Today at the Mission

Henri Nouwen, via Len Hjalmarson at Resonate Soapbox:

“Someone who is filled with ideas, concepts, opinions and convictions cannot show hospitality. There is no inner space to listen, no openness to discover the gift of the other. It is not difficult to see that those who “know it all” can kill a conversation. Poverty of mind as a missional stance is a growing willingness to recognize the vast mystery of life.

“To prepare ourselves for mission we have to maintain an articulate not knowing, a docta ignorantia, a learned ignorance. This is very difficult to accept for people whose whole attitude is toward mastering and controlling the world. We all want to be educated so we can make things work according to our own need. But training for mission is training not to master God but to be formed by Him.”

I find myself cultivating an inner stillness lately when I'm with others - trying very hard to listen - not only to what is said but to what isn't said, to hear with my whole being.  I'm not sure how this came about but I think it's something that's been developing for a long time. Getting knocked on your butt a few times with the realization that you're not so smart after all - well, that certainly helps the process along.

It takes great effort to truly be in the moment - fully and completely and wholly immersed in this present experience and revelation of God. Once this practice is cultivated, and nurtured, and has become a way of life, however, it becomes very difficult to step outside of it, to break free from the clarity of this great peace and plunge headlong once more into the riotous and calamitous frenzy that is the world.

Before he left for Africa (again), Mike Todd visited Ontario. The planets conspired to keep me from meeting with him as I had hoped. On his return to British Columbia, however, Mike mailed me a copy of The Shack by William P. Young. What an amazing gift.

From the back cover:

Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted druing a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicous note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend.

Mack does indeed return to the shack, and does indeed meet with God, who appears as a large African American woman named 'Papa' who loves to cook. Jesus is, understandably, a Middle-Eastern man with the look of a labourer, while the Holy Spirit appears as a shimmering, somewhat trasluscent Asian woman named Sarayu. What follows is a weekend-long conversation amongst these four in which Mack must confront his pain, his anger towards God and the inadequacies of his previous understanding of life, the universe and everything.

The Shack has taken some criticism for it's depiction of the Trinity, particularly in regards to a heresy known as modalism, wherein Father, Son and Holy Spirit are understood to be three manifestations of one being, existing consecutively but never concurrently. I'm certainly no theologian, but the criticism seems unfounded to me - unfounded to the extent that only a person who has never read the book could offer this criticism. (The pertinent explanation of the nature of the Trinity is found on pages 100-101; the simultaneous existence of the three persons of the Godhead occurs throughout Mack's engagement with them.) What I did struggle with is Young's writing. Vast swaths of the opening chapters are simply overwrought and the final chapter is an obvious attempt to tie up loose ends. Perhaps they speak a different language in the Pacific Northwest, but a canoe is propelled by a paddle, not an oar, and such simple but obvious mistakes interupt the reader. Throughout Mack's engagement with the Trinity there are whole chapters of nothing but dialogue and, frankly, much of it sounds contrived ("Let's use the example of friendship and how removing the element of life from a noun can drastically alter a relationship")

In the end, though, none of it mattered. I was simply swept up in the conversation and the events Mack is immersed in during his weekend with God. Though I had heard that this book presents a brilliant portrayal of the Trinity (and it does) that's not what The Shack is about. It is, instead, the story of one man reconciling his unimaginable pain with the concept of a loving, all-wise and all-powerful God. The Shack invites us into a conversation that speaks of the things we've all questioned without receiving satsifactory answers. Oh, we have - at our fingertips - all the information on the Trinity and human suffering we could ever imagine, all of it presented in the dry, clinical tones of academia and sermonic inadequacies. This is different. This examination of Mack's great pain - of all our pain - takes place in the context of a loving relationship between God and Mack. The relationship between the three persons of God is so loving, so close and so joyful that I found myself longing to be a part of it - I wanted to be drawn into the story, a quality of craft that far more talented writers aspire to with less effect. This book is flawed, imperfect and annoying but it is also engaging, energetic, brilliant and wise. I can't reccommend it highly enough.

