Periphery

We go on in normal conversation,
Weather, wars, and weariness.
Work wears unwanted tracks into deep grooves.

We are restless, but fearful of unrest
And change, that hated irony of constant
Coming whether we chase or stay.

Sun aches across the same spaces and still
We talk, in silence or voices or hands,
And grow older. Always, longing

For that periphery, always aiming
And missing. Will it ever exist
In the center, able to be spoken?

Sometimes we catch another's silhouette
and say, "I have seen that before. What is it?"
And briefly, our visions become possible proof:

Maybe we are not being played the fool.
Perhaps we are cast as prophet and
May speak something unbelievably true.

Perhaps, and yet that bright light
Periphery keeps its place and distance.
When, O Lord, when?

Moses hid in the rock and glimpsed
Your backside glory and shone. We see
The same half-realized perfection,

More than hope, but barely so,
Being born, we hope, not just to death,
Like everything we know, including ourselves.

O Lord, come quickly. When?
We chase your glimpses,
Children after fireflies.

Off. On. Off. On
In hand, miniscule miracles in the dark,
Treasured in glass canning jars.

Five Fingers and Theories

I just finished reading this month's National Geographic magazine, my favorite piece of mail every month. This edition happened to include a short and interesting article about the commonality between mammalian hand structures, along with some beautiful illustrations and x-rays of the limbs of several species.

In the very first column the author cites a book by a Sir Charles Bell, a Scottish surgeon who argued that the complicated beauty, the artistic functionality, and the very delicate capabilities of the human hand prove the existence of the Christian God, or at least an intelligent creator. The article swiftly moves on to state that this argument was debunked by Darwin's observation that mammals have common hand structures: five fingers, flexible groupings of small wrist bones, and longer bones forming the main structure of the appendage.

I hadn't thought about the evolution v. creation debate for a while, since my graduation from college (and my chosen literary interests) keep me from much involvement with scientific discussion. Reading this article, however, reminded me again of the, frankly, comically ridiculous arguments put forward by both sides of the discussion.

As probably everyone reading this post knows, I am a firm believer in the existence of the God of the Bible. I believe that He created the world and all its creatures, including humans, my ancient ancestors. I believe He made everything good and right, but that a human choice (a function of our good and right freedom) brought sin, or to use a less religious term, all things bad, evil, negative, etc. into the world.

As a reasonable and intelligent human being (made in God's image to be so), however, I am also a firm believer in scientific process. I believe that facts and truths exist that can be proven through observation, hypothesizing, and experimentation. I believe in observing and classifying different species, hypothesizing about their commonalities with one another. I believe in paying attention to the obvious and curious evidence collected concerning the similarities between mammalian limb structures. I also believe in the necessary process of creating theories for these similarities.

In the evolution v. creation debate, it often seems that these two beliefs must necessarily be incompatible, oil and water, completely resistant to one another. When the two sides have finished throwing the same evidence at each other to support their different ends, their arguments usually boil down to these fundamental beliefs: evolutionists think that creationists are idiots who won't look at the facts, and creationists think that the facts have been tainted by anti-God evolutionists and therefore aren't worth looking at. One dismisses the other based on assumptions concerning their unintellectualism, and the other refuses to examine any scientific evidence, citing its primary sources (I think primarily out of a fear that they might be proven wrong).

And yet here I stand in the middle somewhere, a seeming impossibility.

Using the NatGeo article on the mammalian hand that I mentioned previously, I want to make an observation that demonstrates why I don't think this has to be an impossibility. Both Sir Bell and the article's author look at the same evidence: the beautiful complexity of the hand. The author of the article hints that if Bell had examined Darwin's findings concerning the similarities in mammalian hands, he could not have made his argument, that the human hand reveals an intelligent designer. But I argue that this is a misstep in the author's reasoning.

Looking at the beautifully detailed images included with the article, I am awestruck by the same amazing complexities as Bell, not just in the human hand, but also in the foot of the elephant, the fin of a dolphin, the wing of a bat. In all of them, I see the signature of a master artist, the sculptor's fingerprints on his sculptures. I see an intelligent creator.

The NatGeo author, however, sees only support for evolution: if the appendage structures are similar, it must mean that all mammals descended from a common genetic ancestor, which he cites as some sort of lungfish with limbs strong enough to emerge from an ancient lake and begin life on land.

Again: same evidence, differing conclusions. Or not so different as they might seem, except in one fundamental regard. The only divergence in our perspectives comes from our assumed belief and disbelief in the existence of God.

We both look at the mammalian hand structure and see similarities. To me, those similarities point to a common designer. To him, those same similarities point to a process he believes completely excludes God. Both of us have theories based on the same evidence, differentiated by their foundational assumptions.

Also, consider this shocking thought: why can't they both be true? Would God be any less God if He directed evolution as the process by which all life on earth came to be?* Would science be completely moot and unnecessary if the existence of God was admitted?

To argue either is unreasonable. For the believer, God is God no matter how He created the universe. We don't know everything about Him because He is beyond us, infinite where we are finite. For the scientist, the scientific process and the data it reveals do not instantly disappear when he admits to the possible existence of a God. Science remains science, data is still data.

So arguing with each other using scientific evidence as weaponry is, simply stated, silly. A believer in God will never convince an atheist that God exists using the same evidence that the atheist uses to support his own worldview. In the same way, an atheist will never prove that God doesn't exist through the use of science. For us as Christians, science is God's domain just as much as everything else. Everything points to Him, and nothing will ever be able to disprove Him. For the atheist, evolution provides a mythology to which they can cling that conveniently eliminates that necessity of a god. Both hold to beliefs.

Science, then, is no more partisan than a rock. Bare facts are not beliefs. Results of an experiment are merely pieces of a puzzle that is too big for us to solve alone. In the end, our conclusions about what that puzzle pictures has nothing to do with science, but has everything to do with faith: either faith in something (someone) bigger than ourselves, or faith in nothing other than ourselves.

So, creationists: we believe in a God who created all things, designed all things to work the way they do, controls all things, sees all things, knows all things. We believe he forms children in the womb, sees the elephant give birth, knows the language of the dolphins. He is sovereign. So why, then, when it comes to science, do we close our eyes and hope it all goes away?

Many pioneers of every scientific discipline were strong Christians, firm believers in that sovereignty.  In fact, for most of them, it was their desire to know God and His work better that spurred them to learn more about the amazing things He created. They sought His face in His masterpieces.

And yet now we put our fingers in our ears and look away.  Why? If we believe in a God who created all things, created us, then why do we believe that science is separate from Him? That His existence will somehow be disproved by some future scientific discovery?

Atheistic evolutionists: don't you see that your views aren't based in any more science than the beliefs of those you mock? If science is the all-knowledgeable god you make it out to be, how can two differing conclusions about the existence of God come from the same evidence? As people who love reason, you have to see that your beliefs (and yes, a belief that God does not exist is a belief) influence your objectivity as much as those who believe in God are affected by theirs. Science cannot prove or disprove something of this scale; it is simply beyond the scope of human vision and understanding. You yourselves say that we are only another primate on a tiny dot of light in the universe, no more significant than any other life form on any other planet in any other galaxy in this vast universe. How can we claim to know all things, to see and understand and chart the history of time? By the estimation of your own findings, we are just too small.

