Sue & Albert

When I met Sue (name changed for privacy) at the temporary winter shelter (hosted at another church down the street from ours) where I’ve been volunteering with some local church members over the past few weeks, I didn’t realize she was homeless. In fact, I think I even gave her a dirty look when she said something a little off color, assuming she was a volunteer from another local church. Realizing what I’d done (and that I should be kind to all people), I felt somewhat obliged to get to know Sue after that little mishap. I was worried that maybe she remembered my dirty look, but when I sat down with her to have dinner at the shelter a few nights later it seemed that she didn’t.

Over dinner we talked about how Sue used to be a teacher, about the possible careers she’d been thinking about pursuing now, how long she’d been at the shelter (a few weeks) and how it’s hard to focus when you’re not getting proper nutrition. It was such a friendly conversation that I found myself again forgetting that Sue was homeless and feeling more like I was having a coffee date with my middle-aged mentor who often forgot to take her reading glasses off when sipping her Java. And when we were finished, Sue stood up, made an offhand comment about farting and I could see then that her button up shirt was sloppily tucked into some sweat pants which were covered up to the mid-calf with white socks and paired with some flat dress shoes. I remembered again that Sue was homeless.

As I sat in my bathtub a few nights later (a place where I often ruminate) Sue came into my mind. The temporary shelter would be closing soon and as far as I knew Sue would have to go back to the streets.  And I was suddenly quite worried, “Where would Sue sleep?” I asked myself. “It won’t be safe for a middle-aged woman like that to be out on the street at night, someone could do something bad to her.” I’m not sure exactly why I hadn’t considered these problems before. I guess I figured that Sue had survived on the street before and she’d be able to do it again, but that was before I knew her. I was trying to explain this bathtub epiphany to a friend of mine, Adam, as we trotted along Spring Street downtown after a poetry reading. I pieced together fragments of how I was feeling until finally, I said, “Well, Adam, if you came to me and said, ‘I literally have no where to go, I’m getting kicked out of my apartment and I’m going to be sleeping outside now’ I’d have a serious problem on my hands.” And the fact of the matter is that I’d have that same serious problem if any of my friends told me they’d be sleeping on the streets. I’d tell them it’s not safe, I’d look for a place for them to stay, if worse came to worse, I’d put them on the floor of my studio apartment. So why had I managed to overlook the dangers Sue was facing until just now?

I think some of it has to do with this lie lurking in the back of my brain. It’s the rationale I used to separate myself from others like Sue and it goes something like this: Sue made mistakes and decisions that lead to her being on the streets (and in some sense, she is where she deserves to be). She’ll have to deal with the consequences of those mistakes and fix them when she’s ready. I would say there’s about 10% truth in that and 90% cultural lie. Did Sue make some bad choices? It’s likely, but does she deserve to be where she is? I doubt it. I had (yet another) epiphany about this situation. There’s a very thin line between Sue’s situation and mine – thinner than I previously thought. And I realize I may be oversimplifying a bit, but here’s how my brain’s been working this out based on my limited experiential evidence thus far.

I have another homeless friend, and for now we’ll call him Albert. I had a chance to hear more of Albert’s story this past week when we ate lunch together. Albert was adopted as a baby and moved from Southern California to Minnesota. His adoptive parents locked him in closets, starved him and abused him to the extent that his adopted mother’s sister demanded that she take Albert into her own family. Albert’s new parents (the sister and her husband) already had several children who worked with them on their family farm, but Albert had some health issues that kept him from being able to do that kind of work. One day when Albert was ten years old he got a shoelace caught in a vacuum cleaner when he was doing family chores and was punished for his mistake on two occasions. Like many free spirited children, Albert decided to run away. When the police took him back to his parents, they sent him away to a troubled youth program. From that time on Albert was shuffled around in the foster system and sent to several other youth programs and in the process got involved in some activities that led him down a dark road. He told me he was born in 1966, so he’s been stuck in a cycle of addiction and poverty for quite some time now. Albert loves to read, he’s very smart and has the wit of an academic. He was envious that my husband and I both have college degrees. He believed that with a few more opportunities he may have be sitting behind a desk at a university somewhere rather than bumming on Sunset Boulevard, where he said it was likely that he might end up dead.

