My friend Timy once created an amusing statement: "Asking a Christian if he's taken a vow of poverty is like asking a Eunuch if he's taken a vow of celibacy."
It is funny how we have so easily omitted a theology of possessions from our ethical practices. The only thing Jesus talked more about than money is the Kingdom of God. The faith has tremendous economic implications, far beyond the relative "don't be greedy" and the guilt-ridding "give ten percent."
Timy's quote does not imply every Christian should physically deprive himself of money (though probably more Americans are specifically called to this than the number who actually do it). However, it does imply that all Christians should take a vow of poverty in terms of worldview. The Earth is the Lord's, and everything in it. We cannot own anything, because all belongs to God.
We own nothing; we get to partake in the joys and blessings of what has been given to us. Think about how this world would look different if our sense of entitlement to things was non-existent. Christianity is the most widespread religion on the globe (and certainly not the only religion which teaches this concept). If all Christians proclaimed that nothing was theirs (from dust we came and to dust we will return), think of the true peace which would become apparent. No sense of entitlement to the land allows indigenous cultures to thrive again. It stops wars and ethnic cleansing. No sense of entitlement to money stops greed. Few disputes would go to state courts. Situations would be settled and property shared. Life would be lived together! And what a radical change that would be for many of us.
But these are macro-level implications. The point of this post is to explain how I, on a "home economics" level, have interacted with the Christian teachings of non-ownership in my home of Harrisburg.
At the beginning of the semester an old friend Brett called me, explaining that although he was accepted at Messiah College, he could not attend because of financial reasons (which was enough to make me pissed at my school as it is). He had to go to Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC) as a fall-back plan. However, he still needed housing and didn't have the money for it. Knowing that my housing in the city was free due to being "on staff," I invited him to crash at my place as long as he needed to, until a more solid plan fell into place. I was a single person living in a two-bedroom apartment. All the better to share the space with a friend!
Brett also offered me money, but I could not accept, knowing the space was free to me also. We are both poor, for all intensive purposes relative to Americans. We are not yet the bottom of the barrel, but we will be. We are at a point in history where my generation is coming out of school with the most debt and (statistically) the least hope of eliminating that debt. Let's be real.
So how do we get by? The answer is collaboration. Whenever Brett comes over, he brings something with him. It is often food - leftover chicken patties from an old job he worked, small gluten-free meals, anything he can get his hands on. Having Celiac disease makes "living off the land" very hard in America, where everything is made from wheat. Many of my friends don't recognize this unless they have Celiac. They don't understand why I refuse to buy groceries, and they sometimes offer me food with wheat in it, not knowing I have Celiac (or sometimes just forgetting). But Brett, who doesn't come from the same economic background as many of these rich Messiah-friend families, knows to keep my health in mind.
On the other hand, though, I sometimes eat things with wheat in them. I just pray before eating that God will "bless this food to my body." I can't imagine that me eating wheat is any worse than the disciples partaking in human flesh (the literal translation of Jesus telling His followers to eat His body is "chew my flesh" - no wonder the early Christians were sometimes seen as cannibals!). This prayer causes me to trust the miracle of God, that He can use seemingly horrible things to create good. It also reminds me that I cannot live on "bread alone." In fact, with Celiac I cannot live on bread at all. Because wheat is America's staple food, it makes it all the harder to not worry and trust that God will feed me tomorrow in an even more intimate way than He feeds the birds.
Environmental sustainability is so trendy nowadays. People buy organic and local food half due to a conscience and half due to looking cool. I think, though, that freeganism (what I do - eat whatever is provided to me for free) looks pretty stupid. It makes me look like a mooch and feel guilty. People even call me a mooch. I do recognize that if everyone did what I did, it wouldn't work out because not all of us are farmers. Nonetheless, there is an incredible amount of waste in our current world. I can eat leftover/free meat, chocolate, non-fair-trade goods, etc precisely because I am not contributing to the demand for those goods. In addition, I am decreasing waste and redistributing (both to myself and others) food which would ultimately end up in a landfill.
