we'll see where this ramble takes me....
on the way home from church i saw a large white truck belly up to the curb on MLK and pick up a few day-laborers looking for work. they were latino, i would guess mexican from the little i know about the men who usually stand there. the man in the cab was large and white. the men ran to the door, all clamoring for a chance to work and only two were picked up and the rest cast back to the curb. i just finished reading "the tortilla curtain" saturday night. candido was always running to white trucks and looking for work from large, white men. meanwhile his bride sat in a canyon, pregnant and starving. it was so eerie to see it all go down just past my windshield yesterday. what do we do? pray for mexico. pray for something. michael said we could throw a big feast for them and host it on the sidewalk, ask them what they need, what their families need. would this seem patronizing? only if it was patronizing, i guess.
i know i need to remember that God is already at work, i just need to join God in whatever that work is.
i made this scarf at knitting night a few years ago. in julia's room at reed. it took me a semester of friday nights with these amazing women, talking about all kinds of all kinds, to finish it. it's cream-colored with a blue thread on the side; i ran out of cream yarn and needed to tie it off. it is crooked and catywompus in all the ways of a beginner. and a beginner who wasn't really paying attention to the knitting, but more just doing something with her hands while she hung out with her ladies and talked and listened and played with naomi's rat.
in short: the scarf is totally ugly.
jordan was at my house thursday night for a prayer gathering. he wore the sexiest outfit i've seen at a church "function"--tight leather pants and high heeled leather boots with a black leather shirt and a huge fur collar. jordan and jordan's fashion are two of my favorite things about The Well, my beautiful church. he saw my scarf lying on the floor and wanted it. and then he wore it to church on sunday.
it has never looked so good. my collection of friday nights and conversations and times with those beautiful women all wrapped around jordan's neck. it was a perfect coming together of the places, the people i love.
last night we went to powell park, the havenator tribe. there were some somalian children playing on the teeter-totters and mozea and i talked to asha, the eldest girl, for a little while. she wore a deep purple head scarf and rocked herself on the bright red plank of wood. her sisters wore yellow and red and blue and each one walked and played on the different pieces of wood, also yellow and red and blue. they were so beautiful. asha was noticeably surprised that we wanted to talk to her. i know the somalian refugees in the neighborhood are not always greeted with welcome and affection. i know this because i talk to my neighbors. my white, home-owning, non-refugee neighbors. i turned around and saw michael and ruah on a distant swing. they, too, wore bright colors against the evening light. michael ran back and forth in front of the swing and ruah zel laughed with completeness. it was whole laughter. nothing distracted or divided or shamed. just complete focus on the joy of her papi and the swinging motion and the cool night air. here we all are, i thought. somalians and anglos and latinos all wearing the colors of the world on our clothes and our skin. here we are, under the sun, beneath God's gaze. here we are, some of us with so much money and some of us with so little. some of us with means for shelter and food, others so little. not that any of us deserve it, the much or the little.
what do we do? we pray and we pray. we believe God is already at work and we join God in it, if we are attentive and mature enough to find out where God is and what work God is doing.
i know for sure that God is loving us. each one:
there is mozea and ruah and michael, my beautiful people, and me.
there is jordan.
there is The Well.
there is reed and the women of knitting night.
there is asha and her family and the hundreds of somalian families who live in the section 8 housing just off powell.
there is candido and his bride, albeit fictional, but live narratives of his life portrayed on MLK.
there is the large, white man in his truck.
there are the people who built the truck.
the people who pumped the oil for the truck.
the people who paved the road and built the sidewalk and the church and the teeter-totters.
the people who protested the paving of the road and the building of the sidewalk because it was their land first and someone took it away from them.
here we all are.
under the sun.
a mess. and yet so beautiful.
here we are.
and what is the work God is doing among us? how is God loving me and asha? where is Jesus in the section 8 housing development? is he on the swings? the teeter-totters? does he wear purple, too?
what is the work of God's love on the sidewalk of MLK? how can i join? where can i sign up?
there is so much pain, so much.
just inside of me alone.
and then, there is so much love.
for all of us.
there's more than enough for all of us under the sun.
there's more than enough love.
can i believe that for me, today? can i be so loved to give it all away?
i'll pray.
we'll see.
there's more than enough. more than enough. more than enough....