There's a big old house right next door to the Mission. All week I've been watching the inhabitants of one apartment in particular. They spend all day sitting on their back porch, playing cards, talking, just sitting. Every afternoon someone goes to Tim Horton's for coffee. It's been an interesting exercise for me, watching them sit there all day, from the kitchen window, as I prepare their supper. Today one of them asked me for a box of groceries, reminding me that she had two young children. This was accomplished by yelling at me across the parking lot.

Yes, I know it's all about grace for me. I just wonder what it's about for them, that's all.

Walky Talky can be seen walking all over the city. She has a day long conversation with herself and, sometimes, with passing cars. She waits outside - for two hours each day - before the meal program opens. The Bearded Lady makes pleasant small talk when she comes in. The Young Couple Who Look Like Bikers have a newborn. Young Biker Dad sits in the chair at the top of the stairs and feeds the baby. I don't need to know his life story to know he's never been happier, ever - it's written all over him: he's like a person in one of those paintings by the Dutch Masters, perpetually bathed in light. Volunteer lady is warming up with the karaoke machine - she'll sings a couple of lovely hymns before dinner. It will seem like everyone is talking and chattering away while she sings but, if you look carefully you'll see people throughout the room, listening intently to her every word, some of them pretending not to. Another volunteer lady is getting the birthday candles out for the cupcakes she brings - it's Wednesday night and we say 'Happy Birthday' to anyone celebrating. More than once we've celebrated an AA birthday, we might do so again tonight. The Euchre Posse is in the middle of their second game. Every so often one of them will misplay a hand and the entire table will erupt in howls and laughter. The smokers are outside the front door, talking quietly; the teenagers are sitting on the steps across the street. Impossible - the shelter cat - wanders into my office and meows for treats. Someone has hidden a bag of cat-candy in my desk drawer and she knows it's there, so of course I'm obligated to give her some, though I don't know why I bother with that cat. Our dishwasher hasn't shown up and the cook struggles to catch up on the pots and pans before dinner begins.

We need more sugar for the coffee station, the timer just went off on the oven, somebody wants to know if I can help them out with groceries, kitchen garbages need to be changed again, the kitchen's a mess and I'm waiting for the Teenage Girl Who Lives in the Tent to come back in so I can give her the granola bars and juice boxes I've been saving for her, but it's raining, and she probably won't make the trek downtown tonight. I'm trying to figure out what, if anything to say in the Jesus Talk before dinner, and realize that I may just skip it altogether. God is in this wonderful mess somewhere, I suppose - but, frankly, sometimes it's hard to see where.

I had breakfast with a bunch of guys this week in a lovely little cafe downtown. They all seem so young, but they're so incredibly smart, so funny, so real. The room has floor to ceiling windows overlooking the street and, as I sat there enjoying the eggs and coffee and conversation, a flash of red caught my eye. It was Dame Melba, dressed in her cardinal red overcoat and equally eye-catching red hat with its floppy brim, holding a white canvas bag close to her waist and, in the other hand, a sturdy cane. She walked, slowly, carefully, unnaturally, the length of the street, crossed at the lights and, after several minutes, disappeared from view.

Dame Melba was a fixture on the streets downtown for years. She suffered from mental illnesses, one of which was paranoia, which made her believe that the doctors were trying to kill her. She was impossible to house: she hoarded bags and bags of what any reasonable person would deem garbage. After a few months in any apartment it was filled from floor to ceiling with bags, there would be a path through it from the front door to the bed and the toilet; on the bed only enough room was left clear for her to sleep on. Her case workers tried a dozen times to keep her in an apartment. Dame Melba had also been in and out of the shelters and, eventually, she was prohibited from staying in any them; refusing to take her meds led her to dangerously violent episodes. She slept on a bench outside the library or the Sally Ann, all of her possessions in garbage and shopping bags. She shouted and swore at passersby. She was arrested for assault. She was happy, laughing, luminous, mad, lovely, lighter than air, heavier than all our prayers, unsinkable, wild-eyed, violent, polite. And, as I look back on it, I'm amazed at the number of people who knew of her, who brought her bag lunches and bottles of water, who went looking for her with clothes and blankets in their car. One day she disappeared from our world, the way spring disappears into summer, without anyone ever seeming to notice. I didn't hear her name mentioned for almost a year. Then, early one morning I encountered her downtown. As we passed one another on the sidewalk there was a flash of recognition in her eyes, a hint of a smile and then, almost as quickly, that unmistakeable dullness returned to her features; the dishwater greyness of those who are heavily medicated.

