Talk

Talk

I had to reconcile my image
of a God who is Love
with the reality of a
God who doesn’t always play fair.

Sometimes, what we’re talking about isn’t what we’re really talking about.

A high school graduate called to ask if he could meet with me. Just to talk. So we met. And we talked. About his family. About his decision to take a year off from school. About his job. About the work of discerning – during that year – what he might study when he went back to school. After our talk, the student gave me a letter.

In that letter, he wrote of his feelings for a friend, a friend of the same gender.

Sometimes, what we want to talk about isn’t what we get to talk about.

That student and I talked again. For years, we talked. At church. At coffee shops. In my home. In his. I told him to trust his family. I told him to stay as connected as he could to his church. He told me he was convinced that acting on his feelings would harm his friendship and go against scripture. He told me about temptation and the boundaries he’d set in order to avoid it.

I had to reconcile my image of a God who is Love with the reality of a God who doesn’t always play fair. I couldn’t do it. We didn’t talk about that.

It’s been nearly seven years now since the student and I started talking. Celibate all those years, that student has remained active in our denomination. That student is respected. But I wonder what would happen if that student shared his story with his home church. Or with mine.

If he stood on a Sunday morning and shared a story of sexual purity, a story of victory in Jesus, a story of perseverance and of sacrifice, a compelling story – how might the telling of that story affect his future among us?

1. Would he be allowed to volunteer in the church nursery?
2. Would he be asked to lead a small group for young men?
3. Would he be nominated to serve as an elder?
4. Would we send him to our annual conference as a representative of the local church?

I’d like to think the answer to at least one of those questions might be yes. But I’m not so sure.

I’ve heard the talk.

To Wait

To Wait

He was smart enough to know he couldn’t get answers to most of his questions.
Which was part of the problem.

A few years ago, I spoke at this camp on the Oregon Coast. There were lots of kids there whose parents I knew. But most of the kids didn’t really know me. And they had plenty of friends at camp. And I was one of the old people.

Except at the end of the week, one of those kids got left at camp. His parents didn’t show up to take him home. I saw him sitting in the gravel next to the Meetinghouse. Looking out at the highway. Waiting.

I decided I’d wait there with him. I walked over to where he was sitting. Sat down in the gravel. And we talked. About his best friend at camp. About his cabin. About whether his parents loved him (that was a joke on my part, but he took the statement seriously). About his sisters. And life the way an elementary-school kid thinks about life.

I think I told him that because of who his dad was, he was growing up with a lot of expectations. I think I told him that his ability to be honest was going to be pretty important, especially when he made mistakes. I think I told him that effort mattered more than ability. And that I thought his parents actually did love him. A lot.

He told me a lot of things as well. But I kept trying to read between the lines and didn’t end up hearing much. I got the feeling, though, that he enjoyed talking, maybe even needed to talk. That walking over and sitting down in the gravel was a quality decision.

Later that year, I ended up on a planning team with that kid’s dad. We had meetings in Newberg, and on at least one occasion, I stayed at their house. They put me in what one of their daughters called “The Pimp Room.” The kid was playing percussion. Showed me some things he’d learned. Talked about the school he’d missed (quite a bit of school as it turned out). And whether he’d be at camp the next summer.

For a few years, this was the pattern. We’d run into each other during a week of camp or at Yearly Meeting. Maybe sit down once or twice. Not for long, though. Too much happens at camp. I had responsibilities. He had lots of friends. We’d talk about school. About his family. About a book he’d been reading but hadn’t finished. About a theory he had. About religion. About people’s expectations. About whether I thought he could learn how to be happy. Or how to care about someone (not just for them). Or how to let people care for him.

Every year his questions got a little more serious. He was smart enough to know he couldn’t get answers to most of his questions. Which was part of the problem. He really, really wanted answers.

As far as he could tell, other kids either hadn’t figured out how to ask important questions. Or their answers had shown up. Right on time. At the end of camp. And he was still sitting here in the gravel, next to the Meetinghouse. Looking out at the highway. Waiting.

A few years ago, I moved back to Newberg. The kid had really grown up. He’d developed into a first-rate high school musician. He was a decent athlete. He had a gift for bringing people together, for creating community, for making people feel safe and accepted. He made mistakes, and those were bigger than they’d been when he was in grade school. And we talked more. About music. About poetry. About his dreams. About his questions. About his relationships. About his mistakes. About God.

