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Published: February 28th 2011
So this past weekend I flew up to Springfield Missouri to speak to the John Calvin Presbytery. Individuals had gathered there for a day of trainings entitled: "Equipping the Saints." I was invited by the Presbytery to come and give the Sermon for the opening worship service. After the service there was a brief plenary session as well.
It was a great time. I was honored to come and speak, and tell these people a little about my story. The event was well-attended: which was great for the Presbytery; it is events like this that re-energize and begin critical times of reflection into churches large and small.
If you've been following my blog, one of the stories you'll recognize, the other may be new to you. I should have more concrete updates on things soon: Congregational Development, YAV, and my life in general.
Cheers,
AS
Leadership as found in Gospel Luke 9:1-6.
9Then Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, 2and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. 3He said to them, ‘Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money—not even an extra tunic. 4Whatever house you enter, stay there, and leave from there. 5Wherever they do not welcome you, as you are leaving that town shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.’ 6They departed and went through the villages, bringing the good news and curing diseases everywhere.
I have, in some genuine way, sense or idea been searching for the Real. I first became familiar with the phrase when I was younger and movies or books or teachers would use the term in some vague sense, hinting at something grander, something beyond me. In college, I formed my own meaning for the word: I began to use it to describe people, situations, experiences that stood out to me as “Real.” Over Minnesotan coffees and in between classes, I would tell friends or hall-mates how this or that was: “Real.” I’d speak about it with my fingers clenched together, and eyes squinted, trying to pick it out from all the other clutter that scrambles our lives. This; this is what I want to share with you today: how I have begun to finally realize that only through service, through a giving up of myself, have I formed Real relationships, Real communities and a Real faith.
And so, when I graduated college and set out into this world, I guess I had an idea that building a Real faith somehow involved what Jesus charges the twelve with: constructing the Kingdom of God. But what this term means, how it’s used, and where it’s used makes all the difference for me. It is such a lofty word, meant to be read with such gusto and sentiment, I feel overwhelmed by its mere utterance. But I think, I finally began to understand the Kingdom of God, only just this year.
This past November the YAV groups from Tucson, New Orleans, and San Antonio gathered together in Texas for a retreat. Being the only YAV in Texas, I was excited to see friends whom I had spent an entire week with a couple of months earlier, musing over society, religion, globalization, power and the church’s responsibility to the poor. So, when the other YAVs arrived in San Antonio, I was excited to be amongst those who might share a bit more of my conception for this year. I wanted to hear stories from the Tucsonians about working with community centers, and border ministry programs. But more so than anything, I just wanted to “be” around them again. I wanted that familiar sense of mission, of drive and curiosity to explore and question the world and our society in which we live.
Now, this retreat happened about 4 days before a half marathon that I was set to run, that I had not trained for. When I first arrived in San Antonio, I had a plethora of things I wanted to do: Learn French, the piano, Arabic, and Swahili. Those were all sideline things though, that didn’t include fully investing in a city, working long, hard weeks, and investing in a new community of people with whom I was living. So training for a half marathon was admittedly, low on my list. But the other YAVs were staying across the city, and I didn’t want to drive, so I ran, in the early morning, over to their house.
If you’re an avid runner, or a walker, the sound of rubber hitting gravel chip-and-seal streets is sometimes soothing. For me, it reminds me of Kansas, of countless hours running through a small town. It puts me back in Minnesota too, where I’d run to de-stress from college, or just simply to clear my mind. This November morning was full of fog and mist, so the run over occurred through layers upon layers of rolling billows of fog. It was cool and tranquil and I loved it.
When I got to the other YAVs house, I found the coordinator (who was my summer boss) and a few of the volunteers. After small talk and hugs, we sat down in my boss’ RV made out of a reconstructed school bus. He had torn out the insides, and lined it with a hardwood floor, two tables, a set of bunk beds and was planning to get electricity through solar panels. There was a crisp sense of welcome in this place. But it didn’t have to do with how he had nailed down the wood, or painted his beds, but rather, it occurred in a single question of asking whether I wanted tea.
In running shorts and shoes, I sat down with a steaming cup. The Tucson coordinator and another volunteer and I began to talk, then, about real things: about life as a YAV; about our worries, anxieties and the support systems, or sometimes, even, the lack thereof, that we use to deal with these worries. I was stressed, and frustrated with community. With the lack of common mission that seemed to be arising out of my new home. In such a new and amazing place as San Antonio: a community with a longstanding Mexican immigrant population, a through and through working class town, that somehow was run by several single last names, a town that was gaining diversity by the year, through large Iraqi and Somalian refugee populations. This is such an interesting and challenging place, I thought. And I was frustrated by my housemates’ lack of initiative to go out and explore this place.
This is what I love about the YAV program, I said. It gives you a solid mission from the get go. That orientation is key in providing us with a common sense of who we are and where we’re going and why we’re going there. Tucson YAV Jacob sat musing over this and Coordinator Brandon looked at me then.
This is a man who has lived in Community his entire life. He home schools his two daughters, lives with other individuals who orient their lives to be more economically, ecologically friendly. He is living below his means. You know, Aaron, he said to me then, this is why we live in Community. We don’t do it because it’s easy. We do this because we feel God is calling us to be a certain way in the world. God calls us to work for the poor, to live in communion with others, and to understand ourselves as part of a larger system that we impact and influence with every move. It’s not easy, but that’s not the point. We are called to work through those relationships, and to be in full, whole relationship with others.
As I ran home that afternoon, and every day since then, I have been in a progression or development or process, something, that has involved my digestion of this statement. The week later, I lost the romanticism from that early foggy conversation, and it began to cultivate a field of thoughts for me. Slowly, and even now, as I continue my work as a community organizer in San Antonio I have become distinctly aware, that the only Real thing in my life are the relationships I have been given. Ever since, I have been having more cups of tea, I’ve been trying to listen more intently, and I’ve been attempting to live up to the fact that I feel a call to be in true and right relationship with those around me.
