isaiah & tom

Isaiah 5:23 ...And then line your pockets with bribes from the guilty while you violate the rights of the innocent.

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Isaiah 3:14-15 ...You've played havoc with this country. Your houses are stuffed with what you've stolen from the poor. What is this anyway? Stomping on my people, grinding the faces of the poor into the dirt?

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We must never overlook the fact that the message of the Bible is above all a message preached to the poor, the burdened, the oppressed, the underprivileged. - Thomas Merton

Much of my reading lately has been dealing with how we view the poor, how the situation of poverty can be addressed, and how we should respond. Writers and activists like Thomas Merton and Mother Teresa are referenced by other writers and activists like Henri Nouwen and Shane Claiborne. These folks seem to chase each other around (figuratively) with complementary writings and ideals....ideals that were both ahead of their time and ancient in their wisdom and humanity.
Also, the Old Testament book of the prophet Isaiah seems to come up quite a bit when considering things like "injustice", "the need for societal change", "poverty", "revolution", and "being radical".
The above-quoted verses and writings were both things that I stumbled across while reading this morning.

So where do we start? What do we do? How can we deal with the tragedy of poverty? There are aproximately 100 homeless folks here in the city. I do some cooking and serving, from time to time, at one of the local homeless shelters. But I always feel that wall there...like "rich-suburban-guy-doing-his-miniscule-part" for the minority oppressed. And I'm nowhere near rich...or even really all that suburban! When the service is over, I probably head off in the car to go and consume something. And they go off hoping to consume anything. I guess I feel like these folks are my neighbors, and but for God's grace, I could so easily be on that line for a once-a-month hot breakfast. So I'm thinking...trying to figure out ways to be more human...to be a good neighbor...to try to catch a glimpse of Jesus in the eyes of these interesting and lovable folks. Maybe provide the opportunity for them to see a glimpse of Jesus in my eyes too. We've got a lot. And we so often take that for granted.
Word.

A banner once hung on the front of a deserted church in Philadelphia. It read...

"How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?"

rocks & porches

Keep your eyes clean and your ears quiet and and your mind serene. Breathe God's air. Work, if you can, under His sky. But if you have to work in a city and live among machines and ride in the subways and eat in a place where the radio makes you deaf with spurious news and where the food destroys your life and the sentiments of those around you poison your heart with boredom, do not be impatient, but accept it as the love of God and as a seed of solitude planted in your soul. If you are appalled by those things, you will keep your appetite for the healing silence of recollection. But meanwhile - keep your sense of compassion for the men who have forgotten the very concept of solitude. You, at least, know that it exists, and that it is the source of peace and joy. You can still hope for such joy. They do not even hope for it anymore.

- Thomas Merton

I came across this passage this morning, while I was out on the front porch having some coffee and enjoying the rain and the quiet. Last weekend, we spent time camping with great friends in the beautiful spot pictured above. At some point, I found myself sitting on a rock out in the stream...doing some reading and thinking. The sound of the water running was loud, but gentle in it's steadiness and persistence. The sounds of the kids playing settled into the background, and I was just there...surrounded by life and sound and movement.

But it wasn't the movement of people rushing past to make a buck...or speeding to get one car-length in front of you at a light that's red anyway. It wasn't the sounds of a stereo thumping in some car that's taking a corner too fast. And it wasn't the life that we see when we look through the office window at some guy who's happiness depends on him crunching numbers or shuffling papers, endlessly, for an empire of greed and apathy.

The noise is a pure one...a sound that settles around you like a rhythm. The life here is ancient and teeming and completely interconnected by a Master Creator who's ingenuity and artistry boggles the mind.

It's not here to earn anything or necessarily accomplish anything.

It's here because it just is. Because it has to be.

And it's peaceful and joyful and fully alive.

follow

What does it mean to the world when they hear the question...
"what does it mean to follow Jesus?"
Does it mean, automatically, that the person asking the question
is some sort of unhinged, crutch-wielding sheep?
Would the asker be most likely wearing their Sunday best
and holding out their hand to "collect"?
Would they be trying to "convert" or to "collect" you...
to add numbers to a suspiciously corporate organization?
Would they be on some sort of pedestal...
telling you that you are wrong or that
they are right...
or that they have some sort of handle on a truth that you
couldn't possibly comprehend?
Or could they maybe look a lot like you?
Listen to your music?
Be relevant? Edgy even?
Create relevant works of exciting, fresh art?
Love because what this world really needs is love?
Could they just blend in and be
an "everyman" or "everywoman",
perform no miracles, and just care because
they've discovered something that matters and
Someone that moves them to care?

death of the old

Thomas Merton writes of drinking thin beer and eating hot dogs full of mustard at Coney Island. Apparently Coney Island has been sold. Well, Astroland at least...it might as well be all of Coney Island as far as I'm concerned. The Twin Towers are gone...decimating and de-glorifying the famous and beautiful skyline. They've cleaned up Times Square. Harlem is increasingly a sought-after neighborhood. They've pushed the homeless out of Tompkins Square Park. And Washington Square Park is being "redesigned" and "refurbished".
And along with these things go youth and memories and memories of youth.
We're paving over and redesigning and refurbishing a world that is inevitably dying a not-so-slow death.
We're polishing turds and taking the soul out of the music.

