One in an occasional series of reflections on homelessness and my duties as a pastoral intern at St. Francis House, a daytime shelter on 39 Boylston St. in Boston (http://www.stfrancishouse.org).
From an incident on Friday morning:
“I came up here for an emergency clothing ticket.”
“I’m sorry. We don’t have any emergency clothing here in the day center.”
“But they told me I can get an emergency clothing ticket in the day center.”
“The only way we give out clothing is by the lottery downstairs every morning at 9 o’clock.”
“I need some emergency clothing, do you hear what I am saying?”
“Yes, and I’m sorry, but I don’t have any clothing to give you.”
“They said I can get some emergency clothing up here. Now I need some clothes!”
“I know, but I said we don’t have any clothing here for you. I’m sorry.”
“I need some fucking clothing. They said I can get some emergency clothing. Give me some fucking clothing!”
“If I had the clothing, I would give it to you. We don’t have any clothing here.”
“I need some fucking clothing! Now give me some clothing!”
“I want to give you some clothing. But we don’t have any clothing. There’s nothing else I can do for you.”
“They told me to come up here for the emergency clothing!”
“I can’t give you any clothing.”
This went on, back and forth, between me and a taller, stronger guest, and I began to worry for my safety, as I was all alone behind the hospitality desk (which should never be the case). Finally, I called for one of the staff, who was just as tall and strong as this aggrieved guest, and he convinced the guest that I was telling the truth. I should have said right at the start that the security desk in the lobby gave our guest the wrong information.
This is not the first time guests have been waylaid by misinformation. Now, the security desk knows that there is no emergency clothing available in the day center. All clothing is distributed on the second floor, above the mezzanine. There hasn’t been any emergency clothing distribution in the day center as long as I have been volunteering. Since the introduction of the clothing lottery, we have also stopped giving out emergency clothing tickets. Surely this intelligence has filtered down to security, because they supervise the daily clothing lottery! So why do some staff insist on sending guests to the mezzanine, where they are bound to be frustrated?
Ignorance itself isn’t sin, but willful ignorance is despicable, especially when it frustrates faith, hope, and charity. I refer to ignorance of the reality of the situation as well as ignorance of the possible consequences of our behavior. What angers homeless persons the most is the kind of negligence that opens up, as a yawning void, on account of one person’s or one group’s calculated avoidance of the other person’s experience of the common situation. This anger spilled over several times during worship at Common Cathedral today, as several homeless disrupted intercessions, the Eucharist, and concluding prayers with shouting and infighting. One homeless person, Ken, stepped forward and said he had been barred from St. Francis House and Pine Street Inn, an overnight shelter, for preaching. Invoking God, he promised that things are going to get bad at these places.
When security continues to send our guests to floors where their needs cannot be met; when volunteers do not have the right answers or are put into situations where no answers they can give are the right answers; when guests rage against yet another slap to their dignity, everybody loses. All are caught in sin.
***
A windy winter has arrived at last, and I have been worrying about the homeless, knowing that some men and women are going to die on the benches of Boston Common this month or the next. Earlier in the week a friend of mine called an ambulance for a hypothermic homeless person squatting in Copley Square. She had bought a coffee for him, only to find that he was too cold and too weak to raise the cup to his lips. On Saturday I met Steve, who was squatting in the subway station at Hynes Convention Center, and he looked much worse than he did several months ago. He had been beaten up, he was fitted in a neck brace, and he was starving. His speech was badly slurred. I wanted to find out what happened to him. All he kept asking was, “I’m hungry. Can you help me out?” I brought him some rice, vegetables and chicken from a Korean-Japanese buffet down the road. “Are you a Christian?” he asked. Pausing for a moment, I said cautiously, “Yes.” “Why do you care for me?” he asked. I said, “You said you were hungry, so I came back to feed you.” In between his falling tears he said to me, “Nobody cares for me. I just need somebody to love me.” We prayed together, and he asked me to give him a kiss. I brushed away the hair from his forehead and gave him a kiss of peace. We embraced. He said Jesus Christ had brought me to him and the Holy Spirit was here. I had no words.