Though at this point in the semester I am running low, my pantry has not run dry. I still have food and have not gotten as hungry as I did last semester. The best thing about having food is sharing it and valuing it. When somebody takes me into the campus dining hall, I value that experience far more than those who have a meal plan with the school. I appreciate what is given to me (how appropriate for the season of Thanksgiving). I get to be free with the things I possess because I do not possess them. My door remains unlocked, and anyone can come in at any time and eat what they please. The same goes for my books. A few housemates have borrowed textbooks for class or just wanted something to read leisurely, and the renunciation of possessions allows me to share "my" books, ultimately bringing them joy (in a good read) and me joy (for fulfilling me human need to give).
Food is important because people are important. We need it to live just as we need Christ's body to truly live (and not merely survive for a time). We too often advocate for individual responsibility, saying that our personal actions determine the course of the world. While this is partially true, it does little to change things and still reinforces individualism. Sharing the things that don't belong to us anyway is one of the most subversive things we can do. We can transform the world through this far more than we can through being smart consumers.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
Geographic Apathy
I have neglected to write on here for some time. My apologies.
Nonviolence has been drastically developed globally throughout the past century or so. Why is my generation not embracing it as its own, especially considering its cultivation in the American experience (Civil Rights Movement, conscientious objection, The founding of pluralistic Pennsylvania, hospitality movements, etc)?
Last semester I developed a practice of activism - both in deed and conversation. Ultimately, I failed. Maybe I didn't have faith. Maybe I lost hope. Maybe I needed more love. Whatever the reason, my friends and I were not able to significantly solidify the campus body into one of action.
Why? Very few give a damn and very few act on the damn that they do give. While some argue this postmodern age has enhanced the value of community and justice, I argue that this postmodern age is more of an ultramodern age, meaning an age where all that was crappy about modernism has coalesced into one mass. This is the "me" generation, despite claims of community. We have cell phones, the internet, and the Tea Party. Community is only good to the extent that it benefits the self (or at least the online image of the self).
Why has privatism/individualism skyrocketed? Because we can live in a perfect world with no problems.
Most people do not walk by the homeless, interact with a sick widow, or frequent a poorly-supported public school. There are problems out there, but it is possible (and preferable) to live in a place without problems (if you have a car). These places are not urban, and they are not very rural.
Now more than ever, it is achievable (and in many cases, expected,) to live solely for the benefit of oneself. Who wouldn't want to live in self-interest anyway? So whenever I try to hand a fellow student a piece of confrontational literature, they will not read it. Why would they? They don't have to. If they do read it, why would they act upon it? They don't have to. They have a bubble and they like it. Some days I would give anything to see the world through their eyes again. Ignorance is bliss, at least for a time.
Where we live determines the challenges we face. For some, that means no challenges. If a car breaks down, there is another one in the driveway. We must foresake the land of our fathers and displace ourselves among the exiled. We must become them. We must say with them, "Sweet the weight you bear."
I now have two options. I can do nothing or I can do what I can do. What I can't do is this: convince my peers through raising awareness, making dialogue, writing articles, collecting signatures, and praying/fasting that they must join in the often-silenced protest. None of those things, in themselves, are enough. However, I can certainly make myself poor as He made Himself poor. I can deprive myself as He was deprived. I can bring the light of suffering to their geographic world. I can make the refugee girl, the urban slum boy a physical sight. If that doesn't piss them off, nothing will.
Let all who have ears listen. We need not tarry with the others.
Nonviolence has been drastically developed globally throughout the past century or so. Why is my generation not embracing it as its own, especially considering its cultivation in the American experience (Civil Rights Movement, conscientious objection, The founding of pluralistic Pennsylvania, hospitality movements, etc)?
Last semester I developed a practice of activism - both in deed and conversation. Ultimately, I failed. Maybe I didn't have faith. Maybe I lost hope. Maybe I needed more love. Whatever the reason, my friends and I were not able to significantly solidify the campus body into one of action.
Why? Very few give a damn and very few act on the damn that they do give. While some argue this postmodern age has enhanced the value of community and justice, I argue that this postmodern age is more of an ultramodern age, meaning an age where all that was crappy about modernism has coalesced into one mass. This is the "me" generation, despite claims of community. We have cell phones, the internet, and the Tea Party. Community is only good to the extent that it benefits the self (or at least the online image of the self).
