The Tondo Trinity: Bat People, Drainage Dwellers, and the soon to be displaced

Visited the Tondo slum where millions of people are trying to cling to a life so precarious that any piece of infrastructure, no matter how crumbling, provides a piece of their survival strategy. There for we have what are being called "Bat People", those who piece together shacks that hang suspended from freeway overpasses. They cannot stand up in them, yet some have been there so long they've raised their kids. Having no land rights or access to land, they claim the air above it, baking from the heat of the cement and being rattled by constant traffic overhead. Some 150,000 per year come from the country to the city in Manila and and about 50,000 end up here. Or they end up here:

This is a drainage pipe under a road. We crawled inside and met a family of four who are living there, along with three other families have made that wet, dark space their home for the last two years. Crouching over as we listened to their story I could not stand up straight as the sweat dripped off my nose. The father had seasonal work, the mother had her hands full, the oldest daughter had just dropped out of high school because she didn't have the extra money needed for school projects -- amounting to about $1.50. Her future is turning on such a small hinge.

As I travel to observe these dramatic situations and help my students formulate strategies, it seems like there is a fine line between voyeurism and gathering the information, personal experience and perspectives necessary to be an advocate. I pray that my glimpses into humanity may lead to God's bringing of peace for this family and others in the cities of the world.

Have I become so strange?

In the Botocan community (slum) in Manila I visited Aaron and Emma Smith (he an American and she a Filipina that grew up in the Balik Balik slum that nancy Donat ministered in -- she as a little girl knew Nancy). They are Servant Partners staff who are living there incarnationally. I walked with them down a labyrinth of alleyways, over an open sewer ditch, past dogs and roosters, by dozens of children playing between rusting tin siding, sprouting in the slums like daisys in the cracks of the concrete. I sat in their two-room space where they live with their 2 year old son Zach who sleeps with them on the floor. They have running water and electricity which makes them slightly better off than their neighbors but it means a greater chance of them being able to sustain their efforts at planting a church over the long haul. The kids on their alley love them and kept peeing in out of curiosity.

Had my first ride in a Jeepnee yesterday, and also my first ride in twhat they call a Tricycle here, a motorcycle with a side car. I sat sidesaddle on the back and held on for dear life as my friend got the side car. It reminded me of the question Ray Bakke always asks: "what is better, a bicycle or a jet airplane? Answer: depends on where you want to go and who is with you. The same is true of ministry models and churches. No one size fits all needs and goals."

We also visited a house church in the Welfareville Slum, Block 37.1. This area was flooded in the recent typhoon. What a mess. What chaos. What amazing beauty in the lives of those we met. It was the worst labrynthine slum I have ever been in. Worse than Calcutta, worse than San Jose - CR, worse than Mexico City, worse than China. Trash burning, the black acrid smoke clogging the lungs. Shacks cobbled together -- housing made of trash. Thousands of illegal electrical connections.

We sat under a tarp covered area next to a shanty -- a space for the church gathered. At one point a woman shared her testimony in Tagalog. She and her son had been separated in the flood from the typhoon, and was missing for three weeks. He had just been returned to her. She herself was nearly drowned as she tried to cross a street to get to work. The raging waters carried her away. Because she missed work, she lost her seamstress job, and the $4/day wages. She was in tears with gratitude for her life and the life of her son, but in need of a solution.

That night I ate dinner alone, exhausted from the exposure, the issues, the discussions. I signed my bill for the dinner and realized what had just spent could have fed her for five days. As I travel to the slums of the world, I am more troubled, not less.

As we ended the service with songs and prayers I told the women gathered that our students had come from around the world to visit them because we heard that Jesus (Hesus) was in their midst, in Block 37.1, and if they loved one another they would see him. I aid they are not alone, that people all over the world are praying for them. Their warm smiles and attention told me that they felt encouraged, but I continued to be troubled. Had I over-spoken? Did I promise too much? Weren't these words easy for me to say? Nevertheless, I felt it was right.

From there we went to a mega church that meets in a mall. They are reaching young, affluent youth. Thirteen services, the latest media, lots of energy. It might be said that they are reaching a constituency that no one else is through their methods. But I left with the question, "what does reaching mean?" I hope their vision of the church includes the poor I had left earlier that morning.

I felt empty. I wondered, "have I become so strange that I cannot enjoy worship among the comfortable? " God help me if I am becoming judgmental. God renew your church to include justice for the poor.

My Search for Sex Workers in Manila

So we walked along Quezon street in Manila tonight, horns blaring, sewer vents stinking, nervously picking our way across crumbled concrete hoping to run into young women selling themselves. Our Samaritana guides rehearsed what we would do. They would make the contact, we would step back and pray. Before long we came upon a group of people gathered on a storefront porch out of the rain, some sleeping on cardboard mats, others preparing for the evening ahead where they would trade sex for money, where little pieces of them will die one customer at a time. Only, our guides introduced the girls to us directly and asked us to pray for them directly. The group of leaders from Myanmar that I was helping to lead were deeply moved, and began to tell me that they had never seen this kind of ministry before, one like Samaritana that reached out in friendship with these young women, invited them into relationship, provided job counseling and assistance, medical care. They prayed with fervor, and began talking about what it would take to start such an outreach in their cities. In the end we prayed for seven women, Jenny, Janette, Nancy, Vanessa (who started taking drugs recently), Sherry, Carasita, and Camille. We prayed for a 15 year old girl. And we prayed for the committed women who led us. Oh God, have mercy on your children.