Lord, correct our ignorance. Lord, defeat our negligence. Help us see your face and not be surprised by its pallor or its ugliness. Keep us from recoiling at first from the fury etched into the lines of your mouth and forehead. Let us not look away if we see you wailing for your welfare. We dare not turn away, even if your image appears in a form so abused that the child of God we find curses us. We do not turn away, but we turn back because we know it is we who have abused these children of God. Ours is the sin, the slavery, and the suffering; yours is the kin(g)dom, the power, and the glory. Set us free from the snares we have laid.
Showing posts with label Boston. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boston. Show all posts
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Prayer From Ecclesia Ministries
Ecclesia Ministries (http://www.ecclesia-ministries.org) is a spiritual community for the men and women who live on the streets of Boston. Common Cathedral, a weekly ecumenical celebration of the Eucharist on Boston Common, is the centerpiece of its mission.
Three times a year, Ecclesia leads an overnight urban outreach program called CityReach. Youth and young adults learn about homelessness from persons who are currently or formerly homeless, provide hospitality through gifts of food and clothing, and engage in street ministry.
The following is a prayer that was written by the CityReach volunteer teams on Oct. 21, 2006, after an afternoon of theological and practical reflection.
Gracious God of charity, loving Creator, our almighty warm embrace and Holy Wisdom,
You open our eyes and minds and hearts. You suffer with us, and you love the unlovable. You fill our needs, as when you took pity on us and performed a miracle of compassion to feed the five thousand. You are our faithful and patient provider.
Renew us and help us to remember your people. Work through us as we continue our service to others. Bring privilege to those who are less privileged. Help us to pray for people who need homes. Protect the vulnerable, and give them hope. Make those who are strong stand up for the weak, and give them courage to welcome the outsider and change unjust systems. Renew our faith so we may embrace other people without judgment.
Build our community, Lord. We need a larger table and more chairs for the heavenly banquet. Make your kingdom come quickly.
We ask all this in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son, homeless in this world, but at home with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.
Three times a year, Ecclesia leads an overnight urban outreach program called CityReach. Youth and young adults learn about homelessness from persons who are currently or formerly homeless, provide hospitality through gifts of food and clothing, and engage in street ministry.
The following is a prayer that was written by the CityReach volunteer teams on Oct. 21, 2006, after an afternoon of theological and practical reflection.
Gracious God of charity, loving Creator, our almighty warm embrace and Holy Wisdom,
You open our eyes and minds and hearts. You suffer with us, and you love the unlovable. You fill our needs, as when you took pity on us and performed a miracle of compassion to feed the five thousand. You are our faithful and patient provider.
Renew us and help us to remember your people. Work through us as we continue our service to others. Bring privilege to those who are less privileged. Help us to pray for people who need homes. Protect the vulnerable, and give them hope. Make those who are strong stand up for the weak, and give them courage to welcome the outsider and change unjust systems. Renew our faith so we may embrace other people without judgment.
Build our community, Lord. We need a larger table and more chairs for the heavenly banquet. Make your kingdom come quickly.
We ask all this in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son, homeless in this world, but at home with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.
Letter From Boylston Street #1
This is one in a series of reflections on homelessness and my duties as a pastoral intern at St. Francis House, a daytime shelter on 39 Boylston St. in Boston (http://www.stfrancishouse.org).
I live in Theology House, the dormitory for School of Theology students, in Kenmore Square. When I returned to Theology House from vacation on the 6th, there was no hot water in the building. The water heater was broken beyond repair, and there was no spare available on campus. For two days I bathed under the tub faucet in freezing water. I couldn’t even take a cold shower, because there was no water pressure. You should have seen how gleeful I was after the heater was fixed, running the hot water from the tap with enough abandon to make a conservationist furious. When I shared my frustration with Chris, my homeless friend in Kenmore Square, he said that I now knew what it was like for him and his kind most of the time. This struck me in an odd way: I wasn’t looking to identify with Chris or his brothers and sisters on the street by telling this story.
