Ripples

A long time ago there was a man who lost a great deal of money in the stock market. He became depressed and started to drink, neglecting his own family and treating his children as worthless. The man's son grows older and marries, seeing himself as worthless and in turn treating his wife as he feels, degrading her as often as he can. One day the wife cheats on her husband because she finds someone who treats her with desire and admiration. The man in his sadness and hurt turns to alcohol to soothe his pain, just as he had seen his father do. One day as he is driving while intoxicated, he crashes into a van carrying a family, killing a mother and her two children, but leaving the father alive. This father, destroyed by the loss of what was most precious to him lashes out in rage and jealousy at those who still have children, to the point of kidnapping another's child and killing it. The parents of the kidnapped child sink into despair and numb their pain with Methanphetamines. The drug takes control of their reasoning, they become oversexualized and begin neglecting and sexually abusing their other children. One of their boys grows to be 14 and in his pain and battle against powerlessness rapes a neighbor child for offending him. The neighbor boy's mother cannot handle the guilt that she was unable to protect her son and turns to drugs herself. The boy is removed from the home, placed in foster care and ends up in a session with me.

I ask myself, who is to blame for this? Who should pay for the injustice done to my client? Is it the boy who raped him? Or the boys' parents who abused him? Or the kidnapper? How far back do we go? In an amazing session, my client's mother was talking about how she felt tremendous anger over what happened and wanted to kill the boy who raped her son, but then she softened, and said that she also felt compassion on him because she knew that in order to do this, some incredible hurt must have been done to him.

Recently, I was driving home with a strong hatred in my heart for those who have done evil to my clients and the many victims in the world. The hatred was so strong that I wanted to take justice into my own hands and kill those responsible for evil. Two recent and unexpected sources have opened my eyes to the place of hurt in the evils of this world; the book, "The Shack" and the children's book/movie "The Tale of Despereaux". Both struggle with the problem of evil from a creative and empathetic stance, realizing the complexities of the human heart. The frightening truth is that none of us are immune to deep hurt or beyond the possibility of making unloving choices as a result of this hurt.

While I believe that at each stage of the story I have described, each individual had a choice to make, I cannot help but feel more compassion and understanding for the hurt driving the decisions made. I only hope that there is a light more powerful than this strain of darkness, a redemption more glorious than the fall. I know that within my client lies the opportunity to end the darkness, and with God's help maybe someday...

My client grows to forgive the boy who hurt him and chooses to end the cycle of gaining power over others or being stepped on by others, but learns a third way of giving power to others in wisdom and trust and caring for power given. Maybe he will even become a counselor one day and help other children who have been abused. A child that he counsels learns that she is not worthless or permanently stained, goes on to marry and have children, giving her children the childhood and the love that she never experienced. Her children grow up safe and with compassion towards others. Her son travels across the world to work in a refugee camp in a war torn country. He brings healing to those who have been raped, sold into slavery, and have witnessed terrible atrocities. One boy that he rescues from slavery grows up to commit his life to freeing others from slavery and leads a movement of people to crack down on slave traders. An article is written about this man in a newspaper far away, and it is read by another man who recently lost a large sum in the stock market, causing him to put down his glass of whiskey.

Beyond Critique

A terrifying thought has recently occurred to me. The kind of thought that makes one wonder if the ground they are standing upon is really there or if they are who they believe themselves to be. Recently, Marta and I have been pondering examples in our life of individuals or groups claiming that they are following the will of God. The scary thing is that once someone or a group of people claim that what they are doing is the will of God, they are guaranteed an air tight, waterproof theological barrier around their actions.

