Tired Old Revelations [updated]

“I keep running into this question: why did I leave to learn about community? It’s a little ironic, no? I am at this point now where I am tired and not sure what I’m doing. I recognize that a week (or less) is no time at all to get to know people or a place, and it is emotionally exhausting to go through the cycle of meeting them, awkwardly getting to know them, finally feeling warm and at home, and then leaving indefinitely. There’s a good chance I’ve spent the summer living with people I’ll mostly never see again and possibly never talk to again. And yet when I think back on those things about Seattle, the places I bid my hasta luegos to, I do not feel homesick for them. Not exactly. I feel, if anything, more homesick for myself, mourning that I don’t love Seattle enough to miss it. It’s like this: almost everyone wants to be in love. You can’t make yourself be in love, even with a place you know very well.

I don’t dislike Seattle, but I don’t know that I’m ready to go back to it. At the same time, I kind of long to be in one place and retreat and sit down and write for awhile and not be afraid I’m wasting my time just sitting.

I will get there.”

—from a letter I sent from Philadelphia

I think this will always be about more than Seattle. 

beside a yucca in new mexico, july 14th

I am
finally letting myself hear
that God
in the quiet.
It is like two friends sitting
in silence
yet still
sharing heart.
The greatest teachers have tried to tell me
that God
is in the still small voice, in the wind,
yet crying,
“Wind, where are you?“
the only wind I heard
was my own.
It is good to watch your breath
blow through the trees,
but where does
that breath
come from?
Today I heard the wind
say what she has been saying
all her life:

“Here I am.”

I’m going to be inflammatory for once, but I’m going to be myself: free-written thoughts and questions about the Occupy encampment

I say this with the utmost humility, admitting that I have not yet camped out a full night at the Occupation. I wavered at first on my feelings regarding the movement, and though I’ve fully resolved to stand/sit in support, I still have my criticisms and skepticism (as I tend to with most things). Yet even though I’ve been involved with the movement in other ways (and even if I were involved in that way), I have not heard every story. Not to mention, I wrote this in one sitting, propelled by emotions and questions more than a well thought-out, methodical examination. Take what I say (take what everyone says) with a grain of salt.

That all said, I want to remind you: We’re a baby movement.

This whole shabang has only been going on for two months. And maybe the dramatic eviction in NYC (as well as the continual eviction attempts in other cities) should be taken as a hint to move into the next step.

In other words, do we need to camp? Maybe it’s time to focus on listening, direct actions, and everything else that’s a part of the movement, instead of making the camp our image. Don’t get caught up in the two-month solution: keep looking at the 40(plus)-year problem and listen for the best response.

I also write this as an invitation to thoughtful explanations for the necessity of the camp. I’ll present my skepticism, but I’m thoroughly willing to hear you out about why the camp matters.

Is it symbolic? Yes. It’s the public reclaiming public space, and it models an alternative society developed around people and by people off of independent community resources.

But it doesn’t have to be the center of our speech. The movement is about much more than the space.

If it were about creating a safe space and a listening community and supportive solidarity for the people who’ve been sleeping outside much longer than two months, it would make more sense to me, but from what I’ve observed, this isn’t always/often the case. If it were about keeping vigil and showing our faces to banks and corporations and lawmakers, or if it were about creating a visual presence that would call the attention of those in the 99% who are less inclined to rabblerouse, I might dig that, but in that case I’m not sure if it’s that successful anymore, especially now that many occupations are moving away from financial centers in order to be safe.

Right now, unfortunately, I see the camp creating more distance, more distrust, more drama within the movement. People see the camp on the TV news and think it’s just a bunch of rabblerousers and distance themselves from it; the reality is, there are people in the 99% who watch TV or read the local paper, who claim opposition to the movement because it seems so extreme and exclusive. It doesn’t have to seem that way. It’s not necessarily our fault the media sucks, but the media’s a reality, and it makes us look bad. People want their parks back, people want the money that the government’s been spending on police forces back, and camp drama detracts from organizing. It’s important to have solidarity and conviction, but I’m afraid we might be misplacing our tenacity.

I kind of want to believe in the camp, honestly, but I think we can do better.

What also holds a great deal of weight for me, though, is this: Much ruckus has already been raised around the choice of the name “Occupy.” Anyone with colonial baggage, anyone who has seen the bitter end of war should be stung by this word choice. Seattle’s General Assembly among others cities’ (Austin, Vancouver) voted to rename the movement Decolonize/Occupy Seattle—not that most of us actually consistently use the term.

