We're Up! Ok semi-up...

After false promises and re-starts (we’re behind schedule on this website project by oh, about a year), here we are. Reminds me of the Wittenburg Door magazine that used to be published “semi-occasionally.” Unlike Newsweek, which mails the December 15 issue in November, The Door would arrive at your door sometime the next summer. Likewise, this will be your spot for semi-occasional semi-current semi-coherent commentary on things urban, from people with two city skylines in view.

First skyline: my own city of Denver, a metropolis built by human hands, populated by heroes and scoundrels, nourished by pure Rocky Mountain spring water plus industrial runoff flowing underneath bridges where homeless people camp.

Second skyline: a city “whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10, among other Bible references)—an urban center also populated by heroes and scoundrels, watered by a river that flows down the main boulevard.

So I’ll set the scene for our faith-action-imagination conversation with those two urban images in mind. I’ll be just one of several conversation leaders in this space. We’ll soon have a multiple conversations going at once; we’ll see how this works as they converge and branch off. We’ll interact with many other images, ideas, and events from our urbanizing globalizing planet. You may be sitting in a farmhouse in Iowa or a Starbucks in Delhi, but we’re connected.

Questions for starters:
When you think of paradise, do you think of urban life?!
What do these two city skylines (your own particular city, and the city to come) have to do with each other?

I’ve often wondered what defined an inner-city person. Is it the overwhelming financial struggles that restrict them to living facilities unsuitable for most hard-working Americans? Would it be the high crime rates that plague their neighborhoods and often seduce their children? Perhaps the definition of an inner-city person rests within their broken relationships that have consumed their family structures leaving them with minimal hopes for renewed kinships. On the other hand, maybe it is the cultural differences that frustrate their every effort to appropriately assimilate into popular mainstream American culture. Regardless of what the fitting definition is for an inner-city person, when the church is called to minister to these people, the church knows exactly where to go. Or do they?

The Myth:

The myth is that the inner-city people are found in the geographical center of any metropolitan area. For our great city, we would surely head to the heart of the inner-city of Denver. Surely here these so-called inner-city people would be everywhere. The markings of their neighborhoods are easy to identify with graffiti on the walls, broken glass on the sidewalks, liquor stores on every corner, pawn shops at every turn, and the much needed fast cash and payday loan shops within the blink of an eye.

The Reality:

Inner-city people are not geographical certainties. They also live, dwell, and suffer just as much, if not more to varying degrees, outside of the known geographical inner-city of Denver. In fact, this is true of just about every other major metropolitan city in America. Subsequently, these suburban inner-city peoples are often treated as faceless human beings because they are stuck somewhere in between their inner-city struggles outside the traditional inner-city walls, and the much focused on geographical inner-city mission of the church. Otherwise, in isolation they walk the streets at night, work the late shifts, cut the lawns, clean the offices, unload the trucks at the local Walmart, speak their native Spanish language behind the counters at the local fast food restaurant, heavily depend on welfare, and often pick up the trash many of you place in your front yards, all outside the heart of the city.

The Truth:

Regardless of what has traditionally defined an inner-city person, inner-city people are becoming defined in much broader terms now, but with many of the same ailments. The challenge now is to try to imagine what will become the mission of the church to these suburban inner-city peoples that have rudely invited themselves to live outside the authorized inner-city walls, and have perhaps given the church a mission it didn’t want so near.

"They gave me two doctors to choose from: Dr. Chin and Dr. Abdul. I told her, 'Can't I just have an American doctor?'"

I couldn't believe my ears. I like to think that racism is dead except for in the South. I'm not racist am I? But to hear a relative discriminate against two professionals in one statement by simply using the last name as a basis for judgement made me rethink what I thought about the state of racism in the U.S.

Racism takes many forms as was adeptly portrayed recently in the movie, Crash. As a member of the majority in every category I fall into, it's easy to take a defensive stance. I get upset that I'm constantly forced to defend myself against racism. It feels like there is a broad assumption that every white person is a racist. I try so hard to be fair to each person that I meet and not judge them or stereotype them. I see that racism is alive and well in an older generation. Will the U.S. be a better place for all races when my generation takes leadership? I like to think so, but I think I'm being naive.

As a current H.I.V./AIDS tester and counselor, and throughout my almost 3 years of professional experience working in the AIDS field, I have frequently come across the most extremely marginalized populations of our society. Everyone from injection drug users, prostitutes, crack-cocaine fiends, sex addicts, homosexuals, and many, many transgender people as well. While all of these people are equally tormented by their circumstances, illnesses, and lifestyles, none are more tormented by Christ than the homosexuals and transgender populations. To many of them, when the church reaches out to everyone else except them, it is clear that Christ refuses to comfort them.