For example. Let us say that there is a plot of swamp land down the street selling for really cheap and I am looking to build a house. I spend some time in prayer and ask God if I should buy the land or not (I really want to, it is such a good deal). And then, I discern that God says yes. First of all, no one has any real good reason to deny my claims because there is nothing in his "general will" or revelation against buying swampland. One could maybe bring up that it is not very wise to buy swampland and will be very difficult to build a house but then I would counter that I am the wise one here for getting such a great deal. (I would also say that it worked for Walt Disney :) )

Now let's say that I go to build my house and it turns out that I need to haul in extra rock and soil to lay a solid foundation in the swamp or the house will sink. This puts me back an extra $40,000 but in the grand scheme of things, I am still coming out on top. This is what we would call a "test of faith" or a "trial/tribulation" which could come from God or from Satan trying to throw me off of this amazing blessing God has for us. Then another snag. I find I need to buy a special sewer system for the house that will put me over the amount I would have spent on a house on a normal piece of land. I start to have doubts at this point whether this was a good idea, but they are fleeting and I am at this point, too commited to turn back, besides I have already told my church and all my friends that this is the will of God and my entire reputation would be ruined if I said that I was wrong.

So I keep going. I start to build my house, but it turns out that the foundation I laid wasn't good enough and part of it sinks leaving me with a pretty crooked frame. So I have to pay more money to place more rocks into the foundation and fix the frame again. Clearly, a test of my faith. I have to take out a second mortgage on the house and get another job to pay for it. A friend of mine asks me if I still think it was God's will for me to build this house. First I tell him that I will pray for his lack of faith and secondly, that following God's will is worth more than any amount of money. God judges success not by human standards but by his own standards right?

Now, this story could end in a couple of different ways. 1.) I end up completing the house and have a pretty nice house that cost me twice as much as any other comparable house on the market. I also have the satisfaction of following God's will to completion.
2.) I go into bankruptcy and lose the home. I either blame those brief moments of doubting I had earlier or say that this was merely a test that God had put me through to make sure that I would follow him 100%.

What concerns me here is that there is often not a possibility for someone to admit they are wrong about discerning God's will. Once it has been announced or decided that this is God's will, it seems like it pretty much has to be carried out to completion regardless of the outcome. There is not a lot of grace in our culture for someone who admits that they were wrong, both from others and towards themselves. This individual would face the ruin of their reputation, and mockery from others as well as lose confidence in their own level of faith and ability to discern god's will. But, who am I to say? Maybe there are some times when God does want me to build on a swamp. Yet I suspect there are a lot of people out there building on swamps that don't have to be.

Breadmaking

Just moments ago, I pulled two loaves of absolutely beautiful homemade bread out of the oven. The delicious smell has been slowly filling every nook and cranny of the Stork's Nest, and now they are finally ready - tall, golden and well-rounded, by far my best looking loaves ever. I'm still looking at them in choked-up astonishment.

If you've ever tried to bake bread, you probably know that it is no simple affair. In fact, my own first attempts always ended up in sullen frustration - the bread would most typically not rise like it was supposed to, yet I would try to bake it anyway, and the result usually resembled a brick rather than bread. I think it was just tonight that I finally put my finger on the secret... As so many brilliant conclusions, it dawned upon me by accident. As I was making the dough, I miscalculated how much time I had until Billy and I were leaving for dinner at our friend's house, so I had no time to bake it and had to leave it alone for a couple of hours. When we came home, the dough had actually doubled - just like it said in the recipe! It had been there in the cookbooks all along; I just never really believed it. In my impatience to finally taste a real sandwich - a desire only augmented by the local prevalence of yucky imitations of the Wonderbread sort - I quickly concluded that the dough was ready to go and tried to rush the delicate process. What I got in return were dense bricks - perhaps still wholesome and nutritious, as Billy c0mpassionately reminded me, but nothing like the deliciously fluffy wonders that came out of the oven tonight.