Why has privatism/individualism skyrocketed? Because we can live in a perfect world with no problems.
Most people do not walk by the homeless, interact with a sick widow, or frequent a poorly-supported public school. There are problems out there, but it is possible (and preferable) to live in a place without problems (if you have a car). These places are not urban, and they are not very rural.
Now more than ever, it is achievable (and in many cases, expected,) to live solely for the benefit of oneself. Who wouldn't want to live in self-interest anyway? So whenever I try to hand a fellow student a piece of confrontational literature, they will not read it. Why would they? They don't have to. If they do read it, why would they act upon it? They don't have to. They have a bubble and they like it. Some days I would give anything to see the world through their eyes again. Ignorance is bliss, at least for a time.
Where we live determines the challenges we face. For some, that means no challenges. If a car breaks down, there is another one in the driveway. We must foresake the land of our fathers and displace ourselves among the exiled. We must become them. We must say with them, "Sweet the weight you bear."
I now have two options. I can do nothing or I can do what I can do. What I can't do is this: convince my peers through raising awareness, making dialogue, writing articles, collecting signatures, and praying/fasting that they must join in the often-silenced protest. None of those things, in themselves, are enough. However, I can certainly make myself poor as He made Himself poor. I can deprive myself as He was deprived. I can bring the light of suffering to their geographic world. I can make the refugee girl, the urban slum boy a physical sight. If that doesn't piss them off, nothing will.
Let all who have ears listen. We need not tarry with the others.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
A Walk to the City
A paper I wrote for a class about my experiences in the places I have lived:
I was raised in the Village of Smith Station, an old railroad station neighborhood surrounded by wheat, corn, trees, and cattle, a few miles outside Hanover, Pennsylvania. Not many decades ago, a farmer decided it would be wise to sell one-acre plots for residential use. My family inhabits one of those plots.
If there were ever a place which emphasized the private life, my hometown is that place. The recent history of our exact plot of land demonstrates this fact. As my mother bore more children, she and my father decided to expand our home, tripling the size. I no longer had to share the basement with my brother. It could be used as a hang-out den. My sisters also gained more space, and even guests could have their own bedroom. We added two bathrooms, significantly reducing our verbal communication, because we had often fought about how long our showers should be. The newly acquired floorspace in our home enabled us to play inside, further limiting our interaction with other local children, let alone our own siblings. Moreover, Jane Jacobs would be quick to point out that whenever we did play outside, we would primarily remain in the backyard, away from the view of drivers and neighbors across the street. To this day, I believe my mom knows more families than anyone in our neighborhood, and she only knows about 5% of the families. Each family has multiple vehicles, so when they want to get together with friends, they just drive out of the neighborhood.
I thought my rural private life was the norm until I attended an Orioles' baseball game. To get to the stadium, Dad and I walked through downtown. I saw a man sleeping in a back alley under a newspaper and asked Dad why he slept there. Dad just rushed me away, quickly switching topics. This was my first exposure to the city, a fascinating world that I wanted to explore. So many questions were forming from my bombarded senses.
The next few summers, I took every opportunity possible to go to downtown Chambersburg where my cousin lived. My dad often said he would never live in town, pointing to the dirty streets and the immoral people, but because my cousin lived there, I had a way to explore this urban jungle. We would often bike through town to find a basketball court where other people were playing. We joined so many impromptu games that we even started a street league of our own.
What I enjoyed most about dense residential areas was the people. Perhaps that is why when I encountered Emmaus, a settlement house in Gettysburg, I found myself visiting as often as possible. Their engagement with the public life of the local community was irresistible. In fact, to me, Emmaus was the local community. People of all sizes, interests, and backgrounds were consistently walking through the doors to say hello or invite us to a movie or the diner down the street. Residents of this settlement house were effective in helping their neighbors precisely because they knew the pulse of their place just as thoroughly as they knew their jobs (Jacobs, 420). For many involved at Emmaus, being active at the house was indeed a higher priority than career goals.
