Tag Archives: learning

Mar 19 2013
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learning to live, on, the calendar, what they are teaching me

up for anything

2013-03-19 17.48.46

Today is my grandmother’s birthday. She turns 82.

When I asked her if it was her 83rd, she replied “No” with an exclamation point and said that she apologized for being blonde, but it would take her another whole year to get to 83. She said, “But I’m up for anything…”

This conversation happened on facebook messaging.

I see TuTu more now (TuTu is what I call her of course) because she volunteers for us at least one day a week at Area Relief Ministries. We joked at the office just today about her requesting to close up shop one day after the office had closed, letting everyone know that she would close up shop because she hadn’t finished what she wanted to finish yet. We didn’t allow it, of course.

Some of my stubbornness comes from TuTu.

So does some of my shortness, my red checks, and my fast sweating. Those all come from TuTu as well.

And hopefully, my willingness at 82 years of age to be a part of what God is doing with the homeless, the at-risk, the materially poor, the families in crisis…hopefully being wiling to take part in the work of the kingdom at 82 years of age…not 83 yet…is some trait of TuTu’s that I will inherit beyond my 5’8″ stature and red, sweaty cheeks. If my height, cheeks, and temperature are inherited from TuTu, I’m proud of them too.

Even more so if I will redefine the 80s and 90s as times to pour into what God is doing in the world to make all things new, it will be a proud legacy. As my boss at ARM used to sing, “Age ain’t nothin’ but a number”.

I teach class at Union University a few days a week, and it brings me great joy to hear from students and acquaintances, “You are TuTu’s grandson, aren’t you. She has talked about you.” To work to keep up with my grandmother’s social calendar might bring me shame, but instead, it brings me great pride. To try to keep up with the textbooks she is reading on New Testament theology and Christian history might make me feel dumb, but instead it makes me ambitious.

To TuTu on her 82nd birthday, you make the passing of time seem like a great reward. Thanks for the legacy, and for my red, sweaty cheeks. All my love.

djordan
Pine Tree

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Mar 17 2013
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learning to live, what they are teaching me

the ground remains

the-ground-remains

The weather has finally permitted for my backyard in the evening to transform once again into a glowing outdoor room. A friend of mine and I sat around the rickety wooden table under balls of chicken wire and lights puffing our pipes for nearly three hours this evening.

In my day to day schedule, I like to pretend that I am too important, so I don’t have time for moments like these. There’s no space for propping my feet up, bringing the music outside, lighting up a cigar and laughing, talking about ideas, and wrestling with what we are learning as it is shaken and stirred with who we are becoming.

But tonight, even though as it approached I felt as though I didn’t really have time to indulge this gathering with a friend a needed to catch up with, it was in fact exactly what my mind and soul needed to find each other again.

The work is good. The meetings and projects and plans and research and people are all good, and there is progress toward good things no matter how tenuous or temporary it may be. The calendar pages are flying off the wall faster than the second hand on the clock is ticking, but I am keeping up as best I can nevertheless.

There is something quite magical, and humbling, and ultimately holy and important about stopping long enough with another on the same journey to realize that when I prop my feet up, the ground remains. I am not holding things together, but merely participating in their newness. The meetings and projects and plans and research and people are all good, and for me to be a valuable asset in the mixology, I must make the intentional effort to take time to prop my feet up with thoughtful and entertaining and humble friends. I must hear their questions and see what they are thinking. I must join them in wrestling with their own demons and delights so that I can, in the morning, put my feet back on the ground and start again.

The ground, however, remains. The tasks are still there. My momentary pause from standing on my feet to push ahead is a reminder that I am not the one holding anything together. Propping my feet up every once and a while makes the work a little more honest, a little more true, a little more humble, and a little more holy.

So cheers to the rickety wooden table in the backyard on a brisk evening under the chicken wire lights and stars with good people on the same road.

djordan
Pine Tree

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Jan 12 2013
2 Comments
what they are teaching me

when thirty was old

Image

There was a time, of course, when thirty was old.

It was not that long ago, and I remember it well. My parents were, then, in their late thirties, and were, of course, ancient. Then, as I grew older, the forties became cool, and thirties were early old-age. Then, I hit my twenties, and the fifties were prime, and the twenties were young, and the thirties were when I became an adult.

