hope | most hopeful

Nov 19 2013

stumbling toward healing

The promise brought in by time is hardly ever known beforehand, and even if it were we wouldn’t have the slightest idea what the promise meant. We can’t know until it’s time to know, and we can’t be healed until we’re ready, really. Healing becomes available, but time brings the promise. We can attempt to rush it if we want to, but we’re likely swinging in the dark.

Rev. Becca Stevens’ most recent book, Snake Oil: The Art of Healing and Truth-Telling captivated me earlier this year (as written about here). While reading this book, I knew that one of my very closest friends would soon be ordained in November, and I also knew that he was learning more about what it means to anoint those we love, those who are hurting, those who are dying, and those who are wandering with oil.

I love the notion that anointing with oil is a kind of prayer made physical. We put our hands and fingers in oil, smear it on the flesh of those we desperately want something better for, and then hold out hope that Jesus wasn’t killing time when he said that we would take on the kind of life-bringing and truth-telling that he had been doing. We pause for a moment as flesh and flesh separated only by a thin space of an ancient substance. And somewhere in that thin space rests the deep hope and the breath-stealing promise that God shows up when we come together and ask him to.

So we know we don’t know what we’re doing, but like most things worth doing at all, when we show up and do them even while admitting that we are fumbling our holy way through something we don’t understand, God shows up.

Of course God was already there.
Of course healing isn’t buried in the molecules of oils.
But God shows up in a way that he hadn’t already,
and we even become bold to ask him to in ways we hadn’t already.

And so I woke up early the morning of his ordination, pulled out the random collection of olive oil, essential oils and Shea butter, and headed toward the stove. Fumbling over a pan and these tiny bottles that feel like tools I don’t know how to use, I followed Stevens’ recipe for anointing oil. That is, I followed it until I decided I wanted to change amounts and add other things.

Slowly the kitchen started filling up with the scents of rose pedals, grapefruit, rosemary, olives, bergamot, and lemon. I stood over the stove, noting how time has passed and the truth is a little clearer and healing has come at its own damn speed no matter how much I was ready for it to hurry up, and watched a tear drop into the oil.

Even while making my first batch of oil, without anointing and without meaning to pray, God shows up and reminds me that all this time, through the two years waiting to know what promise was on the other side of waiting in grief, I reminded of a the words a friend prayed over me two years ago in Cape Town while pushing in on my chest: “God is holding your heart, Don. He wants you to know this. And he is shaping it. And he is thrilled at what it is becoming. And when you think he is not paying attention, I pray you will remember that he is holding your heart in his hands. He will push and prod and squeeze, but he is perfectly gentle and perfectly stern. And it is his hands that your heart is held.”

Those words came at a moment when the ground was cracking open and I was most unsure where to stand. I see now that the sky was cracking open as well, and my heart has been in very good hands through all the cracking. And the promise is a little clearer now on the other side of waiting things out.

I gave my friend the small jar with the few ounces of oil in the parking lot after the ceremony, stumbling over words about a gift and an experience and process that has been years in the making. That bottle made it to a worship service the next morning, was used to first pray a blessing over his daughter, then to pray words over those being confirmed. Those being confirmed happened to include not only people I have grown to love, but also people who have loved me and walked with me over these last two years.

Just as the scent of the oil filled the space, the reminder that if I’m willing to stumble my way through things I don’t fully understand while asking God to show up, he is good and ready to do so. And he is holding on to our hearts. And he is breaking them over the things that break his very own. And we are, all of us, stumbling toward healing in one way or another. And we can only stumble toward it in the company of others. And we can’t be in a hurry.

Well, we can be in a hurry, but it’s a waste.

Healing always comes.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

Tagged Anointing, Anointing of the Sick, Becca Stevens, books, cape town, Essential oil, grief, heal, healing, Health, hope, hoping, jesus, Olive oil, ordination, prayer, Snake Oil, truth telling, waiting

Nov 04 2013

1 Comment

social work, what they are teaching me

digging for the possible

On days where I’m ready to practice my craft, and I’ve slept long enough and I’m not trying to finish other things in my head while pretending to listen to someone else, I find myself digging for the possible with the clients who sit and speak and hurt and wonder in my office.

On days where I’m not ready to practice the craft, or on days where I forget it is actually a craft to be practiced, or on days where I’m so absorbed in my own speaking and hurting and wondering…it’s on those kinds of days where I don’t dig for the possible, but rather restate the obvious. My laziness or distraction pushes me to remind others of their own faults, hurts, weaknesses, and burning realities that they––no doubt––know and feel and ultimately honor much more than I ever could.

