Joy to be had

I’m sitting outside on the upper porch of Wynkoop’s now and watching an incredible sunset.  Well, I suppose the sun is gone now, but I’m surrounded by purple sky and a breeze of the perfect temperature is making my skin feel the beauty too.  And at a time such as this—with no purchased entertainment or blessed life circumstance other than having eyes to see and skin to feel, I am experiencing this “alive” concept that I think we’re all searching for.  You can’t plan these things.  I’ve never put “Sunset at 8 p.m.” on my calendar.  And yet I believe that there is joy to be had everywhere.

This morning I sat with a woman at the prayer table in the front of our Gathering who was crying.  She cried because she wanted out.  Out of the shelter she has been staying at, out of the drugs, out of the danger.  She just wanted a good environment to be in.  Maybe she wanted access to the porch I’m sitting on right now.  This same woman sat with me at the Salvation Army three months ago and expressed to me her desire to be in ministry.  God was calling her, she said.  As she cried with me this morning, as much as I understood the desire to flee from all the negativity, I couldn’t help but believe that for her, there was still joy to be had.  That she had been given a huge territory at the shelter to spread the light of God.  I may have a full-time job in “women’s recovery ministry,” but she, as a recovering addict in a temporary shelter, was truly the one in women’s ministry today.  She was the one given countless opportunities daily to radiate the warmth of hope into the lives of hope-less women.  No matter what circumstance we are in, we must cling to the fact that God has not forgotten us, and that there is joy to be had in our circumstance.  If we desire love and acceptance, we must love and accept.  To get our needs met, we must meet the needs of others.  There is love to be had, and to gain it ourselves we must, even in our internal poverty, step out in love toward another.  In this, we do not create love from within ourselves, but we begin to understand what love truly is and realize how we have been loved by Him, our Source, all along.

The product was sheer Portland Christian goodness, and it was the exact manifestation of any dream I could have ever had for this group.

I thought it was over.  I really did.  A few months ago, I’d send out 50 messages and get at least 5 or 6 really positive and interested replies to my invitation to a low-key faith discussion group that meets at Starbucks, connects people together, and removes judgment from discussion about Christianity.  Now I send out 50 messages and receive one reply: “I’m not interested.”  What?  It’s the same message.  These are the same Portlanders.  What’s different?  Are you cutting this off, God?  Did it serve its purpose?  That answer would have been alright with me.  “I’m always up for new things, I guess this one is over.”  I showed up with Danielle at the 23rd and Hoyt Starbucks with more than a little disdain in my heart about being there.  I spent $4 or something ridiculous in gas to get here, and I’m just going to sit here with Danielle, Dan, and Rick.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s still enjoyable, but I had a little too much homework to be just hanging out with a couple friends all the way on the west side.  But you can’t exactly cancel something that you sent a hundred messages to people about, especially knowing that some of your now regular members showed up without ever letting you know they were planning on it.

Needing just a moment alone in those ten minutes before we were scheduled to start, I retreated to the bathroom, locked the door and turned the fan on.  Dropping down on the toilet I threw out a quick but sincere cry to God, and realized more than ever before that my prayer about this discussion group had dropped significantly, and was verging on non-existence.  It felt like a violent rewind to our first meeting–back when I was completely unsure of what was going to happen and was forced to throw up my arms and say, “I dunno God, this is really weird, and I don’t know what you’re going to do, so just please do it, and I’m going to try to not get my stupid pride and grandiose ideas in the way!”  After my obligatory three or four tears were shed in frustration, I went back out to our little corner, plopped down in the comfy chair, and decided to at least enjoy my tea and company.

 Danielle sometimes gets in these interesting and friendly moods–which are great, but also very funny.  There was this cute little forty-something African American guy sitting across from us with a bunch of papers in front of him.  He had little dreadlocks, a cloudy spot in one eye, and was missing half of one of his front teeth.  Danielle started to ask him basic questions about how he was doing, and he’d reply with short answers, looking only minimally interested.  She persisted, until finally he seemed to surrender and revealed that he was a ceramics professor for a couple universities back east, an artist, and was directing recreation at a camp for Jewish kids.  As he opened up the brochures for his summer camp, we all became interested and gathered around to see what it was all about.  We eventually sat back down and talked about a whole lot of nothing for a few minutes, and then he spouted out from the corner, “Hey, what do you guys think of the election?”  We all stammered a little bit, throwing out half-hearted opinions at first.  I wish I could remember the context of how fast the dialogue occurred, but suddenly we were all huddled around Stan, talking about how crucial it was for us to care about the fact that the president matters, that the economy is going to head into recession, and everyone in society is wasting their lives in front of some kind of electronic screen.  A new guy named Yuri showed up, who lived in the Ukraine until he was nine, and the conversation turned to Communism and what the government and society is still like in that country, which was absolutely fascinating.