I'm sure I've made many other discoveries like this one and soon forgot their impact, but this one stands out as an image for a vague inkling that's been with me for some time. The struggle to wait seems like a common malady of our "microwave society." We are impatient to grow up, to get a degree, to get married; impatient for the various pieces of our lives to come together, for pain to make sense, for churches to grow, for the Kingdom of God to come. If things don't happen like we'd hope, we often conclude that the dough needs some speeding up - so we rush through childhood, graduate early, put band-aids over wounds, borrow marketing strategies from business or try to take over the government. Meanwhile, the organism of God's Kingdom operates on an independent schedule - like yeast rising when the cook is away or a seed growing in the soil regardless of whether the farmer is looking. The kind of bread that I long for - as well as the kind of marriage, friendship, community - grows in effortless mystery, but not without my effort of faithful waiting. The beautiful part? Once I give in to the present moment, the bread grows peacefully on its own while I flirt with Billy, notice the full moon on the way to our friend's house and enjoy an evening of lovely conversation.

It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Neighbor

A man was returning home from a visit to the International House of Prayer via a country road when his Timing Belt suddenly broke, startling him and sending him into the ditch. He emerged with a dazed look and a bleeding forehead from hitting the dash. The man knew that he was in the middle of nowhere and that it could be hours before he saw another car.

Just then he saw what looked like a tour bus driving towards him in the distance. He couldn't believe his eyes - it was the bus of one of his favorite televangelists! He cried out in joy and began to wave frantically at the bus with his shirt but the bus picked up speed as it passed him on its way to the next major city. The man stared in disbelief and sunken hope.

As he swaggered back to his car he again caught the glimpse of a vehicle in the distance coming towards him. It was the unmistakable outline of a 15 person church youth van complete with luggage trailer and an emblazened cross on the side door. The man's heart leaped once again as he waved his shirt and cried out in distress. He slowly lowered his arms as the van sped by him full of teenagers pointing and laughing at his predicament.

No sooner had this van passed when the man noticed another car coming his way. He started to raise his shirt once again but then stopped when he noticed a large rainbow sticker on the front of the car. He momentarily cursed himself for his prominent bumperstickers touting his political and religious views. To his surprise the car pulled to a stop behind him. Out stepped a well dressed young man who, with an effeminate tone, asked him if he needed some help. The man was dumbfounded. The stranger drove the man to the next town and, while he was in the emergency room, arranged for a tow truck to get his car and paid for his hospital bills...

"Go and do likewise"
Lk. 10:25-37

Billy the Bunny

I just had to share this one - not only the name, but the subversive style fit someone we know whose name starts with a B.!

Counterscript (I)

Last Saturday, the Storks' Nest once again became a bustling seat of activity as our home filled up with some of our favorite people in the world, gathered once again to remember the story we have all chosen to live by, and to nurture one another as we all seek to follow the alternative scenario of the kingdom of God.

Those gathered in our living room come from various religious traditions - some have been raised in Evangelical megachurches, some graduated from a Pentecostal Bible college, others grew up Catholic, were part of a house church, watched preachers on TV or attended liberal churches with a strong emphasis on social justice. We've gravitated towards each other not just in reaction to our respective traditions - although we do vary in our level of criticism towards where we came from and openly bring those to the table, open to the realization that we've each been equipped with a set of key questions, commitments and preconceptions.

What pulls us together is a common sense that the dominant scripts of our culture, including the religious ones, fail to deliver the safety and happiness they promise. At the same time, we've all stolen glimpses of a very different story, one which makes my heart sing. It seems implausible, impractical, counterintuitive - and yet it is here that the blind see, the poor inherit a kingdom, those in mourning find their tears carefully counted; it is here that being takes precedence over having or doing, happiness is not an impossible goal but a pleasant side effect, and we find the heavens friendly and near.

The trouble is that those glimpses are fleeting, and we live in proximity to many powerful idols: Consumerism, Progress, Technology, Militarism, Romantic Love, Therapism, Liberal Guilt, Prosperity Gospel - to list just a few of the ones we mentioned the other night. They are compelling and popular stories that we repeatedly give in to, only to come full circle with Qoheleth - "all is vanity and striving after wind." That's when we remember the strange distant music of the Gospel. We gather again in someone's living room to hear the Counterscript, perhaps in the Beatitudes. We hear the truth about the shape we're in, and that truth telling makes us free.