Monday, October 29, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
friends
tonight i prayed with the Quakers.
they pray in silence so they can listen to God.
and they call themselves "friends"
if they really are listening to God
and if they really are friends, as in deep love betwist and unity amongst
and absolute delight in one another,
then i think we'll hear some revolutionary stories now and on the other side of the sky
about these friends who gather and what sorts of wonders come from their communities.
they pray in silence so they can listen to God.
and they call themselves "friends"
if they really are listening to God
and if they really are friends, as in deep love betwist and unity amongst
and absolute delight in one another,
then i think we'll hear some revolutionary stories now and on the other side of the sky
about these friends who gather and what sorts of wonders come from their communities.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
my slimy and other thoughts
we played with a big kid puzzle on the floor yesterday afternoon.
mozea shoved the pieces together, pretending they would fit however she pleased, ruah stuffed them in her mouth, and i tried to convince myself that the puzzle was not too hard for me.
at one point mozie got a little p.o.ed at ruah and said: "sissy! NO! don't eat the puzzle!"
i told her that this was our family puzzle and that if ruah wanted to chew on some of the pieces, it was ok, and then i asked her to repeat to me "our family" to help her articulate the idea.
she kept saying "our slimy. our slimy", totally proud of herself that she was repeating successfully the words i asked her to say.
so there we were, my slimy, my beautiful slimy, pretending to put a puzzle together on the kitchen floor so we could be near michael, the slimy's papi and official mascot, while he made soup and rarebit. it rained a hard and cold rain and the dogwood beat against our front window as we listened to blue grass and were warm. it was our saturday afternoon and the lights in our house shed the perfect yellow.
as i'm writing this i'm thinking of lee, the homeless vet to whom i have a knack for bringing completely inedible food. he has no teeth and i seem to forget that he can't do apples. it can be a brutal time of year to live outside. no that i know this, but i can imagine. he lives up in the woods beyond barbur blvd. he "camps", he says. i'm never sure what to do with all of that except pray and offer a little of what i have. once i offered a lot of what i had, my home, to a homeless man in our park, and it didn't turn out so well. mostly because i ended up being mean to him and hating him, really. after 3 weeks, i just wanted him out of my house. i was sick of the cigarette smoke and the lethargy. i completely failed at doing the "good deed" i had set out to do. those sorts of things tend to fall apart--those "good deed" sorts of things. they're bullshit, really, because good deeds are always about my good deed and not so much about anyone else. as soon as a "good deed" gets complicated and people actually become people, not projects, the good deed bit flies right out the window pretty fast.
the terrible and wonderful thing about Jesus is that it's all about your heart.
that sucks if you have a heart that sucks at being all about itself in a way that's good for anybody else. which is me and maybe you.
i'm selfish and don't want to share my yellow-lit kitchen. and even if i did, would it do anything? i can't set anyone free from the things that cause homelessness, whatever those things might be. no way.
but praying. praying. praying to the One who can do something. and then praying that i'd want to also be an answer to some of those prayers. hoping that i would want it to cost me something, not so i could feel self-congratulatory and write about it on my blog, but so i could see beautiful things happen in my time. to people who need to be free, like lee and like me.
just some thoughts....
mozea shoved the pieces together, pretending they would fit however she pleased, ruah stuffed them in her mouth, and i tried to convince myself that the puzzle was not too hard for me.
at one point mozie got a little p.o.ed at ruah and said: "sissy! NO! don't eat the puzzle!"
i told her that this was our family puzzle and that if ruah wanted to chew on some of the pieces, it was ok, and then i asked her to repeat to me "our family" to help her articulate the idea.
she kept saying "our slimy. our slimy", totally proud of herself that she was repeating successfully the words i asked her to say.
so there we were, my slimy, my beautiful slimy, pretending to put a puzzle together on the kitchen floor so we could be near michael, the slimy's papi and official mascot, while he made soup and rarebit. it rained a hard and cold rain and the dogwood beat against our front window as we listened to blue grass and were warm. it was our saturday afternoon and the lights in our house shed the perfect yellow.
