Confession

Ironically, I read this once on the Ascension this year (holla at the Catholic liturgical calendar!). Every time I’ve read it, the beginning is way different. I haven’t settled on one, or a title really, but here’s the approximate text from the Ascension Day version, for lack of a video.

Sometimes, strangers preach to me
—best when they don’t intend it.
On this occasion, I’d asked another Christian
what his faith meant to him. He said,
“It’s the reason I haven’t killed a man.”
Now, there’s a lot there.
But here’s the word I heard:
I’ve asked this question of other Christians who’ll say something like,
“It means I’ve been saved by the precious blood of Jesus Christ,”
instead of,
Jesus Christ saved somebody else’s blood from me.

And that’s easier for me to believe.
Because it’s hard to believe Christ’s concerned with saving me
from my privileged private education,
my comfortably heated apartment,
and my relatively friendly neighborhood.

And it’s hard to believe Christ’s concerned with saving me
in a world with sweatshops and slavery,
vets and elders in poverty
and my country flying drones over the Middle East

If any God is doing anything,
it’s probably saving people from my silent violence.
If God’s making miracles in the modern age,
it’s making fools fall in love in a world that learned rage
and any conversation in this era of contagion,
plastic gloves, ATMs and self-checkout stations.

I know some things are broken
—our hearts and homes have loudly spoken,
but some of them broke open
remembering true religion is for widows and orphans

It hasn’t all failed

even when our idealistic plans and dreams derailed
even when I saw the facts and faces and I bailed
even when all I think I can do is just whine and wail
It hasn’t all failed

But we are
the most dangerous things in this world
and it’s a miracle more casualties haven’t come
from my casual apathy

I wanted to ask that man
if hearing “love your neighbor” might save me
from putting on my headphones on bus 48
or arguing with the guy who asked me for change
Because I can’t talk sin nature
until I get off my armchair
and exorcise my bank account
and clean the demons from my cup of coffee
and call my sister with an honest apology

And I can’t Alleluia! on Easter
until I roll the stone away from my cold heart
and resurrect the child in me who once believed
that things were possible
and had an easier time remembering
people are good.

I want to stop asking questions
of how we get to Heaven
and what it costs—in blood or deeds—for a picket-fenced plot in North Eternity

Some better questions:
Have I learned to live in miracles with the eight billion plus connected to me?
Am I open to all of you correcting my stupidity?
The crucifixion I believe in looks like open arms and humility,
So does that look like me?
Or am I waiting for someone else’s suffering to save me?

Anthony

Tuesday afternoon a stranger named Anthony told me, “That makes me feel like a honeydew melon!”

When Anthony saw me on the sidewalk, he genuinely thought we’d met before, but he’d mixed me up with someone. He said it was because I smiled at him that he thought we must know each other; I wish it weren’t so unusual to smile at people we don’t know. We got into talking anyway and I wasn’t really saying anything, and he wasn’t really asking questions, but he kept saying he wanted to receive my advice and even just my presence, he would “receive and hold” whatever I had to offer so he could pass it on to someone else. Perhaps you’re imagining a(n ex-)hippie type, or a soothing, soft spoken old man (maybe a Marilyn type, SU folks). I’m also going to challenge that you might be imagining someone white. None of these things were true, except that he was a man, possibly old, and only soothing in a different way. His rhythm was rambling and rough, his fast-blurred words were often lost in his gums, he looked sort of unkempt and his jacket, I think, was askew. But I loved his spirit, and what I received and held from him was that “happiness is all the time, all around.”

And what does a honeydew melon feel like anyway?

Michael: A Story about Vomit from My Summer Vacation (which is far less debaucherous than it sounds)

I had just crossed the midpoint of my journey, about six weeks in. I was leaving Charlotte, North Carolina for Washington, DC. But as was always the case, it was much more than place I was leaving and much more than place I was moving toward. It was a ten-hour bus ride between love and death, or between death and love; which is which, I am not sure.

These are stories for another day, but the very short of it is that in Charlotte I madly fell for a fellow, fully knowing the entire time that the whole matter had to be unbearably, impossibly temporary. And in DC, I didn’t know any of this was going to happen of course, but I arrived in town the same day as a member of the community I was visiting passed away and sat with strangers in their grieving.