The Beatitudes

In preparation for attending the play "Jesus Christ Superstar" with a friend of ours who is not too fond of Christianity as he conceives of it, I emailed him this short introduction into the Christian ideal.

Matthew 5:1-10

Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them, saying:

"Blessed are the rich, for theirs is the kingdom they have created.

Blessed are those who are impervious to sorrow and trouble themselves not with the pain of others, for they comfort themselves.

Blessed are the powerful, for they have received their inheritance.

Blessed are those who are self-righteous, they have already filled themselves.

Blessed are those who are unwavering and unbending in their pursuit of justice as to not let a single error go unpunished, the favor will be returned to them.

Blessed are the self-unaware, for they do not have to worry about God.

Blessed are the lovers of war, for they will be called sons of men.

Blessed are those who persecute others in the name of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of this world.

Blessed are you when you insult people, persecute them, and falsely say all kinds of evil against them because of me.
Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward."

Of Rabbits and Men

With a thick cover of snow covering our back yard, we've recently discovered a couple sets of animal tracks indicating that we may have a couple more neighbors than we thought. We had so far made our acquaintance with a tattered tom cat, the raccoon who occasionally raids our garbage, a family of pigeons who seem to have taken a liking to our bedroom window, a pair of crows in the maple tree, along with their entourage of silly sparrows, and the three boisterous squirrels who chase each other around our alley. We've become familiar with all of their sights and signs, so we knew right away that the long tracks in the snow must have belonged to somebody new. A few nights ago, as I was opening the door, my eyes suddenly met with the frightened stare of a little white rabbit crouched by the jasmine bush. We looked at each other for a good minute, both surprised by each others presence, before leaving each other alone and going our separate ways.

The sight of all these animals in the city still startles me, even after living here for over a year. Where I come from, cities are ancient human enclaves effectively separated from nature over the course of many centuries. The sight of a squirrel in a city park is a rare and celebrated occurrence, and rabbits can only be spotted far off in the country, away from human dwellings. The only time I had ever seen a raccoon was at the zoo - a funny creature who liked things so clean that he meticulously washed all of his food. When I first looked in the dictionary to see if I knew the Polish name for the scary creature that dug in our garbage, I could at first not believe that it was the same thing - in fact, I still wonder if the animal I saw at the Polish zoo as a little girl might be a different type of raccoon than those in Minnesota?

Even if it should be so, I can't hold the same disbelief with regard to squirrels - they are definitely the same species, yet I am about the only person I know who stops at their sight with amazement and wonder. There are, in fact, so many of them here, and they cause so much damage to people's houses, that they are seen as an outright nuisance - much like rabbits, who nibble on people's flowerbeds and gardens. One man's joy is another's pest... We even have a friend a couple of blocks away - if you are a child in Poland you may want to stop reading right here - who regularly shoots squirrels with his BB gun!

The culture of shooting is a subject for a post of its own, but the various connotations of raccoons and squirrels actually made me think of people the other day. They remind me of a man I got to know back in Poland, who came on numerous missions trips with a deep sense compassion for the young people of my country. Shortly after I moved here, we had a conversation about the part of the city where Billy and I chose to live, and I was taken aback by his open hostility towards my new neighbors - "these lazy troublemakers who live off others' taxes and make our streets unsafe." I was instantly struck by his radically different attitude towards two groups of people who live in very similar realities. It would be an understatement to say that Polish cities are no safer than the south side of Minneapolis - the difference is that they are an ocean away, and so the pain does not cut as close; it is not as personal as having your car broken into or a friend's child wounded by a gunshot in the back yard. It's less of a challenge to love broken people and to see their beauty at a distance - like an occasional squirrel in the city park.