In the end, we're both left looking at x-rays of our own hands, both marveling at the complexity, the strange and practical beauty. We both see potential for art and destruction, hurt and healing, gentleness and violence. Maybe in our future discussions, this is where we should start.




*As a clarification, I personally do not believe that God used the process of macro-evolution currently outlined by most non-believing scientists. The story of creation in Genesis does not even match up with that theory even in a mythological sense, and my belief in a sovereign God necessitates my belief in His infallible Word. Also, scientifically I do not think that enough evidence has been presented to support the very large assumptions about the process of macro-evolution that underlay most major macro-evolutionary theories.

Good Friday

you swallow down my vinegar-sour thimbleful of
tiny wrath, as if you deserved it,
as if it were your own.

your merciful silence sends me into fits,
raging sorrow scoring wound after wound
into the record of my scars, reopened.

you bleed too

sometimes i wish you would just
not exist
then there would be no one innocent
therefore no one to blame

go away
sometimes
but please, never leave me alone.

Porcelain

Why do you tell stories about clay pots

When you made me like translucent pearl

Beautiful, they say, and perfectly formed,

Meant for good things,

Offering up delicacies in the golden light of candles

Shimmering on my sides. But then,

They see beauty in inherent flaws:

Not just chipping, but shattering

With the slightest blow, no practical use,

A pretty bauble. You could have made me sturdy

And beautiful in earthier ways, as strong as the mountains

You pulled me from. I could see your fingerprints

In my rough ridged sides, see my color and know my roots,

Take a hundred knocks off the shelf and never break.

But instead, you baked me and shaped me in the fire

Till what you made me was my death.

Nobody thinks that broken pieces are beautiful.

Snow in Chicago

I


You mute the air

And I can open my eyes wide,

Sky and asphalt and naked trees

Dressed in the same gray white,

Soft. You smooth the creases,

Cover over sharp edges and points, shroud

The dirt and broken bottles and forgotten

Socks in gutters. Everyone drives politely, if only

Out of fear and the

world slows

Down.



II

The old homeless woman looks happier than usual,

Though her tennis shoes surely have holes, leaking slush

To soak her only pair of socks. But people are more generous

When they see those shoes in the snow, below her chapped red face,

And almost every car brings an open window and

A handful of cash. She tucks it in her coat so it won’t get wet

And gives you thanks even as you freeze her naked fingers.



III

Young man (black or white?) shuffles along, face hidden in his fluffy hood,

The same worn by the businessman (known only by his briefcase)

trotting to the bus and the old woman (or man?)

Burdened by grocery bags, back to the wind.

Median trees, barely growing in two feet of precious soil,

Stretch endlessly up the fathomless, falling sky,

Each twisted twig a silver scepter. They arch in majesty

Over the asphalt, now a silver carpet, and for a while

Make an avenue of kings.

For one hour, the city shares in a communion of clothing

When you give them clean white robes covering

The filth of collected carelessness.

Inside

Jeremy and I were watching a National Geographic special the other night called "Inside: High Security Prisons." At first, Jeremy didn't think I should be watching it, since we had also recently started the first season of the show Prison Break, and I had been having nightmares and queasy feelings about some of the terrifyingly evil characters.

So Jeremy watched the first ten minutes while I was finishing up a row of crocheting and getting ready to take the dog on a walk. I found myself being pulled into it nonetheless and, strangely, feeling comforted.

The story of line of Prison Break is that an innocent man is framed for murder and is awaiting his unjust execution on death row. His genius structural engineer brother, who has the blueprints of the prison tattooed on his body, gets himself thrown in prison with his brother so he can use all his brains and a lot of good luck to break his brother out before execution day. (Interesting note: The story is based in Joliet, Illinois at a high security prison and is set in 2007. In the show, this prison still uses the electric chair, which hasn't been used in most prisons for decades. In reality, Illinois just recently passed a law to get rid of the death penalty entirely. Someone didn't do their research.)

Throughout the story, the main character/genius/rescuer brother, Michael Scofield, finds himself struggling with all the horrors he sees while in prison: inmates shanking each other, hanging themselves, and killing guards without pity. There is one particularly evil inmate who is incarcerated because he raped and killed five children, and he manipulates and sexually torments weaker inmates in the prison. While disgusted by him, Scofield has to work with him in order to help his brother escape.

The National Geographic special, on the other hand, looked and felt very different even though its subjects were much more evil criminals with many more horrible crimes under their belts. Filmed within the fortress of a super-max prison, where the most dangerous and violent perpetrators are sent (most come from other prisons, sent to the super max because they keep fighting with and even killing other inmates), camera crews were in close proximity with men who had between them destroyed the lives of thousands of people through murder, rape, and absolute savagery.

But somehow, I found myself more disturbed by the fiction than the reality.

At first I thought it might have something to do with the lack of dramatic music, or the lack of unbelievable, high stress situations that the main character faced in the obviously less realistic fictional show. But the more I watched the more I realized it was more than that.

First of all, both shows deal differently with this question: does goodness and justice exist?  Part of the tension of Prison Break is that you struggle with knowing who to trust. Besides Scofield and his brother, nearly everyone else seems crooked to the core, with the guards taking bribes and the Secret Service as the bad guys, framing Scofield's brother and hunting down the rest of his family to use for leverage. Even Scofield has to do some things that go against his conscience in order to survive. While the fight is for justice, the things that are sacrificed for that justice make it almost not worth it.

In the reality of the super-max prison, on the other hand, justice, while still imperfect, is clear. Guards are normal people, just doing their job routinely and thoroughly. When an inmate gets into a fight with another inmate, their charges are written up and reviewed by an unbiased third party (i.e. not a prison employee) and the inmate has a hearing with the disciplinary officer, warden, the third party, and any legal counsel he requests where he can plead either guilty or innocent to his charges. His punishment is then set out as an amount of days he has to spend in solitary confinement, depending on the severity of the charges and the amount of disciplinary points he has already accrued. Even after sentencing, he can always write a letter to the warden requesting a second look and a reduction of punishment.

No crooked guards, no innocents framed, no conscience-killing choices between darker and lighter shades of gray. The rules, punishments and rewards were clear. The employees had not committed crimes. The inmates had. And each inmate knows the crimes for which he has been imprisoned, even if he doesn't regret committing them.

The second, and I think bigger, difference was this: the inmates in the super-max prison were human. They are human. In one perspective, that almost makes things scarier; these people, just like you and me, have torn people apart with their own two hands, raped, destroyed, killed. But on the other hand, I was reminded that they aren't somehow godlike in their evil. They are not supernatural, they are not immortal, they have weak spots. They are humans who have been twisted, who have chosen to do horrible things while other people have chosen to do good things (or at least, not illegal things). And in the end, whether in prison or out, they will die and come face to face with their creator. Unlike the characters in Prison Break, who seem to be unlimited in their evil with no one to stop them.