I told him that he had value. I told him that he was doing good work (in spite of the mistakes). I told him that the questions might be a lot more important than the answers. I told him that it wouldn’t hurt to listen to his parents. Or to catch up on his schoolwork. Or to be patient with people. And I told him that no matter what he did, I’d still want to be his friend. That no matter what he believed, I’d always be up for a cup of coffee and a talk. That no matter what I heard, I knew the truth of who he was and of who he’d always be.

Someone who cared deeply about how. Someone who cared deeply about why. Someone willing to sit down in the gravel when the rest of the world was driving home. Someone who was willing to look out at the highway and wait.

Need

Need

We cannot house every family. We cannot clothe every child.
We cannot feed the hungry.

There’s a place on the south end of town that has no trees. It’s a flat, dusty desert – an island of dirt and sand and sunshine – with a bright city center to the north, and a sea of rolling green fields to the south. The town is San Luis Rio Colorado (Mexico). This place on its south edge is where the town’s newest residents are building a life. Every year, more people come to this place, looking for a chance to start over, and every year, that flat space without trees grows larger.

In the last 10 years, San Luis has added about 30,000 residents. But the Border Economic Cooperation Commission predicts that in the next six years, nearly 200,000 more people will move to this border town.

Last spring, Newberg and North Valley Friends churches sent nine folks on a work trip to San Luis. We visited our friends at Nueva Esperanza, a church we’ve worked with for more than two decades. We built a basketball court, expanded a patio roof. We worshiped together and worked together and ate together. We considered the need – the overwhelming need – in this town that will soon be a metropolis. And we realized that we cannot meet the need. We cannot house every family. We cannot clothe every child. We cannot feed the hungry. There are already so many. And there will always be more.

We also recognized that God didn’t call us to right every wrong in this place. Instead, God simply asks us to try.

Last year, there were nine of us. This year, we plan to take ten times as many.

It won’t be easy.

We’ll raise more than $80,000 for building supplies, insurance, meals, lodging and fuel. We’ll organize meetings for team members. We’ll put together a work day to build trusses, paint siding, load up lumber, organize donations of clothes and curtains and shoes and sewing machines. We’ll sell Christmas trees. We’ll work on the language. We’ll get our passports and our shots. This fall, we’ll send a small team to meet with members of the church, the families we hope to help, and representatives of the new government.

And we won’t be alone.

Current government workers have promised to help us connect with the right people when the new government takes power in September. Members at Nueva Esperanza are already meeting each month with the families we hope to help. These same church members plan to start construction work on several of the projects before we arrive. Some of the families we’ve helped in years past plan to work with us in our efforts to help four new families this year.

With their help, we’ll be able to take on more projects this year than ever before. With their help, the work we do over spring break won’t end when we leave. With their help and God’s grace, our five loaves and two fishes might be enough.

Shame

Shame

There is no such thing as an issue. There
are only people.

I’m embarrassed about a lot of the things I did in high school. And no, I’m not talking about the time I convinced my 4-year-old brother to climb into the clothes dryer. Or the time I turned on said clothes dryer. Or the hundreds of times I repeated the story – of how I’d convinced him, of my mother’s screams, of the thrill – over the following year.

In public.

With volume.

Granted, that incident – and quite a few like it – is one that probably should cause shame. But even now, as I’m typing, I’m also smiling. At the memory. Of how stupid I was. And I’m thinking about who hasn’t already heard that story because I’d kind of like to tell it again.

That’s part of the problem. People hear stories of the things I did –

1. an under-the-radar, pay-day loan service I ran during the lunch hour;
2. a series of letters to the Oregonian, urging editors to fire a certain columnist I didn’t like;
3. a faked disorder in which I semi-secretly and pseudo-obsessively consumed paper products for attention (for two years)

– and conclude that there couldn’t possibly be more.

But there is. Few people know, for instance, that I once took part in a public protest.

I was on the news.

I was standing on a street in Portland.

I was holding a sign: Abortion Kills Children.

My friends at church (assuming they read my blog) are probably starting to wonder where I’m headed with this. My other friends are probably wondering how they didn’t know I was THAT kind of Christian. Some of you just want me to get on with it already.

So there I was. At my first public protest. And I was being POLITICAL. I was making a STATEMENT. I was standing up for the TRUTH. And something funny happened.

