Today at the Mission

Each summer Amber and an entire gang of good people visit Pine Ridge Reservation. They take backpacks loaded with school supplies for the kids and, if the pictures are any indication, they put a whole lot of love, food and fun on folks. It's an amazing ministry. Resonate '08 is 12 hours of tunes in the summer sun to support the work, and there's an impressive line-up of musicians providing the entertainment. If I was anywhere near Cinncinati I'd be hanging out for the day. Definitely.

From the Backpacks for Pine Ridge website:

The Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota has been the poorest place in America with a median income of just $3500.00 a year.  The school drop out rate is soaring at an estimated 70% and the schools on the Reservation fall into the bottom 10% of funding. 

Since 2004 we have been delivering new backpacks filled with school supplies to one village on the Reservation.  In 2008 we are expanding to provide backpacks and school supplies to the children in three villages.  Our long-range goal is to be able to give every child on the Reservation a new backpack and school supplies each year. 

Giving a child on the Reservation school supplies not only provides them with much needed equipment for school but it gives them hope for a future.

I'm going to take some time off from blogging, and probably won't be back until September.  It's almost August, and I still haven't found the perfect Sangria. It's all about priorities.

Summer. Sangria. Jesse Cook on the box.

Yeah, baby.

Thanks for hangin' out with me.

Keith has come up with some interesting math - something I never thought of before. I bought a coffee at Starbucks today for $1.95. Considering that I enjoyed it a great deal, that seemed like a Toonie well spent.

What that looks like to the guys in the shelter, though... well, that's another story altogether.

Interesting, and well worth the minute or two it takes to read.

Today I had two different experiences, as different as gasoline and chardonnay. This morning a young man came in to see me. He has been in and out of the Mission for the entire 5 years I've worked here. It's only a matter of time before he's asked to leave, and the reason is always violence. Having him in the house is something akin to having a truckload of unexploded ordinance in the driveway. I see him downtown, strutting on the street, always sporting a new tatoo, or a new black eye, a new scar, wet and red and still seething. He's currently under yet another eviction and is trying to get back into the residence early, so he comes to me. I work in the kitchen. I don't make those decisions. He knows that, and is trying to manipulate both me and the system. Nothing ever changes with this guy. He barely contains his anger, he exudes a spirit of violence.

The second man came to see me in the afternoon. He brought his young son with him - he's got visiting rights and has come to our fair town to spend the day with his boy. I can remember him, in the throes of withdrawl from alcohol, standing in the kitchen sobbing and wailing because he thought he'd never see his son again. He's gotten himself together since then - it was a long, ugly process with more than one setback - and now has a job in The Big Smoke, is now living in peace, joy and hope. He came in the kitchen, threw his arms around me and kissed my neck. He told me how great things were going. He said that not a day goes by that he doesn't say a prayer of thanksgiving for us. We made happy talk for a few minutes, gave his son a fruitcup as a 'treat' and then said good-bye. When we shook hands he clasped my palm between both of his and kissed the back of my hand.

I don't know how to think about this place anymore. It's a motley collection of bricks, mortar, glass. cups and plates and beds and showers. It is also, though, a place where a thousand stories intersect every night, a nexus of misery and hope, of anger and joy, of peace and fear. We're a part of all their stories, and they're a part of ours. It's an emotional, psychic and spiritual roller coaster ride and sometimes you're laughing with your hands in the air, and sometimes you close your eyes and hang on for dear life. Today was a bit of both and, frankly, as beautiful as it was to see our friend and his son this morning, I'd like to get off this ride for awhile.

There is no right way. There is no best. There is no perfect. It's not a competition. Not when it comes to faith. Not when we're talking about our relationship with the divine. In the end, it's about grace; it's about something you don't do. It just is.

That quote is taken from Cathleen Flasani's "Sin Boldly - A Field Guide for Grace". Zondervan provided me with an advance copy for review and it is slated for release in September of 2008.

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this book and, I have to tell you, the subtitle is entirely accurate. Cathleen doesn't give us a weighty theological tome or a position paper laden with jargon. Instead we read a series of personal essays that illustrate examples of grace, in all its wonder and joy, found in the wilderness of real life. Grace playing in the background of a conversation with a Chicago disc jockey. Grace on the streets of Rome. Grace in the shade of tree named Henry. Grace among a group of widows in Kenya. Grace in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

Years ago I was walking along Yonge Street in downtown Toronto. Amidst all the noise and haste through which one could not go placidly, amidst the exhaust fumes and the rumble and roar of the traffic, somewhere amidst the thousands of footfalls and voices I heard a bird singing. I stopped, closed my eyes and forced my ears to listen. After a moment's focus I was able to tell where the melody was coming from and looked up to see a House Sparrow perched on a narrow ledge high above the street, warbling with all the joy her tiny heart could ever know, warbling with all the joy in the universe. Grace is often like that - an unexpected moment of joy and wonder amidst the bellow and strain of life. Just when I needed it most, "Sin Boldly" reminded me that God still sings in the hearts of sparrows, that his grace is still in the world.

