Imitatio Dei

We must recognize that the majority of Jesus’ life – and of ours – is found in our families and our homes, in our work and play, among our neighbors and in our everyday surroundings. The tangible world is the place we most fully express the meaning of incarnational living. This is where we experience the outflow of love, joy, peace, and all the fruit of the Spirit. Here an nowhere else.

[...] This way of sacramental living calls to us. It calls us to make all our waking and sleeping, all our working and playing, all our living and loving flow out from the divine wellspring. It can; Jesus points the way.”

 -Richard Foster

never say never

We can never stop, safe in the knowledge that our calling has been discovered, even for the time being. God prods us onward, through situation and circumstance, a nearly untraceable chain of events, a series of perfect timings, toward greater understanding, greater responsibility, greater incarnation of the Spirit that was in Christ Jesus, who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but, with the Spirit’s propulsion, proclaimed good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, release to the captives – practical, tangible, real salvation.

Will you love the you you hide if I but call your name?
Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?
Will you use the faith you’ve found to reshape the world around,
through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?

The details of this day will have to be shared later, but for now, suffice it to say…never ask a question before you are prepared to hear the answer.

Seeking Solidarity

Jesus says “The poor will always be among you.” So where are they?

Today I walked home from work with a bag of food. This is part of how I am paid – a monthly food bag. But I still have to follow all of the procedures and policies – after work, I go down to the program director’s office, he enters my information into the electronic database (as mandated by the federal government,) and then I can go downstairs and get a food bag – full of government commodities.

For a moment, I feel solidarity with the people I am serving. The bag is a normal grocery bag, but it feels ridiculously conspicuous as I carry it down the street – obviously not on the way home from any grocery store it would be reasonable to walk to. The bag digs into my hip, it is full of cans, heavy, and awkward to carry. I worry that it will break and the white-labeled USDA subsidized chicken, pears, and spaghetti noodles will fall into the street.

I get home and unpack the bag. It’s full of carbohydrates, starch, salt: spaghetti, macaroni, rice, pinto beans, peanut butter, Rice Crispies, canned green beans. I realize I have no idea how to cook dry beans. I open the chicken and it’s literally a whole chicken stuffed inside a can – white meat and dark meat mixed together. I repackage it in a Tupperware to deal with later and make myself an avocado and cheese quesadilla for dinner – the last of my produce until payday.

And yet, this solidarity passes. I put the food in the cabinet and sit down with my less-than-a-year-old Macbook to check my email and communicate with friends around the world. I pick up my cell phone and call my mom. I turn on the TV and flip through the channels until I find the season premiere of Heroes. I’m cold, so I turn the heat up.

All too soon, I forget the feeling of all eyes watching me as I walked down the street with my bag of food. I realize that, even if I never figure out how to cook pinto beans, I won’t go hungry. I will get paid enough to cover my rent and utilities for the month, and if I don’t, there are at least a dozen people I can call to make sure it gets taken care of – and I don’t have to meet any stringent government qualifications to get help.

As I consider all this, I remember that I have friends in Jerusalem, Hong Kong, South Africa, who are facing machine guns, AIDS, poverty on a scale that would shock the men living on my street corner, fighting culture shock I can hardly imagine. And I wonder, where is my struggle? What difficulty am I experiencing. Here, with no language barrier, living in the neighborhood of the addicts, the homeless, the economic struggle – how can I still be sitting in my ivory tower, seeing, occasionally touching, but never truly in communication with the people all around me who are struggling.

Am I engaging my community in the best way I can? Am I experiencing the struggle? Am I in a place dangerous enough to inspire growth and renewal in my own life?

The poor will always be among us. But how do we be among them?

Those who, in the Biblical phrase, would save their lives – that is, those who want to get along, who don’t want commitments, who don’t want to get into problems, who want to stay outside of a situation that demands the involvement of all of us – they will lose their lives.

What a terrible thing, to have lived quite comfortably, with no suffering, not getting involved in problems, quite tranquil, quite settled, with good connections politically, economically, socially, lacking nothing, having everything.

To what good?

They will lose their lives.

“But those, who for love of me, uproot themselves and accompany the people and go with the poor in their suffering and become incarnated and feel as their own the pain, the abuse – they will secure their lives, because my Father will reward them.”

Brothers and sisters, God’s word calls us to this today. Let me tell you with all the conviction I can muster, it is worthwhile to be a Christian.

-Oscar Romero

on the road to find out…

well i left my happy home to see what i could find out;
i left my folk and friends with the aim to clear my mind out.
well i hit the rowdy road, and many kinds i met there,
many stories told me of the way to get there.
and so on and on i go, the seconds tick the time out;
i’ve so much left to know, and i’m on the road to find out.

in the end i’ll know, but on the way i wonder -
through descending snow, and through the frost and thunder.
and i listen to the wind come howl, telling me i have to hurry;
i listen to the robin’s song, telling me not to worry.
and so on and on i go, the seconds tick the time out;
i’ve so much left to know, and i’m on the road to find out.

then i find myself alone, hoping someone will miss me;
i’m thinking about my home, and the last woman to kiss me.
but sometimes you have to moan, or nothing seems to suit you;
but nevertheless you know, you’re locked toward the future.
and so on and on you go, the seconds tick the time out;
i’ve so much left to know, and i’m on the road to find out.

and i found my head one day when i wasn’t even trying;
and here i have to stay, ’cause there’s no good in lying.
yes, the answer lies within, so why not take a look now?
kick out the devil’s sin, pick up a good book now…

Maybe we shouldn’t be allowed to live alone…

Once upon a time, a girl named Katie decided it would be a good idea to wash all of the dishes that had collected in the sink over the past week. So, like a good apartment-renter, she loaded them into the dishwasher, filled the proper holes with dishwasher detergent, started it running, and sat down to read a book at eat her lunch.

About 10 minutes later, her roommate Beth walked in. She looked into the kitchen and said “um…” Katie looked over. There were soap suds crawling towards her from the dishwasher! Katie said to Beth, “Um…we need a camera.” Beth said to Katie, “Um…I’m going to call my mom.”

For the next 15 minutes or so, Katie and Beth sop up the mess with towels, scoop water and soap suds out of the dishwasher with their bare hands, a cereal bowl, and a few more towels, and then they run the dishwasher again.

Problem solved.

But it sure was exciting there for a while…