as i'm writing this i'm thinking of lee, the homeless vet to whom i have a knack for bringing completely inedible food. he has no teeth and i seem to forget that he can't do apples. it can be a brutal time of year to live outside. no that i know this, but i can imagine. he lives up in the woods beyond barbur blvd. he "camps", he says. i'm never sure what to do with all of that except pray and offer a little of what i have. once i offered a lot of what i had, my home, to a homeless man in our park, and it didn't turn out so well. mostly because i ended up being mean to him and hating him, really. after 3 weeks, i just wanted him out of my house. i was sick of the cigarette smoke and the lethargy. i completely failed at doing the "good deed" i had set out to do. those sorts of things tend to fall apart--those "good deed" sorts of things. they're bullshit, really, because good deeds are always about my good deed and not so much about anyone else. as soon as a "good deed" gets complicated and people actually become people, not projects, the good deed bit flies right out the window pretty fast.
the terrible and wonderful thing about Jesus is that it's all about your heart.
that sucks if you have a heart that sucks at being all about itself in a way that's good for anybody else. which is me and maybe you.
i'm selfish and don't want to share my yellow-lit kitchen. and even if i did, would it do anything? i can't set anyone free from the things that cause homelessness, whatever those things might be. no way.
but praying. praying. praying to the One who can do something. and then praying that i'd want to also be an answer to some of those prayers. hoping that i would want it to cost me something, not so i could feel self-congratulatory and write about it on my blog, but so i could see beautiful things happen in my time. to people who need to be free, like lee and like me.
just some thoughts....
Thursday, October 18, 2007
walking on lakum dukum
i took myself out for coffee this afternoon. well, me and jc.
we had a fine time of it.
took the same route that mozie and i took on sunday.
same tree-leaf-clomping-stomping-shuffling route. i was just as taken with the leaves as i was with mozea on sunday. i darted back and forth across the street to whichever part of the sidewalk had the most yellow and red piled up on it. i was full-on into my clomping and sloshing and yahooing about when i noticed that some primly dressed folks getting off the bus with pointy umbrellas were trying desperately not to look at me. if you've ever died your hair a color that you've seen on old women in grocery stores, you know that look.
i guess it was only ok to enjoy the leaves so dizzily when i had my 2 year old at my side.
(as an aside: good job for taking the bus to work and all, but how can you get all dressed up and get hired for very important jobs that provide you with the social wherewithal to even know how to carry one of those umbrellas and then completely miss the point?)
anyhoos--
once i reached gladstone coffee, i threw open the door, feeling just as blustery as the wind that carried me there and proceeded to order a hot chocolate with whip cream and sprinkles.
this was a mistake.
another grand social foible in the span of 10 minutes.
the extremely cool barista kind of jerked his head back into his neck a bit and said, "ok....do you want it lukewarm?" and it immediately became clear that i'd just ordered a kiddie drink.
i don't know how to go out without mozea, apparently.
i've completely forgotten how to pretend to be cool. i don't even know how to do my hair anymore. (although, i'm not sure i ever knew how to pull off a successful coiffure.)
after the "nice try, sweet heart" of a moment with the coffee king, i trundled off with my whip cream and sprinkles and mom sweats to the back yard so i could feel the wind and hang with God. i bumped a few tables on my way out with my ever-rising mom hips and then spilled a little cocoa on some extremely cool person's table. "oh, i got it" i said, and wiped it up with my sleeve.
about 8 years ago i stood at the edge of lakum dukum at whitman college in the land of two wallas for several hours in the very late evening of some winter night. i stood right at the very edge, convinced that i was going to try to walk on water. not like Christ. like peter. big difference. i stood and watched the duck crap float around the surface of the water, bumping into other duck crap, forming large continents and then just as quickly as the alliance was made a wind would come up and the masses would drift apart again.
duck poop pangeas.
for hours, i tell you, i watched this.
my dear friend jess called to me at one point with a small and pitying voice from behind some distant bushes: "good luck, sl! i love you!" she was on her way to the library and knew exactly what i was up to; i'd called her earlier in the day and spoke very quickly, breathy even:
"hey, i'm going to try to walk on lakum dukum. think of me."
(jess and i later ran naked across the platform in front of memorial building at midnight the night before graduation. i had a terrible case of incontinence back then and hysterically peed all over the long ramp where our classmates would stand the next day and get little papers that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars from a tall and believable president that said we were smart enough to feel ok now in the world.)
jess passed and the winds died down and the crickets went to sleep and it was then, after staring at this black cold mess of an opponent for hours and hours, that i just did it.
i stepped right on in--took the plunge, as they say.
duck poop and slimey silty cold water collected around the cowl of my sweater. other competing duck poops went up my nose. my bandanna dripped cold, stickying water down my face after i'd come up for air, just to punctuate the failed experience.
and i stood there for a bit, in the middle of it all.
pangeas splitting and forming around my giant head, gathering at my neck.
some sleeping ducks woke up and swam over to see if i was a loaf of bread.