But on the days where I’m tuned in, dialed up, hunkered down, it becomes magical. To be a voice given some privilege in a room, I get to ask the questions that uncover the great strength and fortitude and creativity and resilience of the people sitting in my office, telling stories more honest than I’ve every dared to tell.

And as we dig through the rubble for the possibilities of their futures, I become immediately honored and terrified that what might happen in the room depends to a certain extent on the state in which I show up to work.

And with the stakes so high, if stakes are viewed as gifts, to whom much is given much is required.

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged archaeology of hope, counseling, hope, listening, possibilities, resilience, social work, social worker, therapy, truth

Oct 23 2013

2 Comments

grief and trauma, poems, Quotes Quote

You are tired,
(I think)
Of the always puzzle of living and doing;
And so am I.

///

You have played,
(I think)
And broke the toys you were fondest of,
And are a little tired now;
Tired of things that break, and—
Just tired.
So am I.

– e.e. cummings –

the always puzzle of living and doing

Tagged broken toys, ee cummings, fatigue, hope, hopeless, living and doing, poetry, real, reality, waiting

Sep 22 2013

3 Comments

grief and trauma, learning to live, what they are teaching me

i ironed every shirt today

I ironed every shirt I ever actually wear today. I stood in the den ironing and hanging one after another on the pull up bar connected to the door frame.

I’ve noticed my own ironing habit over the last twelve months. It’s often after a long day at the office where people allow me the chance to journey with them through their personal, familial and communal junk as we work to find what good can be uncovered in its midst. While some days it’s an archeological journey worth photo-ops, full of good findings and the perfect blue skies to offer backdrop to their discoveries, many days end after journeying together where we don’t actually find anything.

We may have found better questions, or better ways to let go of bad questions, or better standards by which to gauge ourselves and others, but we end without any picture-perfect discoveries. We end without the pain and the mess being over. We end, after having given it all we know to give and finding that there wasn’t light at the end of the tunnel. Not yet, at least. Not today.

I often come home on those days, pull out the ironing board, and start working on a task that I know will begin and end well in one try. It helps me suspend hope, if just until the sun rises again, that some things get settled, some things end up making sense, and some things work out before the sun goes down.

Today was not a day of counseling, but a culmination of multiple days of reminders that many good people holding out great faith can’t make the pain stop and the heartache end. We can’t hope our way to the phone call giving us the news we were begging for. Today began with the news of loss. The loss of a man whose personality and gestures were in themselves reminders that there is another world buried under this one that creation itself can hardly wait to see break through. The loss of a man who made it clear, even on the day of his murder, that there is something rumbling underneath the cracking present age that speaks of a kingdom of light and a community of icons of God himself.

And we can hardly wait either, you know. We can hardly wait especially on days like today where we know what is good, but we don’t know how to get there and we feel powerless to bring it here. So we iron ourselves into some kind of sanity, so we can see something finished and something in order like all of our button-up shirts hanging on pull-up bars.

But night falls and morning rises, and we realize that as much as we would like to settle ourselves with tasks that we can see from beginning to end, neatly pleated and orderly hung, we also realize that our hearts are only truly alive in the tasks that leave us with great heartbreak, for now. And so, while they are too big to carry, we can’t help but doing our best to pick them up again. And, in the words of the pastor calling us to move toward the kingdom, it’s in picking up the things that are too heavy to carry that we realize we are actually on our way home.

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged beginning, burden, chores, confusion, crisis, death, ending, finish, finishing, grief, holding out, hope, iron, ironing, loss, too heavy to carry, weight

Sep 21 2013

4 Comments

learning to live, on, Quotes

when it finally has no end

I was up late, and woke up late, and made it into the church service about ten minutes late. My voice was much deeper than normal, and was still deep when we made it to the words of the Nicene Creed. I think it was the unfamiliar cantor of my voice that made me hear what I said today as if it was the first time I had ever heard it.

“…and his kingdom will have no end.”

+++

There are often moments where I see it. It’s clearly present in ways that don’t make any sense, so I lean back, squint my eyes so that tears don’t fall out, and try to breathe it in. There are moments where I see what Nora Gallagher references as “thin space,” moments where the space we are in is touching the space we will be in when the kingdom comes in all of its fullness.

Sometimes, these moments of heaven meeting earth are in
the monotony of daily chores
the normalcy of singing with the windows down
the clinking of glasses and forks and plates at dinner with friends
the deep breaths after long days of good work.