Typhoon's impact increased by human sin

The vision from my hotel room includes this building that has collapsed from the recent Typhoon Ketsana in Manila. This is but a tiny example of the devastation that residents are still dealing with in the aftermath. Now, even two weeks later, the waters are still creating a glut of piled up trash, and sludge. Typhoon Parma followed Ketsana and is still parked over the north of Luzon dumping meters of rain on a fatigued population. But here's my question: Is this an act of God, as they say? Well, of course. It's a natural disaster, right? Rain is God's territory.

OK. I'll give you that. But there's more to the story of the 250 people who lost their lives in the flooding. Rain is an act of God, but not the choices that city planners made about how to handle the rains in historic flood basins. That corruption, greed, and lack of moral leadership that led to those deaths is man's specialty. Government abandoned the role of stewarding the commonwealth of the people, caved into commercial interests, cut costs of projects that could have led to better draining even thought the engineering was there. And worse yet, God's people who are in key positions in government have been taught that their faith is best expressed in praying over their meals and sponsoring office prayer meetings, rather than shaping more just policies in local government. In fact, many of them have been taught to separate religious belief from political involvement.

But we are called to seek the well-being of our cities (Jer 29:7), to invest ourselves in them. That's what I have been doing here in Manila. My students are learning about the relationship between Christian ministry and city planning -- learning about how to help the church contribute to more just policies, the alleviation of suffering, and the stewardship of God's creation that we were meant to tend. Pictured below are students from Myanmar, Brazil, the Philippines and Nigeria working together on a plan for shalom in their cities.

May God use our time in Manila to create cities of God across the globe.

Profile in Courage

Ray Bakke has said that some things in history have been just too difficult or too dangerous to do, so God has called a woman to do it. Such is the case of one of my DMin students, Po Ming of Hong Kong. She lives in the Kowloon City district, a space with thousands of poor that many in Hong Kong stigmatize and avoid. Here in Costa Rica where she is studying in the program I am teaching, you see her reaching out instinctively to children in the Los Tables slum of San Jose. It is an extremely dangerous area we visited and served in, and you see her loving children on the spot where there had just been a murder last month. Po Ming came from a difficult family situation growing up, but broke free and came to Christ, who has now called her back to the very kind of environment she had left. She planted a church for the urban poor of Hong Kong, and now is part of an NGO that reaches out there. I don't know whether I am teaching the class, or she is. I know that I am humbled by her courage, and so sad that most what she does is invisible to most of the world. But there is One other who sees, and I know that there are tears of joy in his eyes tonight too.

Red Light Prayers - Part 2

After having spent this night with my students on deserted Costa Rican street corners in conversation with young transvestite men who were selling themselves, the haunting words of Octavio Paz pulled at me.

I am a man: Little do I last

And the night is enormous.

But I look up:

the stars write.

Unknowing I understand:

I too am written,

at at this very moment

someone spells me out.

They were men but their names were 

Nicole and Jasamina,

Alejandra,

Stephania and Erica. 

I will not forget them.

The bondage they are in, like the city corner they inhabit, is a

Dark and cavernous abyss,

An empty anonymity.

But I knew that God knew who they really were, knew their stories, felt their pain and alienation, was loving them even as they were.

I knew he was tracing the letters of their real names in stardust,

In the tail of some comet,

Was longing that they come to know their true identity in Christ, longing to free them to be loved with a pure love, as he intended. 

It's 1am but I wonder if I will sleep tonight

Knowing that they are still under the night sky, 

Praying that they will look up.

Red light prayers

Your prayers are appreciated tonight as I take a group of Bakke students to support a ministry that reaches out to women who are practicing prostitution as well as transvestites, all of whom hang out in the parks in downtown San Jose, Costa Rica from 7pm to midnight. Obviously, because of language barriers and lack of expertise, our participation is via prayer and whatever interaction we can foster through translation. We want to communicate hope and grace. Our prayers will rise through the glare of neon red tonight, heard by a God who is not scandalized by the poor choices of his children, nor passive toward a system that often forces such choices. Senor Jesus, nececitamos su ayuda.