But more than just the fact that these men are going to die someday and face judgment for their actions, my real comfort came in seeing the near-hilarity of their sinfulness--what all of us have in common with them. Jeremy noted that one inmate who was interviewed about why he always ended up in fights sounded like a boy who has just been pulled into the principal's office after giving another kid a bloody nose at recess. They make excuses, they protest that they have good reasons, that the way they live is the way they have to live. There is no other choice, and they shouldn't be to blame. Whatever they did, it was justified. The punishment, though they might not deny that they deserve it, is always unreasonably severe.

One man interviewed told the story of how he once killed and chopped into tiny pieces another man who had insulted him. After telling the whole story without emotion of any kind, he put up his chin proudly, as if to say, "That's just what happens if you insult me. He should have known better. He deserved what he got."

And yet, when their punishments were read out, the mask of violence and toughness slipped just slightly enough to see the abused and broken little boys underneath.

All of us are these men. We just haven't made the choices they've made to end up where they are, haven't bred sin within us to the extent that it has completely destroyed our lives and the lives of others. But the seeds of all of it are within us all the same. And there are other things that we water in secret, things that are not illegal, more easily hidden. Secret lusts and hatreds, envy, and our precious idol most in common with theirs: pride.

Jesus relates anger to murder during his sermon in Matthew 5. All kinds of sin, he reminds us, have the same root, all grow from the same poisoned soil of our perverted and twisted hearts. All of us are murderers and rapists filled with a destructive evil on the inside, all of us locked up in a super max prison built for us by our forefathers and fortified with our own hands. Little children beaten and abused, we have grown up to hurt others in the same way, and we suffer the punishment of absolute isolation for our crimes.

He sees all this, but instead of leaving us where we deserve to be, he died a death much worse than the electric chair in order to not only pay the price of our evil, but also to effectively abolish the evil we have inherited and nurtured inside ourselves. He sets us free not just from prison, but from the things that put us there.

Sometimes, I think that I am the worst of sinners compared to other people I know and that there is no way God could possibly stand my pathetic self for more than a few seconds at a time, that he won't let me into heaven simply because he can't bear to be with me. I hear myself say, "Well, at least you're not a murderer," and feel the hollow echo of the lack of the comfort this thought was meant to provide.

In the show, I did see the hearts of murderers, and realized that they aren't any different from my own, or from those belonging to people who made me feel so insecure, not when considering our innate sinfulness. The only difference I could point to was that grace given to me freely, nothing more and nothing less. Beyond all reason, he chose to save me, for no reason other than his own glory. And in that, I see the only true comfort I could ever find.

We are those men, and he loves us still. We are those men, and yet he has sacrificed everything for us. He is the ultimate judge, wielding the only true justice, and yet he has chosen mercy. In this, all of us have the only hope of freedom through change, from the inside out.

With Child

I knot the lines of your first blanket,

Child, though you are not mine

I hold your weight in my belly all the same.

Like an unspoken promise, one read in

Eyes and lips and subtle hands,

Are the flutters of your non-existence within me.

I loop and loop yellow yarn for your mother

But really for you, child I have not met,

Wishing you were mine, flesh of my flesh,

Blood of my blood. But you are not,

And so I knit you a blanket

Dreaming of that one whose life

My life will knit together.

Blank Pages

blank pages, you mock me

singing your song of perfect

nothing

pen marks only mar.

dare to write, you chant,

create, you our ridiculous god,

begin what isn't.

but i hear another ancient song

and write what has already been

written and sung and lit into flame,

myself being the perpetuation of

exponential imperfections

multiplying the mysterious workings

of deformities forming

the very flesh of beauty.

Amos 8:1-2

Amos sees a basket of ripe fruit
What do you see? says the Lord
I see a basket of ripe fruit
The time for judgment is ripe
Sweet smelling, shiny-skinned
Juiciness running down between fingers
Like blood on the hands of the murderer
We all pay for the sugary nectars
Under our tongue, turning bitter,
Rotting away our teeth
We cannot speak in our own defense
Our mouths overflowing, full of the fruit
Of our own destruction
I am only saved if you take my plate away
For I can do nothing but eat
What my own hands have prepared
So many dead bodies
Silence

Falling

leaves you float
falling
shocking gold carpet
beautiful in death

tiptoeing softly over
in shiny gold shoes
I hate to bruise you
friends

frozen I soak up your sunshine
as my hopes fall
fluttering
loneliness my constant winter

in death and life
beautiful
if I could only join you
in your sleep

Crabapple Tree

Fruit sweet, mostly sour,
(I can eat more than anyone)
We gather up in black garbage bags,
Not really sure why.
I tell them we will sell them, or
Make pies. Mostly I eat the good ones,
Keeping an eye out for worms.
Once I ate half of one,
The other half wriggling, dying, in the white circle
Left by my last bite.
We built a ladder from old rope
And sticks, even though the tree was small and we could reach
The lower branches. Adventurers use rope ladders, I told them.
It broke while I climbed it,
My wind knocked out on the roots. But I didn't,
Wouldn't tell anyone it hurt. I laughed and said
Oh well. The cold grass felt good on bruises
Anyway.

Forgetting

I can't remember a lot of things nowadays. My boss always makes fun of me for being absent-minded, forgetting how to do things she's told me a few times. It's always extremely embarrassing, because I pride myself in my ability to remember silly pieces of trivia that impress people, trivia that I never really have a chance to bring up at work.

Today at church we were talking to a friend about the Roman empire and the downfall of Greece, and somehow I remembered that Alexander the Great died young and Greece was split up between his generals, making it weak and easily conquerable by the Romans. The friend asked, "Did you go to Moody?" (assuming, of course, that I went to Moody Bible Institute with my husband and therefore took an Old Testament class that included ancient history). When I told him no, he asked, "Then how do you know that?" I didn't know what to say, so I made some flimsy attempt at explaining that I'm good at that sort of thing without sounding pretentious.

So I remember the history of the Greek nation from a freshman classical literature survey class, but I can't remember where to find the double tab manila folders that my boss is wanting me to retrieve.

I also can't remember anything I liked about high school. Sometimes, I can't remember the good friends I've had, but only the ones that have left or betrayed me. I can't bring to mind a time when I've been truly happy in church, or when I've really felt completely saved and at peace with God. I can't remember ever liking myself.

It would seem that I have a memory problem.

Even as a natural pessimist, I know that my life has not been all bad. In fact, I have had a rather good life if I try really really hard (giving myself a headache in the process) to think about all the good things I've seen, done, learned, loved, and lost.

But there are difficult, painful things that I've faced as well, things that have hurt my soul, and they seem to be the things that I remember. Why is this?

I think one reason is because I don't want to forgive myself for my own part in making my life miserable. Moving on would mean letting myself be happy, even after all the ways that I've screwed up myself and others. Because I am not so delusional that I don't know how I've hurt others as much as they've hurt me; we're all, even unintentionally, little fleshy vehicles of destruction. In a lot of ways, through my own choices and actions, I've hurt myself and those around me. And I want to make myself pay.