"nice try, sweet heart" of a moment it was, indeed.
thus are my times with Jesus some afternoons and some very late winter evenings. trundling and whip creaming and sprinkling and dorking and leaf-shuffling and failed water-walking.
i must believe that it's all worth the try and that they really are "nice try"s, good tries. admirable tries, from a certain perspective. a very, very peculiar perspective ;)
the yahooing about and the mom sweats, the duck crap and the breathy calls included.
i must or it's to the land of pointy umbrellas i ought to go.
we had a fine time of it.
took the same route that mozie and i took on sunday.
same tree-leaf-clomping-stomping-shuffling route. i was just as taken with the leaves as i was with mozea on sunday. i darted back and forth across the street to whichever part of the sidewalk had the most yellow and red piled up on it. i was full-on into my clomping and sloshing and yahooing about when i noticed that some primly dressed folks getting off the bus with pointy umbrellas were trying desperately not to look at me. if you've ever died your hair a color that you've seen on old women in grocery stores, you know that look.
i guess it was only ok to enjoy the leaves so dizzily when i had my 2 year old at my side.
(as an aside: good job for taking the bus to work and all, but how can you get all dressed up and get hired for very important jobs that provide you with the social wherewithal to even know how to carry one of those umbrellas and then completely miss the point?)
anyhoos--
once i reached gladstone coffee, i threw open the door, feeling just as blustery as the wind that carried me there and proceeded to order a hot chocolate with whip cream and sprinkles.
this was a mistake.
another grand social foible in the span of 10 minutes.
the extremely cool barista kind of jerked his head back into his neck a bit and said, "ok....do you want it lukewarm?" and it immediately became clear that i'd just ordered a kiddie drink.
i don't know how to go out without mozea, apparently.
i've completely forgotten how to pretend to be cool. i don't even know how to do my hair anymore. (although, i'm not sure i ever knew how to pull off a successful coiffure.)
after the "nice try, sweet heart" of a moment with the coffee king, i trundled off with my whip cream and sprinkles and mom sweats to the back yard so i could feel the wind and hang with God. i bumped a few tables on my way out with my ever-rising mom hips and then spilled a little cocoa on some extremely cool person's table. "oh, i got it" i said, and wiped it up with my sleeve.
about 8 years ago i stood at the edge of lakum dukum at whitman college in the land of two wallas for several hours in the very late evening of some winter night. i stood right at the very edge, convinced that i was going to try to walk on water. not like Christ. like peter. big difference. i stood and watched the duck crap float around the surface of the water, bumping into other duck crap, forming large continents and then just as quickly as the alliance was made a wind would come up and the masses would drift apart again.
duck poop pangeas.
for hours, i tell you, i watched this.
my dear friend jess called to me at one point with a small and pitying voice from behind some distant bushes: "good luck, sl! i love you!" she was on her way to the library and knew exactly what i was up to; i'd called her earlier in the day and spoke very quickly, breathy even:
"hey, i'm going to try to walk on lakum dukum. think of me."
(jess and i later ran naked across the platform in front of memorial building at midnight the night before graduation. i had a terrible case of incontinence back then and hysterically peed all over the long ramp where our classmates would stand the next day and get little papers that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars from a tall and believable president that said we were smart enough to feel ok now in the world.)
jess passed and the winds died down and the crickets went to sleep and it was then, after staring at this black cold mess of an opponent for hours and hours, that i just did it.
i stepped right on in--took the plunge, as they say.
duck poop and slimey silty cold water collected around the cowl of my sweater. other competing duck poops went up my nose. my bandanna dripped cold, stickying water down my face after i'd come up for air, just to punctuate the failed experience.
and i stood there for a bit, in the middle of it all.
pangeas splitting and forming around my giant head, gathering at my neck.
some sleeping ducks woke up and swam over to see if i was a loaf of bread.