Before I continue, be advised that this post is not a political/theological debate on the moral issues revolving around sexual preferences, same sex marriage, gay parenting, or any other such controversial topic. This is but a mere observation that when Christ is unable to comfort all human sufferings, then the resurrection of Jesus is rendered meaningless.

While the tension mounts outside the walls of faith, and the AIDS epidemic becomes the unifying community cry for justice amongst these marginalized people, I am forced to live in tension at all levels. I am forced to wrestle with extending a positive H.I.V. result to the 20 year old male sitting in front of me, knowing that upon leaving my office, Christ offers him no comfort. There is no community of faith that will endure his pain with him, and there is seemingly no prayer that will remove the stigma attached to his condition.

I often wonder how many of us really know someone living with H.I.V./AIDS. I often wonder what was it about Christ that compelled him to have a sort of ruthless compassion for the lepers by touching them, or his love for the prostitutes by hugging them, or even for the drunkards by sharing meals with them. What kind of man was this Jesus? Perhaps the reality is that at some level, everyone else on this planet matters to Christ, while homosexuals and transgender people don’t. Perhaps we are not called to them at any major compassionate level. Obviously, they must be less than human, and for that, I am sorry. For that, I will apologize to them for us all one by one. I will apologize to them for Christ. For as they come into my office, and as I send them back out into the world with their H.I.V./AIDS results they must remain alone in a world where a suffering Christ with AIDS is nowhere to be found.

One month ago, we were able to send one of our young men home. He had decided to leave the life on the street. With great expectation, he boarded his bus and was off. It would only take a few hours to be back were his life began. A possible fairy tale ending to a nightmarish story seemed to be playing out.

When I look back on this nineteen-year-old young man, I see a boy that began his street life at age eleven. He has had numerous encounters with the police he has gone in and out of jail, used alcohol and other drugs extensively. Seemingly, street life is all he is qualified to do. Just over the last few months he moved out of state and began dealing drugs and stealing. He says he was very good at this endeavor. Money became as common as the smog that filled the air. Woman, cars whatever he needed were literally at his fingertips. It seemed he had found what he truly is qualified to do. He awoke one morning to find a tooth that had fallen out during the night lying beside him. When he examined the rest of his teeth, he notices they all showed signs of great decay. He knew this was a symptom caused by the enormous amount of drugs entering his body. He was terrified. At that moment, he decided to go home.

After contacting us and making the plans, he was on his way. He arrived home safely and all seemed to be going great. That is until mom’s new boyfriend laid down the get a job or get out notice. He gave a two-week maximum for our friend to get a job or out he had to go. Our friend looked for a job but to no surprise, his qualifications did not match any requirements on the job market. With his possessions strapped to his back, he arrived back here returning to things he feels qualified to do, living on the street, dealing, stealing, and drinking.

What do you tell people they are qualified to do?

http://www.drybonesdenver.org

I just returned from a couple of days in New Orleans, tagging along with my friend Scott Lundeen. Scott was part of the Issachar Community when he lived in Denver. Now he’s on the staff of a church in NO’s Central City neighborhood, just across the highway from the Superdome. Scott and his wife Melanie train groups of volunteer interns, helping them kindle a passion for life and service among the poor.

At least, that’s what they did before Katrina. Scott and his friend Michael, who was a youth pastor pre-Katrina, were among the first people back into the neighborhood after the flood. Even as they surveyed the ruins of their community, they began to hear rumblings about “gentrification” – the impending arrival of developers who would surely find in Central City a virtual “blank slate,” and a chance to start over and build a new neighborhood, right next to downtown, full of trendy brew pubs and upscale lofts to replace the neighborhood’s housing projects and tiny shotgun homes. In other words, to replace the neighborhood's residents.

U.S. Border Crossing Sign - San Diego, Ca.

The other night marked the end this semester for Colorado Christian University where I am a student. In the last night of my American Political Process class we had guest speaker. Mr. John Marshall, who serves as communications director for Congressman Bob Beauprez (R) of Colorado, came as a last minute expert on all things political from a "faith-based perspective", given that he himself is a Christian working in politics. While his demeanor was certainly humble, and his approach completely Christ-like, when we touched on the issues revolving a current “hot button” topic, Immigration Reform, the aspect of faith quietly and quickly found its way out of that particular conversation. As a result, we were left with what seemed like a completely American Patriotic conversation about immigration concerns. This is understandable given that this issue is more of political matter, not a matter of faith. Or is it?