However, Gettysburg and Chambersburg were not intense cities. They were merely American towns for middle-class families, still with plenty of green grass and “an enjoyment of open space for its own sake” (Rybczynski, 78). Neither place had the intensity of downtown Baltimore which I remembered and craved.
When I moved away to Grantham for school, I quickly developed a desire to live in a land which was not car-dependent. I could only escape the Messiah College “bubble” by motor vehicle, due to the “mobile and decentralized” nature of greater Harrisburg (Rybczynski, 49), and I certainly did not have the money to buy one.
After a year of growing disconnected in my backcountry world of Grantham, I found a job washing dishes in Carlisle, and I subleased an apartment downtown. Work was two blocks away, an easy walk. On the days I did not want to walk, I could easily access all necessities (food, clothes, etc) by bike or skateboard. Once a week, the Amish farmers' market came to me, right in the square where I lived. Though I had much less space than in my hometown, I enjoyed my summer far more than usual. Three to five people at any given time were living in our one-bedroom apartment. Though town life was slightly noisier than the countryside, we could still access the local college campus to relax on Adirondack chairs, climb tress, and throw frisbee. We were not deprived of the “purer air” which Americans so deeply value (Rybczynski, 78). Our main joy, however, did not lie in the local parks or picnic getaways. The fact that life was shared with roommates, coworkers, storeowners, and same-building neighbors is what brought us happiness. We craved the public life, but whenever there was a day when we wanted privacy, we could easily just adjust our blinds and curtains, as Jacobs recommends (Jacobs, 59).
After only a few months of living in downtown Carlisle, I could easily point out the key characters in the daily sidewalk ballet of our block, everyone from the evening police officers at the Court House to the disabled smoker who crosses the square several times each day, rumored to be a local professor who was fired when he went mad. Conversely, I still cannot say a thing about the neighbors across the street in my hometown, who moved there about ten years ago. There is an inherent joy about knowing a place, and therefore knowing its people.
Tocqueville must have been ahead of his day when he noted how ceaselessly Americans change their residence, even venturing into the unknown frontier (Rybczynski, 109), for I too desired to go the the furthest reaches of our globalized world's frontier. My third college semester was spent in Uganda, where I lived with two families, one from the town and the other from a rural village. In these experiences I began to understand what it is like to be part of a solidified family unit. As previously mentioned, the togetherness of my biological family is weak, due in part to the very geography of our home. Ugandans, however, see the individual as a part of the whole, much like a branch is to a tree. Therefore, time is spent sitting together, even if there is no food or conversation. With no significant value on personal space or property, less resources are spent on absurdly large backyards or big homes. This private family life is strong, but public life may be even stronger. Visitors are always honored and seen as a blessing, rather than a distraction or burden. Some local languages use the same word for “guest” and “stranger,” indicating that anyone may come at any time, so the house must be prepared to accept whoever steps through the door.
After being exposed to such forms of hospitality, I decided that I needed a specific place to welcome others as well. I reasoned that the campus in Grantham would not be ideal because everyone has a private space of their own, such as dorms and apartments, and there are many public spaces for clubs to meet and friends to gather. Someone who studied with me in Uganda soon told me about the SALT (Serving and Living Together) House in Harrisburg. The idea seemed ideal. I had long missed the active community I had at Emmaus, and the Harrisburg Institute building had all the necessary facilities for inviting people in, including kitchens, classrooms, lounges, and for our friends dwelling in Grantham, free laundry.
The residents at SALT, both this semester and last semester, share meals together almost every day. Our lifestyle is simultaneously public and private. We have our own apartments in which we can retreat for privacy and quietness while completing schoolwork. However, we agree to leave our doors open as much as possible to give our building a homey flow. Agape Center volunteer teams do projects in our classrooms or hold celebrations and get-togethers. People of various neighborhoods in Harrisburg borrow our spaces for birthday parties. Ethnic minorities in the area hold language classes.