As I watched her carefully negotiate the length of the sidewalk I wondered if she was a success story. Not our success story hear at the Mission, and certainly not mine, but a success story nonetheless. She had not been at the edge of madness but well beyond the sharp border where this reality ends and so many others begin. And now she's back. Well, sort of. She has an apartment of her own, a case worker, assistance from Social Services, stability, a life that looks and sounds so much like yours, and mine and millions of others. And yet I'm haunted by that vacuous gaze, that flash of brilliant light that was then swallowed up in a fog that I can't quite name. I've seen her in my mind, a dozen times, in that red coat and floppy red hat, slowly passing by and I think she represents something that is not quite success, but certainly not failure either. It seems to me that the system did the very best it could. Yet there's these other thoughts that keep swirling through my head and I hear Jesus making a statement that surely seemed like madness in his day  - "You must be born again."  

I consider that, carefully, slowly, each word melting like chips of ice on my tongue, and long for something more than the appearance of being whole for Dame Melba, for real healing. Yes, I am indeed thankful that she is no longer sleeping on a bench in the middle of winter's howling fury, but ache also for transformation to be completed, for her woundedness to be overcome, for her spirit to soar in the extraordinary normal-ness of a life well lived. All of creation groans as it awaits redemption and I believe - to the soles of my feet believe - that this redemption will come. I have hope, true hope, that there is a welcoming light and love beyond this life and in that hope - and for that hope - I live, seeking to drape it like a comforting shawl over the shoulders of others, seeking to draw others into that light. This is no small part of what it means, I believe, to be born again: that in all of our weakness and failings, in all of our brokenness and pain we become the carriers of hope, the birthing mothers of hope, the womb of redemption, the nursery of restoration. We become hope.

No, we can't fix the world, but perhaps we don't need to. Perhaps hope is enough. For Dame Melba, for the women in our shelter who greet me each day with laughter and pleasant banter, for the men standing outside the door smoking, for the kid behind the counter at the convienence store, for our splintered families and strained relationships and stressed out co-workers and for everyone who is surrounded by people and yet dying of lonelieness, perhaps, for today, just to see hope in the world is enough.

I woke up this morning with the words of Jesus in my mind. They came to me as his words always do: quietly, unadorned, unannounced, with no apologies for their gentle but unyielding intrusion in my life. "Blessed are the peacemakers," he said.

It occurred to me, as I lay there between the braying of the alarm clock and business of the day ahead that my whole life has been spent making peace. Here, in the second half of my life, I find myself trying to make peace with a body that is often uncooperative and, occasionally, even unresponsive, a body that has become disturbingly lumpy and sometimes pained, to which gravity and time and many of my own choices have not been particularly kind. I am trying to make peace with the fact that I need so much more rest now than I did in years past, that I no longer possess that determined drive to overcome, that I am aging and, in ways both great and small, failing. I strive for peace with a world obsessed with perfection, with wholly unrealistic standards of beauty, with the constant portrayal of youth and vitality as values exalted far above those of wisdom and that inner strength that only comes with age. As I make - or try to make - peace with my own body if find myself displaced in a world that worships the rippling musculature of an air brushed impossibility, a world with which I cannot bargain and from which I cannot withdraw. In a world like this, peace must be found within.

From SGWorship and Church At Our House:

Every week in church we have a prayer time and people pray for whatever is on their hearts and I'll sit there listening and my mind will start to wander and all of a sudden, somebody will pray something that just shakes me. Takes my breath away. 8 or 9 or 10 little words that start with, "Please, God", that are so devastating that I just think, "Nobody should ever have to ask for that." So much of it has to do with family and children and loss and grief and fear and the profound injustice that people live with. And so much to do with helplessness. And there's such a fine line between helplessness and bitterness and just giving up.

Behold: The Kingdom of God.