is one of my heroes). His courtship with his wife is interesting--but what struck me the most was Kagawa's prayer concerning the seeming conflict between his vocation of living in the slums and his blossoming love for Haru. Here is one of his poems--
Love, linger not to whisper your temptation,
Seek not to bind me with your heavy chain.
I would be free to seek the world's salvation,
I would be free to rescue men from pain.

When Haru indicated to him that she wanted to fully join him in his work in the slums, he asked her to marry him, and their beautiful wedding was not followed up by a relaxing week on some refreshing island escape, but by a short jinriksha ride back to Kagawa's hut in the slum of Shinkawa.
Needless to say, life was hard for the couple, and Kagawa wrote the following to his love--

You who dwell
In the heart of my heart,
Listen to me;
This you must know--
I am a child of grief and pain,
Bending my fingers to count my woe.
You yield me
Everything;
But I
Have nothing
I can bring
To give to you.
Know
You have married
Poverty, sorrow;
Bear it with me;
The storm will be over
Tomorrow.
A little while
For us
The rod;
And then,
Then, God!

Singled out

Sitting on a stairway, looking into my itouch ( I splurged so that I could get on the Internet when outside) and reading a blog and listening to Rich Mullins, suddenly a flahlight is shining in my face, a white cop asks me
"you seem to hang out here quite a bit--is that true?" ( we are conversing near an expensive frozen yogurt shop)
"well not every day"
"do you live around here?"
"yes"
"where?"
(!!!!!!!who cares where I live--mind your own business!!!)
"down the street"--I point off in the direction of my chosen abode, my backpack sitting comfortably in front of me, betraying my rooflessness
"well, just remember not to sit in the chairs of the Pinkberry unless you've bought something."

(context--I hang out near the pinkberry because I get free wireless access from a stray signal--I've sat in the chairs twice without buying something--and I doubt the cop would have said anything to me if I didnt have a bag in front of me with clothes air- drying on it that almost shouts--"look at me--I sleep under the stars")
I share this story because I'm reminded once again how little it takes to get the attention of the authorities if you are homeless, no matter how innocent you are, or how harmless you look (I got a compliment the other day from an elderly man on the streets that I "clean up well"

Interview in Portland

I found an article online written by a guy who interviewed me on the street when I was homeless in Portland. Here is the link if you're interested--you have to scroll down a couple stories till you get to mine--Nathan.
http://bookbanshee.securespsite.com/Sociology/Youth%20Stories%20-%20Book%20In%20Progress.doc