But the truth is, when I look at this morning’s Zuccotti Park eviction, I am chilled thinking of our colonial history. First of all, I see few in the movement paying sufficient attention to whose land this really was in the first place. That aside, even, the police violence is a reminder of the brusque brutality that wiped out indigenous peoples, but the stubbornness of people who descended on those parks two months ago almost echoes the same colonial mentality. I hate to say it, I honestly do, but it is preventing other members of the public from using public space.

Does that justify banning the press, dumpstering books, shooing away the public from watching, cutting down trees(???), and bringing in a hose and bulldozer to clear Zuccotti Park? Hell no. If we want to talk about colonialism and dystopia, I’m pretty sure silencing the media and taking away books is early on the checklist for Classic Ways to Dumb Down a “Free” Society. Read any of the terrifying sci-fi novels you were assigned in high school English classes.

I want to see an alternative society in action, but the reality is we’ve reached a turning point and conflict: the movement got big. Thank God the movement got big. If I may introduce an ecclesiological (churchy) analogy that I’m obsessed with, it’s like this: the early followers of Jesus practiced in house churches where they could all sit around the table of communion in a circle, look at each others’ faces, hear each others’ voices from all over the room, share a meal together. Then the Good News spread and things got too big for a living room, which was cool, but which also led to big church buildings. Unfortunately these big church buildings made it a little harder to hear who was speaking, thus we had to put the speaker (turned bishop) in the front next to the table and create a divide between leaders and congregation which led to a hierarchical system which led to an institutionalized church…all because things got too big.

Not to mention, if everyone’s in one building and the building crumbles, then what?

The movement is now too large for our living rooms. Decolonize. Don’t give into the temptation of cramming into our own isolated, institutionalized space; remember what’s at the root and get creative.

So what am I suggesting? I don’t know. I’ll keep pulling out of my bum and start here: If you want your symbolic action (and I know I do) and your martyr-esque arrest (my mom’s reading this), then we can use more prophetic imagination than this. Let’s have more Break Up With Your Bank Days. Link your arms outside of Chase Bank like Seattle protestors did on November 2 if that’s what you’re feeling. Keep running the library and the teach-ins. Sit in on foreclosure auctions. CAUSE SOME RUCKUS PLEASE. But choose your battles wisely.

If we’re not trying to make this accessible and visible to the rest of the 99% who aren’t camping and who aren’t already active, then it’s not solidarity. We need more voices, and we need to challenge our own system.

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.

---

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

How I Spent My Summer Vacation: Chapter Two

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You may or may not be here because you’re still curious about my summer journeys. So now that it’s autumn, let me explain a different way.

Speaking of explaining a different way, if you know what this blog and this pilgrimage were all about, you’ll know that there are a lot of stories left untold and unposted. For instance, I’ve hardly described the communities I visited; most of these entries focus on my internal murmurings. But what is also untold, what I find most strange and beautiful, are the lessons and whispers from this summer that keep revealing themselves and popping up in my life as I carry on in Seattle, stories haven’t even been told to me. I am still trying to figure out how to tell both types of stories and where I should keep them. In the meantime, I’ll explain what this hubbub’s about in the first place.

Möbius and Miracles

The truth is, this trip is less about going somewhere and gaining something than it is about leaving and letting go. So to come back to a place, to attempt to settle in, has itself been a practice of letting go, and that’s at least as terrifying as the last three months of it. I am no longer on my pilgrimage, but I am no less a pilgrim. I am leaving my leavings, only to find that everything is still as temporary as they were at the beginning, as temporary as they were the moment I was conceived. I’m just as fragile as I was that moment, and so are you. But here we are, a few thousand days lived past an idea and an emotion and a messy escape.

I wanted to post this sort of “closing” post once I settled in, figured out something somewhat conclusive and round and warm to say. But I have come out of this trip with fewer conclusions and more frayed ends. I don’t even know if I have the questions yet, I just know I don’t have the conclusions. Surprise, surprise. But if you ever read any of the posts before this trip, you might recall Benji sharing at church that, as much as you think you’ll need to prepare and take care of things and tie those knots before you go, God will provide what is needed. It’s cheesy and it’s humbling and it’s hard to believe, but this summer my itinerary changed literally every week and on a couple occasions I didn’t even know what city I’d be sleeping in until a few hours before. Nevertheless, I realized that in Seattle, I’m still guaranteed nothing. Anything could happen at any time, and these past 12 days have been just as unpredictable as 12 weeks on the road. But I am blessed to be taken care of and to get to help take care of myself.

Many people have joked(?) that I should write a book. But I am still listening for the narrative. I am trying to hear and see how it all connects. Sometimes I feel like my life is a galaxy of constellations, well-ordered puzzles of light aglow. Sometimes it’s all confetti to me. And that’s okay too. I’ve been thinking, some people believe that when you die, you’ll finally know all the answers and understand everything, and you’ll finally reach peace. But sometimes I think that when we die, we’ll just realized that not knowing was okay too, that it wouldn’t have made a difference, and we’ll still reach peace.