Another reason is because I want to make sure that God and the world know that my pain is important, that it really, really hurts (at this point you are allowed to roll your eyes at me, I can't see you anyway). Those punches that I took, the pieces of myself I lost bit by bit, the gashes and rips I've collected over my measly twenty two years, I want those to mean something. I want my suffering to matter somehow. Which, in and of itself, I don't believe to be a bad desire. God does care about our pain, and suffering of all kinds is evil. When it means, however, that I hold on to my pain to make other people feel sorry for me instead of healing and using my experience to help heal others, this is a problem. I'm just sitting in a puddle of my own filth, so to speak, calling to the passerby to help me out but not taking the hands that are offered.

I know I'm not alone in this. I can't name names, of course, but, while I don't excuse myself, I have seen and copied some bad habits I've observed in others. Church, school, family, friends: we are all human, and we all seem to have bad memories concerning the way things really are.

I also know that I'm not alone because I know there are a lot of other people who visit the pharmacy for my same prescription. Lately, I've had to start taking medication due to this particular form of memory loss; namely, the type that causes me to remember only the bad things and therefore makes me extremely anxious and depressed. Ironically, this medication actually makes my "real" memory worse than it was before. So to improve my spiritual memory, so to speak, my Jeopardy-winning trivia memory has had to be decreased significantly.

But it's worth it, because I don't want to live only in the memory of all the dark things I've done, the dark things other people have done to me. Indeed, I can't live this way. My body literally cannot handle the stress and my soul cannot handle the strain of keeping my self together.

I'm sure everyone has heard the phrase, "Forgive and forget." My experience has led me disagree with this maxim. I don't believe forgiveness is ever about forgetting, but about remembering things the right way. I can only forgive myself if I remember not only what I've done wrong but what was done to make me clean in the eyes of God. I can only forgive others not by trying to ignore the scars they so obviously left on my heart, but by remembering that I am just as guilty as they, if not in the same time and place, and that God loves them just as much as He loves me. In fact, forgiveness is really just about remembering that one thing:God loves us.

Forgiving is about remembering, because frankly, there are just some hurts that can't be forgotten. And there is only that one truth that even begin to heal us.

So I'm trying to remember that while I didn't fit in at high school, that there were a few people who showed me kindness; that even in my mistakes I grew stronger and began to see others struggling with the same darkness; that the people who injured so terribly made me cling closer to my God as the only safe place I had left. This is not whitewashing, this is not forgetting. This is remembering the truth that in the end, love wins.

Flesh and Bones

"...I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, 'Son of man, can these bones live?'

I said, 'Sovereign LORD, you alone know.'

Then he said to me, 'Prophesy to these bones and say to them, "Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin. I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.'"

Ezekiel 37:2-6

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 was last Sunday, as everyone in the world knows. "The whole planet mourns with us," they say. But I heard the speeches, I saw the political posturing, I see the American flag, and I felt nothing but a strange emptiness. To me, all of it seems immeasurably hollow. Now, before I am crucified by my readers, allow me explain.

I will start by bringing to mind the example of a high school graduation: music is played, caps and gowns are donned, speeches are given, and a solemn awe surrounding the magnificence of the future is encouraged. But through it all, everyone sitting in the audience and every single student knows the reality is much more than the hollow good wishes of the speech-givers.

No matter how moving the speeches or how emotional the music or how pompous the dress, nothing can be said or done that reflects the depth of how exciting, depressing, terrible and wonderful the future will be for each student, or even the depth of what they have experienced so far in eighteen measly years. So, on graduation day, each student who is honest with him or herself will have the feeling that something is missing.

To me, the memorializing surrounding this tenth anniversary echoes with the same emptiness. It's not that I don't think that 9/11 was a day horrible beyond words. It's not that I don't feel a deep sadness when I think about how many people died, how many families lost someone who couldn't be replaced. But in all the speeches, all the politics, in all the ceremony, I can't help but feel that something is missing.

That something, I believe, is the breath of truth.

I consider in particular our discussions and attitudes towards death and grief. Instead of letting ourselves break down in weeping, or sit in silence under the weight, or tear our clothes in our anguish, we turn geninue mourning into "a celebration of life." We avoid the pain by talking about the good things the dead accomplished before the end. We look forward to the growth that will come out of the ashes. We convince ourselves that they are in a "better place" and cross our fingers behind our backs.

I do not mean to say that some of these things aren't good and proper, when at the right place and time. But they are not grief. They are not mourning. And when they are confused as such, an empty void takes up the place that rightfully belongs to grief. They become something false, a marble statue compared to a real living, breathing person.

When I think of real grief, living and breathing grief, I think of the scene in heaven in the book of Revelation when all the angels and the creatures and God Himself express furious outrage at the murders of Christians during the tribulation. These deaths are mourned, even though a certain hope of their resurrection and eventual glorifcation is expressed at the same time. How does this make sense? It only does when one realizes that to God, all death is evil in and of itself.

We water down this truth. We say, "They lived, a long full life." Or, "They died sacrificing themselves to save another." Yes, these make death more bearable for us, but they do not make it less of an awful separation.

I think we are afraid to face this reality of the evil of death and truly mourn because that would mean admitting that something is wrong with the world. If we are to say that death is wrong, then we are in fact admitting that death is not the way things are supposed to be. In saying this, we are saying that things were originally designed differently, but something, or someone, made a mistake.

We are, in fact, faced with the reality of God.

The atheist cannot mourn death. How can he? Death is the way of all things that are alive, and if no one died, how could anyone live? Death is natural, normal, for lack of a better word. If they are to mourn, the atheist can only (possibly) mourn the contributions to society that might have been made by the person that died "before their time." But if no contribution really matters, because there is no such thing as eternity, then why should he care? The dead will not only pass out of existence, but also out of memory and time, along with the rest of their species one day, and that will be the end of it.

But with God, we have reason to mourn. God hates death. Death is the perversion, the disease, that plagues the world. And so with God, we can hate death as well. We can wail at it, weep because of it, throw ourselves to the ground in grief. With God, the hollow space is filled with truth: death is shown to be what it is, and we feel its weight in our souls.

So when the speeches last Sunday were all spoken, when all the music had been played, when the memorial was been unveiled, something was still missing. That something, someone, is God. Without knowing His tears, how can we grieve? Without knowing He is angry, how can we express outrage? Without His healing, how can we heal?

And without knowing the He died and rose again to destroy death forever, how can we celebrate?

For without Him, this is the way things always have been and always will be: innocents will be murdered and the guilty will go free, the best young men of a nation will die in its wars. So without Him, there is no reason to have a memorial service at all. Without Him, 9/11 is just the way things are. 9/11 is...normal. And we have no reason to mourn.

Without Him, all things are dry bones. Let us pray for the breath that gives flesh to grief, to celebration, to life.

