Early on Sunday morning I stopped by my office to pick up some things and to drop off donated clothes, as well as newspapers for our recycle bins.
As I approached the back of the building, I noticed someone peeking out from inside one of the trash dumpsters. When he heard me pull up, he ducked down so that I would not see him there.
When I got out of my car to unload my donation, I simply said, "Good morning!"
At my greeting, my new friend's head popped up and he replied, "Good morning to you!"
At that point he went about his business of examining a shirt someone had thrown away, before continuing to dig for cans among the trash in the bin.
It was clear that he was relieved to find me basically harmless and it was also clear that he wanted nothing from me beyond the recognition of my greeting.
Later in the morning, as I sat in a pew at the beginning of the service in a downtown church , we heard the loud and disturbing crash, crush and sickening thud of an auto accident just outside the sanctuary walls on the street. Our singing and praying went on without interruption, but the expected noise and commotion of an accident continued. Sirens and the rushing sound of emergency and fire vehicles soon drew near us.
It was an eerie feeling to sit in the church and to be able to hear the sounds of disappointment, hurt, pain, distractionction just outside. Toward the end of the ordeal, I know I heard the wail of a person in the onset of a fierce grief.
Two very different experiences on my Sunday morning.
The intersection of my world with two very different worlds.
One the result of homelessness, possibly addiction and/or mental illness and a combination of terrible circumstances, bad choices and most likely a dose of sustained injustice. I don't know his story, but I've heard the broad outlines many times. The details don't really matter. Here was a brother in trouble who needed my friendship no matter what the reasons for his current location in life.
The other most likely an unfortunate accident that may have ended very tragically. At this point, I have no way to know. But pain was there and a need for hope and comfort and healing.
In both cases the church was positioned very nearby. That could be fortunate or ironically irrelevant.
Of course, that all depends on how the proximity is engaged.
I'll see my new friend again, I know. And, I expect that a number of folks leaving the church after Sunday School encountered the accident that I heard. There could be ongoing connection.
But beyond the details of my experiences, both seem to symbolize the choice communities of faith face today in America. To remain safely cloistered behind our walls of comfort and familiar friendship. Or, to step out into the streets to confront the painful reality that is very close at hand.
I'll think of this Sunday often in the coming days.
4 comments:
Perhaps . . . but we should never be content when such pain is around us. We should always ask, "Why is this pain here, and what can be done to prevent it?"
Asking "why" can be done in two ways: 1) To find out who is to blame, and to punish them (see the current administration's approach to 9/11), 2) To determine the core drivers behind the pain, and to prevent them from furthering their damage on our world.
CDM is adopting the latter approach, in an attempt to put itself out of business. The agency's stated goal, on its Web site, is "To put ourselves out of business by removing the need for our services in every neighborhood in our community."
Unless they ask why that need exists, they will never be able to achieve that goal.
The only reason to label their approach as "blaming" is if we have a reason to fear that WE are somehow to blame, and we don't want to be found out. Looking at myself, at my life and at the many things that I have done or not done, I know that is the case. I hope that CDM finds me out, and helps me to change my ways. Perhaps that will be blaming; or, perhaps it will be a way of helping me to lead a better life so that I can enable others to lead a better life themselves?
I do not understand what you mean by poverty pimps. It sounds like a derogatory term to make the rich feel better when accosted by people who are poor, or those who have chosen to give voice to them. Such base terminology seems to serve no better purpose than to reduce the debate to the level of primitive name-calling. This sort of "reframing" has been masking over the real issues in our world for over 20 years.
How do I guard against? By not allowing that sort of terminology to infiltrate my thought process, and to focus on the hearts of individuals rather than the world's reductionist labels for them.
Regarding the Serenity Prayer: That prayer has entered my life in many ways; it was the first prayer I learned after the Lord's Prayer, in fact. I think it is useful in many circumstances, but most of those are personal. That is how it was introduced to me: by people suffering disease and addictions that were beyond their control to handle as individuals.
I do not believe that it should be lifted up as a prayer for the public.
That is, I believe its application is ineffective when discussing social and political policy. I do not believe that there is any source of pain or oppression that is beyond our capacity to change as a community or people. Perhaps I am blindly optimistic, but I believe that we are here to do more than simply tend the garden ("weeds and all").
I shall not ask for the serenity to accept injustices that are beyond my personal power to change, but which our country/people have the power to change.
I shall not ask for the serenity to accept the reality of the lives of the working poor whom I have never, and may never, be.
I shall not ask for the serenity to go about my days concerned only with my own meager plights, passing off larger burdens as beyond my capacity to change.
Our lives are gifts, to be used as tool's of a divine hand to build His Kingdom in this world. I shall not be "free from stress or emotion" (i.e. serene) until His work is done.
Am I missing something, Larry? How could you, of all people, sit there and carry on with a worship service while people needed help right outside the walls of the buildling? People may have died who would have lived if Christians in that building had gone out and helped. You and the rest of the commenters here seem to see some larger issue, but the issue seems simply to be that in one particular circumstance Christians stayed on the other side of the road while leaving the work of service to the Samaritan.
Milton, it wasn't quite like what you think. Many people did go outside and I didn't describe the entire event. In this case, the church where I worshipped on that day did respond as best it could, as did the police and emergency workers.
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