Transformation Tracker

Many times we don’t get the privilege of seeing the immediate fruit of our work. But when we do, it is so encouraging. Perhaps you remember that I spoke into the lives of some African leaders in Ghana in January. They came from six different nations, including Sierra Leone, which has just emerged from a decade of civil war. One of those students was Warren Fornah (pictured here), a pastor and Christian leader in Freetown, a city of 5 million in Sierra Leone. As a result of our time together he feels called to use his position and influence over about 200 churches to help his nation and city repair the social fabric that unraveled during the war, leaving many physical, psychological and spiritual scars. He feels the church has a special role to play.  I just received word from him today that he has introduced some of the material I designed to help leaders in a city understand its identity (from chapter 20 of my book Encounter God in the City: Onramps to Personal and Community Transformation (IVP 2006)) to the main council of churches in the city – the one that helped to negotiate the truce between the government and the rebels. Warren reports that this material has, in his words, “immensely helped the council even as the process is on. The findings are gradually coming up. The exercise is quite exciting and helping to create a new paradigm for the entire council of churches in Sierra Leone.” I ask you to share my amazement and joy as some feeble effort I have made is producing a human harvest out of proportion to and beyond any skill I have – glory to God. I pray that thousands recovering from that civil war will benefit by a church newly equipped to understand and address the needs of the city of Freetown. And I pray for Warren as he presses ahead on the long road to recovery in Sierra Leone, for his perseverance and struggle.

Woman Married for 30 Years Smiles at Photographer

After 30 years

It appears

All my fears

All her tears

Were worth it.

We spent our 30th Anniversary in Yosemite watching for signs of hope, signs of the spirit, things that represented a world larger than the life we have created with each other. What an irony - with all the grandeur of Yosemite around us, we found them in the small things, the delicate black and white Monarch and the eager Robin. 

Maybe we needed the reminder that even in the world of marriage, its the small things -- the kind word, the laundry folded, the mess picked up -- that contain the largest messages.

We still enjoy being together. We're friends. It doesn't have to be Yosemite. Sometimes we rendezvous in the frozen food section of Save Mart. 

Still, it's hard to beat lunch at The Ahwahnee Hotel, and a quick hike around the valley floor. Celebrate with us! 

No mental energy so you get pictures

I have no energy for blogging right now, in case you haven't noticed. Its been a long time. So, for now, maybe a picture will do. It says, "we're still here, we're generally happy, and that's a very nice tree."

Prayers Go Up

In Ghana I type an email, then

Raise my laptop above my head

As if I am making an offering to the internet god.

The signal is better at that altitude.

Over and over I repeat this motion.

I type and lift

Type and lift

My message sent up prayer-like to the connected universe,

Like virtual incense.

I feel like some sort of

Cyber pagan.

Travel Fast

Go without food? No problem. I need to lose weight anyway.

Skip media for a time? It’s actually a relief.

Don’t scratch an itch? It’s a discipline for self-denial.

Deny myself some pleasure and replace with prayer? Common.

 

But take me to Ghana, through the tedium of terminals

Through heavy, humid days

And exhausted, lonely hotel nights –

The drama of children who with grace weave through wafts of black exhaust

Balancing massive, must-sell loads on their heads, approaching

The open windows of

Overstuffed worker-vans and rap-thumping Hummers –

 

Take me into the irresolvable dissonance of extremes –

The concentration required for me to connect across difference –

To running the show when knowing my deficit

 

Take me away from the one who is for me comfort and solid ground –

And this is the fast of my life.

G'Day from Sodom and Gomorrah

Forgive me, I am teetering here in Accra. The woman I am looking at across the road is balancing a great basket of clothes on her head, picking her way along the crumbling roadside, stepping over the sewage ditch with such grace and refinement. I imagine her a Ghanaian Eliza Doolittle, reciting “The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain.”  It is a grace that belies the circumstances, and I am discomfited . I have passed hundreds, thousands even, of other women and children with similar burdens in the space of a few days. Today I entered a slum in Accra that the residents themselves have labeled Sodom and Gomorrah. The women from this slum and thousands of others like it have developed ways of living – coping  -- with the harsh indignities of life, ways that preserve order amidst the chaos. The contrast confronts me. Clothes are folded and placed atop, her baby strapped to her back, her hands left free to navigate the neighborhood. Even the young women standing in medians to sell fish or brushes or packets of water move so adeptly. Never out of balance or in danger of losing their load, they are twisting and turning to navigate the traffic, handing product to drivers and making change – all with what looks like half the contents of a hardware store or corner market on their heads. Even as they sweat profusely in the unforgiving heat and equatorial humidity, their grace and quickness to smile are a reminder of the gentle imprint of dignity that Jesus has given to every live soul. Perhaps all young debutantes in the US should spend a stretch of time on a Ghanaian street.

Forgive me, it’s the context that makes me totter. I am out of balance as I try to navigate this place, the daily, relentless, unchanging realities that shorten and harden life for its residents. The pollution that hangs in the heavy air from charcoal smudge pots where the poor fry plantain to sell at roadside, or the piles of refuse that endlessly smolder, since the city only picks up two thirds of the garbage that it generates every day. The desperate pressure to find work. The churches and mosques that present a spiritual message that either pacifies the populace or confirms the status quo. Today we exposed students to six churches with varying levels of engagement of the city, some operating for more than 150 years. Entire slums have grown up around them. Some have tried to respond with compassion. Few have gone beyond that with more systemic ministries that address the root problems. The ones that have are as inspiring as they are unusual.

And so I am not doing such a good job of balancing the world on my head. I am tripping and careening down the corridors of my calling to seek the peace of the city. Oh that some of the grace of these women would rub off on me. Oh that I would learn to smile through my burden. Oh that my hands would be free to help others in the process and be raised to God in praise.