Sometimes, these moments of heaven meeting earth are in
the deep grief of watching one we’ve lived loving be lowered into ground
the deep heartbreak of waiting to hear the horrible news we’re hoping isn’t true
the deep sadness of holding our hair in our hands because we know we are powerless and things are out of control.

Sometimes, these moments of heaven meeting earth are in
the brilliance of art, laughter, hard work
the sharp edges of a brilliant sonnet, sunset, silhouette
the joy of eyes meeting, hands shaking, understanding.

But every time, for now, these moments of heaven meeting earth
have ends. Endings. They are over after they begin.

They have an end.

And we are then reminded that
the things that feel true, honest, just, lovely, pure
don’t last, for now.

+++

So we stand together, deep voices on early Sunday mornings, and say the words that have come from the mouths of men and women for hundreds and hundreds of years. In the echo of their voices and the startling depth of our own early-morning voice, we hold out hope that the day is coming when it has no end. The kingdom made up of thin space, where heaven and earth meet for good and hold hands for good, will have no end. So those moments where we know and see and tell and sense the truth, and we hope that they would last forever…we wait for the day when they will.

We wait for the day when it finally has no end.

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged and his kingdom has no end, chaos, Christianity, church, creeds, desperation., endings, grief, heaven and earth, hope, jesus, kingdom of god, kingdom of heaven, loss, Nicene Creed, no end, suffering, Sunday, sunday morning, thin space, when his kingdom will have no end

Sep 17 2013

3 Comments

learning to live, poems, Prayers

deep heartbreak and deep hope

when we feel trapped between
the way things are and
the way we know things should be

between
the work we have and
the work we can actually accomplish

between
the hours in a single day and
the heartaches in a single day

between
the insolvable injustices and
the imperative to seek and to do justice

between
the eyes of those we publicly hold responsible and
the eyes of ourselves that we privately shield from responsibility

we ask for a deeper and more burdening reminder
that you are the one who has built us
to be unsettled and undone
until justice comes
until peace flows
until humanity looks like itself again
until humanity is an icon of you again

and in that deeper and more burdening reminder
we ask that you would give us
deep breaths
deep honesty
deep heartbreak and
deep hope

that kingdom comes and
that kingdom will come on earth as in heaven
finally.
and until the finally,
we work toward the impossible things we have no power to change
knowing the desire to work toward them
is a gift from the God who has a habit of doing impossible things

amen

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged Activism and Peace Work, beloved community, Evil, God, good, heartbreak, honor, hope, justice, kingdom, others, ourselves, peace, responsibility, saving, task, truth, truth telling, work

Sep 16 2013

3 Comments

grief and trauma, learning to live, social work, what they are teaching me

my hands are tied

I looked down at his wrists, bound together with metal handcuffs as he moved his body toward the front of the police car obeying the silent index finger of the police officer. He had not made eye contact with me yet, and I felt myself staring at the handcuffs themselves.

I realized in that moment, looking down at his handcuffs, that I felt like my hands were tied as well. I then also quickly realized that I have never been handcuffed. Ever. I don’t know what metal against my wrists feels like. I don’t know what obeying the silent finger of a police officer feels like.

+++

We’ve been working for the last two years to get this program off the ground. Through research and relationship it has become obvious that once you are on the down and out, short of a miracle you will never be able to get back on your feet again, much less work, pay your own bills, and be spoken to and interacted with as someone who is not defined as “down and out.” Through this same research, we’ve come to discover that it’s only through job creation and long-term support that there is any hope of moving toward self-sustainability. Not the kind that means we don’t live in community, but that kind that means we are able to live in ways scripture refers to as working, building our own houses, and resting in them.

We have been partnering and depending on churches across our small, Bible-belt, semi-rural community for the last seven years to house men who are homeless in our shelter-less city in their churches, eating dinner with them, watching movies with them, laughing and crying with them, and learning each other’s names with them. Seven years later, we are all changed from this interaction.

And from these new relationships, a case management center and daytime hospitality center has been created, an eight-bed safe haven for homeless men has been taken on, and in the last few months, a transitional work program has begun. Two years in the making, we are now able to create jobs for the men of our homeless and housing services to be able to do good work for a paycheck.

Problems aren’t solved, but it’s a start.

With the transitional work program, we’ve created enough work over the last few months to now have multiple lawn care contracts across the community, including one contract with the city government itself. The men themselves as well as the staff who work with them are at it hard nearly six days a week.

Progress is made, it feels. Work is being created, income is being generated, and the “down and out” are able to move a little closer to a kingdom vision of what it means to have the chance to work and be paid for your work, and to then pay for your own needs.