merton, my dad, a world's fair, and nelly

I am reading Thomas Merton’s ‘Seven Storey Mountain’…his autobiography, I guess you could call it. In truth, I skimmed/skipped past the really early stuff, the family history and really young years, and moved on to when he was around 16 years old and began his “journey”. It’s interesting to me that he and my father attended the same Chicago World’s Fair…the ‘A Century of Progress International Exposition’. While Merton, 18, was working as a barker and picking up pamphlets on the Mormon Church, my dad, 17, was checking out exhibits of “Homes of Tomorrow” and other futuristic things. I remember him telling me about how humans were predicted to look in the the “future” (1980’s or so?)…big, swollen, ET-looking heads, etc. Maybe their predictions weren’t too far off!
Interesting that my dad and Merton could easily have crossed paths. Later in life, I think they could have had a friendship and good conversations. I find myself having a big respect for Merton, even as I'm still in the beginning stages of learning about him.
While reading some of this stuff, I was sitting on one end of a bench while one of my neighbors sat on the other end and played with his I-phone…watching Nelly videos with enormously-butted women dancing. Nelly is such a respectful romantic.

jersey

So I've been looking into something...making a dangerous promise...a dangerous commitment to growing in a deepening spirituality and grace. I have a "suggested reading list", and I dusted off my library card this morning. Normally, I'd hit amazon.com so I could own, and mark up, the books I'm reading. But times are tight, so I'll wait on actually owning. This will be interesting...taking in this reading without that option of highlighting and making notes actually in the books.
So I roll into the library parking lot, and a guy yells out to me, "JERSEY!" It's a neighbor from when we first moved in. He's since moved across town and I run into him sporadically. My name is "jersey" to him. He's a disabled vet from NJ...somewhere over by Philadelphia...Camden maybe. He had just gotten out of physical therapy, and had been advised not to walk the mile or so home. He couldn't remember the number of one of "his ladies" ;), so I offered him a ride home. It was nothing. A nothing gesture. But it felt graceful, and we had the chance to catch up for a minute or two. I was anxious to get into the library and scrounge up some more Nouwen and some Merton to read, but the detour ended up being a really graceful moment for me. I felt pretty priveleged to be able to offer a simple "nothing" thing that was presented to me as an opportunity to help this guy who needed and appreciated it so much. I am blessed by the unexpected.

lights on a lake

My thoughts and readings lately have put me into a sort of tailspin...got me thinking about things past and future. There's a part in Nouwen's 'The Genesee Diary' that says..."It seems as if I am being slowly lifted up from the gray, dull, somewhat monotonous, secular time cycle into a very colorful, rich sequence of events in which solemnity and playfulness, joy and grief, seriousness and lightness take each other's place off and on."
Next to that highlighted passage, I wrote "DL" in parenthesis because that passage brought me back to years at Deerfoot. There was always a feeling there, of being shut off from the outside world. So much so, that as a staff member, trips to town to do the laundry were almost surreal. Kinda gave you the feeling that you had been raised by wolves and someone was suddenly exposing you to polite society! Deerfoot Lodge, and the beautiful old country around it, are a beautiful mix of solemnity and playfulness...where we shared times of extreme joy and sometimes heavy sadness with our new families. We conquered mountains ecstatically; and we suffered through rainy nights under dripping tarps miserably...and we knew that a new day approached.
One of the things that has stayed with me from the summers there was the candlelight ceremony at the end of each camp session. As night falls, everyone gathers along the lake front with unlit candles. One is lit, and that flame passes from candle to candle. It's an awesome sight to see the flickering lights as they move through the woods and spread out...and a voice booms out over the still lake and tells us that when we leave this place, we are to go into the world outside as lights to that world.
I miss those times of awe, when something was able to break through the youthful clowning around and settle quietly into my heart.

learning a lesson

I've got a lot to learn about grace...
My instinctual reaction to conflict is to curl up into a (figurative) ball, be angry, not communicate, and hope that time will heal. But it never really heals smoothly. There's always a nasty scar left behind...like a speedbump you can't easily swerve around. That way of "dealing" is, quite frankly, a bullshit way of handling things. I've done that quite a bit lately, and a lot more than just quite-a-bit in the past. I'm fortunate to have good folks to call me on my poo. Beyond that, I'm blessed to have folks I can communicate with and be forgiven by.
I guess you could say that I'm a work in progress.

compassion in conflict

I'm reading some stuff that's been changing me. It started with a little book called 'Basic Christianity' by John R. W. Stott. That little book sort of "set up" the next thing that a couple of friends and I are currently reading...a book called 'Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture' by Michael Frost. 'Exiles" is a three-part book, and we are meeting to discuss each part as we finish it. I tend to read pretty quickly, and found myself ahead of the discussion schedule, so I picked up a book by Brian D. McLaren entitled 'Finding Faith - A Search for What Is Real'. Partway through that book, and after meeting with our pastor and friend (and on his recommendation), I picked up 'The Genesee Diary' by Henri Nouwen.

It's interesting how all of these books seem to have almost built on each other. Each have offered, and are offering, different viewpoints and awarenesses into what it means to be a follower of Jesus. They've brought up such varied ideas as the basis of what it is to believe in Jesus...what the Bible really says; how to deal with life as a follower of Jesus in a commercial, self-centered, and injust world; what church should maybe look like; and the idea of monastic living without actually becoming a cloistered monk.

A while back, I found myself in conflict with an old friend. We were trying to build something together and it ended up falling apart. Actually, it fell apart for me, and ended up leading into something good for him. I put the idea out there that maybe I just wasn't all that relevant anymore, and he indicated that he agreed. I've been, frankly, pretty annoyed at the whole situation for awhile now. More recently, I tried to be part of another (completely unrelated) endeavor that also died a sad death amidst a bunch of disagreement over labels, theology, approaches, and "extras". I've also been feeling pretty negative and distant because of that situation. Last night, I was impressed by a comment made by an old friend that he was "practicing compassion for himself and someone who he is in conflict with". This got to me. Here's someone who...I don't know if he believes in Jesus or not...is putting caring and empathy towards someone in a situation where distance and self-centeredness might be the initial response. I think this is what Jesus would do. I think that I am learning, in small steps, to be more like Jesus.