We release our past to the past,
we release our future to the future,
we accept our present.
We give up our cares and fears.
We abandon our illusions of control.
We acknowledge our complete dependence on providence.
We relinquish our apprehension.
We rely on that which we do not understand.
We have faith.
We have courage.
…the courage to give ourselves hope.
last night, i went to see Saw IV with my new friends: Dawn and John Murphy, who are living rent-free with someone they met at a church called ‘Scum of the Earth’, and John Cline, who’s been living at Samaritan House, a local men’s shelter, for…well, a long time.
we bought soda at the 7-11 and split the cost of a fifth of vodka to spike it with. then we went to the movie. after the movie we got dinner at taco bell and then stood on the street shooting the shit for another half hour or so.
i saw Dawn pull a sweatshirt out of her backpack and give it to a street kid she knows. i saw john murphy pull a fistful of change out of his pocket and thown it in an old man’s backpack while he was sleeping on a bench. john c. and i had a long conversation about how unhappy everyone who was passing us looked and then exchanged phone numbers so we can go bowling sometime.
some people might argue that drinking with homeless people is well…not a good thing.
but they’re not alcoholics.
they’re not panhandlers.
they’re people.
people trying to get by. trying to earn a living.
struggling with where their next meal is going to come from more than with how they’re going to pay off their college loans or fund their next carribean cruise.
struggling with the loneliness of living with 70 other men and the incongruous nature of living with an upper-middle class family while at the same time not being able to afford to eat at subway.
people who give out of nothing while i spend my days trying to convince the Church – the Church founded on the love of Jesus Christ – to give out of their abundance.
and they allow me to be their friend.
what an honor.
what a privilege.
i never thought going to see a Saw movie would help me encounter Christ in my midst.
We go on pilgrimage so we can go back home and know that we never need to go on pilgrimage again. Pilgrimage has achieved its purpose when we can see God in our everyday and ordinary lives.
- Richard Rohr
Here’s the thing about Denver: sometimes it seems so…familiar.
Like today, I was driving home from a CROP Walk in Littleton, past cute little houses near Washington Park, and way the curved over the street with their bright yellow leaves and the snow still caught in places where the branches met – the air was crisp and the sun was shining – and it just felt – familiar.
It would be too easy to say it felt like home. But it feels like a place I know, like a place I’ve been and want to be again. And just for a moment – just for a moment I feel like I am myself again, living in a place that I feel a bit of ownership of and pride in.
Other parts of Denver are not familiar. As soon as I leave Washington Park and enter Capitol Hill, it feels like Denver again. Which isn’t bad…it’s just Denver. It’s new and a little uncomfortable in unexpected ways – I don’t know what the neighborhoods are like around the corner, and I’m aware of that – the people are Western people – they talk about hiking 14,000 foot mountains and mountain biking and backwoods camping – and don’t want to go anywhere that there’s ‘tourists’.
But I am a tourist, more or less, especially when I leave the places I know and serve. The mountains still awe me, I seek out places like Garden of the Gods and old mining towns full of antique shops. I want my car to be near me when I go camping, I’m afraid of being in the mountains when its snowing, I don’t really know what people are talking about when they mention different ski resorts or mountain passes, I don’t care one way or the other about the Rockies. I actively miss bodies of water.
So, I was reflecting on all of this as I was walking to the Cathedral for a new church service I wanted to try out. And then we read the Lesson for the week.
“When the man saw that he couldn’t get the best of Jacob as they wrestled, he deliberately threw Jacob’s hip out of joint. The man said, ‘Let me go; it’s daybreak.’ Jacob said ‘I’m not letting you go until you bless me.’” (Genesis 32)
I’m not letting you go until you bless me.
I am in Denver not to make it be my home, but to engage in a wrestling match with something here and with something in me. And I cannot let it go. I cannot give it up or loosen my hold. I must engage…Engage in this community and this place and these people – until they bless me.
Even if this place deliberately throws my hip out of joint, I must continue to fight.
The fight in itself is a blessing, because it helps me to know my own strength.
And so it is not familiarity I am seeking. It is not home I am seeking, because I am coming to know that home is elsewhere. What I am seeking is the struggle, the fight…and eventually, the blessing.
My mom came to visit and I finally made it to the mountains! It was beautiful. And we found out when we got home that we missed 8-10 inches of snow by about 20 minutes.