Mashed Brains and Mashed Potatoes

So I said in May that I would begin writing again after a year's absence, but it has only been the competition of a fellow blogger (who happens to be my best friend) that has spurred me to finally fulfill my promise. It has gotten rather embarrassing to hear the doomsday phrase "Have you started writing yet?" every time I talk to her on the phone, so here, Sarah: a blithering nothing to begin.

To be honest, I think I was waiting to sit down and write until I had a moment of peaceful clarity, wisdom, insight, beautiful vocabulary. Unfortunately, and as I should have remembered from the naming of this blog, my current stage of life is one of anything but rare insights and peaceful clarity. My life is a compilation of mostly boring moments. I am not a guru (i.e. MFA student). I am a gerbil on a wheel working in a small enclosure also known as a cubicle. Okay, that was a little harsh. It is actually not all that bad of a place to work, if construction is your thing. Well, if managing construction projects is your thing. We don't actually build anything, we just subcontract with trade contractors to build things. And that's my job: writing contracts. On a scale of one to ten measuring creativity: -12.

As I'm sure you can feel all your creative juices and hope to do something meaningful with your life melting away as I describe my job, I will change subjects. Also, my husband just popped my creative bubble by reminding me that my employers might end up reading this blog somehow (hence the exclusion of my company's name in the previous paragraph). Sigh. No such thing as speech without consequences in the public sphere...

I made the most delicious mashed potatoes in the world a few days ago. I've been taking the leftovers out the fridge and eating them cold. Better than ice cream. Martha Stewart moment:

1. put 10 golden potatoes (the yellow kind with the smooth, thin skin) in the microwave for 25 minutes (if you have a tiny microwave like ours, you might need to do more than one batch)

2. cut up hot potatoes with the skin still on and put them in your mixer

3. add a stick of butter, softened

4. mix potatoes and butter using the whisk attachment (if you have an awesome KitchenAid mixer). don't use too much speed or you'll get a chunk of blazing hot potato in your eye!

5. when you've mixed a potatoes a little, add a little bit of milk at a time. you're going to need a lot more than you think. keep adding until your potatoes aren't sticky anymore (you know what I'm talking about)

6. add salt, pepper, and more butter if you want

7. eat up!

Okay, so I'm not Martha, but I know my comfort foods. And nobody can put a black mark on my record for talking about how good I am at making mashed potatoes. Except, perhaps, Martha, who could very well sue me for using her name without permission...

Through that recipe I came up with ideas for a few more things to write about, but I'm out of time, so tune in again for:

My Husband the Sample Man

Dogs and Their People in the City

Living Miscellaneous

"Perhaps, until one starts at the age of seventy to live on borrowed time, no year will seem again quite so ominous as the one when formal education ends and the moment arrives to find employments and bear personal responsibility for the whole future." - Graham Greene

One year and a week ago today, I found myself self-consciously hurrying across a brightly lit stage, handed a diploma case (without the actual diploma inside), and shooed along into a life I thought I already understood. Marriage June 19th then moving to Chicago and finding a job to pay the bills, I repeated over and over to interested parents and grandparents and parents and grandparents of friends and my mother's coworkers and the professors who didn't know me very well and didn't really care where I ended up, so long as they tried to seem interested as they felt obligated. And I felt obligated to give them this very prescribed answer, to play the part in this last dance of hierarchical roles, until I finally drove away with the final evidences of my college education (ugly bedspread, cheap lamp, etc.) stuffed haphazardly into the back seat of my car.

One year and a week later, I know I could have never anticipated or prepared for this thing we like to call "adult life." (Really, it's not that we become adults after we graduate, but that the falsified semblance of life also known as the college culture has been broken down and carted away, like a movie set after the last scene has been cut.) Though my obsessive note-taking personality would have loved to have taken a class called "How to Be a Functional Member of Society 101" my senior year, I know that nothing I wrote down would have been helpful, partly because no one can ever hope to prescribe to every individual what they would need to know, and mostly because I would have no clue what important points I would need to write down.

So I suppose, in a roundabout way, this explains why I have decided to redesign and begin to write again on this blog. Unlike many other "periods" in my life, I don't feel as if I have changed into someone no one (including myself) knows, so that I must re-explain myself and my every thought in order to be understood. In fact, I would like this refreshing of sorts to move away from the religion of self-centeredness somewhat inadvertently encouraged by the unspoken undergraduate motto, "Discover yourself, develop your talents, be all that you can be." In fact, I would like the posts on this blog, as suggested by the title, to be completely miscellaneous, unrelated to any notion of "self discovery" except for the incontrovertible fact that they are things experienced by me, filtered through my brain, and then written by me. Oops. I suppose there are some self-centered aspects of the act of writing that just can't be avoided.

Back to my abstract explanation. You see, one thing I have learned since graduation is that life doesn't include as many categories as I had been previously led to believe, and yet the categories themselves are sometimes too subtle for us mere mortals to define. There is love and there is hate, no in-between. And yet both love and hate have their subtleties that sometimes disguise them as each other, twin sisters swapping name tags. There is peace and and there is fear, there is hope and there is despair. There are believers, and there are unbelievers. Though the unbelievers like to pretend they are saved, while we sometimes like to forget that we are, and it is easy to get confused.

I thought (a self-centered statement already, dang it) that my blog should come to reflect this. Life is, in short, miscellaneous. The large categories are all that matter, and yet the larger categories never seem to cut it in terms of understanding, of really seeing and knowing. There are no Sparksnotes for life, no back-of-the-book synopsis, no Life for Dummies how-to guide. Life is a thousand million puzzle pieces, some fitting together, others being pushed to the edge of the table to find a partner or two at a later date. I know they will all fit together some day, but as for me and my house, we can't even seem to find all the edge pieces.

My prayer is that you find hope in the randomness: the randomness of my posts, the randomness of my own scattered existence, the randomness you realize you share with me. It is harder, sometimes, to be confident, hopeful, joyful in randomness, the unknown, than it is to be patient in suffering. In suffering, we at least know there is an end. But in the random, the unexpected, the miscellaneous, there is no preparing, no enduring, only a living within, a trying to keep your footing while you're walking on the water. But when you begin to see the beauty of this uncertainty, how it points you toward the only true stability, hope grows into something close to joy.

Thoreau and Me

All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.

Henry David Thoreau

I first encountered Henry David Thoreau’s Walden at the end of my senior year of college. When I say encounter, I meant that I read it for the first time, though I had heard much about it from others, preemptively determining it contained the musings of a crazy transcendentalist who went to live in a cabin in the woods just to make a point.

I expected to write him off as a tree-hugging hippie of a previous generation, picturing him as a scruffy-bearded man with a dirty face, no shoes, and wild eyes. He would attempt to talk to animals, of course, and would during the course of the winter go so crazy that he might even think they answered back with curious prophesies and pronouncements against society. He would then write these annunciations in his notebook, get them published as a novelty, and become the saint of my own generation of tree-huggers. So I thought.