"nice try, sweet heart" of a moment it was, indeed.
thus are my times with Jesus some afternoons and some very late winter evenings. trundling and whip creaming and sprinkling and dorking and leaf-shuffling and failed water-walking.
i must believe that it's all worth the try and that they really are "nice try"s, good tries. admirable tries, from a certain perspective. a very, very peculiar perspective ;)
the yahooing about and the mom sweats, the duck crap and the breathy calls included.
i must or it's to the land of pointy umbrellas i ought to go.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
dying, living
sunday.
i took mozea out for hot chocolate this morning.
this was our church service--loving each other.
we walked to gladstone coffee and sang about the wheels on the bus, and mozie picked her nose and waved at dogs and passersby.
when we got there she stood in front of a table of interneting people and stared at them, picking her nose once again, staring, staring and picking.
she was not phased by their apparent discomfort and she perservered with her simple tactic of observation and extraction :)
they finally smiled, and their tattoos of skeletons and nails and razor blades melted and ran right off their shoulders.
everybody was just people for a few minutes.
thank you, mozea.
on our walk home we stomped through bright red and orange maple leaves and i told her about the Fall and how it is mama's favorite season. there's so much life in this season--portland never looks more vibrant and alive to me as it is does when the leaves are dying.
death bringing life,
made me think of giving birth to my girls.
no drugs and so much pain, i was sure i was going to die both times. as i dug my fingernails into her soft forearm, my midwife kept telling me about how i was not only giving birth to mozea but to all of the potential children inside of her. women are born with all of their eggs, and with each insane contraction, i was birthing my family tree. generations and generations.
just as i thought death was certainly going to follow the next contraction, mozea came.
and then ruah came.
two years later and just as hard.
so church this morning for mozea and me was had with the trees in our nook of south east portland, the leaves dying this time of year, thinking about death and life in birth as i walked in the crumbly red leaf paper with mozie, thinking about death and life in the cross and the beauty of seeing that expressed in women giving birth, in me giving birth,
and in the trees showing their true color and then letting it go.
i took mozea out for hot chocolate this morning.
this was our church service--loving each other.
we walked to gladstone coffee and sang about the wheels on the bus, and mozie picked her nose and waved at dogs and passersby.
when we got there she stood in front of a table of interneting people and stared at them, picking her nose once again, staring, staring and picking.
she was not phased by their apparent discomfort and she perservered with her simple tactic of observation and extraction :)
they finally smiled, and their tattoos of skeletons and nails and razor blades melted and ran right off their shoulders.
everybody was just people for a few minutes.
thank you, mozea.
on our walk home we stomped through bright red and orange maple leaves and i told her about the Fall and how it is mama's favorite season. there's so much life in this season--portland never looks more vibrant and alive to me as it is does when the leaves are dying.
death bringing life,
made me think of giving birth to my girls.
no drugs and so much pain, i was sure i was going to die both times. as i dug my fingernails into her soft forearm, my midwife kept telling me about how i was not only giving birth to mozea but to all of the potential children inside of her. women are born with all of their eggs, and with each insane contraction, i was birthing my family tree. generations and generations.
just as i thought death was certainly going to follow the next contraction, mozea came.
and then ruah came.
two years later and just as hard.
so church this morning for mozea and me was had with the trees in our nook of south east portland, the leaves dying this time of year, thinking about death and life in birth as i walked in the crumbly red leaf paper with mozie, thinking about death and life in the cross and the beauty of seeing that expressed in women giving birth, in me giving birth,
and in the trees showing their true color and then letting it go.
the last thing the world needs
there's a presbyterian church a block from me that has limped along for several years now. the church bell only rings at midnight when local youth climb the belfry and pull the rope with what i imagine from my bed to be intense hormonal gusto. the sign sits askew on a brick wall near the sidewalk, and the worship times are etched in and then crossed out and etched in again with pen and pencil. church starts at 9am, no 10am, no 9:30am....
we met jack hodges, the current pastor, at the neighborhood association meeting. i wonder if he's evangelical; he doesn't have that nervousness that most evangelicals have about them. he's not in a hurry to buy us lunch.
(don't get me wrong, i think talking about Jesus is beautiful, when it comes from a place of peace, not panicky compulsion.)
i've seen him outside lately laying bricks and washing the windows of his church. a few days ago he was tending his bloody finger he sliced on the venetian blinds he was washing. other days he's scrubbing the sidewalk in front of the church and blithely, heartily laughing with what i assume to be his congregates as he works alongside them in the beautification process.
this is so striking to me.
so striking to see a pastor doing the unseen servant work.
we are in an age of celebrityism. (maybe we always have been.) everyone wants to be an american idol. (admittedly, i watched this last season because i was on bed rest from my labor with ruah for 6 weeks. i did, tragically, get tired of books. i know it's hard to imagine and even harder to admit.)