On Sunday the 14th I worshipped at Common Cathedral, the weekly ecumenical service of Eucharist held for homeless and street people on Boston Common. On this day the inclement weather forced us to celebrate on the portico steps of the Episcopal cathedral across the street. Afterward I lingered among the congregation, waiting for the afternoon Bible study to begin. In the meantime, the homeless were lining up to receive sandwiches and snacks prepared by members of a visiting congregation. While I was resting on a chair on the portico, a teenager from the pilgrim church stopped over and asked me if I wanted a snack. This happened again moments later when a woman offered me a peanut butter sandwich. I got up to mill around, and another visiting congregant approached me to offer a warm hat. This never happened to me before at Common Cathedral. I always assumed you could tell a homeless person from a person with housing. Inside, it irked me to be confused with the homeless. Couldn’t these guests to our congregation see I wasn’t hungry or threadbare? But, then, another question: why should I be offended at being identified as one among these poor, whom I also serve?
Maybe the answer is this: because I do identify with the homeless, but I am offended by superficial identifications. It is just not true that all homeless persons do not, cannot, and will not bathe often or well, or that all homeless persons go starving and naked. However, it is true that they all go avoided and ignored, deprived and disrespected. They are not loved as well as other people. They are not nurtured or supported as well as other people. They are invisible and anonymous. What are the intrinsic identifying characteristics of the homeless? Look into their eyes, and you will see. Listen to them speak, when they do speak, and you will hear. You will know that they are forlorn, lonely, and shell-shocked. They are melancholy and sluggish. They have been beaten, cast off, and rejected forever. Many feel they’re outside God’s gracious circle. I can identify with the homeless not because I have occasionally wanted for the same material things, but because I have often wanted for the same spiritual things.
I returned to my duties on Monday, and I was feeling depressed and miserable. A few conditions at the shelter compounded my blues. This being the civic holiday, the regular day center staff was out, and we had no telephone, clothing, or shower services. We had no counseling or educational services. All this on a day that is supposed to commemorate Martin Luther King, who, last I checked, was a tireless advocate for the poor, whatever day of the year it happened to be. The day center was supposed to show a film about Martin Luther King to the guests, but someone forgot to bring it. The stand-in supervisor decided to show Charlie’s Angels instead. Charlie’s Angels? At a homeless shelter founded by Franciscan friars, whose mission is to rebuild lives, not narcotize them with ironic, mindless, sex-crazed entertainment? Incensed and despondent, I departed for the kitchen to help prepare lunch.
Though lost in a thick cloud of sad feelings, I was aware enough to notice my body language and gestures and that of our guests. We were the same: stooped over, eyes averted, moving slowly. I listened to our speech. We were the same: soft, terse, guarded, a little disconnected. I peered into several of our guests’ faces. We were the same: subdued and weary-looking, eyes and mouths drawn downward.
When lunch was concluded, we were short on volunteers for the cleanup. In an unusual move, we recruited some of the guests to assist us. As we were hustling about, it occurred to me that I couldn’t tell who was homeless and who was not. We were the same. We were servants. We were nobodies. We were poor.
God, please send men and women to love these, your poor servants, your sinners, your dear, dear children! God, please do not forget them or us when you count up your children. Remember well, comfortable reader, how, in your occasional hour of doubt, you feel rejected, maybe respected but not loved (and what good is respect when there is not love?). Then consider that, for many homeless, the hour of doubt is unending. Now dare to identify with the homeless! You can, because you can imagine, even for just a moment, a life without love, which is really no life at all. All you need is love; all you are is love. Yes, you need a great many things in order to live, including food, shelter, clothing, and the means to acquire these things. But without love, giving love and receiving love, you are nothing. This is what Jesus taught us. This is what his apostle Paul taught us. You can “live” on food, shelter, clothing, money, and respect for your fabulous gifts and talents. But in an hour of temptation Jesus said, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” This word, every one of these words, is love. Lord, we say Yes to your Yes. Please say Yes to us.