I was already fed up with the hippies around me. I heard enough assertions of the perfection of nature, enough of calls to be one with the world, enough with global warming. While college students at Colorado State University were writing vows on their graduation sashes promising to fix human damages in nature, I wrote papers about the dangers of alternative fuels and the benefits of controlled hunting. The news, full of predictions of doom in the form of burning rainforests, extinct species, and the dissipating ozone, weighed on my soul. Yes, the world is going to hell, I thought. So why does everyone keep talking about it as if they are surprised? Crazy would be to think that nature really is perfect, to think that we can fix it through rash action, and to say that one only needs to go into the woods by themselves and build a cabin by a pond to fix things.

But instead of crazy musings, in Walden I found a surprising wholeness of mind, of purpose, and of art. It was, in an odd way, beautiful. Thoreau included annoyingly small and seemingly inconsequential details, like the changing temperature of his beloved pond over the course of the spring. He told me how he made his house, down to the last shingle, and of what material, and with what tools. But he did so with the grace and firm tangibility of poetry. I unexpectedly lost myself in his cadences and imagery, listening to the song of his words in my head as I watched along with him Walden changing through the seasons.

I found instead of a crazy hippie a nonetheless strange man who sat by a pond for two years and watched. Watched ice form and melt. Watched birds and furry creatures come and go. Watched trees grow and seasons change the colors month by month. He listened, too. To the boom of the ice on the pond as it thawed in spring. To the songs of the birds. To the different voices of the wind in the trees and in his chimney.

Hippies wish to melt themselves into nature, to become no different from the trees and the ground and the animals, to lose their individual consciousness in the greater consciousness of the whole of nature. Hippies hate their humanness and pray to be anything else. Thoreau, on the other hand, placed himself within nature in order to be a part of it, but not to lose himself. Rather, he saw his project as a finding of something about life, an escape from slavery into true humanity. In his own words: “I went to the woods to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (85). Here was not a hippie seeking to meld himself with nature. Here was a man carefully observing nature to learn what it might teach him about his own life.

And, to my surprise, I found I could not dismiss him because I saw him in myself.

My Walden has always been the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Every summer, my father would take our family on camping and backpacking expeditions, exploring the depths of river valleys and the heights of twelve thousand-foot peaks. I took my first backpacking trip to Twin Lakes when I was eight years old. Of that memory I have retained only the colors: emerald moss framing the crystal flow of a glacier melt trickle. Shining black mica flakes like flashing animal eyes among the white sand on the trail. Dead, rusted pine needles. The deep blue of a sky very narrowly separating us from space.

Since that first trip, I have dedicated myself to learning my mountains. I know the names of the animals and plants, and dangerous and friendly, poisonous and edible. I know the dangers of the weather and the things I must bring with me into the wilderness in order to survive. I know the names of each peak and the shape of their crags by heart.

But more than just learning about the mountains, I have lived them. As Thoreau says about students of anything, “they should not play life, or study it merely…but earnestly live it” (47). Like Thoreau, I have stayed and watched and listened. I have heard the roars of waterfalls reverberating from granite cliffs like the vibratos of opera basses. I have listened to the illusive lark bunting call for a mate from the dwarf junipers on windswept tundra. I have watched the bud of a columbine open and tracked the hoof prints of a deer to the hiding place of her fawns. I have heard the song of the wind in the lodge pole pines, I have smelled the cinnamon on the bark of the fir, I have tasted the sour sweetness of tiny grouse berries.

Thoreau knew Walden, and in knowing Walden, he knew himself. He did not write about nature. He wrote about place, planting himself beside a pond and becoming an intentional part of that landscape, allowing it to impress his imagination and feed him with its silences and sounds, its breathings in and out. In this place, Thoreau learned less about nature than about human existence. He saw living in his place not as a return to perfection or even goodness, but as a return to the simplicity desperately needed by the human soul.

I also have embedded myself in a place, a place where my imagination has been planted, where, as Barbara Kingsolver describes it, my stories come from. And like Thoreau, I have learned from that place several things about what it means to live.

In terms of my agreement with him, it seems that both he and I acquired a greater appreciation for the simple things of life, namely food, clothing, and shelter, from knowing the wild. When you must work for it, food becomes something you notice you are eating instead of a three-times-a-day habit of consumption. You eat when you are hungry, and you realize that eating anything requires a process of finding and cooking, sometimes even catching and cleaning. You know your food intimately, down to its very innards.

Clothing also takes on completely different associations. In civilization, the clothes you wear have more to do with how you wish to appear than with their more practical functions of temperature regulation and protection from the elements. In the wild, clothing fulfills these practical functions first and foremost. One wears the oldest and most comfortable articles one can find, these clothes being the best for climbing and hiking and chopping and cleaning and staying warm without worries about stains or rips. Clothes lose their associations with fashion and become important only in their care for the people that are in them. After all, Thoreau reminds us, “it is only the serious eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it [clothing], which restrain laughter and consecrate the costume of any people” (23). One becomes much more concerned with character than a sense of style. I say with Thoreau: “…if my jacket and trousers, my hat and my shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they not?” (20) When one worships God on the mountaintop, a little mud on jeans or a sweatshirt that has never really fit right no longer matter at all.

Most congruent with my own views and least hippie-ish of all, I found, was Thoreau’s understanding of shelter. He knew his human place within nature. When I camp, no matter how much good will I have towards nature, I must bring a tent to keep out the cold and the wind and the rain. In the same way, Thoreau did not strip off all his clothes and wander into the woods, expecting to be accepted and to survive on the grace of “Mother Earth.” Instead, he worked to build his home, even cutting down trees (gasp!) in order to do so. He recognized his finitude, not as something that disconnected him from nature, but as a fact that connected him to the similar finitude of other living things.

This understanding serves as the pinnacle of my agreement with Thoreau: his recognition that nature, just like human society, is not a utopia, but that beauty can still be found by living in the present moment of a place. One should enjoy life and beauty where they find them, not looking for perfection, but rather living intentionally in the moment. Thoreau knows that nature is not perfect, that he is finite, that if he runs out of food or gets too cold he will die. He knows that he must also kill other finite organisms in order to live. In other words, he knew as well as I that the world is going to hell. And, contrary to what the hippies might want to believe, he didn’t seem too worried about it. In fact, he rather enjoyed it, because it gave him something to think about.

This is because his musings did not focus on man’s destruction of the earth, but rather on man’s destruction of himself. Though he cared about Walden Pond, he did not live there in order to write a book about it and make the local people appreciate its beauties. Yes, in the process he did live in a way that was kind to the nature around him; his natural setting was vital to his lifestyle and therefore his philosophy. But his point did not center upon nature. It rotated around himself, not the entire world. It focused on simplicity, a word that should not be considered synonymous with conservation. It also focused on the present, not the future. He did not proclaim himself as a squatter in order to keep bulldozers from destroying the forest. He went to Walden to live his life in a way that he felt was the best way for people, namely himself, in freedom. To live deliberately.

And yet this is the point where I must disagree with Thoreau: his view of what it means to live free and deliberately.