 In the next hour or so, we talked about church and state, Jesus, the Bible, two-party politics, the direction of society, the end of the world, social change and revolution, economic recession, Communism, globalism, education, the last few decades of American history, and a myriad of other things that all overlapped and were brought up at rapid fire.  We represented so many different points of view between Stan, Dan Creamer, Danielle, Yuri, Doug (Danielle’s dad) and I, that it was ridiculous how dynamic the conversation was.  We were all on the same team as Christ followers, but fell just about every different place politically, socially, and the way we manifest our faiths in our daily lives.  The product was sheer Portland Christian goodness, and it was the exact manifestation of every dream I could have ever had for this group.  As a whole, we had the ex-cult guy, the homeschooler, the girl who has lived in two totally different worlds and now embraces conservatism, the black college professor who likes Jesus and the Bible but doesn’t want to be a Christian, the Ukrainian pastor’s kid, the church kid turned Christian radical liberal, the Jesus-skeptic hippie and…me, whatever that is.  I guess I’ll take the synthesizer role.

At the end of the day, I love being able to tell Stan that we ARE revolutionaries.  I love to tell him that there is SOMEBODY stepping up and doing something.  Yes, people are disconnecting, gluing themselves to their cell phones, iPods and laptops.  Yes, our young people don’t care about politics and are ready to be absorbed into consumerism the way their parents were, refusing to take ownership for the direction of their society.  But Stan, we’re not those kids.  We’re fighting.  We’re fighting for authentic community, authentic faith, and authentic life.  We care about politics and society, and we encourage others to do the same.  We get people talking.  We get people moving.  We live in a community of leaders being trained to go out into the world and serve completely different functions for the same grand purpose.  We care about…stuff!  And we care about him.  And I hope if the economy does hit a major recession, and half of us are begging on the streets, that I’m able to share a meal with him someday on the sidewalk, and give him the last of whatever I have.  I hope he’ll let my poor soul into his house.

I hope he’ll let me sing for him another time…

 I treasure the smell that permeates my clothes right now.  After nervously trying to navigate through “unsafe” people to get to the door as walked into the Portland Rescue Mission tonight, my nose was confronted with the memory of the last time I entered that door—the smell of smoke, alcohol, and unwashed bodies was so strong.  But in the name of God, Amanda, it’s just air.   

After being introduced to the man running the kitchen that night (his name was J.D., he used to run a pizza place…people’s lives are so interesting), I put on an apron and joined the serving line, trying so hard not to slop this strange moose, venison, and elk stew onto a pile of rice.  Seeing so many people in a row in such stark contrast to one another never seems to become commonplace to me, no matter how many times I go to the mission.  Some hands are shaking as they receive their heavy tray, some eyes are darting around and avoiding contact with yours, some are swearing and complaining to the invisible person next to them…and then some greet you with the warmest smile you’ve ever seen, thanking you and asking you how you are that night.  Being asked how you are is never more meaningful than in that moment.   

You look out into the room and realize that every person there, just the same as you, gets one life.  And as I run through the decisions I get to make on a daily basis about what soap I’m going to use or if I could really marry someone who doesn’t recycle (or insert ridiculous human preference here), it begins to occur to me, once again (if ever I get to the day when I won’t forget these things…), that I hold my life in pretty high regard.  When I begin to evaluate those things I deem important (but what if I never get to ____, I can’t die without being able to do ___) in my life, it became interesting that the people in the room wonder the same kinds of questions.  They’re just more like, “I wonder if I’ll ever have an address again?”  Or maybe their life has been so taken over by drugs that their brain may never be the same again, and they have already surrendered their “right” to have vision or goals.  Their life is already gone.  Their existence will likely never represent the joy, or even pain, of coming home to a family at the end of the day.  It may be spending every dinnertime at the mission, steering their way through the “crazy” people and hoping to God they’ll get a bed at the lottery.   It becomes the simple things—not whether I plant a dozen churches or author world-renowned books. 

Life becomes about a sweet man named Bill, who colors his hair bright red with Clairol, though he covers it with a hat because it’s unwashed, to remind him of the days before the gray set in that he was a stunning redhead.  He says he can’t see the words to the songs, so he’ll just listen to my voice instead.  He is just a piece of my life, a snapshot, some night I spent in my 20’s at a rescue mission, but this is his life.  I’m home now, I smell like homeless men, and I have a marionberry pie stain on an expensive sweatshirt.  And it’s a good day. 

I miss Bill, I hope he’ll let me sing for him another time.

I often forget how much I treasure…

being in dialogue like this.  And no better place to engage in intentional conversation.  I’ll archive some old stuff pretty soon, and hopefully keep this fairly updated.  It’s a barometer for the passion flowing through my veins, I’d say.  If I don’t have anything to write, I’m either not “Living a life worthy of the calling I have received” (thank you sir apostle Paul), or not contemplating that life enough.  Now if I can get over being so bold as to say that…let’s go.

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