Category: who do i think i am?

Operation Tell it Like it Is

I have for years and years struggled in my encounters with panhandlers.  And I have continued to live and work in areas that have forced me to struggle with this.  During the years I have shifted from gratuitous giving to simple refusal.  I have never been happy with any response (as if my happiness was the goal).

I would like to bracket for just a minute the larger structural and societal questions around panhandling and focus on the reality that each encounter is an encounter between two human beings in the midst of life.  While I am still not fully satisfied with my approach I am beginning something new.  I am beginning to shift my posture towards panhandlers to something more selfish.  I am now interested in their stories.  I value the unknown (to me) story latent within each of these encounters and I am willing to pay fairly for it.  Working in a church located centrally in Winnipeg we come across a fair number of people looking for some sort of aid.  I never really believe their ‘story’ as if any story is truly believable by someone in power.  So I am trying to evoke another kind of story.  A man came in to my office for the second time in about as many weeks.  The presenting story is always well scripted and pointed in a way that is all or nothing with respect to what they are asking for.  You will either have to accept me or refuse me . . . on my terms.  I was sitting and thinking with this man on my couch and did not feel really comfortable enacting my new plan with him.  But reluctantly I put forward the proposition that I would like to buy a story from him if he would write one.  At first he started telling it to me but I stopped and told him that I would like him to write it down.  He actually responded with more than a little enthusiasm.  Now the story he completed still reads a little more like a ‘justification’ for why he is asking for money.  I tried to be clear that was not what I was looking for.  As I went with him to take out some cash to pay him he started talking about how his girlfriend has been telling him to start writing again (he used to write in prison).  I told him I was not always sure I can pay the same rate but I would be happy to look at other stories.

While this approach does not offer a solution it does make me hopeful and I think it made him more hopeful.  Not a bad thing during this season.

Here is an excerpt from my first story acquisition;

Lately I have been taking good care of Linda and love her very much.  Sometimes she thinks that she’s a burden because she’s sick and I need to reassure her that she needs my help and I’m okay with it.

A Theology of Home Owning

My wife and I are, for the first time, looking seriously at buying a house.  My first impression is that I did not expect it to be as ‘spiritual’ of a process as I am realizing.  First there is the question of ownership.  My recent theological trajectory arcs towards the need to identify where I try and control questions of God, truth, morality, etc.  To what extent do I remain open even vulnerable to changes that I did foresee or create?  How does this relate to home owning?  My impression is that the saying a man’s home is his castle remains powerfully relevant (to what extent the gender ascription is relevant I don’t know).  The modern house is designed to be a space of dominance; a space where control and predictability are attainable.  We essentially colonize a small space for benevolent or destructive ends.  Is there a way of approaching home ownership that does not fall prey to this tendency?

What I am beginning to see is that the process and act of home buying must be integrated into a person and family’s larger theological and spiritual orientation.  For instance my wife is interested in a space that can be renovated so that it can be a type of canvas to explore new environments of living that can facilitate and nurture relationships.  I am interested in examining my motivation for location so that our purchase does not entrench further social, racial, economic boundaries that are based on fear.  From my brief conversations I find fear to be probably the most influential emotion in how people have gone about decision making.  It is certainly not the only influence and it is not always the strongest but it is almost always present.  I have had little fear in my life so I need to be careful in recognizing the roots and realities of other people’s fears.  Theologically, however, these fears must be discerned and sorted so that they do not create decisions that only enforce a continually fearful world for other people.

And of course tied in with all this are questions like the proximity to work, family, friends, and schools as well as the issue of transportation (what is walking and biking distance). What this means is that there is no one right house or approach to home buying.

Then there is the whole question of trust.  So we begin with a trusted friend who refers an agent.  We meet the agent and the agent refers a mortgage broker., etc. And suddenly a web spins out that would have looked entirely different had we cast an alternative first strand.  I cannot become an expert in all these fields while starting a new job, caring for a new child, all the while living under my in-laws roof!  So we trust.  Lord help us.