“How can we thank you enough for coming to us as God in flush?”

Every head was bowed, every eye closed at Anchor of Hope yesterday morning. Good thing, because maybe nobody saw me stifle a laugh during the “prayer of invocation.” Did he really say God in flush? Plagued by a graphic imagination even in church, I envisioned human waste circling the bowl, struggled briefly with the word “God” swirling in the same context, and pulled myself together again in time for the amen. Ok, it was just a waver of the tongue… or the rich Arkansas accent of an older man greatly respected and dear to me.

But it wasn’t that easy to get out of my head. I have to admit it kept intruding on the rest of what I heard about advent throughout the worship service. God in flush. It certainly puts a new, imagistic spin on Philippians 2, that ancient hymn about God emptying himself.

I do not want to want to be sacrilegious here. When speaking of God I am trembling on holy ground, tinkering with dynamite, squinting at mystery. But the mystery I am most drawn to tinker with and squint at is the extraordinary notion that God did in fact empty himself, taking on of all things the form of a human being. And not just any human being, but a servant-human being, so that God not only had the experience of producing excrement but got treated like it.

When you’ve come from some form of poverty, extreme brokenness, or marginalized part of society, everyone wants you to be honest. Courts want you to be honest. Case managers want you to be honest. Addiction counselors want you to be honest. Therapists want you to be honest. Housing facilities want you to be honest. Medicaid technicians want you to honest. Food stamp personnel want you to be honest. Churches want you to be honest. Everyone wants you to be honest.

The problem is that when you are tied up with all these people wanting you to be honest, honesty requires vulnerability. Though this is a special kind of vulnerability. A kind where your life, your kids, and your future depend on how someone responds to your honesty. However, when most of the people asking for such levels of honesty have never had to risk everything by being so honest themselves, it becomes difficult.

Honesty then becomes a trap. The people asking for it then become outsiders awaiting the moment to refuse what you need most. They do not understand what is at stake. Not like this. Not when you are completely dependent on everyone else to survive, or face surviving somehow with nobody at all.

Why are you not dancing? The music is playing. The others are dancing. Why are you still sitting here? These very well could be questions from one of my Jr. High School dances. I would have several answers to these questions. I can’t dance. Dancing is against my religion (I think). I have two left feet. Who would dance with me? I just want to watch.

Any of those would do the trick and keep me from doing what I was embarrassed to do. Oh how I wished I would have known what God wanted to teach me in Jr. High. Lately several books I have read describe the life we live as a dance. A dance with the triune God. A dance with others where God is pursuing us. Everything I am learning seems to be all about dancing. Let me give you an example of a dance.

Signs are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign!”
The word within a word, unable to speak a word
Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger
--T.S. Eliot, "Gerontion"

In the last several days I have been with a number of people who were unable to speak a word. In each case I had a sense of having brushed up against something holy, though it was not immediately plain how this was so. At the time, each encounter was awkward in its own way. Only tonight am I unpacking it all a little.

Tuesday evening in an intensive-care room at Rose Medical Center, I held a woman’s hand as medical staff disconnected her breathing tubes. In the quiet dark, family members touched her goodbye.

Thursday morning at Joshua Station, a motel for homeless families where I work, I looked into the face of a newborn child.

Today I stopped by Monaco House, a group home for developmentally disabled teens. Monique, a young lady I have known and loved for many years, greeted me excitedly and introduced me to her friends, most of whom have disabilities more profound than hers. Some cannot speak. We nodded and grinned at each other.

Tonight, Christmas eve, our family is swaddled in sleeping bags for our traditional living room slumber party. The house is dark. Our neighborhood is unusually silent for a Saturday night. I remembered Eliot’s poem, and like the old geezer “Gerontion” reflecting on his life and on Life, I’m wondering at the mystery of God-with-us. The Word that roared the universe to life came silent in the dark. Stealthy as a tiger, ready to spring in the springtime (or youth? I read somewhere that Eliot made up the word “juvescence,” which made me feel better for never having heard of it) of the world’s calendar, smashing our words with his silence and our competence with his helplessness. “For he shall save his people from their sins.”

Christ’s coming is good news worth shouting about, for sure. Maybe tomorrow. But tonight, this last evening of Advent, it’s worth being quiet about--listening to the Word unable to speak a word, swaddled with darkness.