at least half of the contestants on american idol were christians. one of them was a worship leader at his church. i can't say what's in the heart of those people, but i can say that the last thing the world needs is another person, especially another christian, who wants to be famous.
i think of all the hoopla around recent christian authors and writers and speakers and whatnots.
it makes me ill. for good reasons and bad. i think a good chunk of the bile rises in my throat when i'm feeling insecure and unsure of God and how beautiful God is, not believing that to be at the center of what Christ is doing is such a place of honor, so i want that adoration for myself.
it's quicker and easier. doesn't cost much.
i was talking with a prominent artist 5 years ago or so and asked him about the poor. he said that it wasn't his calling to care for the poor, he was called to be a writer.
precisely. of course it's not our calling to do the shit of the world that no one wants to do. of course it's not our calling to care for people who have bad breath and bad attitudes and who will never say thank you. of course it's not our calling to scrub the sidewalk. it's our calling to be upfront and have all the eyes and attention on us. of course.
and yet Christ did not seek the equality of God, but laid it down and took up the cross (phillipians). i mean, isn't that the deal with fame? wanting equality with God? wanting that power and that control over people and that love from them?
and then there's jack, not out promoting himself or creating listserves so people will know when his next performance will be. he's out there in the rain, scrubbing and doing things that no one will really see--i mean, who notices the dirt on venetian blinds? he's doing the menial servant work.
i have no idea what his sermons are like or if i would even agree with them, but he preaches the Gospel to me every time i walk past.
every time i think of him it saves me a little bit. it clears the air.
there are people doing beautiful things in the world whom we will never hear about. there will never be any books written by them or about them. they are quiet laborers. servants. they are sidewalk scrubbers and free-clinic openers and feeders of the homeless and defenders of the poor. they are lovers of the Navajo rez and slum-dwellers in Cairo. they wash feet and pray for the ungrateful. they love Kurdish refugees. they live in red-light districts so they can have a place right in the heart of prostitution in Bangkok to invite people into safety. they live in the bush in Alaska where it is dark 7 months of the year and every child has been abused, every child has fetal-alcohol syndrome. they give up prestige and fancy college degrees to move to Yakima and care about the people there who have no education, no hope beyond wal-mart. they invite people out of gangs and give them a place to live in their own home. they buy houses for homeless street kids in pdx and live with them, putting all thoughts of personal safety on hold. they adopt five children who were abandoned in a hotel in Denver, even though they are in their 50s and have already raised 4 children of their own. they are everywhere. and we will never know them. we will never hear about them.
they are jack.
they are the Gospel.
we met jack hodges, the current pastor, at the neighborhood association meeting. i wonder if he's evangelical; he doesn't have that nervousness that most evangelicals have about them. he's not in a hurry to buy us lunch.
(don't get me wrong, i think talking about Jesus is beautiful, when it comes from a place of peace, not panicky compulsion.)
i've seen him outside lately laying bricks and washing the windows of his church. a few days ago he was tending his bloody finger he sliced on the venetian blinds he was washing. other days he's scrubbing the sidewalk in front of the church and blithely, heartily laughing with what i assume to be his congregates as he works alongside them in the beautification process.
this is so striking to me.
so striking to see a pastor doing the unseen servant work.
we are in an age of celebrityism. (maybe we always have been.) everyone wants to be an american idol. (admittedly, i watched this last season because i was on bed rest from my labor with ruah for 6 weeks. i did, tragically, get tired of books. i know it's hard to imagine and even harder to admit.)
at least half of the contestants on american idol were christians. one of them was a worship leader at his church. i can't say what's in the heart of those people, but i can say that the last thing the world needs is another person, especially another christian, who wants to be famous.
i think of all the hoopla around recent christian authors and writers and speakers and whatnots.
it makes me ill. for good reasons and bad. i think a good chunk of the bile rises in my throat when i'm feeling insecure and unsure of God and how beautiful God is, not believing that to be at the center of what Christ is doing is such a place of honor, so i want that adoration for myself.
it's quicker and easier. doesn't cost much.
i was talking with a prominent artist 5 years ago or so and asked him about the poor. he said that it wasn't his calling to care for the poor, he was called to be a writer.
precisely. of course it's not our calling to do the shit of the world that no one wants to do. of course it's not our calling to care for people who have bad breath and bad attitudes and who will never say thank you. of course it's not our calling to scrub the sidewalk. it's our calling to be upfront and have all the eyes and attention on us. of course.