I have an argument against him only because his lifestyle has so tempted me. Whenever someone asks me about a particularly stressful or busy day, I simply say that it is a llama farm day. If they are a member of my family or a close friend, they know this means that I am strongly considering quitting everything I am doing, buying land somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and ranching alpacas and llamas for their wool. I came up with this idea after seeing an infomercial where a happy older lady was standing with her cute, clean, fluffy alpaca and smiling. “I’ve never regretted owning alpacas,” she said through her perfect dentures. “They’re the best decision I ever made.” On the tough days, and even on the not-so-tough days, I want to be that lady, not because llama ranching sounds like the best job ever, but because it sounds so…free. Away from the city, peaceful, and without worries about bosses and coworkers and deadlines. Keeping my llamas happy would be my biggest concern.

Thoreau’s Walden reminds me somewhat of that infomercial. I see Thoreau standing in the woods, a big smile on his face, with the background of the pond behind him. “I’ve never regretted moving to this pond,” he says. “It’s the best decision I’ve ever made.” And it’s tempting, for a moment. I want to leave my responsibilities behind, just go to the woods to live deliberately. I want to live in the freedom of very few material possessions, hardly any obligations, and all the time in the world. I would love to simply observe one place in nature day after day after day. But I cannot listen to this sell.

Thoreau’s freedom is not true freedom because it is a running away from, not a running toward. Though he would like to make it seem as if he is creating for himself a better life, that he really knows what he is looking for at Walden Pond, I see him escaping, rather, a life he does not like. I hear him rail against those who laughed at him for his shabby clothes. I see him shake his fist at the landlords who hassled him for the monthly rent. I listen to him addressing over and over again those who did not think he could live at Walden Pond without going crazy. This is not freedom. This is enslavement to bitterness towards the customs of a culture.

Given, some of his criticisms of that culture are valid. In fact, I think that most of them are worth consideration. We should not consider clothes to be more important than character. People should live more simply and cheaply than they currently believe they can. Most men do “labor under a mistake,” forgetting that they will soon be “ploughed into the soil for compost” (3). But railing against such things does not prove freedom. It simply proclaims a personal philosophy that seeks to point out the problems. Thoreau’s time at Walden simply gave him the opportunity to think about and write out those personal philosophies, not to prove them.

This argument against Thoreau has been made before, but I’m going to make it again: one cannot seek to reform society unless they are a part of that society. Thoreau’s arguments fall flat because he has isolated himself. His infomercial does not sell.

But my argument goes beyond this. I will not fall into the same trap as Thoreau and simply argue against him without looking toward what I am preferring as a solution. Instead, I must consider how I can continue to see his criticisms as valid even while choosing to not mimic his reaction.

Living against these issues Thoreau raises does not mean one must pull away from society altogether. In fact, it means just the opposite. It means living life in society with a different perspective, a different focus, a different direction than everyone else. It is a remembrance that we will be compost. It is a living frugally and giving the extra to those who need it. It is a close observation, a quietness of soul, a paying attention. It is, in fact, a living deliberately.

This type of living deliberately is more challenging than the sort that builds a cabin in the woods and escapes society. It requires that we integrate our deliberateness into our daily business, our every choice, our interaction with others. We must combat the forces of society that tell us we must keep striving for more, whatever that “more” may look like, for no apparent reason. We have to think deeply and pay close attention to the world around us for glimpses for those things that are truly important.

Perhaps Thoreau himself knew that his time at Walden was not the answer, but only the space for the development of his ideas. His best explanation for leaving Walden after only two years of residence is vague at best: “Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one” (302). In other words, Thoreau admits that Walden constituted the fulfillment of an internal desire, the pursuit of a dream, a short experiment in living. Those two years at Walden Pond were only a period, a space in his life, not the entirety of his life, and he knew it.

It is for all these reasons that I praise Thoreau and assert he is not a crazy hippie even while I don’t pick up my life and move to the woods. Perhaps someday I will fulfill my dream of owning land and ranching livestock in the mountains. But in the meantime, I do not neglect Thoreau’s idea of living deliberately even as I finish college and get a nine-to-five. Instead, I remember our agreements about the beauties of nature and the benefits of living within that beauty, our mutual acknowledgment of finiteness and the reality of death. I seek Thoreau’s perspective of humility, acknowledging that the more I know, the more in danger I am of knowing nothing useful. After all, Thoreau says, “how can he remember well his ignorance—which his growth requires—who has so often to use his knowledge?” (4) I will continue to spend time in my mountains, being reminded that “a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors” (35). And, above all, I will attempt “to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line” (14). In other words, Thoreau and I, in disagreement and agreement, will be living life together. Deliberately.

All quotations from:

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004. First ed. 1854.

Between the Gym and the Sanctuary: Learning to Serve the Homeless Wholeheartedly

“This is a great church,” Jim tells me. “I know a lot of people are really appreciative for what they’re doing here.”

In the two months that I have been attending Sunday morning services with the homeless at Parkview Community Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, this appreciation has been an often-heard comment from Jim and other homeless community members served by Manna Ministries.

For Jim, Manna means being able to call Parkview his church family. “It gives a lot of us a place to call a home church,” he says.

While the rest of the larger church body attends the service in the typical, non-denominational sanctuary next door, homeless attendees are given the option of staying in the gym to watch the sermon on a television screen. Lunch is later served in the same room. An early morning Bible study is also offered in a classroom upstairs before the first service.

The gym-turned-sanctuary seemed to be a good idea for encouraging the homeless community to attend a church where they did not have to face the scrutiny of non-homeless members, a situation that might discourage attendance. It gives those served by the ministry a chance to sit back, relax, and avoid judgment for one afternoon. But I had to ask myself: why would we have to separate people from the greater church body in order to keep them from feeling judged for being homeless? I knew the answer from looking at myself. Despite my heartfelt desire to serve the people of Manna, I had come into the ministry with negative assumptions about the lives of the homeless, including assumptions of character, that remained unchallenged until I actually sat down and talked with them. As a part of the church my whole life, I know that the beliefs about homelessness held by other members of the church are likely to be similarly misinformed, leading to a desire to serve while still remaining separate from those being served.

The response of the church to homelessness in the form of ministry would not lead one to conclude that Christians hold negative misconceptions about the homeless. Though no formal statistics exist concerning the number of churches that support homeless ministries or have begun homeless assistance programs, the name of Christianity has commonly been associated with help for the poor in many forms. As an example, Parkview is not the only church seeking to help Manna attendees. Many of the homeless of DuPage County find shelter in different churches and other volunteered facilities every weeknight, facilitated by the PADS organization, or Public Action to Deliver Shelter. According to Manna members, church locations always outnumber secular community buildings when it comes to volunteered facilities.