This, this is the Kingdom of God for me: to be in right relationship with others. To recognize, legitimize the others’ dignity and respect and worth from simply being. I see it as similar to the idea that because God loves all of creation, I should exemplify that love. But, it’s deeper than that. It’s recognizing that my way of being, impacts others. To actively construct and be the Kingdom of God that Jesus calls the 12 to create, we must realize that it is not in actions or in words, but in ways of being.
This, is a good first step.
And lots might be shared on how I, as a heterosexual, white, middle class, male might “be” in a more equitable manner. But, recently, it has been when I am listening, when I am most present to others in those relationships and their stories that the Kingdom of God manifests itself. This is what I am continually learning during my work as a Community Organizer in San Antonio. Through this work, I have learned that by actively constructing the Kingdom of God by being right relationship with others, I am called by these relationships to care for my community. What this looks like for me, is not a creation of a product or community event, but rather is embodied in creating more equitable, just relationships.
And so, In heavy houses, weighed down by a presence of family and community, I am learning what it means to live out my faith. To enact my beliefs. To be in those relationships. Intellectually, this makes sense: who I am socially is inherently guided by what I believe. But if you get past the terminology, if you peel back the layers of discourse slow, you get to the heart of life. And this is what I’ve begun to uncover throughout this year as a Young Adult Volunteer and working in San Antonio as a community organizer. I have begun to understand what it is to have power, to work with real people and issues, and to understand who I am.
Take Nancy for example. She’s a single mother and grandmother. She has lived in the same house, on the same block for the past several decades. Packed in between the shutters and their windows, found underneath TV stands is a sense of family. Each room is painted a better color: one brighter and more alive than the next. Nancy had her kids in this house. Her kids have had kids there. Her three daughters now live beside her. It is her block and she has claimed it. With gardens and puppies, flowers and fences Nancy has cared and cultivated her side of San Antonio into a safe, real community.
And so when I asked Nancy if she would participate in a House Meeting, I asked her primarily because she had been involved with my organization before. She knew the ropes and I was confident she would be able to provide good input. House meetings are intentional small groups. It’s not a time to come and grieve and complain; though there is space for that. House meetings are spaces where personal stories are told, where histories are shared, and where concerns and cares about the pressures facing our families are voiced. This is the heart of a community to me. This where the life of a congregation begins to shake, move and finally burst into life. Its people being in relationship with one another.
But admittedly, this process: Of going out and being in relationships with your neighbors is not an easy one. It takes a constant effort and consistently is done, with nothing but a single simple offering of ourselves.
As a part of my work, I check in with congregation members. Have lunch or grab coffee with them. At taco shops or in vegetarian cafes, I see this as a way that I might care for these people, the issues that are important to them, and help them care for their congregation and community. Last week I met with Nancy. In the cool evening, I walked up past her gate to her door and as she let me in, she sat me down for spaghetti and meatballs, iced-tea, and a fresh salad. I, did not expect this. I called her earlier in the week to set up the date and told her I wanted to hear her opinion on a meeting I had organized we had earlier in the week. Through the next 45 minutes I ate, and Nancy talked. She spoke about the problems her block is having with drug dealing neighbors; she voiced her concern and fright that her grandson, now knows several spots where he might get any sort of drug. And in anger, she told how she had witnessed many drug deals in the past couple of months and the frustration that arises from her sense of inability to act. Being a single mother and grandmother in her late 50s Nancy does not have a whole lot of time on her hands to muse over the best avenues to solve these ailments of her community. I asked about her neighbors: Where they interested? Might she begin by talking to them?
That is a good second step. To realize that a worry one has about her community is a worry for her neighbors as well.
Nancy’s situation is not new. Matter of fact, the side of San Antonio that Nancy lives on is ridden with drug problems. She is experiencing the tangible outcomes of an underinvested area of town, a purposely structured economic policy by the government of San Antonio leaves the residents of the East side without adequate resources.
So Nancy committed to hold a house meeting in her home. To create the space where others might voice their concerns about the neighborhood. To give voice to their own cry. These house meetings are the places where parents, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, might voice their struggles with the distinction between the world as it is, and the world as we desire it to be.
And the world as it is, is frustrating, it is difficult, and it is filled with relationships that weave and connect the web of networks that we all maintain within our lives. I often feel, one of the most difficult aspects of life is not being successful, winning at life, but rather, adequately maintaining, upholding, and caring for the relationships that have interwoven themselves and become my life. Real life is relationships.
And when these relationships break: as Nancy's had begun to with her neighborhood. As they undergo stress and strain, as mine did with community frustrations, it became obvious to me what my work was: to work and be wholly in relationship with others: in right relationships so that my being around and with others actively constructs the Kingdom. This Kingdom to me is working with others, being with others, serving with others so that the World as it is becomes the world as it should be. These real relationships transform our reality. The work of my Christianity is a way of being. It is not a job that I might plug in and out of. This is where I am today, recognizing that this YAV year is not a year off, but a new beginning, a new commitment I strive to make daily: to “be” more equitable, to “be” more just. Through a way of living I completely, consistently construct my surrounding world, and the life I live within that world. How this moves me to act is the next step that involves understanding how my life impacts others, and how I might change that to express solidarity with the poor, to live in community, to be more ecologically, and economically friendly, yet always through and within the relationships that are my life.
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Sally
non-member comment
re: "talk"
Sorry I couldn't be in Springfield to hear you last Saturday. Thank you for sharing your insights and your growth. I see you as "real" and becoming more so every day.