And so I say G'Day from Sodom and Gomorrah

 

What the world needs now

"The ruthless will vanish, the mockers will disappear, and all who have an eye for evil will be cut down." Isaiah 29:20

He pulls out a gun but up comes the sun

As he heads for the door he is out of C4

They lay in wait but get stuck at the gate

On their way to the bang love takes over the gang

He plans to hit her but is no longer bitter

She plans to steal but considers how she'll feel

We plot deceit but end in defeat

Mockers and mobs dissolve into blobs

Rage pours out red, but by noon he is dead

Hearts once ice cold, like flowers unfold

Of Icons and Saints

Standing in the Hagia Sophia (The Church of Divine Wisdom) in Istanbul (ancient Byzantium, renamed Constantinople) is an experience of both amazement and deep frustration. Built in the sixth century by Emperor Justinian it was a wonder of the world, a thousand years ahead of its time in design and construction. It flourished as a center of Orthodox worship until the overthrow of the city by the Ottoman Empire, which turned it into a mosque. The majority of its amazing mosaics were plastered over by the Islamic prohibition on images. Now a museum they have uncovered a few (like my favorite above) to inspire visitors.

To stand in front of these is to open a window to the theology of early Christians. Jesus is clad in blue (for his humanity) and gold (for his deity). He often holds his right hand in a pose that crosses the first two fingers to convey his two natures, and combines the final two fingers with his thumb to convey the idea of the trinity. The devotion of the early faithful to these images is seen in the loving detail, right down to the gentle color of the cheek and the mournful emotion of the eyes. While Orthodox Christians do not worship these icons, they have for fifteen hundred years used them in worship to be transported from the temporal to the eternal. 

I have been standing before these images in Turkish caves and Romanian churches now for weeks and I am realizing how dissatisfied I am with the casualness of my faith. The strength of evangelical tradition -- of what a friend we have in Jesus -- is also its weakness. It is a comfortable faith that is long on chattiness with the divine, and short on awe. Even if I cannot imagine adopting Orthodox practice or liturgy, I also cannot imagine a deepening of my faith if I continue to neglect the place of the imagination in worship or be so centered on the message and its social or ethical implications that I forget the real presence of God. I have found that great art can help in this process, as if providing a window through which we can glimpse the eternal.

In this (poor quality picture) of a Hagia Sophia mosaic, Emperor Constantine stands to the right of the Madonna and Child and offers to them what is most precious to him -- the city which he has created. On the left, Emperor Justinian stands and offers what is most precious to him -- the amazing church he constructed. The fact that both men were not the most admirable followers of Christ should not diminish an important lesson here. We should live our lives in such awe of God that we should direct the focus of our lives toward accomplishing something beautiful for the Kingdom, something worthy of the Eternal, and dedicate it to the author of beauty himself.

And some lived in Caves

"They went about in sheepskins ... destitute and persecuted and mistreated -- the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves and holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith ..." (Heb 11:37-39)

In Cappedocia (yes, the one mentioned in the Bible) early monks in the Orthodox tradition formed monastic communities, both men and women, to deepen their faith. These became educational as well as ascetic, and shaped the early life of the church. They literally carved homes and chapels and refectories from the very sandstone, frescoing the interiors in the symbols and stories of the gospel, turning the desert into a faithful city.

Into this environment Ray Bakke, Robert Calvert and I  took our class to examine the influence of the Cappedocian Fathers, St Basil and others who so shaped the faith and practice of the church as Christianity began to deal with the rise of Islam in the fourth through sixth centuries, a very contemporary issue again today.

Ephesus: They met on our behalf

What does it mean that more than four hundred bishops entered through this arch in the fifth century at what is known as the third ecumenical council? What does it mean that it is now the ruin, as is the rest of Ephesus where the remains of this church sit? Paul ministered in this city -- almost got killed here. He left Timothy in charge of a fledgling church that had to figure out what faithfulness to Christ meant in the context of pluralism. Later, those Bishops gathered from the known Christian world to hammer out some of the most basic doctrines of the church that we take as gospel. What does it mean that they marched through this arch? Though the buildings lie in ruins, the ideas continue to influence the very practice of our faith -- in ways most of us have no sense of. In other words, we stand on some ancient, Byzantine shoulders. Ideas have consequences. The extent to which I know anything at all about God is a gift from those that stood in this once vibrant church and deliberated on my behalf. They are the family I never knew, and now give thanks for.

The Library at Ephesus, once a wonder of the world. Now a fascade. Timothy had to frame his ministry in the shadow of the intellectual tradition it represented.

Did Paul and Timothy step on these very mosaic pieces? Their testimony endures and cries out, just as this pattern perseveres in the streets of the ancient city.