Though its response to the problem of homelessness might be exemplary, the evangelical church is a part of a society that misunderstands homelessness, a fact more than likely to affect perceptions of the homeless even within ministry. According to a 2007 Fannie Mae General Population and Cities Survey concerning perceptions of homelessness, eight in ten, or 85%, of adults believe that alcohol and drugs are the primary cause of homelessness in the United States (4). In comparison, the statistic for the amount of addictive substance users among the homeless population is 38%, a percentage that includes those who began to drink or do drugs after they became homeless (“Who is Homeless?” par. 13). In another ironic twist, the reasons listed by the wider public for their own possible homelessness come down to medical expenses, job loss, housing prices, or the death or divorce of a spouse (Fannie Mae 6). In other words, if they were to become homeless, it would not be their fault, though they believe that the majority of those who are homeless are in a bad situation primarily because of their own intemperance.

Similar misunderstandings surround the increasing prevalence of homelessness. While 58% of American adults believe that homelessness has increased over the last ten years in the nation as a whole, 49% asserted that the number of those affected by homelessness in their own community has remained static (Fannie Mae 3). In actuality, estimated reports show that homelessness has been increasing exponentially in the majority of U.S. states over the last twenty years (“How Many People” par 13-16). According to similar reports, ignorance concerning homelessness close to home increases with income: “Adults reporting household incomes of $75,000 or more are less likely than their counterparts less affluent to say the that the number of homeless people in their community is increasing (20% vs. 36%)” (Fannie Mae 3). With DuPage County’s long-standing reputation for being one of the richest counties in Illinois, the majority of Parkview members fall into this income bracket and, likely, the same opinions.

Misconceptions such as these have the power to increase the reluctance of church members in interacting on a personal level with people who have become homeless. Assumptions about alcohol and drug use can cause fear that people served by the ministry are either violent or incoherent, only interested in the next bottle or high, not a good conversation. Those from high-income neighborhoods may be unwilling to acknowledge the presence of real and physical needs of individuals and families right on their doorstep, a realization that would challenge one’s beliefs concerning a growing problem in every part of the country. In short, if the Christian church can be included in an opinion survey of the wider culture, then the heart behind homeless ministry might not match up with the hardworking hands, a truth that will eventually have a negative effect on the results that the hands produce.

As has occurred in my own experience, these misconceptions about homelessness seem to be most effectively alleviated by establishing relationships in spite of misunderstandings with those who are homeless. Dr. Michael McDuffee, a professor at Moody Bible Institute and the director of Manna Ministries, has also experienced a change of perception concerning the homeless since beginning to work at Parkview. He is considered to be not just a ministry worker, but also a friend to many Manna members, an acceptance resulting from his hard work and close care to get to know and pray with attendees. “Taking part in Manna is teaching me that every relation I have with every person who is in between in life…should evoke in me the charge to see the person, to see the full person, not a hassle, not an opportunity, not a problem, not an issue, but a complete person,” says McDuffee.

It can be estimated that fewer than five Parkview members, including Dr. McDuffee, interact regularly on a personal level with Manna attendees. If the majority of the church not interacting with Manna members holds such biases against the homeless as the rest of society, why do they actively support homeless ministry within their church? James J. Graham poses a theory containing harsh criticism towards the church in his book, The Enemies of Poor. He asserts that the “distribution of food, clothing, or shelter under religious auspices” can only spring from two sources: (1) the “selfish” motivations of either gathering converts or bettering one’s own position in heaven or (2) simply to ease a guilty conscience without doing anything to disturb the status quo of social problems (139). His third criticism strikes directly at the heart of ministry: “The charitable impulse of the institutional Church is so legalistic, so compartmentalized, that it is easily satisfied by the donations to the poor box or, vicariously, by the full-time endeavors of others. It need not, and does not, permeate the lives of those who call themselves Christians” (139). In Graham’s argument, the church serves the homeless from a motivation of self-benefit and a sense of self-righteousness without an understanding of those they serve, a perspective that allows them to separate themselves from those they serve.

Dr. McDuffee has been a member and volunteer at Parkview Community Church for a number of years and asserts that Graham’s criticisms have no foundation in his congregation. “Parkview, as a community of believers, seekers and outsiders hanging around, has a corporate perception of the homeless. That is both important and rare,” he says. “The people of Parkview see the homeless. They are generous and compassionate. This is to be commended. We should give God thanks for this gift that He has given us as a community, made up of believers and unbelievers alike.” In McDuffee’s opinion, the body of the church that is not homeless does not separate itself, in perspective or in action, from the homeless that attend the church through Manna Ministries. The gym solution represents the inclusiveness of Parkview in their welcoming of the non-believing homeless community to have somewhere to go on a Sunday without feeling obligated to listen to the sermon. The main sanctuary does not exclude the homeless. Rather, many of those served by Manna sit in the front row and even participate in the worship band.

Still, McDuffee admits that the church, as a human institution, always needs to keep an eye on the heart. “Without doubt, a strain running through the perception nurtures a sense of self-affirmation,” he says. “We are doing something good and therefore we can feel good about ourselves. This is human nature.”

McDuffee is confident that this potential for self-righteousness, as long as it is recognized and kept under careful consideration, is not likely to undermine the good purposes of Manna Ministries. The success of any Christian endeavor, he says, depends on the mercy of God individually and corporately in the end, no matter how perfect the motivations of those who serve. The faultiness of the servants, then, does not need to be a condemnation of either the church or its ministries.

For McDuffee and Parkview Community Church, this is the bottom line: knowing they will make mistakes along the way, they continue to press onward in serving the best that they can. Still, for Parkview and the church as a whole, Graham’s criticisms should remain in mind. Those who serve without accurate self-knowledge or knowledge of those they serve run the risk of causing the recipients of their service, instead of being encouraged and humanized, to feel dehumanized by the resulting separation, materially and spiritually, from their “saviors.” Being made to feel as if they are of less worth than those who assist them will not help those who have become homeless. Rather, those who have become homeless will only find their feet again by receiving caring assistance while being treated as equals, in all ways, by those who serve them.

Breaking the deadly cycle of misconception is the necessary first step for a renewed outlook on ministry to the homeless. The fear caused by misconceptions influences those who are not homeless to separate themselves, which does nothing to undermine the misconceptions. Those wishing to serve people who have become homeless must take the first step by approaching the homeless first as humans, then as those disadvantaged by various circumstances. The best vision for breaking this cycle will be, not when Manna comes into the sanctuary, but when the rest of the congregations starts attending church in the gym, showing their efforts to facilitate community and personal relationship. Parkview Community Church is on its way.

Works Cited

Graham, James J. The Enemies of the Poor. New York: Random House, 1970. Print. 132-175.

“How Many People Experience Homelessness?” National Coalition for the Homeless. National

Coalition for the Homeless, July 2009. Web. 20 January 2010. http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/How_Many.html

McDuffee, Michael. Personal interview. 21 Jan. 2010.

“Survey Highlights.” Homelessness in America: Americans’ Perceptions, Attitudes, and

Knowledge. Fannie Mae General Population and Cities Survey. Gallup, Inc., November 2007. Web. 20 January 2010. http://www.fanniemae.com/media/pdf/GP_Citiesfinal.pdf

“Who is Homeless?” National Coalition for the Homeless. National Coalition for the Homeless,

July 2009. Web. 20 January 2010. http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/who.html