This car came around the corner. It was moving slow. A woman leaned out the window, and as the car passed, she looked at me and asked, “Why don’t you just keep your penis in your pants?”

For some reason, I thought that maybe my fly was down. I put down the sign and checked. Nope. All good. When I looked up, the car was gone. And it dawned on me why she didn’t stick around for my reply. It was already on my sign.

I hadn’t taken any communications theory at that point. And I wasn’t skilled in cultural exchange analysis. But I knew that sign had a message. And as messages tend to be, it was aimed at someone.

Abortion Kills Children.

Sometimes my brain doesn’t work as fast as I’d like, but I realized, looking up, reading the sign, standing on that street in Portland on a Sunday afternoon, that my sign was aimed at women. What women were most likely to physically feel the sign’s message? Women who’d had an abortion. Women stuck between one bad choice and another. Women who were doing the best they knew how in a world that didn’t love them. And certainly didn’t understand.

I was holding up a sign that was intended to shame people.

Poor people.

Powerless people.

The abused.

The assaulted.

The already-ashamed.

For more than half my life now, I haven’t really thought about that time in Portland. Didn’t want to. Didn’t need to. Even now, writing about the incident, I feel a mixture of shame (I was once one of THEM) and relief (but I’ve CHANGED). The shame is real. But the relief is not. Because I’m still one of THEM. And even though I don’t take part in that kind of protest, I also fail to protest the protest (if you know what I mean). This little blog post is my relatively weak attempt to change that. By telling the moral that I learned that day:

There is no such thing as an issue. There are only people. Jesus loved people. Even people who could have killed their brothers by sticking them in clothes dryers.

I want to love people, too.

Negative Attention

Negative Attention

people can only hear you when they are
moving toward you

They called me names. They mocked my appearance. They scoffed at my opinions, disdained my attempts at humor. They sometimes threatened violence. A kick to the face broke my glasses once. They called it an accident.

Considering what I might do, I realized that I could leave. I didn’t have to stick around, and I didn’t have to take it; so I resolved that I would show up one more time, if for no other reason than to announce my intention to quit. Mind made up, I felt good. But that night, I made a discovery that changed the way I see. And instead of leaving, I stayed.

They needed me too much.

It was my freshman year in college. I was volunteering with middle school students at a local church. They were horrible, and they wouldn’t leave me alone.

That was the key to my epiphanous moment: they wouldn’t leave me alone.

Other adults in the room didn’t get punched in the back during worship. Other adults in the room didn’t suffer sotto voce critiques of their facial features. Other adults in the room – as far as student behaviors indicated – weren’t even visible.

It wasn’t fair.

That I’d been given so much power.

Edwin H. Friedman claims that “people can only hear you when they are moving toward you,” and for absolutely no good reason, these students had decided to move toward me. They had given me the power over what they heard and how they heard it.

If what has value is like a radio signal in a sea of static, then these students had decided that I was the signal. Other adults in the room were just noise.

I have to admit that, along with the students, I too suffered serious and prolonged bouts of immaturity. In other words, I recognized the power I’d been given, but I didn’t use it well. And the next year, a new group of volunteers – younger and demonstrably cooler – joined the work, so I had to learn to share attention, to be part of a team.

Fortunately, I mostly grew up over the intervening years without growing too “old” to relate. But that time of my life – that discovery I made on a Wednesday night in October, 20 years ago – pointed to a truth that has opened ministry doors in dozens of contexts.

What, exactly, did I learn? That negative attention is attention. When people are moving toward me, whether from loving acceptance or annoyed engagement, they are also attuned to the signals I send. They choose to hear me.

It’s a truth that has helped me to re-perceive what feel like attacks, to see them as opportunities for relationship, as indicators that I have value.

When a parent sends me an email, questioning my judgment, I can rejoice that this parent trusted me enough to start a conversation, to tell me what she really thinks, to give me the opportunity to respond.

When a retired college professor invites me to coffee, sits across from me, and proceeds to tell me why I’m an idiot, I don’t have to hear the isolated critique. After all, I don’t have to take it personally.

I get to.

He has a Ph.D., national recognition, decades of academic experience, and he’s decided that I’m worth his time.

When an elder at my church questions my character in an embarrassing, semi-public, quasi-accusation, I look up and see that she’s looking into my eyes. That she’s not angry. Just afraid. And that thing she just said might be more about her than about me.

What do I do? It depends.