Now, of course, as I am pushing the hands of the thirty clock into their final destination, the sixties seem young, and the eighties seem old.

Until lately.

My grandfather died in his early eighties, and it seemed completely unfair. He had more traveling, more reading, more drinking, more laughing, more teaching and talking and leading to do. So suddenly, the eighties seemed like when people had it all together and could tell those of us who were young, (thirties) what choices to make that we would regret.

Tonight, I left my neighbor’s 80th birthday party before she did. I was sweating from laughing,  stuffed from eating, and thoughtful from conversation. As I walked the fifteen yards back to my front door, I realized how quickly time flies, how young eighty is, and how, at thirty, life is only beginning.

Cheers, Ms. Coleman, on hitting 80. And thanks for the reminder.

djordan
Pine Tree (one house over)

 

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Sep 08 2012
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learning to live, poems, Prayers

give us courage.

djordan
Pine Tree

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Aug 30 2012
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learning to live

before the day begins and ends

We pass each other like ships in the night.

The most meaningful conversations happen in person, but there’s an ocean in between.

I can point directly back to certain days, times of day, the commons where the walk was, how the sun was, how low the tree limbs were over the sidewalk that brushed my forehead as we walked back home.

I can point directly back to the kitchen counter, the conversation where the truth coming out meant a risk had to be taken, and once taken, the floodgates open. I remember the glasses and the stools and the way I rub my hands through my hair when I can’t think of anything clever or wise or meaningful to say.

And I can point directly back to the table in the restaurant in the airport where the goodbye was looming, and the risk of the sand ticking pushed me through my cowardice to laying out on the table something other than the beer and small talk, but rather laying out the things that had refused to let me go for quite sometime.

But then I got on the plane and flew back across the ocean. Back to work. Back to class. Back to groceries and bills and friends and all the other things we come back to.

Now, like ships in the night, we pass each other. My late-night hour is the twin of his early-morning hour, and across the latitudes we pass usually only a word or two, a prayer or the promise of a prayer. And while the ocean robs two friends of the possibility of walking through that field, sitting on those stools, or leaning over that table, we still know that the other is out there. Moving and knowing. Working and waiting. Watching for signs of the kingdom together.

And we give thanks before the day ends and begins simultaneously.

djordan
Pine Tree

Related Posts | Holy Indeed | The In Between Times

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Jun 01 2012
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learning to live, what they are teaching me

a world lives in you

It’s surprising, really
the way it rattles the ribcage
and then leaps into the lungs.
missing.
missing and needing.
especially on days like today
the missing and needing arrive
when face to face again.
the miles and miles made it easier
to forget the ways they make up my world
to forget that it was them who began to teach me
who I was
who I was not
what the world could be
what the world actually was
how the kingdom insists on bursting through
how the kingdom waits to be released.

but today, this morning
on the edge of the literal sunrise
on the bumpy, muddy roads
on the way to school
when seeing your faces
and hearing your giggles
and feeling your faces
the way we feel faces when it has been so long

I was reminded that you are a part of me as I carry you inside me

and the only words are thank you
thank you to the kiddos who keep growing
growing in their shrinking sandals
growing in their brilliant brains
growing in my heart as they expand my world
expanding the spaces inside me that
had closed in a little too tightly.

And all is well once again.
And the world grows bigger once again.
And the kingdom protests once again.

djordan
León, Nicaragua

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May 16 2012
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learning to live

what we do not know

There’s a fear of what we do not know.

We stand here, looking at what is behind us.
We know clearly what we hope carries into the days ahead,
and what we hope can be left here, in what has already been.

We can speak clearly and eloquently about
what does not belong in the way things should be,
But our tongue becomes tired and slurred with
what it is we hope for in the world and ways ahead.