I wonder, however, if the depth and transformation that love is really about can ever truly happen at a distance - unless it begins in the back yard, in close community with others different than us who will occasionally eat our lettuce or bite through our roof.

The Poor will Always Be Among Us

The more I work in the social services arena, the more I come to see the grim reality behind Jesus' words. I often work with clients whose poverty(material and spirit) is a result of a complex web of addictions, mental illness, poor parental modeling, and plain old selfishness. I have recently been thinking about what it would take to end poverty forever.

We all know that just throwing money at poor families will not lift them out of their circumstances or break the deep cycles in which they are imbedded. Let us imagine then that we were able to provide the most comprehensive wrap around services possible. We give the family stable housing in a neighborhood with mixed income so as not to concentrate poverty, we provide them with job training and positions in jobs making livable wages, we provide their children with day care and the best education money can buy, then we have counselors and therapists provide intensive therapy for both the family as a whole and the individuals, we give them domestic abuse training, chemical dependency training and support, life skills education on how to budget and manage a household. We then connect these families with spiritual communities where they can be loved and cared for, and be given meaning and connection. Even if we did all of this, we still cannot account for an individual's choices. A person's unwillingness and lack of desire to change can make all of these lovely programs as useless as giving vegetables to a lawn mower. I have been in many sessions where I bend over backwards trying to come up with new and creative ways to help families and when the dust clears it comes down to the fact that they do not want to change their ways.

Even if every person on the planet was freed from the curse of poverty there would still come along people who make poor choices both for themselves or in regards to others. A mother chooses herself over her child and uses substances in the womb, that child does worse in school, is less equipped to get a high paying job and thus the cycle begins again. A son is born mentally ill and when he comes of age goes in search of a mate, having children, the cycle begins again. Another people group is oppressed because they are different and given less opportunities in society, the cycle begins again. A company lays off a third of its workers to show an increase rather than a decrease in their already large profits, the cycle begins again.


So what is to be done? Should we give up since the end goal is hopeless? Even though I don't believe we are ever going to free this world from hunger, war, poverty, or hate, there are small successes that give me hope. There are people who do desire to change even though they are oppressed by a myriad of issues. There are people who do change. It saves my mind from despair to know that each individual or family that is brought out of the cycle of poverty means that we have not only freed them, but the generations that proceed from them.

A Stork Apology

Just so we are all on the same page to start out, a few words about storks. I suspect that there are a few of you out there already wondering if this blog is meant to be a chronicle of an imminent parenting endeavor, and a few others, who happen to know about my secret pregnancy phobia, guffawing at the irony. To set the record straight, our association with storks has other sources though - it all began soon after our wedding, when we moved in to a lovely apartment on the top floor of a duplex, high above the surrounding city and accessible through a rickety staircase. Before we knew it, or my phobia had time to get activated, the place named itself the Storks' Nest. As it turns out, it had great insight in doing so... Did you know, for instance, that:

• The white stork is the national bird of Poland, my home country. Along with other Slavic nations, Poles believe that storks bring peace and happiness to the family on whose house they nest.
  
• One of the largest stork populations is found in Ukraine, where the two of us first met. There, it is associated with the start of a new family in a new home (!)
• Storks are migrant birds - they spend part of the year in Europe, and travel to more tropical parts in the winter. While Minnesota is in no way a tropical destination, the element of migration is a constant in our world - one of us is and always will be living in a foreign country.
  
• Is it any wonder then that Pithagoras thought that storks impersonate the souls of dead poets??

Welcome

Greetings wanderers, vagabonds, and pursuers of beauty.  Welcome to our cozy home among the electronic rush hours and dilapidated telephone poles of cyberspace.  We invite you to join us as we take refuge with our thoughts and reflections on life.  We hope that our thoughts stir your thoughts - and vice versa.

Best read with a cup of tea with lemon.