Mostly, I try to receive the gift of attention as a gift, to truly be thankful for the influence I’ve been given, for the value that’s been communicated. I try to listen and really understand. I try to give back.

I’ll admit, it doesn’t always end in raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. But more times than I can count, that parent has volunteered to work in my classroom, that retired professor has shaken my hand and asked if I would be his friend, that elder – in tears – has called to talk about her son and to ask for my forgiveness.

And I pray: God, help me to have the grace to see a world filled with opportunity, a people filled with potential, fields white for harvest. Help me to love my neighbor as myself. Help me also to recognize when my neighbor is trying to love me.

Condemned?

Only those who know they are loved can face hell without fear.

Interdependence

We don't believe that the marginalized have anything to give to us. We don't recognize our poverty.

Power

Our character is most revealed when we are given power. What is character? How should we use power? Always for the sake of those without it. Power must benefit the powerless.

Transformation

The goal is not to become a person of character. The goal is to become a person of character who changes the world. The goal for me is to become the person God wants me to become for the sake of others.

Miracle Story

Kevin, Ben, and Rafaelito look out from the upstairs window of the miracle house.

Miracles

He had the clothes he was wearing and
a black baseball cap.

Over a lunch of shredded beef, avocado and fresh tortillas, Julio – wearing his signature black baseball cap – was telling me his miracle story. Over a year ago, a fire swept through the home he shared with his extended family. Julio lost clothing, blankets, a bed, his birth certificate – almost everything. When three Americans visited a few days after the fire, Julio was sleeping in his car. Except most nights, Julio said he couldn’t sleep: “It was too cold.” He had the clothes he was wearing and a black baseball cap.

Those Americans decided to build a home for Julio’s family, and that spring, a team from Newberg-area churches worked with Julio’s family and members of a local church – Nueva Esperanza – to build a new home. That’s the first part of the miracle. Julio’s family got a house.

Julio couldn’t get a job. He didn’t have a birth certificate or any other form of identification. The pastor at Nueva Esperanza and several of the American workers took Julio to the city’s social services agency, where a social worker walked Julio through the process of getting new papers. But it would cost money, Julio argued. The Americans found a way to cover the cost. But he would have to get back to the office, Julio said, a distance of several miles. His car didn’t run. He couldn’t afford public transportation. The Americans insisted that Julio find a way. And he did. That’s the second part of the miracle. Julio got his papers.

Last fall, the Americans visited Julio’s family. The family had planted young trees in front of their new house. The family had been attending the church that helped them, Nueva Esperanza. Julio’s young cousins loved to go to Sunday school. But Julio didn’t have a job. One of the Americans talked to Julio, told him that he had skills, that he could be helping his family if he were working, that the Americans would be back in the spring and they expected Julio to have a job when they returned. That’s the third part of the miracle. Julio got a job.

It wasn’t a very good job. Julio was working with his uncle at an auto body shop. Work was slow, and on a good day of work, Julio only earned the equivalent of $5 or $6 a day. But he was learning new skills. And the money did make a difference for his family.

Then, in the spring, the Americans came back. They were doing a series of work projects at the church: a basketball court, a patio roof, metal sheeting for the roof. They asked Julio and his uncle to help. Julio showed up early on Monday morning, and by the time we’d stopped for lunch, he’d poured water, shoveled gravel, and moved dozens of wheelbarrow loads of concrete. A man from the church was helping us work. He admired Julio’s attitude and his effort. That was the fourth part of the miracle. Julio told me over lunch that the man, Ruben, supervised a clean-up team at one of the vegetable packing plants south of town. Ruben had offered Julio a chance to work that night. If all went well, Julio would have a job that paid more than twice as much as his other job. And the work was guaranteed for four months.

So how did the story end, Julio’s miracle story? Julio got the job in the packing plant. But that’s not the end of the story. At least, not yet.

Newberg Friends has been working in the city of San Luis Rio Colorado for more than three decades. For most of the last 20 years, we’ve partnered with North Valley, West Chehalem, and Nueva Esperanza. We’ve named our partnership Equipo, which means “team” in Spanish, because we really are a team. With each other. With the church in San Luis. With the government officials who help us get supplies across the border, who help us identify families in need. With the families. With Julio.

A boy who lost everything now has a home, a job, a church family, friends in a foreign country. And he’s joined our team, working with us to help other families in need. Maybe that’s the real miracle story.