And it is here
that we realize
we are afraid of what we do not know
we are afraid of where we have not been
we are afraid of what we cannot imagine

And yet, in our deepest gut on our best days
we know that where we are comfortable
is not where we have been called
we know that where we are safe
is not where we engage as we have been made to engage

So we find ourselves praying for courage
So we find ourselves hoping for vision
So we find ourselves putting down ambition

And we hope to find ourselves courageous
And we hope to find ourselves imaginative
And we hope to find ourselves obedient

And we take one step at a time
into the new world
we fear because it is made of things we do not know

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Apr 26 2012
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learning to live, what they are teaching me

calling out in the darkness

I sat this morning watching a video (below) that highlights the last five years of a homeless ministry that houses and feeds the homeless in churches every night of the winter months. My mind went back to one evening about six years ago spent with Jonathan Stewart and Wes Gristy; we had been making and serving sandwich dinners on Friday evenings in a parking lot downtown, and our question had become “are there homeless in our community?”

In following that question and other rumors that accompanied it, we met at the church late one evening, made a pot of decaf coffee, and headed to the amphitheater where we had heard those who were homeless stayed.

I remember conversations about exit plans, what we would talk about, how we would find them. We parked facing the main road, flashlights in hand, and started walking through the damp ground toward the amphitheater calling out in the darkness.

“Are you there?”
“We won’t hurt you.”
“We aren’t the cops.”
“We have coffee.”

There was, of course, no one there.

Six years later, with churches across the community working together to host those who are homeless in their buildings night after night, what seems most certain now is that we were, indeed, calling out in the darkness.

We are, those of us fortunate enough to have grown up in church, blessed with a great deal of treasured heritage, and at the same time plagued by a deep spiritual paternalism that we can’t see until we are staring our ignorance straight in the face.

Were I to ask “Are the homeless christians?” the answer would no doubt be, “not necessarily.”
Were I to ask “Are the homeless not christians?” the answer would no doubt be, “not necessarily.”

But were I to have asked “Why do we serve the homeless?” the answer might have likely been “to show them Jesus.”

We are still often calling out in the darkness.

Six years later, I can say that I have learned more about who Jesus is and what he has done from the Christian men who are homeless in our community. Their homelessness is not a result of their not-Christian-ness. And they were not necessarily waiting around for me to show them Jesus.

They are often showing Christ to me, as even Jesus made clear that when we interacted with them we were interacting with him.

But we say we serve to show them Jesus, so we do little looking to see him in them.

But that is changing with those who are willing to open their eyes and see that when we have experienced relationship with those in need, we have experienced relationship with Christ.

Here’s to a future of continuing to open our eyes more and more, and continuing to call out in the darkness less and less.

Theirs is the kingdom, of course.

djordan
South Church St.

 

 

OTHER RELATED POSTS | the fear of the weak among us | we can assume | crack our great ambitions

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Apr 22 2012
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learning to live, poems, what they are teaching me

fear of the weak among us

the weak, ill, addicted, crazy, poor, uneducated among us

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Apr 18 2012
3 Comments
grief and trauma, what they are teaching me

when others tell their stories

It often takes only a few minutes into a counseling session for me to realize that I have no way of speaking solutions into the room. A story begins, a tear drops, and people began to share with me the kinds of things I would never be brave enough to speak out loud to another…or myself for that matter. And after only a little bit of training in graduate school, I learned that me offering advice isn’t the craft of therapy to begin with.

And it also doesn’t take long to realize the kind of disrespect or arrogance that my solution-speaking or advice-offering would actually be suggesting. It seems, when I think about it for a moment, that in no situation would I ever allow someone who has talked to me for thirty minutes, once a week, for a month, tell me what to do with my life or how to orient my grief or what to do in my marriage.

And yet the role of counselor or therapist or even pastor sometimes has those connotations attached.

So in a kind of powerlessness, when others begin their stories, begin to tell the truth about the life they have been living in and wrestling with and learning from since birth, my only option is to switch into the mode of curiosity. And in that curiosity, I become another human being in the room, asking questions that the person sitting across from me may never have asked before even to themselves.

And in the magic of the room, new things are learned. New things are learned for my own life and for the client’s life.

Good helping doesn’t come from being the answer-man, but rather from being the questioner, a facilitator of the insight that is buried within the person who has come in seeking counsel. And more often than not, as two human beings sit in the room listening to each other in spaces that don’t judge, don’t lie, don’t have other agendas… people find their ways.

There is a deep, dangerous humanity in offering to simply bear witness to the grief, pain, fear, horror, loss, confusion or despair of another. And in staring it in the face, we both become, together, a little more human.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

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