Commuting in Istanbul

The metro in Istanbul is close to Mexico City's, except it's above ground. You stand at the entrance of the train and PUSH to get in. Everybody exhales at once to make more room. This morning I bailed out. Just too crowded. That meant I payed 1.4 lira (about a dollar) to walk a mile or more to my destination -- the Kapa Carsi (Grand Bazar). Students arrive for the Istanbul portion of the course today and I knew I wouldn't have much of a chance to see the place. It is a vast, tangled, indoor bazar full of vendors and merchants, all of whom have a question for you. I paid far too much for the scarf and Ottoman design tapestry I bought, because I invariably start the bargain process with an offer too high. At least I gave them a good start to their day. I had limited time, but I stopped for a glass of orange juice squeezed in front of me. Shop keepers were setting up, and old men with white, Abraham Lincoln beards dressed in islamic hats and western suit coats pulled carts past my table, laden with goods. Their commute was more labored than mine. 

The ride back was easier. There was time and space to observe students on their way to Istanbul University, decked out in stylish, shiny head-coverings, sitting next to elderly women with more traditional, black chadoras, sitting next to business people in western dress. They all seemed comfortable with the differences -- secular muslim, conservative muslim, christian, young, old. 

The traffic out my window starts before 7am, and it is the honking, rumbling, yelling kind. The commute is an unhappy and impatient one. There is no AC where I am staying, so an open window is required, and I hear every engine, every brake in need of replacement, every police loudspeaker, every siren, and every horn.

Everyone is going somewhere. As they go, I want them to know that they are not anonymous. Jesus observes them more closely than I have, knows their name, and loves them. Here in the cradle of Orthodoxy, the birthplace of Christian worship, at one time the city (Byzantium) regarded as heaven on earth, I want them to meet their savior who commuted our way.

Peace in the Middle East, Please God.

In Amman: Someone Else's History?

I wish I knew my Biblical History better. I have read it any times -- references to the Ammonites, references to David's conquests in this ancient city, references to the Trans Jordan. But I just can't seem to remember it. Its because it is someone else's history, of course. Separated by time and culture I didn't live it. But now I am here in Amman, listening to a dear brother who is also the archbishop of the Armenian church in Iraq who has seen friends die and countless others leave, listening to a Palestinian Christian activist from the West Bank suffering the daily injustices of occupation and corruption, listening to a student worker from Beirut overcoming obstacle after obstacle for his love of students. And I find myself weeping at their lives, their courage, sometimes my country's complicity, and my disconnection from it all.

And because the hand has no right to say to the foot, "I have no need of you" I am listening with new ears. Their histories, their stories, have begun to merge with mine. Current history is being made on this Biblical earth and I cannot forget it.

Peace on the Middle East. Please, God.

Peace in the Middle East

Its a phrase my kids used to say when leaving the house. It was meant to be ironic, or cool, or random or something. Later they shortened it to "peace out." I never resonated with either. 

And now I am going there. I've been advised not to divulge publicly the countries in the Middle East to which I am headed. Better to not draw attention to the event there, endangering the Christian leaders I'll be with.  I will attend an event designed to help western Christians listen to Arab Christians who are struggling to maintain both their witness and frankly their literal presence in the shadow of Islam. Then from there I will fly to Turkey to help lead a Bakke class from Istanbul to Bucharest, looking at ancient Christian traditions that have survived through centuries of conquest, oppression and fragmentation to a place of quiet influence in the Arab world.

Listening to Eastern Christians? Studying ancient traditions? What does this have to do with Urban Ministry? Byzantium (Istanbul) was regarded as the New Jerusalem on earth and has shaped more of our historic and modern faith than most can imagine. The great Schism dividing the eastern and western churches began there. Monasticism began in its shadow, inspiring other forms that spread around the world. Literacy was saved by these movements during the dark ages, and our best spiritual writers come from these roots. The earliest urban ministers, Catholics like Dorothy Day and Protestants like Luther and Calvin, took their cue from the early Eastern saints that labored in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria, impacting not only individuals in need but also city systems.

Africans have a word that gets at why this trip is important. "Sankofa" -- it means looking backward in order to look ahead. What was learned in the womb of the ME through the first centuries of the church's history will certainly inform how kingdom people move ahead in the context of political Islam. It is naive to live without regard for the rest of the world, as if we were not interconnected in a thousand ways. We need to understand that crucial region. What is happening in the ME affects us here. If we are to avoid the cynicism of those who do not believe in a God powerful enough to bring peace, we need to go and taste, reflect on site, build relationships and make connections. And we need to convey hope to those who are there. They are not alone.

Please pray for the trip. 

Peace in the Middle East

Randy

Just Another Father's Pride

There's no way of saying this without sounding cheesy. Some things by their nature beg being tuned out or forgotten because of their commonness. If I say, I'm often amazed by my sons, that I cannot explain how they became the good men they are, that their choices and decisions reflect a degree of thoughtfulness and faith that is beyond me, well I'm just another father talking. 

But strangely, I who am used to addressing more esoteric subjects, feel the need to float this most basic of human emotions out in the universe somewhere. I was up at 3:30 this morning thinking of how proud I am of my sons. I see what they are giving their lives to -- that young people in Vancouver and Fresno would know the life-changing message of Jesus the Christ. They have both married women who are in every way beyond our highest dreams. They surround themselves with friends of quality who laugh and serve and provide this amazing extended family. And I am left with a sense of gratitude and the humility to know that, in spite of my fallenness, God has gifted them up to be who they are.