I think Albert did make some mistakes, but I don’t think that he made any more serious than I did, at least not in the beginning. I tried to run away from home as a child, it didn’t land me in a center for troubled youth or in the foster care system when I was ten. I’ve been involved in activities I shouldn’t have been and I’ve been broke, but when these things happen, I call my mom or my sister or my grandma or my friends who have good jobs. I’m also lucky because I don’t have an addictive disease. And if I did I used the health insurance I’ve had my whole life to get help and people who love me would be there to walk me through treatment. I have safety net after safety net. So, after talking to Albert, I’m thinking that, yes, we are all responsible for our own actions, but we certainly don’t all deserve to be where we are – I know I don’t.

I don’t yet know what all this means. And in some ways I’d rather stop hanging out with people who are causing me to question why things are the way they are and, more importantly, why I’m okay with it. 

Ash Wednesday and True Fasting

This morning I attended a small Ash Wednesday service with my friends and my husband David at my church in Hollywood. Fasting is a common practice during lent and we read Isaiah 58 together—a reminder of what true fasting looks like. Even beyond fasting (because I honestly don’t do that much of it myself though I find it to be a useful spiritual discipline) I think I could lump many of my own more common “spiritual” practices in with the practice of fasting--things like going to church, singing praise songs, reading my bible. The list goes on.

Today I felt right at home in the Isaiah passage, though sadly I was not playing the part of the characters I’d hoped. I was a confused Israelite. Here’s what I read:

Isaiah 58

Shout out, do not hold back!
  Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
 Announce to my people their rebellion,
 to the house of Jacob their sins.

(God’s trying to get the Israelites attention here. And in case you didn’t catch it, he’s not pleased.)

Yet day after day they seek me
 and delight to know my ways, 
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
 and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
 they ask of me righteous judgments,
 they delight to draw near to God. ‘Why do we fast, but you do not see?
 Why [do we] humble ourselves, but you do not notice?’

And right there in those first lines of verse two I saw myself and my own American Christian culture – we, day after day, seek God and delight to know his ways, as if were a nation, a culture, a church that practiced righteousness and did not forsake God’s ordinances. We take delight in (as the King James puts it) approaching God. But God’s not paying attention, and we’re all confused when we’ve just spent our long weekend at a worship conference singing about how much we love Jesus.

Okay God, what ordinances then have I ignored because I’m trying to be nice to people, I’m not stealing or lying or cheating and I’m reading my Bible and going on mission trips—what am I doing wrong? Here’s the next thing I read:

Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. 
Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. 
You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high. Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, 
only a day for people to humble themselves? 
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed 
 and for lying in sackcloth and ashes? 
Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?

So the first thing that comes up is collective exploitation of workers. What I'm hearing from this passage is that people are fasting, lifting their hand high in the worship service (use whatever imagery you like) while simultaneously allowing or contributing to worker exploitation in their community which is something that is causing fights and strife. This is still sounding all too familiar for my liking.

Alright God, what then would true fast look like? What kind of fast would you choose to pay attention to?

Is not this the fast that I choose:
 to loose the bonds of injustice,
 to undo the thongs of the yoke,
 to let the oppressed go free,
 and to break every yoke? 
 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
 and bring the homeless poor into your house;
 when you see the naked, to cover them,
 and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

After reading this I find myself in deep sadness because I know what I’ve been doing is not enough. I cannot any longer sit in a church service or go to a Bible study or sing a praise song if it doesn’t lead me to share my wealth and food, free the oppressed, bring strangers into my own house and stop worker exploitation. In fact, based on this passage, I think God would prefer I spend most of my time doing those latter things rather than the former.

Today during the Ash Wednesday service my pastor Ryan came around to each one of us before he imposed the ashes and said, “Reconsider your whole life. Follow the gospel.” God tells Israel in Isaiah 58 that when they follow him in the way he requires that he will heal them, answer them and be near them and they will be transformed—they will be called, “the repairer of the breach,
 the restorer of streets to live in.” As you set out on your journey to fast in God’s way, these are your promises from Isaiah 58:

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
 and your healing shall spring up quickly;
 your vindicator shall go before you,
 the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard. 
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
 you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

If you remove the yoke from among you,
 the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry
 and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, 
then your light shall rise in the darkness
 and your gloom be like the noonday. 
The Lord will guide you continually,
 and satisfy your needs in parched places,
  and make your bones strong ;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
 like a spring of water,
 whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
 you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; 
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
 the restorer of streets to live in.

*This post is dedicated to Rachel Stricklin who, at a wedding of a dear friend this past winter, expressed unexpected interest and confidence in my blogging abilities.