I live in Theology House, the dormitory for School of Theology students, in Kenmore Square. When I returned to Theology House from vacation on the 6th, there was no hot water in the building. The water heater was broken beyond repair, and there was no spare available on campus. For two days I bathed under the tub faucet in freezing water. I couldn’t even take a cold shower, because there was no water pressure. You should have seen how gleeful I was after the heater was fixed, running the hot water from the tap with enough abandon to make a conservationist furious. When I shared my frustration with Chris, my homeless friend in Kenmore Square, he said that I now knew what it was like for him and his kind most of the time. This struck me in an odd way: I wasn’t looking to identify with Chris or his brothers and sisters on the street by telling this story.
On Sunday the 14th I worshipped at Common Cathedral, the weekly ecumenical service of Eucharist held for homeless and street people on Boston Common. On this day the inclement weather forced us to celebrate on the portico steps of the Episcopal cathedral across the street. Afterward I lingered among the congregation, waiting for the afternoon Bible study to begin. In the meantime, the homeless were lining up to receive sandwiches and snacks prepared by members of a visiting congregation. While I was resting on a chair on the portico, a teenager from the pilgrim church stopped over and asked me if I wanted a snack. This happened again moments later when a woman offered me a peanut butter sandwich. I got up to mill around, and another visiting congregant approached me to offer a warm hat. This never happened to me before at Common Cathedral. I always assumed you could tell a homeless person from a person with housing. Inside, it irked me to be confused with the homeless. Couldn’t these guests to our congregation see I wasn’t hungry or threadbare? But, then, another question: why should I be offended at being identified as one among these poor, whom I also serve?
Maybe the answer is this: because I do identify with the homeless, but I am offended by superficial identifications. It is just not true that all homeless persons do not, cannot, and will not bathe often or well, or that all homeless persons go starving and naked. However, it is true that they all go avoided and ignored, deprived and disrespected. They are not loved as well as other people. They are not nurtured or supported as well as other people. They are invisible and anonymous. What are the intrinsic identifying characteristics of the homeless? Look into their eyes, and you will see. Listen to them speak, when they do speak, and you will hear. You will know that they are forlorn, lonely, and shell-shocked. They are melancholy and sluggish. They have been beaten, cast off, and rejected forever. Many feel they’re outside God’s gracious circle. I can identify with the homeless not because I have occasionally wanted for the same material things, but because I have often wanted for the same spiritual things.
I returned to my duties on Monday, and I was feeling depressed and miserable. A few conditions at the shelter compounded my blues. This being the civic holiday, the regular day center staff was out, and we had no telephone, clothing, or shower services. We had no counseling or educational services. All this on a day that is supposed to commemorate Martin Luther King, who, last I checked, was a tireless advocate for the poor, whatever day of the year it happened to be. The day center was supposed to show a film about Martin Luther King to the guests, but someone forgot to bring it. The stand-in supervisor decided to show Charlie’s Angels instead. Charlie’s Angels? At a homeless shelter founded by Franciscan friars, whose mission is to rebuild lives, not narcotize them with ironic, mindless, sex-crazed entertainment? Incensed and despondent, I departed for the kitchen to help prepare lunch.
Though lost in a thick cloud of sad feelings, I was aware enough to notice my body language and gestures and that of our guests. We were the same: stooped over, eyes averted, moving slowly. I listened to our speech. We were the same: soft, terse, guarded, a little disconnected. I peered into several of our guests’ faces. We were the same: subdued and weary-looking, eyes and mouths drawn downward.
When lunch was concluded, we were short on volunteers for the cleanup. In an unusual move, we recruited some of the guests to assist us. As we were hustling about, it occurred to me that I couldn’t tell who was homeless and who was not. We were the same. We were servants. We were nobodies. We were poor.