So I guess its not just a run-of-the-mill Father's pride that kept me up. Its amazement that I get to witness the fulfillment of all those prayers in the night a couple of decades ago when they were feeding or teething. Its amazement that someone with my particular set of sins and limitations gets to see the improvement of the species through grace alone. And its amazement and gratitude that they still care to hang out with me from time to time.

OK, maybe its just run-of-the-mill Father's pride.

In the Forest of Promise

It's raining now, and the forested  hill out my window is  gracefully shedding the deluge into eager rivulets that lead to the creek at the edge of Ray and Corean Bakke's home in northern Washington.  Winding through this land, Ray has crafted a 500 foot "Mission Trail," a soft, pine-needle carpeted pathway under a canopy of Douglas Fir, Red Cedar, and Hemlock. Markers every 100 feet or so celebrate the influence of missional Christians throughout the ages, folks like John of Damascus, St. Francis of Assisi, Benedict of Nursia,  Martin Luther, etc. Ray has produced a guidebook for the trail, helping the hiker to reflect on the way the world is different because those people followed the climb God had them on.  Occasionally there are signs posted that indicate when certain ones of God's people, Luther or John Knox or others 500 years or more previous, were ministering when the tree you are standing in front of had first started to grow. The trail ends in a circle of benches, a chapel in the woods, complete with a cedar pulpit and stone baptismal font.  Here, it's easy to reflect on the amazing legacy of costly leadership that we operate under today, almost like the great canopy of Hemlock and Cedar that dance above that chapel.

I have walked this trail a few times over the years.  It has never failed to raise my expectations of what a life committed to Christ could be.  I walked it again yesterday, when it wasn't raining. Golden sun filtered through spaces in the canopy and, fell on amber colored humus,  sharp shale and granite rock formations, and lacey spiderwebs sparkling across the path.   Ray has planted more than 3,000 saplings on his property in the last four years, and they have been welcomed into the fellowship of older trees.  As I  reflect on these trees, it occurs to me that someone 500 years from now might choose to extend this mission trail and post another sign, which will say, "when this tree began to grow, Ray Bakke taught a generation to love their cities and seek their transformation." 

I am often lost in thought on this trail, but never in danger of being lost in the forest, though the continuous tunnel of green beckons you around corner after corner. Occasionally there are living splashes of color that act as landmarks: a Huckleberry bush with its edible red berries,  a deep plum Japanese maple, or a holly-leafed, Oregon wild grape. One of these splashes jumped out to a startle me as I rounded a bend,  resulting in the following haiku:

Surprise hydrangea

Prankster flow'r of the forest

Blue marks my way home

Part of me wants to be one of those colorful splashes, a landmark.  But in my saner moments, I know that I really just want to be a sapling planted in the company of elders. As I transition to working closely with Ray's international ministry over these next few years, I know that my branches will take on their own shape. I know that I will reach to drink in the sun at the edge of his remarkable shadow. And I pray that I will grow to be a tree that takes its place in the forest of promise.

The Whites stumble into technology

We don't pretend to be good at this ...

Taking Down the Alphabet

Tina stood on a chair to reach for the alphabet that was strung across and around the top of the tiny tutoring room at the back of our house last night. I couldn't bear to watch the dismantling. But so much of language has been out of reach for the children who filled this place over the last 15 years, it seemed appropriate that taking it down should be hard for us as well. With our transitions to new positions, the Wise Old Owl reading and homework club is shifting to another location and we are clearing out the space. I poked my head in briefly to check her progress. Tina is nothing if not efficient. She had already boxed the books, stacked the attendance posters with names of kids we have grown to love -- Lupita, Bobby, Keeshawn, Victoria, Eternity and hundreds of others. The ancient, donated iMacs were being unplugged. The globe of the world sat leaning in the corner - A Swiftly Tilting Planet.

Not one to instantly recognize my emotions, I turned away -- had to get out of there. If my initial fear was that the faces of the kids who had picked out books in that room over the years would accuse me of abandoning them, I needn't have feared. They are always too gracious and appreciative of any effort on their behalf, and too accepting of what must seem like arbitrary changes to their options for that. What I am feeling is grief.

I ran the program at first, scouring the neighborhood on my moped for any available kid who wanted to come for an hour, read a book, do homework with a college student, play a game, sing a song, pray a prayer and get a snack. I met parents and siblings, got to know some of their stories. Many times I walked walk down a street in the neighborhood and children ran up to me, hugging my legs and yelling "Pastor Raaaaaaaaandy!" It became my primary way of understanding what was happening in Lowell, and a way to ensure that my white, middle class eyes could not avoid the realities of life there, and my whiter, middle class mind did not give in to the tidy explanations of middle class culture as to why the poor are poor.

After a few years we had staff take over the program, and as my work caused me to travel more I would miss weeks. But if I was in town I would make sure to come and play the song at the end, to lead a devotion for the college students who were there as tutors, to share a meal with some of them afterward. Tina would be cooking that meal as the program ended, and the kids would walk through the kitchen, interested in what she was making, and of course drooling over the smell of it. What I loved most was seeing kids matched with tutors, siting on benches together, engaged. Brilliant students from Japan, struggling with their English, helping bright students from the 'hood struggling with their English, and everybody winning in the process. We held cooking demonstrations by professional bakers, folded orogami, had an artist come to display watercolor technique, a physical therapist to talk about kinetic energy. With every special feature, my whole insides smiled.