What I must shed regardless of our decision is the notion, the illusion, that a home can be a refuge or escape from the world.  The world will always reside within our homes in one form or another.  Our purchase then cannot be about possession and control because there remains too many variables (internal and external) that will continue to effect my family’s life no matter how well I reinforce the castle walls.  Our actions, spaces, and objects emerge as spiritual realities (whether residual or ontological).  They are not neutral.  They are engaged with God’s work of creation and redemption.  The image becomes almost levitical thinking of how priests concerned themselves with the mold on walls and binding of diverse threads.  Spaces and objects can be holy or profane, clean or unclean and they are never in these states permanently because these states are bound up in our ongoing engagement with God.  This gives me hope.  Perhaps the holiness of God can even be encountered as far away as the suburbs . . . perhaps.

Neither Here Nor There

This is my last day in the office at Hillcrest Mennonite Church.  This Sunday I will be preaching my last sermon here.  On Monday I will pick of the Uhaul and Tuesday set out on the serpentine Ontario leg of the Trans-Canada.  This is a place where it is still possible to run out of gas before reaching a 24 hour gas megaplex (been there done that and moved on from the kindness of a stranger).  A place where if you drive into the night you are more likely than not to be accompanied by a moose running alongside your headlights for a time.  I plan to take the pace slow spreading out the 24hr plus driving time over three days.  There is no rush.  Once I hit the homeland of Manitoba and settle in Winnipeg I will shortly begin my time at First Mennonite.

Chantal and Salem will fly out ahead of me on Sunday.  And so for about four days I will be neither here nor there but in motion, in transit.  Perhaps we cannot live in liminal space, perhaps it is impossible to hover between the cherubs wings, perhaps we will always be in motion towards on or the other, touching, so that we feel grounded though less holy.  But for a few days I will travel from one wing to the other releasing my grasp in the left hand while taking a tentative step on my own before reaching out again with my right hand to steady my feet.

I have always loved traveling roads where you can turn off at any intersection and not have to wait for an exit that directs you to a pre-fab community of consumption.  Perhaps I will offer some posts from the not-here and the not-there but hopefully not.  If anything I hope to sit alone and sit in silence and then perhaps scrawl by hand on machined wood that has been thinned to sheets that allow for the possibility of enscription and collection.  These sheets then could be burned or stored but both participate in the breaking down of the material order.  They are under no illusion of being part of the digital that claims more permanence or at least presence but is infinitely more fragile.

It is interesting that this transitional space is where my mind is attracted to.  I have not thought too much about ending my time here or beginning my time there.  And perhaps the notion of liminality and transition is just an illusion.  The problem though may be that our sense of permanence, of endings and beginnings, is the illusion.  It is the endings and beginnings that mark our attachment and submission to structures of order, preservation, and stability.  I long to live as though I was traveling between one wing and the other touching neither.  Perhaps I will be able to enter into something which I will not leave even upon arriving.

Well, if you could not tell I am trying to romanticize a period of time that will be filled with poor hygiene and way to much coffee and pastries.  But those spaces have also, in the past, been filled with sounds both harmonious and cacophonous as only the refrain holy, holy, holy can be uttered.

Before I Knew It . . .

I went for a walk this afternoon with Salem.  I usually head out to our local thrift store and check out the used books.  I picked up a collection of poems and prose by William Blake.  On my way back I often to stop at an area that has lots of shade and grass for Salem to crawl around on.  Before I knew it I realized that I was reading William Blake aloud to my 11 month old in a cemetery.  Pray for the boy . . .

A couple of excerpts from Blake though,

The Clod and the Pebble

“Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.”

So sang a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle’s feet,
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:

“Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another’s loss of ease
And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.”

The Garden of Love

I went to the Garden of Love
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And “Though shalt not” writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore,

And I saw it was filled with graves
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

I am slowly re-entering some poetic works but I find I need quite simple rhythm to feel like I am engaging them.  I know it is likely my inability or impatience that keeps me from further exploration but for now pieces like this are very satisfying.