I want to close with a story about a story, and then I’ll read from that story. Donald Miller is responsible for two of my favorite chapters in any books I’ve ever read. One of them is from Through Painted Deserts, his own story of a cross-country road trip spiritual exploration bonanza. He was 21. I’m 20. I feel up and down about the way Donald Miller writes his life, much as I feel ups and down about mine, but regardless this story has a great deal of significance to me. A few years ago I gave this book away to one of my friends as he embarked on his own leaving, never having read the book myself. I started it, and stopped, I started and stopped, and I finally read through it this summer. I read it on the light rail to the airport, on my way to visit my family at the very beginning of the summer, and I talked about it with a couple from Minnesota during that light rail ride. I finished it as I was leaving Portland, Oregon, which is actually where the author arrives in the end. I gave it away, with all of my penciled notes and exclamations, to a friend at the halfway point of my journey this summer. I mailed a page of it away in Chicago, and I read the following page of it over the phone in Detroit. And during one of my last stops before Seattle, I met up with that couple from Minnesota.

Anyway, I want to close my story with a piece of his story, partly because one of the things that has fascinated me the summer is the way people tell other people’s stories…and partly because it fits. The introduction ends like this:

And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?

It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.

I want to repeat one word for you:
Leave.

Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.

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Stumbling Upon a Garden

I was walking around the neighborhood after checking out the MLK stuff and saw this garden from a block or two up. Intrigued, I went toward it.

“You in the wrong place,” a passerby in a beat up t-shirt and shorts or something said. “You want to be over there.”

“Oh no, I just saw this and was curious,” I said.

“You in the wrong place. You lookin’ for Ebenezer? It’s that way,” he said. “Auburn. That’s where everything’s happening.”

“Yeah, I actually just came from there. I was just looking around the rest of the area,” I said.

Folks on the street in Atlanta are kind of funny. At the hostel one guy said he was offered unsolicited restaurant recommendations by a homeless man, and another guy said another man tried to sell him a tour map. People also sell bottles of ice water there, which is smart.

I finally asked the man what he knew about the garden or who operates it.

It used to be an apartment building. After it was demolished, the lot was actually empty for a few years until the garden began five months ago. He didn’t know who owned it or anything, just that they sell flowers sometimes.

Flashes of Hope

Along I-75 in Georgia a sign reads:

PEACHES EXIT NOW

- / / -

I had no peaches in Atlanta, nor pecans (yet), nor sweet tea, but something magical happened in Atlanta. I wasn’t entirely expecting to come to Atlanta just yet, and in fact the only full day I spent there was Sunday, which was exactly the day I wanted to come.

The one thing I knew I wanted to do in Atlanta was go to a service at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where both Martin Luther Kings preached. In many ways, the 1960′s Civil Rights Movement was born out of churches – after all, blacks didn’t have many other places to gather. Thus, praying in Ebenezer was more important to me than actually visiting King Jr.’s birth home, or tomb, or the memorial museum, or really anything in Atlanta.

Fortunately I can tell you that I really felt the social Gospel is still alive at Ebenezer’s pulpit. The pastor addressed homelessness and immigration policy in his sermon obviously and compassionately without making it a political speech or a breast-beating ideological bludgeoning. And though the church is large and renowned and welcomes many visitors, there still seemed to be a closeness of community, a healthy pre-service chatter. The reverend invited us to hug five people at the beginning of the service…and then there more. In how many churches are people wary of even shaking hands with their neighbor?

Worship took place at a somewhat newer building, but the old building across the street had been restored to its 1960′s appearance, and they play King Jr.’s old sermons and the hymns and songs overhead on surround sound. Surreal. What would it have been like to be in that kind of space, that kind of energy, when it wasn’t camera flashes and posing in front of the altar, but altar calls and flashes of hope and rows of “Amen’s” rocked by the witness of eyes that have seen the mountaintop. I think we visit not only because we owe much to that, but because we still long.

I did visit the rest of the King historic site anyway – birth home, tomb, museum, neighborhood, and even the first SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) headquarters at the Mason’s temple. All in all, it was a young still-idealist’s pilgrimage and pinnacle moment. What can I say? I still have dreams.

I did try to take note of the neighborhood around today, though it is hard to understand much in a few hours. Auburn Avenue is still predominately black. Two blocks out of the historic area, it’s not in great shape, but it’s not the worst part of town either (but after all, it’s kind of a tourist destination). There’s this peculiar mix of charming old buildings and sad oldish buildings. There was also this large plot of urban gardens.