Between those things was still another overnight Greyhound bus ride and still another morning of waking up upright, stiff of body from the awkward seating, languid otherwise from the lameness of heartbreak. And not too long after I woke up, somewhere about 25 minutes outside of Richmond, a woman vomited on her way out the bus. Putrid barf, right in the middle of the aisle.

Light Railing (or We Think It’s Seedy Because Our Lives Have Been Sitting on Shelves)

I (mostly) wrote this on an airplane way too early in the morning three days ago. Hence, it is all rage and no artistry. Begin:

This morning I was talking to a man while waiting for the light rail, and I kind of remember some of the things he said, but what I most remember was when I had told him I was a barista and he said his friend works at Starbucks in the Columbia Tower.* I oohed at what it might be like to get the nice view from the Starbucks on the 45th floor. He clarified that she actually works at the one in the lobby, which largely entails “COCKBLOCKING THE HOMELESS.”

Emphasis mine, obviously.

I don’t know how I really reacted, but whatever it was wasn’t as strongly as I should’ve.

The usual furious questions came up in my mind but didn’t make it out of my mouth: Why is it that I, having no business in the Columbia Tower myself, can go to either Starbucks counter and get a cup of coffee without being seen as an enemy to be “cockblocked.”

(Not to mention, why do we need two Starbucks in one building?)

What was also frustrating was this:

“Did you hear about the taxi driver who got fired for honking in support of the [Occupy Seattle] protests? I guess the cops pulled him over, for honking or whatever, and gave him a $140 ticket. But then some of the protestors came together and paid his ticket. I always thought Yellow Cab was good for nothing, but I guess there’s one good driver.”

There’s a lot going on here that I should’ve engaged. For instance, what’s your problem with taxis or your assumption about taxi drivers? More fascinating to me was (and always is) that he could (at least mildly) support Occupy Seattle and still talk about 23rd & Jackson or Beacon Hill as “seedy” and talk about cockblocking the homeless. I have this problem of tending to assume that anyone with whom I agree about one thing I must agree with about a wide cluster of other things. This is presumptuous, underexplained, and even contradictory, but it seems to me that I tend to assume more sameness than true, where this man perhaps assumes more difference than true.

Because I am always thinking about this and I am in the mood to take things farther than I usually do and farther than maybe I should, I’m going to point out that 23rd & Jackson and Beacon Hill are both ethnically diverse parts of Seattle (the latter particularly a popular area for immigrants) and that I’ve never ridden a cab with a Euro-white driver.

It is also worth clarifying and exploring that, in spite of the way I’m portraying him now, the man was actually pretty friendly; after all, it’s not often that strangers actually strike up a conversation in Seattle. He works for a green small business I like, he takes public transportation, and like I said, he had at least some respect or appreciation for the Occupy movement, things that are traditionally more attractive to liberals and earn good points in Seattle.

My point is, though, bigotry doesn’t just come in the form of Crotchety Old Man from the South like we so often imagine and assume (and, on the flip, my interactions with old men, southerners, and old southern men have been more fabulous than otherwise). And ignorant statements don’t always come couched in long tirades at high decibel levels under pointed brows. Just as often they come from left-leaning, news-reading, young adults, passingly tossed into conversational lite fare.

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*a downtown skyscraper, for those of you out-of-Seattle folk

Norton

I first met Norton during a simple, idealistic jaunt with Myra Louise (my blue Razor scooter). My sophomore year I’d bake brownies specifically to give away to people on the street, which was…I don’t know what I think about that now, but I saw Norton and gave him a couple foil-wrapped brownies. And then the second time I saw Norton, I said, “I always see you here,” and I asked him name, so he gave me his name, and I didn’t know what else to say. On a few occasions afterward, I would regularly bring him oranges or blood oranges. But this was a year ago, so I don’t even remember how he responded. He always sat in front of this vacant suite on the corner of a lively street—a pretty nice little alcove, where the doorway sank in just a little bit, undoing a corner, and it had a little bit of roof, and it was always at least a little bit lit. I would always see him just sitting on a mat on the sidewalk—never lying, never standing, not even leaning when he sat—with his backpack by his side. He seemed to fit right into the space and was as much a fixture as the lampposts. I felt a little guilty for thinking so.