Our ancient, grafted orange/grapefruit tree forms a canopy over the back yard, and each December as the program entered its last week of the term, the children jumped for the lowest fruit. They held them like prizes, would take a second one home for a Mom or a little brother. We would collect the rest and put it in gift bags to deliver to their families at Christmas. My whole insides smiled.

But lest we succumb to nostalgia, the program was also a major inconvenience, and contained pieces that could act like hidden coral in the shore of our week. The preparation and cleanup, the snack wrappers in the yard, the kids with attitude, the damage to property or the simple wear and tear; any of these things could leave our toes bleeding and sore, and won't be missed.

Yet I still grieve. I feel proud of these 15 years. Glad to have loved these kids with our modest effort. Sorry that we will miss what is next for them, though some of them still come by to check in with us. Perhaps I grieve the loss of that inside smile that hosting this outreach created.

We are making plans for the tutoring room, this old 10x10 sleeping porch wrapped around with seven windows. It has great light, has a bathroom, and is connected to our kitchen and back office. It will make a nice breakfast nook, or guest room, or a place to set up art projects -- stained glass or mosaic, or perhaps Tina's sewing machine. Like any change, it is filled with a combination of loss and possibility, of a death and a rebirth.

The alphabet cards are now in a jumble in a box, along with the books. Out of sequence, I can imagine them reassembling on their own in the half-light of their storage, but in a new order of their own making. My mind's eye says that they now spell out a sentence: "get us to the next room." A part of my heart has been boxed with them, and won't be free until they are.

Of Mirrors and Tears

We turned to go, to leave the cramped quarters of my parents’ downsizing, their unwanted relocation, for our long drive home. I knew I would steer the car without seeing the road as I reflected on their age, their fragility, the increasing ghostlike quality of their presence. The traumas and restrictions of aging are like a tightening noose to them, and their enjoyments are few. But just then the strains of a violin began on the television, and I said, “Is that something from Brigadoon?”

Without hesitation, my Father, who at 90 is finding it harder to express what he means these days, said with certainty, “No, Phantom of the Opera.” Then he pulled us back into the room and urged, “Let’s just listen to the end of this before you go.”

And so we stood there, we four, two couples in a line, watching a man do what so few of us can these days. With the one musical instrument most like the human voice he communicated fully, clearly with my Dad and Mom, through faulty or forgotten hearing aids, right past the latest medical tests, past the corridors of boredom or helplessness they live in. The message found them, like cups of cool water to their perfectly matched pair of parched and grey souls, an oasis found while crawling through the desert that precedes paradise.

As we listened it slowly dawned on me that we were standing in front of the mirror that had made the trip with them in their move. The added angle put me face to face with them, allowed me to witness the power of that melody as it pulled from their frozen faces something I didn’t recognize at first. It was astonishment and awe.

I felt my own breath leave. Was it the glimpse of them at 87 and 90, standing together in their respective infirmaries, together for more than 65 years? Was it the thought that this could be the last time I see this picture? Was it the absolute pathos of the music? Yes, all these things. But slowly, in that regal reflection, I came to know that it was the immensity of the gift that this image was to me that made we weep. That angle allowed me to see them not as my parents but as a man and wife, propping each other up, stiffly, painfully, for nothing but the reward of beauty. It was a too-late realization of how music, and anything true and beautiful, really, was like food to them, and especially if there was someone to turn to afterward and exclaim, “A perfect end to the day.” It was a too-late realization that it had always been that way for them, I had just not understood it in my childhood. It is that way in me as well, but never until this moment in front of the mirror, have I known why I feel it so deeply in my soul. Time is ruthlessly, lovingly, and as a gift to me, insisting that they reach their end with their truest selves on display.

My tears lasted for the first hour of our drive home, silently rolling from under my dark glasses to soak my collar. After a while, I turned to the radio for rest from the poignancy. But it was not to be. It was now my own turn to be astonished – for my own wet face, stiff with the attempt to conceal my tears – to be caught up in amazement by the program I had randomly selected. The strains of Phantom of the Opera had just begun, the melody instantly flooding the car with the images of my parents’ true selves, and peeling back the layers to reveal something of my own, my own equal need for the true and beautiful, and the similar journey I am now on.

The Giver of this gift, the one who spontaneously gathers an audience around a television concert, the one who arranges the right angle in front of the mirror, the one who beckons a driver to turn on the radio at just the right moment, this Giver wants to give only what matters most -- the gift of knowing who we are, the gift of knowing why we are the way we are, the gift of his beauty and truth, the gift of a journey.