I think of the “Eternal Flame” across from King Jr. and Coretta Scott King’s tombs. The flame is supposed to represent the ongoing fire for justice and community, but when I visited there was no flame behind the plaque.

“This used to be burning all the time,” said one woman, whose husband was posing a photograph in front of the tomb, “but homeless people used to sit by it to warm themselves, so I think the city put it out.”

On the door of the Martin Luther King Jr. Historic Site Visitor Center (operated by the National Parks Service), a sign reads something like (I wish I had taken a picture):

GIVE CHANGE THAT MAKES SENSE. STOP PANHANDLING.

• Giving money to panhandlers is a lose-lose situation.
• Your money may be used to buy alcohol and continue addictions.
• If you care about homelessness consider volunteering in person with a soup kitchen or other organizations.

(something to that effect)

Much as people fabricated that Martin Luther King Jr. quote after Osama Bin Laden was killed (granted the misquote came out of fine intentions), people have oft claimed his next plan was to fight global warming. King was actually working on what was called the Poor People’s Campaign. When he was killed he was in the middle of organizing a march, which somebody else led later. I don’t know where it went past that.

- / / -

Perhaps a 30- or 40- minute walk away in midtown, I went to church again that night at 910 Ponce De Leon, or, The Open Door Community, a Catholic Worker made up of mostly Presbyterians.

Worship starts at 4 on Sundays, but they like people to come in at 3:45. I showed up on their door steps at 4:15 because I had written down the address incorrectly.

By that point I was already stressed. I knew I was cutting it close, but freaked out even more when I discovered a parking lot between a pizza place and a drugstore right where I expected my number to be. At 4ish I sucked it up and walked toward the library to look it up. I literally ran from there to 910.

But nobody answered the door when I rang. I looked around and couldn’t tell if there were people or not. I went on the side of the house and saw that there were and I tried knocking, to no avail. Then drumming inside began.

Candidly I must admit I was also PMSing, so at that point I was on the verge of tears. Feeling defeated, and perhaps even ashamed, I turned around and walked toward the hostel I’d stayed in the night before.

Then a man walked out from beside the house.

“Excuse me!” I called out, trying to compose myself. “Were you just inside there?”

“Oh, no,” he said, and my face fell. “I was just coming around the side.”

So I kept walking, then realized I hadn’t eaten and turned around toward a restaurant. Then something told me to knock a third time.

Like something out of a parable, this time the door was answered.

“Is it…too late…to come to worship?”

“We are just getting started.”

When I sat down, they were doing introductions, so I gave my spiel to a few hums and smiles.

“Do you have a place to stay? We’ve got a bed!”

During the service itself, residents shared concern about a recently executed friend and other friends they’ve met on Death Row, where The Open Door’s community makes regular trips to visit. I received the Blood of Christ from a lay minister many ignorant people would fear on the street based on his appearance and dress. And many people reminded me there was always an extra bed.

Everyone shared supper together after worship – bread and green beans and corn on the cob and redbeanandrice (one word) and…southern dinner is always magical. But I was so aglow someone beside me even remarked, “She’s got good spirits,” which is especially something for what’s usually the Awkward Night One. I even found out that Quiana, who let me in the door, was not only at Ebenezer in the morning too, but used to be at Koinonia Farm, where I was headed next.

“I feel like this means something,” she said. “I don’t know what, but something.”

- / / -

The reading at The Open Door was the Road to Emmaus, a favorite of mine. The reading at Ebenezer was Acts 3, which I had just been reading on the Greyhound and got to see in a much richer way Sunday morning. Both readings are stories of Jesus appearing to ordinary believers, ordinary people, in unexpected places. And most of them didn’t recognize him at first, though they believed. In Acts, two ordinary people (one of whom is completely unnamed and ungendered) are headed toward Emmaus, only mentioned once elsewhere in the Bible (or never, depending on your translation) as the site of massive victory for the Maccabees. It’s a place people visited as kind of a last resort pilgrimage, or if nothing else, to restore their pride. This is where they expected to find Jesus, but instead he appeared along the way. And they didn’t get it until he left.

In Acts 3, Peter heals a crippled beggar (who I’ll go ahead and call Jesus – see Matthew 25) who is sitting right outside the temple. At the gate. At the “Beautiful Gate.” And though many believers walk past him to go into the temple, Peter recognizes that the Church is outside that gate. And when people react, he doesn’t just tell everyone, “Yeah, you got me – and I don’t regret it.” He practically says, “I’m glad you asked, and I’d do it again,” and he goes right ahead and professes his creed for a good fourteen-and-a-half verses (Acts 3:12-26).

That’s Gospel I believe in. And that’s something I inexplicably felt come alive, yet come to question, in a single day in Atlanta. I hope that hope lasts.

I am thinking about going back.

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