Then a kitschy furniture and households store went in the space, with bright lights and bright colors and stark hipness. And winter came and I stopped seeing Norton there.

I saw Norton the Tuesday before this past, as I was walking with a friend toward a coffee shop (me) and grocery store (her). We even ran into another friend one corner past Norton, gave him a showy hug or whatever, but I could not stop turning back to look.

On my way back from coffee I stopped in front of him, chipper but a little nervous.

“Norton, right?”

He didn’t remember my name, if he ever knew it, but when I noted I hadn’t seen him in awhile he explained that he went to L.A. for the winter. Climate’s better, and UCLA lets him use their Internet, which he would use to prowl through Wikipedia.

But there was something that told him to come back to Seattle, and he always follows those somethings. (Lucky for him, he came back on the first sunny week in awhile.) I smiled. I’m all about leaving things up to somethings. Finally I asked if I could sit down, and there I was on the concrete next to him. I had never seen Capitol Hill from ground level at night before, my eyes at everyone’s knees while they walked by.

George

I was going to go up half a mile to a coffee shop and work on a paper for my Gospels class. Instead, I met George along the way there, on a corner between two grocery stores. He’s apparently friends with a woman who gave a testimony at my(?) church yesterday and bashfully sang at the end of it. I wanted to thank her and speak to her yesterday, but she was always with other people, so I was grateful to run into her as the result of a few spontaneous decisions today (including the decision to turn back a second time). And had I changed any of my split decisions of where I should go or which street to take, I wouldn’t have met George.

Like much of America, we spent a good amount of time talking about the rapture. George was angry that some guy could get away with making millions of dollars off of selling these scam tracts. They both said he should go to jail for swindling so much money out of well-intentioned people. And even when Penny had to leave, George kept on with the conversation and said many times, “They have a good heart,” that these people, even if they left their jobs or their families or sold everything because they thought they were going to die anyway, “at least they had a good heart. And he [Harold Camping of Family Radio] just took advantage of that.” I think a lot of people have really demonized a lot of the folks who bought in to the whole May 21st rapture thing, or at least flattened them to foolish. Everyone’s vulnerable, though, and people have lost much (both of world and of spirit) from the confusion. Remember that.

I tend to end up in a lot of conversations with random people about religion and spirituality, especially people who are financially or physically poor. This conversation with George was definitely one of them. Some are Bible thumpers, some are imprecise spiritualists, some say it’s all the same anyway. Some are overflowing with somekindagratitude for somekindaGreat, and some are angry. I spend a lot of the time hanging back and listening to what the other person thinks, because sometimes I’m bashful (not surprising), or sometimes the other person just doesn’t take a lot of pauses, or sometimes I have no idea what to say. I like to think it’s because I try to listen for truth, but I am sure it’s hard for my ego to get past my anxiety sometimes. Anyway, one thing I loved about George (besides the conversation itself) was I found myself totally unable to guess where he sat in terms of religious identification, which is rare enough in any conversation about spirituality and the existential questions, let alone ones with the strangers who are audacious enough to bring it up. And then he reminded me that “those labels don’t matter” anyway.

Somehow we got into talking about Paul’s letters and Hinduism, and he recommended some books on the yogas. We discussed the meaning of the word “Islam” (literally, “surrendering”) and how the early Christians were not called Christians but followers of the way (“And that’s what Christians should be—followers of the Way”).

He told the story of someone he’d met at Safeway or something who was working on a Masters in Divinity at my school. He asked her what it meant to study Divinity anyway and what she was doing with that. She said she had to do this program to become a chaplain, and he told her that she didn’t have to study to know God, she didn’t have to get a degree or get that kind of job. All of that was a choice. And he asked if she believed in God, because, “It’s not just about the divine. God is something else.”

We talked about meditation, the power of breathing, the “third eye,” cloning, natural disaster, dinosaurs, genetically modified food, Biblical lifespans, martial arts. He frequently said, “You’re going to think this is funky”—a little self-conscious but confident nonetheless.