God, please send men and women to love these, your poor servants, your sinners, your dear, dear children! God, please do not forget them or us when you count up your children. Remember well, comfortable reader, how, in your occasional hour of doubt, you feel rejected, maybe respected but not loved (and what good is respect when there is not love?). Then consider that, for many homeless, the hour of doubt is unending. Now dare to identify with the homeless! You can, because you can imagine, even for just a moment, a life without love, which is really no life at all. All you need is love; all you are is love. Yes, you need a great many things in order to live, including food, shelter, clothing, and the means to acquire these things. But without love, giving love and receiving love, you are nothing. This is what Jesus taught us. This is what his apostle Paul taught us. You can “live” on food, shelter, clothing, money, and respect for your fabulous gifts and talents. But in an hour of temptation Jesus said, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” This word, every one of these words, is love. Lord, we say Yes to your Yes. Please say Yes to us.
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Babylon, Home, and the Kin(g)dom of God
Home is a “whole in the ground.” It is where we go to become complete. It is where we live most deeply. For Christians, “kingdom of God” is the ultimate expression of home, and while it is utterly unlike any home we have known, I think it is the ground and measure of every real home we have encountered. Any home we know is on the way to the ultimate Home prepared for us by God and to which we are guided by Christ and speeded by the Holy Spirit. So we are moving from home to Home.
I think that the kingdom of God is like a homecoming, only this is a traveling festival that comes out to meet you where you are. Here you find all the people are your kin, and you meet your many, many brothers and sisters, and all the maternal and paternal figures, too. Wherever Jesus went, there was the kin(g)dom of God, and all his brothers and sisters were with him, as well as his mother and father, much to the confusion of even his natural kin. Home, the ultimate Home, is where the Sacred Heart is.
Today, the Spirit, not Jesus in the flesh, finds us where we are and brings us from home on to Home. That spiritual journey need not be a literal peregrination, but it has been for millions, and that includes me. And this is where I may say with some pride, and a little irony, that Babylon was the origin of my pilgrimage toward the kin(g)dom. What I find lacking in this community today cannot diminish the wealth of what I received when I was younger and not far along in the process of becoming.
And what riches! I got educated. I discovered reason. I acquired morals and a conscience. I was given responsibilities. Again, the Spirit finds us where we are. It may be the mind or the heart or the hands, wherever our being is centered. My family taught me to learn, and the home that Babylon once was prepared me to think. Therefore, the Spirit that stirred my spirit first touched me by the mind.
But no person is merely a thinker. Sometime, somewhere, we’ve got to feel and experience. The Spirit wants to be—has to be—in our heart and hands, too. Living in Babylon, I could never develop a discipline of the heart and the hands, and the Spirit was not going to touch me in those parts of my being there.
And so the Spirit moved, and it moved me out of Babylon.
Living and studying at Cornell University, I honed the discipline of the mind, struggling with questions that life in Babylon only barely foreshadowed. Having thought my way past unbelief, God opened another way, and the mind gladly gave way to the discipline of the heart. And for the first time I called Ithaca my home.
But I was untimely ripped from Ithaca when I graduated, prompting a spiritual crisis. When I returned to Babylon, I claimed faith and the faith tradition mislaid by my family years before. Now I fought my way past the dead end of cynical irony, and, for a time, by force of will, Babylon became a home again. This time around I found men and women of faith willing to walk slowly, with wonderful patience, with the person dying to become a new being. Nobody knew or cared if I was smart or intelligent. They looked at my heart, beating like an infant’s.
Yet for all their nurture, I could not shed my tough shell, I could not flower among them, and I could not join their community of natural hearts. Instead, I lived in contradiction, with one eye on the will be and the other on the was. Too often I found myself breaking rocks, expecting to find living springs within them, only to find devils and dust. When I was not looking, my own heart continued to petrify. Left to my own devices, I could not keep myself from being hardened. I prayed to be lifted out of the quarry and planted into fertile soil.
I thought that soil would be a seminary or a friary. It turned out to be a ghetto.