+++

Tonight, as I’m trying to run in the office doors of our small nonprofit to work on last minute details for our big fundraiser later this week…the fundraiser that will help support these work creation programs for the homeless in our community… I park in the lot to see the very police officer who is now directing the actions of a grown man by the silent pointing of a finger.

I find out, after brief conversation with the police officer, that one of the guests of the homeless day center has stolen a leaf blower from the trailer carrying the equipment for the transitional work program for other homeless guests.

“That leaf blower is evidence, and we can lock him up for a few months at least,” he says, then phoning in his partner who is holding the man a few blocks over, telling him to bring the man and the leaf blower to the office. My mind begins reeling through Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow.” My memory conjures up the words of another man in my counseling practice earlier today dealing with a lifetime of abuse and neglect, then drug use and criminal activity, then prison, and now the words “I can’t go back to prison. I can’t go back to prison.” My gut screams at me suggesting that we all should have known it would be a homeless man who stole the lawn equipment being used to create jobs for homeless men.

But my eyes go to those handcuffs, and my fragile little white, well-educated, privileged wrists that have never felt the pressure of metal, and I think to myself, “I feel like my hands are tied.”

And I hear the words come out of my mouth, “We don’t want to arrest him. We don’t want to press charges. We won’t, officer. I’m sorry.”

I want to look the man in handcuffs in the eyes and tell him again that there are people out here trying our damndest to help him. I want to wave my index finger and make it very clear that when he steals from us, of all people, it makes us mad as hell. I want to both send him to jail and also to invite him over for dinner. I want to cuss him out and let him cuss me out because I have no idea what his world has been like. I want to scream at him and cry with him. I feel like I can see what is not right about all of this, but that I have no idea how to begin making it right.

I see the other police officer almost roll his eyes at me, fill out a trespassing form, and leave soon enough. I feel like I’ve let the cop down. I know this man will likely steal again, and that will be seen as my fault for not pressing charges now. I try to look the other police officer in the eyes, but his eyes never come up to meet mine.

I feel like I’ve let the homeless man down. I see his skin pulled tightly across the muscles in his neck, and I wonder about his drug use, I wonder what it was like to grow up a black man in the 70s at the beginning of the “drug war.” I wonder what change we might see if we spent what it costs to incarcerate a man for three months for stealing a leaf-blower on counseling, rehabilitation and community development services. I try to look him in his eyes, but they are down on the roof of the police car.

As he’s been finger-directed.

I wonder what we are doing all of this for, any of this for, when even at our best it feels like all of our hands are tied.

Soon after I see the remaining police officer unlock the handcuffs, I stick my hand out. I call our homeless guest by his first name, and he raises his hand to shake my own: a gift. He raises his eyes to meet mine: humbling reminder of our desperate humanity.

“We want the very best for you” I hear come out of my mouth. I hope it’s true as I hear myself say it.

But my hands feel tied.

Come, Lord Jesus. Make us whole, and set us free. All of us.

djordan
108 S Church

Tagged area relief ministries, cuffed, fresh start, handcuffed, help, homeless, Homelessness, hope, incarceration, jail, job creation, Lawn, Leaf blower, Michelle Alexander, New Jim Crow, Police officer, poverty, transitional work, work

Sep 03 2013

1 Comment

learning to live, social work, what they are teaching me

the ways of the king and the kingdom

He’s stressed about work and life and pressure
and as we pray for each other
he uses the words
“on the chopping block.”

I’m waking up in the middle of the night
thinking about what has to be done, finished, started, explained, reminded
trying to remember more than I stress that the work is good work
and the ends do not depend on my ability to think up the means
because the rules of the kingdom of heaven
don’t follow the rules

but I hold my breath
and I clench my teeth
and I hunker down
over computer
over printer
over keyboard
over paperwork

hoping that all works out
so that we can do the work we hope to do
because God knows even on our worst days we know
that those we serve deserve it.

The trick, though
is that on our worst days
we forget that it is the kingdom they long for
we forget that it is the king they are waiting for
and we take on the pressure of the kingdom and the king
when the only pressure waiting for us is
the pressure of getting caught up in
the ways of the king and his kingdom

So as I wake in the middle of the night
with him in mind
neck on chopping block
and with me in mind
sanity on chopping block,
I do my best to remember
that the kingdom comes.
period.
and my prayer is to be caught up in
the ways of the king and his kingdom.