In the middle of all this I questioned (as usual), Why do I even go to school? This is what matters to me—conversations, encounters, people who are not in a social position of paying tens of thousands of dollars for power and social acceptance. And then I remembered that throughout the conversation I’d been referencing Shankara and the Hindu yogas; Greek words in Paul’s writings and Luke; literary technique in the book of Genesis—things I learned or talked about in class. Then again, George knew much without a fancy theology degree, and he had offered much to me.

There was a totally separate and odd moment as I was leaving where he said he enjoyed talking to me and maybe would I call him sometime. I clearly didn’t give him my phone number. But I wondered, would the decision have been as clear if I had fallen into a 40-minute conversation about subjects that matter to me with someone who seemed cleaner, who seemed younger, who did not seem homeless?

Are these clues to something?

(I stole this from an e-mail I sent. Totally cheating, but totally real.)

A man came in to the Welcome Center (again, my station at the shelter where I volunteer) a couple weeks ago and was waiting to make an ID card. The computer was being wonky and took awhile, so as he was waiting, he asked me if we had any string. He showed me a cross that he was wearing around his wrist and said he wanted to put it around his neck instead. I couldn’t find any string in the office, so I looked in my backpack.

Lo and behold, in the abandoned crevaces of the front pocket, I found a tiny Ziploc-esque pouch with string and beads and beaded string from a reflection in a prayer/community group I was in about a year ago. I have a lot of symbolic attachment to string and wrists and other things that make up the nuances of this story, but long story less long I gave it to him and he was exceedingly gracious: “Really? I can keep this? Are you sure I can take all the other beads too? Did you make this? How did you do this? Are you serious, I can keep this?”

Here is the really odd but also sappy part. The next Saturday I was at the Welcome Center, and since there were a lot of people in there and the other volunteers were working the desk, I was sitting in the back and kind of zoning out. And all of a sudden the man was back, in front of the desk holding out a green Patrón box sealed in medical tape. He looked at me and I recognized him. He proudly showed me he was wearing the cross around his neck, hanging on the string I gave him. Then he held out the box again.

“I’m pretty sure I can’t take this…” I said.

“Nah,” he said. ”It’s just a few little gems I found.”

So eventually I took the box, gave thanks, and he quickly left.

I slowly (and awkwardly) broke open the box to find: green gift tissue with a little glue on it, one small screw, two dead lighters, half a book of matches, a small red flower with a green craft feather on it, the zip top of a tiny plastic Ziploc like the one in which the string and beads came, two candy wrappers, two first aid kit-esque packets of pain relievers I think, a red plastic packaging tie (the kind that looks like a string of tiny cones), and two translucent pebbles and one opaque one (dark brown).

The other people working sniffed the items, joked that they were probably clues to a dead body or something, warned me that the man might be at least a little weird if not dangerous. Unsure of what else to do with it all, we left the bright green Patrón box in the Welcome Center for a little while, which is especially ironic since this place also houses a recovery program.

We disposed of the box, but we kept the sentiments.

How do you spell your name?

He came up to the Welcome Center (my station as a volunteer at a local homeless shelter for men) on a Tuesday morning and asked if the chaplain was in. No, unfortunately. He asked for someone else, I can’t remember whom, and said he was leaving that day, leaving for Nashville and couldn’t come back another time. He wanted to say thanks for letting him stay there. So he opted to leave a message.

He asked me to write for him and carefully spelled out his name, which I underlined at the top of the scrap of paper. There was something childlike about him, about his mouth. He seemed to have a kind of speech impediment that softened his R’s into W’s and a kind of speech gift that made everything he said simple and golden.

“What’s your message?” I asked brightly.

I could not catch up to write it all right away. I wrote slowly, maybe to make sure my writing could be clear and sure, maybe to match his speech.

I am very, very sick. I am dying of cancer. Please pray for me. Thank you for all of the help. I am going home to Tennessee and need all the love, thoughts, and prayers I can get so I can make it to Tennessee.

I asked him if he’d like to sign his note. He scrawled in an illogical mix of capitals and lowercase:

from a true brother

I taped his message on the bulletin board inside the Welcome Center, alongside notes like “Pick up your contact lenses” and volunteer lists and policy updates.