and yet Christ did not seek the equality of God, but laid it down and took up the cross (phillipians). i mean, isn't that the deal with fame? wanting equality with God? wanting that power and that control over people and that love from them?
and then there's jack, not out promoting himself or creating listserves so people will know when his next performance will be. he's out there in the rain, scrubbing and doing things that no one will really see--i mean, who notices the dirt on venetian blinds? he's doing the menial servant work.
i have no idea what his sermons are like or if i would even agree with them, but he preaches the Gospel to me every time i walk past.
every time i think of him it saves me a little bit. it clears the air.
there are people doing beautiful things in the world whom we will never hear about. there will never be any books written by them or about them. they are quiet laborers. servants. they are sidewalk scrubbers and free-clinic openers and feeders of the homeless and defenders of the poor. they are lovers of the Navajo rez and slum-dwellers in Cairo. they wash feet and pray for the ungrateful. they love Kurdish refugees. they live in red-light districts so they can have a place right in the heart of prostitution in Bangkok to invite people into safety. they live in the bush in Alaska where it is dark 7 months of the year and every child has been abused, every child has fetal-alcohol syndrome. they give up prestige and fancy college degrees to move to Yakima and care about the people there who have no education, no hope beyond wal-mart. they invite people out of gangs and give them a place to live in their own home. they buy houses for homeless street kids in pdx and live with them, putting all thoughts of personal safety on hold. they adopt five children who were abandoned in a hotel in Denver, even though they are in their 50s and have already raised 4 children of their own. they are everywhere. and we will never know them. we will never hear about them.
they are jack.
they are the Gospel.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
trees, again
the trees are saying many things.
it's so good to just sit with them.
i miss that tree, that giant, on 33rd.
rest in peace, old tree.
it's so good to just sit with them.
i miss that tree, that giant, on 33rd.
rest in peace, old tree.
blue soup
mozea is amazing. she is so smart. i can brag about this here because no one is reading this blog anyway, so it's not annoying.
she is so, so smart.
this, of course, is way too important to me, and i know i'll need deep inner healing sometime soon so that i don't need her to be smart, like my dad needed me to be smart, and thereby mess her up in the ways that i am messed up.
just let her be smart. or not smart. Lord have mercy.
either way, i know i'll love her beyond the sky.
she's my mozea river.
and she loves blue soup. and blue sandwiches. and blue dogs.
"mozie, what kind of soup are you making mama for breakfast?"
"blue soup, mama!"
sometime later in the day, "mozie, what do you want for lunch, sweetness?"
"ummmm....blue sanweech"
and sometime even later, "what color is that dog, mozie?"
"blue dog. i carry you, mama (translation: "carry me, mama")."
recently we made pine cone soup at the park and ate it under a big tree we call our "tent".
mozea came home later and pooped a very admirable poop in the toilet, and we all examined it.
the whole family was called in to give it a good look.
mozie said: "hooray! pine cone soup!"
yes, indeed.
making people is so beautiful. making mozea and ruah has been one of the best things i've ever done with my life. making them and then loving them. often i think about the success of my life, whatever that is anyway, and the only thing i really feel sure about is that my girls are the best gift to the world i could give. i don't mean that they are perfect or that obnoxiously they are"god's greatest gift to such-and-such", but i mean that there's nothing more precious or beautiful inside of me that i could offer than these beautiful girls, my babies, to the service of God in this world. i can think of nothing, absolutely nothing, better.
(sometime i shall write about giving birth to mozea at home.
it rocked.)
she is so, so smart.
this, of course, is way too important to me, and i know i'll need deep inner healing sometime soon so that i don't need her to be smart, like my dad needed me to be smart, and thereby mess her up in the ways that i am messed up.
just let her be smart. or not smart. Lord have mercy.
either way, i know i'll love her beyond the sky.
she's my mozea river.
and she loves blue soup. and blue sandwiches. and blue dogs.
"mozie, what kind of soup are you making mama for breakfast?"
"blue soup, mama!"
sometime later in the day, "mozie, what do you want for lunch, sweetness?"
"ummmm....blue sanweech"
and sometime even later, "what color is that dog, mozie?"