Living and teaching in the inner city of Baltimore, I honed the habits of the heart. I loved and hated and praised and envied and rejoiced and sorrowed more deeply than I thought myself capable. With more fecklessness than wisdom, I claimed Baltimore as my home.
But after two years of so much feeling without an equal knowing for my moods, the Spirit left me, and my spirit was emptied. Determined to live in poverty in Baltimore, I got all the banal wretchedness I wanted, but it was not pleasing to God’s children and of no great significance to God. And I was wasting all my talents. Living in Baltimore, I could never develop a proper discipline of the hands.
The Spirit moved me to consult experience a little more seriously, and it moved me out of Baltimore, but not before I had a little epiphany. Providentially, it happened one weekend in Ithaca, during my college reunion … a homecoming. Here, where all my cares were taken from me, I realized it was time to integrate the disciplines of the mind, heart, and hands: to think, to feel, to act, to experience all at once! Theology was the answer to a question it took so long to ask correctly, and the signposts pointed to Boston, the epicenter of American Christian theology.
Knowing I was destined to move on, I returned to Babylon for a short time to prepare for this new journey. These thirteen months felt like exile. Looking back on yesterday’s glories in Ithaca and Baltimore while my eye was training on tomorrow’s possibilities in Boston, I neglected the present moment. In Babylon, I was merely a boarder on the border of a transformation. In light of the present, I hope all has been forgiven.
Living, studying, and serving in Boston, I think that for the first time I am honing all three disciplines in good measure. Thanks be to God, and forgive my faults, kind reader, because it’s certain that my thoughts sometimes go astray; my heart isn’t always in the right place; and my deeds fail to meet the promise of my words.
It should not disturb you or me that Babylon or any place that was a home becomes not a home. The Spirit wanders, and we with it. Besides, none of these present homes are the Home that is symbolized by the phrase “kingdom of God.” They reveal and occasionally manifest what that Home is like, but that Home is yet to come. To find the kin(g)dom of God, you must first leave home.
I remember this distinctly. Once upon a time, when I was still a high school senior on the verge of starting college, the superintendent of our hometown’s public schools told me in words to this effect, “You’ve done all you could possibly do in West Babylon, and West Babylon has done all it could do for you. Now it’s time for you to move on.” He said more than even he knew.
I think that the kingdom of God is like a homecoming, only this is a traveling festival that comes out to meet you where you are. Here you find all the people are your kin, and you meet your many, many brothers and sisters, and all the maternal and paternal figures, too. Wherever Jesus went, there was the kin(g)dom of God, and all his brothers and sisters were with him, as well as his mother and father, much to the confusion of even his natural kin. Home, the ultimate Home, is where the Sacred Heart is.
Today, the Spirit, not Jesus in the flesh, finds us where we are and brings us from home on to Home. That spiritual journey need not be a literal peregrination, but it has been for millions, and that includes me. And this is where I may say with some pride, and a little irony, that Babylon was the origin of my pilgrimage toward the kin(g)dom. What I find lacking in this community today cannot diminish the wealth of what I received when I was younger and not far along in the process of becoming.
And what riches! I got educated. I discovered reason. I acquired morals and a conscience. I was given responsibilities. Again, the Spirit finds us where we are. It may be the mind or the heart or the hands, wherever our being is centered. My family taught me to learn, and the home that Babylon once was prepared me to think. Therefore, the Spirit that stirred my spirit first touched me by the mind.
But no person is merely a thinker. Sometime, somewhere, we’ve got to feel and experience. The Spirit wants to be—has to be—in our heart and hands, too. Living in Babylon, I could never develop a discipline of the heart and the hands, and the Spirit was not going to touch me in those parts of my being there.
And so the Spirit moved, and it moved me out of Babylon.
Living and studying at Cornell University, I honed the discipline of the mind, struggling with questions that life in Babylon only barely foreshadowed. Having thought my way past unbelief, God opened another way, and the mind gladly gave way to the discipline of the heart. And for the first time I called Ithaca my home.