My favorite thing about living in the city, however, is practicing Jacobs' art of people-watching, examining the 9-to-5 business culture transition to the nightlife bar scene. Demographics change throughout the day. In Harrisburg, the world is at my fingertips. I can access dozens of one-of-a-kind restaurants seven days a week. Fellow residents and I can become a positive presence by playing alley soccer or sitting outside on the curb at night, watching drunk people come out of The Pub, ensuring the rest of downtown that “a well-used city street is apt to be a safe street” (Jacobs, 34), even when people have been drinking since morning.
So far, downtown Harrisburg has been the only place I feel comfortable calling “home.” Our neighborhood has a unique vibe that reminds us our place is not “Noplace” (Jacobs, 338). We are stationed in a section of town for commuters, facing a parking garage, surrounded by businesses and commercial buildings. Most of our residential neighbors are homeless people. Those who live at SALT also recognize that “children in cities need a variety of places in which to play and to learn” (Jacobs, 80), so we have art galleries in our building and invite the youth to participate in our street soccer matches. I am having the most fulfilling adventure I have ever had, and contrary to orthodox city planning which emphasizes mobility, privacy, and grass, I find that the more I stay still and rooted in my concrete wasteland of a home, the more I learn and enjoy myself.
I was raised in the Village of Smith Station, an old railroad station neighborhood surrounded by wheat, corn, trees, and cattle, a few miles outside Hanover, Pennsylvania. Not many decades ago, a farmer decided it would be wise to sell one-acre plots for residential use. My family inhabits one of those plots.
If there were ever a place which emphasized the private life, my hometown is that place. The recent history of our exact plot of land demonstrates this fact. As my mother bore more children, she and my father decided to expand our home, tripling the size. I no longer had to share the basement with my brother. It could be used as a hang-out den. My sisters also gained more space, and even guests could have their own bedroom. We added two bathrooms, significantly reducing our verbal communication, because we had often fought about how long our showers should be. The newly acquired floorspace in our home enabled us to play inside, further limiting our interaction with other local children, let alone our own siblings. Moreover, Jane Jacobs would be quick to point out that whenever we did play outside, we would primarily remain in the backyard, away from the view of drivers and neighbors across the street. To this day, I believe my mom knows more families than anyone in our neighborhood, and she only knows about 5% of the families. Each family has multiple vehicles, so when they want to get together with friends, they just drive out of the neighborhood.
I thought my rural private life was the norm until I attended an Orioles' baseball game. To get to the stadium, Dad and I walked through downtown. I saw a man sleeping in a back alley under a newspaper and asked Dad why he slept there. Dad just rushed me away, quickly switching topics. This was my first exposure to the city, a fascinating world that I wanted to explore. So many questions were forming from my bombarded senses.
The next few summers, I took every opportunity possible to go to downtown Chambersburg where my cousin lived. My dad often said he would never live in town, pointing to the dirty streets and the immoral people, but because my cousin lived there, I had a way to explore this urban jungle. We would often bike through town to find a basketball court where other people were playing. We joined so many impromptu games that we even started a street league of our own.
What I enjoyed most about dense residential areas was the people. Perhaps that is why when I encountered Emmaus, a settlement house in Gettysburg, I found myself visiting as often as possible. Their engagement with the public life of the local community was irresistible. In fact, to me, Emmaus was the local community. People of all sizes, interests, and backgrounds were consistently walking through the doors to say hello or invite us to a movie or the diner down the street. Residents of this settlement house were effective in helping their neighbors precisely because they knew the pulse of their place just as thoroughly as they knew their jobs (Jacobs, 420). For many involved at Emmaus, being active at the house was indeed a higher priority than career goals.
However, Gettysburg and Chambersburg were not intense cities. They were merely American towns for middle-class families, still with plenty of green grass and “an enjoyment of open space for its own sake” (Rybczynski, 78). Neither place had the intensity of downtown Baltimore which I remembered and craved.
When I moved away to Grantham for school, I quickly developed a desire to live in a land which was not car-dependent. I could only escape the Messiah College “bubble” by motor vehicle, due to the “mobile and decentralized” nature of greater Harrisburg (Rybczynski, 49), and I certainly did not have the money to buy one.