Earlier this week I was awakened in the middle of the night by a peculiar restlessness. I found myself on the couch, bathed in the flickering light of the television, wandering amongst the late night hucksters and commercial laden movies, settling for brief moments in the midst of cable news shows and sports network broadcasts. As I thumbed the remote I found a Christian program where a young man was speaking to an arena full of teenagers. In that brief moment before I flipped the channel I heard him utter - with great conviction - "The world has nothing to say, and they say it so well." It's the kind of thing that makes one pause, sitting there in the darkened living room, in the middle of the night, suffering from an indescribable restlessness of the soul. The world has nothing to say, and they say it so well.

I wondered what was going to happen to the Christian teens that were buying into this mentality of 'in here' verses 'out there'. I wondered what would happen when they reached college and lacked the tiny little wooden desk under which they could duck and cover while the nuclear bomb that would obliterate their faith went off. What really got my attention, however, was the name that entered my mind next, the face, the voice, the unmistakeable sound that began as a tiny whispered memory and, like single guitar string plucked in the silence of an empty cathedral, resonated clear through my soul. Van Morrison. I sat there for a moment, staring at the remote clutched in a hand that seemed like -  but strangely unlike - my own as I was displaced for a timeless moment, as I remembered.

There was a time when I couldn't get off the couch. When I was first diagnosed with depression I began to laugh. There was a name for what I felt. There was an explanation. There was, for the first time in my adult life, hope.  A few years later, however, the illness overwhelmed the meds and I spent those dark, difficult months on the couch. It should have been far longer, but  I went back to work too soon and a short time later was unable to cope once more. I survived that dark night. There's few people I can thank for that - my wife, my mother, my cousin, and God, not least of all, but I have to tell you that what got me through those days was Van the Man. Without a doubt, Van Morrison saved my life.

My wife came home for lunch each day, and in the afternoon I would stack up the cd's and crank up the music and sit on the couch or lie on the floor and listen, the way the earth listens to water, the way the moon listens to the prayers of heartbroken lovers.  Van never mentioned it in any of his songs. It wasn't in the words on the page. It was in the music. It was in the tone of his voice. It was in the haunted, pained moan that lay just beneath every phrase, in the wild howl that threatened to break loose in almost every chorus, in the loneliness and hurt and anguished, bruised, broken, soul-deep wound that bled into everything he said. Van Morrison knew my pain. I spent hours on end, unable to weep, listening to his shaking, scarred hands holding my heart in his, longing to be free, longing for this Gethsemane to end.

That experience was so profound, so emotionally powerful, that to this day I can't listen to those albums. I still listen with great joy to his early work, and still maintain that 'Moondance' may be the greatest love song ever written, but I simply cannot play the music from those dark days without immediately being transported back to that brokenness and despair. I've been thinking about that experience for the last few days, turning it over in my mind, examining the smooth, round edges of this stone plucked from the eternal river's edge. God met me there, in that music. I needed something to hang onto, something that would speak to the very depths of my soul in a way that I understood, in a way that my woundedness would accept. It wasn't a bible verse, it wasn't a sacred hymn, it wasn't a sermon or a worship song or anything you might expect it to be. God threw me a life line, and his name was Van Morrison.

The world has nothing to say, the young preacher said, and they say it so well. I came back to myself, sitting on the couch in the middle of the night once more and wondered what it takes to know the truth, wondered how great the cost of it, the tears shed for it. Jesus said he was the way, the truth and the life, and we all just assumed we could get to Pentecost without going through Gethsemane, without going through the cross, without enduring that terrible abyss that is the tomb.  I wonder how many of our lives will allow us to see Christ return as the conquering hero without first having seen him as the slaughtered lamb and I wonder, truly wonder, what would have become of me had I believed Van Morrison had nothing to say.

Some friends of mine are doing a fundraiser for Africycle. They will begin in Port Hope, Ontario (Go Spartans!) and ride around Lake Ontario, raising donations for the effort.

From the Africycle website:

Based in Uxbridge, Ontario, Canada,  Africycle functions through many facets, bringing communities together to pursue the common goal of providing people in Malawi access quality used bicycles.  Many Malawians experience difficulty accessing quality bicycles, due to economic constraints and the limited availability of affordable, reliable bicycles in the local market.  Africycle believes that by providing bicycles it can be a catalyst for sustainable and effective development in Malawian communities.  To accomplish this mission, Africycle follows a defined plan of action which consists of two parts on opposite ends of the planet: The ‘Recycle-a-Bike’ program in Canada and a bicycle repair shop and distribution center in Malawi. 

The Ride for Africycle website is here.

And, (for the locals) ...on Saturday and Sunday (July 12/13th) when you order a large fries from the Hippy Chippy, the net proceeds go to support the ride. Peace, Love and French Fries.  Dig it.