But I was untimely ripped from Ithaca when I graduated, prompting a spiritual crisis. When I returned to Babylon, I claimed faith and the faith tradition mislaid by my family years before. Now I fought my way past the dead end of cynical irony, and, for a time, by force of will, Babylon became a home again. This time around I found men and women of faith willing to walk slowly, with wonderful patience, with the person dying to become a new being. Nobody knew or cared if I was smart or intelligent. They looked at my heart, beating like an infant’s.
Yet for all their nurture, I could not shed my tough shell, I could not flower among them, and I could not join their community of natural hearts. Instead, I lived in contradiction, with one eye on the will be and the other on the was. Too often I found myself breaking rocks, expecting to find living springs within them, only to find devils and dust. When I was not looking, my own heart continued to petrify. Left to my own devices, I could not keep myself from being hardened. I prayed to be lifted out of the quarry and planted into fertile soil.
I thought that soil would be a seminary or a friary. It turned out to be a ghetto.
Living and teaching in the inner city of Baltimore, I honed the habits of the heart. I loved and hated and praised and envied and rejoiced and sorrowed more deeply than I thought myself capable. With more fecklessness than wisdom, I claimed Baltimore as my home.
But after two years of so much feeling without an equal knowing for my moods, the Spirit left me, and my spirit was emptied. Determined to live in poverty in Baltimore, I got all the banal wretchedness I wanted, but it was not pleasing to God’s children and of no great significance to God. And I was wasting all my talents. Living in Baltimore, I could never develop a proper discipline of the hands.
The Spirit moved me to consult experience a little more seriously, and it moved me out of Baltimore, but not before I had a little epiphany. Providentially, it happened one weekend in Ithaca, during my college reunion … a homecoming. Here, where all my cares were taken from me, I realized it was time to integrate the disciplines of the mind, heart, and hands: to think, to feel, to act, to experience all at once! Theology was the answer to a question it took so long to ask correctly, and the signposts pointed to Boston, the epicenter of American Christian theology.
Knowing I was destined to move on, I returned to Babylon for a short time to prepare for this new journey. These thirteen months felt like exile. Looking back on yesterday’s glories in Ithaca and Baltimore while my eye was training on tomorrow’s possibilities in Boston, I neglected the present moment. In Babylon, I was merely a boarder on the border of a transformation. In light of the present, I hope all has been forgiven.
Living, studying, and serving in Boston, I think that for the first time I am honing all three disciplines in good measure. Thanks be to God, and forgive my faults, kind reader, because it’s certain that my thoughts sometimes go astray; my heart isn’t always in the right place; and my deeds fail to meet the promise of my words.
It should not disturb you or me that Babylon or any place that was a home becomes not a home. The Spirit wanders, and we with it. Besides, none of these present homes are the Home that is symbolized by the phrase “kingdom of God.” They reveal and occasionally manifest what that Home is like, but that Home is yet to come. To find the kin(g)dom of God, you must first leave home.
I remember this distinctly. Once upon a time, when I was still a high school senior on the verge of starting college, the superintendent of our hometown’s public schools told me in words to this effect, “You’ve done all you could possibly do in West Babylon, and West Babylon has done all it could do for you. Now it’s time for you to move on.” He said more than even he knew.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Babylon as Exile
God is everywhere, even among the concrete ribbons of Babylon. But I am not here; that is, when I am here, I am not being. I am not supposed to be here anymore, maybe never again. Babylon is my hometown; it is not my home.
Home now is Boston. Once it was Baltimore. Once it was Ithaca. Once and again it was Long Island. One day, maybe, none of these places or any other in this world will be home.
Any place can become a home and later cease to be a home. Homes change, even if the places do not. Homes change, even if the people you know in those places do not. All it takes for home to change is a change in the person led to wander. A person can have a home in many places or in none at all. Both may be true at the same time for some persons. You call such persons nomads, pilgrims, or sojourners. If you believe some people are meant to be sent away from every and any home to every and any home, you can call them apostles in a secular sense. Or maybe you just call them homeless.