The mirror makes their small place seem larger; I am glad we decided to hang it there. But today it expanded my soul as well as the room, and helped me glimpse a reflection of the Giver – the One who planted the soul’s taste for the truth, the One that grants regular feasts of it, the One who causes one traveler to say to another, “a perfect end to the day.”

red-tailed prophet

Rooster announces a not-yet reality
Red-tailed, Paul Revere prophet of an
Apparently urgent
Urban dawn.
Atop a rusting chassis in a
Cycloned yard
This concrete kingdom deserves advance notice
Of the merciless light
As much as any benign barnyard.
Patriot on his perch
He delights in the warning but
Cannot defend the night.
Let it come, Rooster.
Push the snooze and hug your hen
And I will do the same.
Perhaps the day is kind afterall.

***********************

There, Scott. I only blog these days when prodded.
Keep prodding.

Remember

I turn the page of a very good book, anxious to know the end of the thought which had so captivated me, and there, lining the margins, like a graded exam, are comments and underlines in my own hand, from a previous day when the same words had first moved me. I had savored them, chewed them even like a juicy tenderloin. But like almost everything I read they had passed through me -- slowly or quickly, who remembers? -- had not taken up residence in my incontinent mind. Having only been enjoyed but never been planted, these seeds of thought could never bear fruit. Now they slap me in the face. I have even re-read sections of books that I have written, and have forgotten that I had ever said such things.

I could worry that this is a foretaste of what my 87 year-old Mother experiences in the throws of her dementia. Unable to remember a conversation past the three minute mark, she experiences over and over the joy of our visit, every time I re-enter a room. But over and over she experiences the panic of my Father's absence, when he leaves to use the restroom.

The command to remember is pervasive in the scriptures. The Creator, ultimate realist that He is, seems to know that the daily beauty and burden of being alive requires an intentionality and focus that consumes us. The command to remember is a prescription for survival -- the lessons of the past meant to provide a more sure footing for the present, a reminder to give ourselves only to things that matter.

But I need more than a reminder. Like my Mother I find myself rediscovering God's goodness every day. While that is a joy, it is difficult to build on my experience, to add to yesterday's joy, to assemble cumulative total of God's goodness in my life. And like my Mother's panic, I must re-learn the falseness and hollowness of sin every hour.

I round a corner and my Mom lights up: "when did you get here?" I turn a page and there are my marks. The joy of first discovery, the frustration of having hiked in circles, of having tread the same ground.

My journal prods my memory. I can at least re-read the most significant lessons. But what I know I really need is a way of embedding these seeds before they pass through me. Beyond the act of underlining, beyond the act of writing them down. What if my mistake has been to treat knowledge as food -- something to be consumed? What if what I really need is to obey the thing I discover-- to turn the calories of truth into muscle, something that can be used, something that must be used to be kept? Every book I read, every passage of scripture I study, every moonlit meadow I see, every shaft of of afternoon light basking my living room with a rich amber glow. Maybe memory is like muscle -- use it or lose it.

The Arithmetic of Blessing

By Randy White on the Occasion of his Dad’s 90th Birthday

32,850 – The number of times you have opened your eyes
To see the room growing light,
Though not always the same room,
And closed them again at rest,
Though not always at peace.

32,850 – The number of days, I am quite sure, you found
Reason to smile,
Sometimes broadly,
Sometimes bravely,
Effortlessly one day,
As a discipline the next.

32,850 Cycles of hunger and filling,
The interruption of inspiration and the tedium of dullness,
Of love as an experience and love as a verb,
Of muscles taught and the bow unstrung,
Cycles of praying and waiting,
Of worry and unexpected wonder.

The Ancient Word says,
“Teach us to number our days and so gain a heart of wisdom”
We are to look ahead and know they are limited, and so use them well.
We are to look back to learn, and give thanks to an invisible hand.
Ninety revolutions around the sun clinging to this divine blue dot
Have taught you the truth of this, the
Unavoidable arithmetic of blessing.

God has been with you, Dad.
All 47,304,000 minutes of your 90 years,
Upholding, sustaining, training;
And now you stand, like those two wooden
Chinese scholars on your dresser,
Wise in the ancient knowledge of His goodness and grace,
Surrounded with love by those with fewer days and less experience Who still watch and learn.

Beaver Tail, O Beaver Tail

O Beaver Tail,
When in the market I look at you
My limbs go frail
My tongue turns blue
As if some beaver stout and hale
Had come and chewed my knees right through

rww c 2008

Christmas Eve Notables

1. Made sure that I borrowed a car from a friend large enough to handle every neighborhood kid coming with us to Christmas Eve service and then back to our house for soup, presents and fusbol tonight. Leaving one at the curb will simply not do.

2. Called another friend to arrange delivery of his used furniture to a woman in the neighborhood who has nothing for her grandchildren to sleep on. She's available at 3pm today. (What a great gift this will be!)

3. Answered a phone call from out of the blue from a man who was drunk, who somehow got my number. Prayed with him on the phone and got him information on assistance with alcoholism.

4. Watched Tina peel potatoes. It is strangely comforting.

5. Finished varnishing a picture frame I made from an old redwood fencepost pulled from a neighbor's yard to go around a new stained glass piece I made for a loved one.

6. Heard from another friend who wants us to come over later after the neighborhood kids go home.

And it's not even noon! Thank you, God, for your presence in this day. We give you the rest of it, and will watch for you to appear in unexpected ways.