"blue dog. i carry you, mama (translation: "carry me, mama")."
recently we made pine cone soup at the park and ate it under a big tree we call our "tent".
mozea came home later and pooped a very admirable poop in the toilet, and we all examined it.
the whole family was called in to give it a good look.
mozie said: "hooray! pine cone soup!"
yes, indeed.
making people is so beautiful. making mozea and ruah has been one of the best things i've ever done with my life. making them and then loving them. often i think about the success of my life, whatever that is anyway, and the only thing i really feel sure about is that my girls are the best gift to the world i could give. i don't mean that they are perfect or that obnoxiously they are"god's greatest gift to such-and-such", but i mean that there's nothing more precious or beautiful inside of me that i could offer than these beautiful girls, my babies, to the service of God in this world. i can think of nothing, absolutely nothing, better.
(sometime i shall write about giving birth to mozea at home.
it rocked.)
meditating for G-Dubs
i was at afifa's birthday shabang in sellwood 2 years ago, and her friend said something that i didn't really take notice of until a few months ago when my subconscience conjured it for the sake of the universe.
she said something like this: "i was meditating this morning and thinking about all of the negative energy george bush is getting these days...how can he make any good decisions with so much hatred being sent his way? so i decided to send him some love as i meditated, hoping he'll do something good with it."
i've never prayed for a president before. i've never prayed that he would make good decisions or care about the welfare of the country, the globe. i've never thought much of government, (unless it's local, and even then i'm pretty lame about doing much more than voting). but then all this crap of the last 8 years. so much needless death, on all fronts: literally, environmentally, spiritually, diplomatically, etc.
now, to be honest, i would not have the faintest idea how to run a country. i would do a very bad job of not cussing on t.v. and i would never shower. it would be terrible p.r.
along with reflecting on my own hypothetically tragic presidency, i thought about my sometimes incredibly angry "what is he doing?!?!" vibes i caste about the stratosphere and wondered if that is really accomplishing anything but raising my blood pressure.
bush needs help, just like me and every other non-showering, t.v. cussing, sort of red-headed person and everyone else.
so i started praying for him a little bit, just to try it out and see how it went.
i'd pray while listening to NPR, hearing about where he was in the world and what he was doing. it was like my personal little prayer calendar for George W. (delivered to me via stern, british woman voice)....and depending on what he was doing that day, i'd pray some specifics and then always that love would win in his heart and wherever he takes his heart. i'd pray that wisdom would come down as he meets with dignitaries and prime ministers. that humility and truth and Truth would be victorious.
sadly, i fear i've come around a bit late as he's about to exit the stage...but perhaps afifa's friend has some wisdom that will carry over to the next president, and i'll pray for him or her with compassion and perserverance, knowing that under the shower and the good p.r., he or she is just a person who needs a lot of help, too.
she said something like this: "i was meditating this morning and thinking about all of the negative energy george bush is getting these days...how can he make any good decisions with so much hatred being sent his way? so i decided to send him some love as i meditated, hoping he'll do something good with it."
i've never prayed for a president before. i've never prayed that he would make good decisions or care about the welfare of the country, the globe. i've never thought much of government, (unless it's local, and even then i'm pretty lame about doing much more than voting). but then all this crap of the last 8 years. so much needless death, on all fronts: literally, environmentally, spiritually, diplomatically, etc.
now, to be honest, i would not have the faintest idea how to run a country. i would do a very bad job of not cussing on t.v. and i would never shower. it would be terrible p.r.
along with reflecting on my own hypothetically tragic presidency, i thought about my sometimes incredibly angry "what is he doing?!?!" vibes i caste about the stratosphere and wondered if that is really accomplishing anything but raising my blood pressure.
bush needs help, just like me and every other non-showering, t.v. cussing, sort of red-headed person and everyone else.
so i started praying for him a little bit, just to try it out and see how it went.
i'd pray while listening to NPR, hearing about where he was in the world and what he was doing. it was like my personal little prayer calendar for George W. (delivered to me via stern, british woman voice)....and depending on what he was doing that day, i'd pray some specifics and then always that love would win in his heart and wherever he takes his heart. i'd pray that wisdom would come down as he meets with dignitaries and prime ministers. that humility and truth and Truth would be victorious.
sadly, i fear i've come around a bit late as he's about to exit the stage...but perhaps afifa's friend has some wisdom that will carry over to the next president, and i'll pray for him or her with compassion and perserverance, knowing that under the shower and the good p.r., he or she is just a person who needs a lot of help, too.
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