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged Christianity, faith, God, hope, kingdom, prayer, Religion and Spirituality, social service, stress

Aug 03 2013

6 Comments

learning to live, poems

so we wait

so we wait.
even the time we don’t think we’re waiting
we come to find out we were
working while ultimately waiting for work to matter
hoping while ultimately waiting for hope to count for something
dreaming while ultimately waiting for dreams to come true
praying while ultimately waiting to see if praying works somehow.

and every now and then,
we are honest enough with ourselves
and maybe one or two other people
to profess that we are actually
just waiting
while we work, hope and dream
we are really just waiting
with breath tied up tight
in the back of our stomachs or
in the front of our backs
waiting
to see
to feel
to know
to believe

that what we’ve waited for
is true after all.

not even true, sometimes.
just possible.

there’s courage and bravery in waiting.
whether we admit that’s what we’re doing or not.

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged breathe, Courage, courageous, Dream, dreamers, dreaming, dreams come true, holding on, holding our breath, holding out, holding up, hope, hoping, Tension, tight, waiting, wishers, work, working

Jul 28 2013

protest at the table

Even though I’ve heard it repeated, the story is told regularly and goes like this:

Donald, roughly 3-5 years old sitting at the kitchen table during family dinner. I see a booster seat need based on my age.
Mom: Donald, you have to eat your brussel sprouts before you can get up from the table.
Donald: I don’t like them.
Mom: Well, you’re going to have to eat them before you get up from the table. I don’t think you’ve ever tried them before.
Donald: I don’t like them. I’m not going to eat them.
Dad: You will sit right there until you eat them. Conversation over.
While usually allowed to disagree, the “conversation over” card means be quiet or else. To speak is bad news.

The story apparently plays out that I sit at the table, refusing to eat my brussel sprouts, (I imaging a cigarette in mouth and newspaper in hand, but it’s likely that I went between whining and being way to cool to make eye contact for the next SEVERAL HOURS. I ultimately refused to eat the brussel sprouts (a food I now love), and sat at the table, triumphant, got a spanking, triumphant, and went to bed, crying…..and triumphant.

+++

I have friends, some considered by me as close as family, who live and work in the ordinary ways of nonprofit work in Cape Town, South Africa. Their stories seems incredible, but it mimics the news reports here in Jackson, the news reports in Chicago, and the news reports all over the globe. In the community that Fusion finds themselves in, Manenberg, in Cape Town, SA , there have multiple shootings resulting in multiple deaths lately. A community mourns, and the church wonders what is next.

I’m sure churches there, like churches here, continue to worry about issues of childcare and women in leadership and politics and budgets and music styles and whatever else occupies time. And still, Christians there, like Christians here, are finding themselves standing in the spaces where lives have been lost, injustice smells like dried blood and spent gunpowder, and are wondering what it means to follow Christ.

+++

And there’s something valuable in ways that transcend time and space about protesting at the table.
Friends in Manenberg serve soup on the very same pavement and dirt spaces where lives have been lost and chalk outlines could have washed out by now. The value of a meal shared together overcomes the injustice and lack of shalom that leads to violence in the streets in Manenberg, and in Jackson, and in Nicaragua, and around the globe.

And so a group of believers end up deciding that while the believe in the hard facts of guns and gunfire and bullets and death and blood and chalk outlines, they believe something about the table to be healing and to be hope calling and hope inducing, so they serve soup in the very spaces where lives have been lost.

And they proclaim that Christ is king and kingdom comes. Ultimately. Always.

+++

I sat at the communion rail today, accepting the sacraments of his body and blood, both knowing what they mean and at the same time accepting that I have no idea what I’m actually doing. I look across the others at the communion rail. I look across the others in the room. Drama fills the air. Frustration fills the space.

But the space at the table is a space of shared protest, promise, and therefore hope.

All is not well, but all will be well.
The world goes not well, but the kingdom comes.
It comes in Manenberg, South Africa. Soup is served in the spaces where lives have been lost.
It comes in Jackson, Tennessee. Peace is accepted in the spaces where insecurities breed.
It comes in our hearts. The future is claimed for kingdom come while the present is unclear as to how it gets here.

His kingdom come
His will be done
On earth as in heaven.

Who knows how.
We pray not knowing how to pray.
And the table becomes a place of protest.
And kingdom comes.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

Tagged Brussels sprout, cape town, Chicago, Christ, communion, el ayudante, eucharist, Fusion, hope, Manenberg, nicaragua, protest, reasonable, South Africa, the warehouse, warehouse trust

most hopeful

choosing to be most hopeful

Tag Archives: hope

stumbling toward healing

the always puzzle of living and doing

i ironed every shirt today

when it finally has no end

deep heartbreak and deep hope

so we wait