Babylon is a home for many others, but it is no longer the place where I belong. Living here in Babylon, I am immobilized. I have no car and I do not drive, and public transportation is shamefully inadequate. You cannot live in community when you cannot easily reach out to find your community. The immobilization is thus also figurative and spiritual. Few friends do I have left here in this neighborhood. There are three places left for me here in which the presence of the holy dissolves the barrier between sacred and profane: the church, the library, and (believe it or not) the public schools, which I visit from time to time. But one does not live in these places; the home must also be such a place, and if it is not, you wither, because the rest of these places cannot sustain your being. In my parents’ home, secularism prevails, and I suffocate whenever I visit. Other homes my brother and I have visited in this neighborhood are little different. I am pessimistic about the prospect of making an independent home for myself anywhere on Long Island that uncovers the presence of the holy that I have realized in experiences elsewhere. In his own way, my brother, newly graduated from Ithaca College and returned to Babylon, is apprehensive about the project of living authentically, dodging Scylla and Charybdis while sailing on the brackish waters of the stinking suburban seas.
Three times I have moved out of Babylon, and each time I left, I left less of me behind me. Twice I have returned, and I each time I stayed, I felt like I was losing more of me. Even to visit for several days, as I do now, is to feel increasingly constricted every day. It is time to go for good. So long, Babylon, and hello, Boston.
This post demands a companion piece, lest I come across as ungrateful toward the place that was a home for twenty years and more, and the people who made that home. Though I have grown out of Babylon, I grew up in Babylon. Of those formative years in the home that was Babylon before it became a place of exile, I hope to write more later. Until then, happy new year, friends.
Home now is Boston. Once it was Baltimore. Once it was Ithaca. Once and again it was Long Island. One day, maybe, none of these places or any other in this world will be home.
Any place can become a home and later cease to be a home. Homes change, even if the places do not. Homes change, even if the people you know in those places do not. All it takes for home to change is a change in the person led to wander. A person can have a home in many places or in none at all. Both may be true at the same time for some persons. You call such persons nomads, pilgrims, or sojourners. If you believe some people are meant to be sent away from every and any home to every and any home, you can call them apostles in a secular sense. Or maybe you just call them homeless.
Babylon is a home for many others, but it is no longer the place where I belong. Living here in Babylon, I am immobilized. I have no car and I do not drive, and public transportation is shamefully inadequate. You cannot live in community when you cannot easily reach out to find your community. The immobilization is thus also figurative and spiritual. Few friends do I have left here in this neighborhood. There are three places left for me here in which the presence of the holy dissolves the barrier between sacred and profane: the church, the library, and (believe it or not) the public schools, which I visit from time to time. But one does not live in these places; the home must also be such a place, and if it is not, you wither, because the rest of these places cannot sustain your being. In my parents’ home, secularism prevails, and I suffocate whenever I visit. Other homes my brother and I have visited in this neighborhood are little different. I am pessimistic about the prospect of making an independent home for myself anywhere on Long Island that uncovers the presence of the holy that I have realized in experiences elsewhere. In his own way, my brother, newly graduated from Ithaca College and returned to Babylon, is apprehensive about the project of living authentically, dodging Scylla and Charybdis while sailing on the brackish waters of the stinking suburban seas.
Three times I have moved out of Babylon, and each time I left, I left less of me behind me. Twice I have returned, and I each time I stayed, I felt like I was losing more of me. Even to visit for several days, as I do now, is to feel increasingly constricted every day. It is time to go for good. So long, Babylon, and hello, Boston.
This post demands a companion piece, lest I come across as ungrateful toward the place that was a home for twenty years and more, and the people who made that home. Though I have grown out of Babylon, I grew up in Babylon. Of those formative years in the home that was Babylon before it became a place of exile, I hope to write more later. Until then, happy new year, friends.
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