After a year of growing disconnected in my backcountry world of Grantham, I found a job washing dishes in Carlisle, and I subleased an apartment downtown. Work was two blocks away, an easy walk. On the days I did not want to walk, I could easily access all necessities (food, clothes, etc) by bike or skateboard. Once a week, the Amish farmers' market came to me, right in the square where I lived. Though I had much less space than in my hometown, I enjoyed my summer far more than usual. Three to five people at any given time were living in our one-bedroom apartment. Though town life was slightly noisier than the countryside, we could still access the local college campus to relax on Adirondack chairs, climb tress, and throw frisbee. We were not deprived of the “purer air” which Americans so deeply value (Rybczynski, 78). Our main joy, however, did not lie in the local parks or picnic getaways. The fact that life was shared with roommates, coworkers, storeowners, and same-building neighbors is what brought us happiness. We craved the public life, but whenever there was a day when we wanted privacy, we could easily just adjust our blinds and curtains, as Jacobs recommends (Jacobs, 59).
After only a few months of living in downtown Carlisle, I could easily point out the key characters in the daily sidewalk ballet of our block, everyone from the evening police officers at the Court House to the disabled smoker who crosses the square several times each day, rumored to be a local professor who was fired when he went mad. Conversely, I still cannot say a thing about the neighbors across the street in my hometown, who moved there about ten years ago. There is an inherent joy about knowing a place, and therefore knowing its people.
Tocqueville must have been ahead of his day when he noted how ceaselessly Americans change their residence, even venturing into the unknown frontier (Rybczynski, 109), for I too desired to go the the furthest reaches of our globalized world's frontier. My third college semester was spent in Uganda, where I lived with two families, one from the town and the other from a rural village. In these experiences I began to understand what it is like to be part of a solidified family unit. As previously mentioned, the togetherness of my biological family is weak, due in part to the very geography of our home. Ugandans, however, see the individual as a part of the whole, much like a branch is to a tree. Therefore, time is spent sitting together, even if there is no food or conversation. With no significant value on personal space or property, less resources are spent on absurdly large backyards or big homes. This private family life is strong, but public life may be even stronger. Visitors are always honored and seen as a blessing, rather than a distraction or burden. Some local languages use the same word for “guest” and “stranger,” indicating that anyone may come at any time, so the house must be prepared to accept whoever steps through the door.
After being exposed to such forms of hospitality, I decided that I needed a specific place to welcome others as well. I reasoned that the campus in Grantham would not be ideal because everyone has a private space of their own, such as dorms and apartments, and there are many public spaces for clubs to meet and friends to gather. Someone who studied with me in Uganda soon told me about the SALT (Serving and Living Together) House in Harrisburg. The idea seemed ideal. I had long missed the active community I had at Emmaus, and the Harrisburg Institute building had all the necessary facilities for inviting people in, including kitchens, classrooms, lounges, and for our friends dwelling in Grantham, free laundry.
The residents at SALT, both this semester and last semester, share meals together almost every day. Our lifestyle is simultaneously public and private. We have our own apartments in which we can retreat for privacy and quietness while completing schoolwork. However, we agree to leave our doors open as much as possible to give our building a homey flow. Agape Center volunteer teams do projects in our classrooms or hold celebrations and get-togethers. People of various neighborhoods in Harrisburg borrow our spaces for birthday parties. Ethnic minorities in the area hold language classes.
My favorite thing about living in the city, however, is practicing Jacobs' art of people-watching, examining the 9-to-5 business culture transition to the nightlife bar scene. Demographics change throughout the day. In Harrisburg, the world is at my fingertips. I can access dozens of one-of-a-kind restaurants seven days a week. Fellow residents and I can become a positive presence by playing alley soccer or sitting outside on the curb at night, watching drunk people come out of The Pub, ensuring the rest of downtown that “a well-used city street is apt to be a safe street” (Jacobs, 34), even when people have been drinking since morning.
So far, downtown Harrisburg has been the only place I feel comfortable calling “home.” Our neighborhood has a unique vibe that reminds us our place is not “Noplace” (Jacobs, 338). We are stationed in a section of town for commuters, facing a parking garage, surrounded by businesses and commercial buildings. Most of our residential neighbors are homeless people. Those who live at SALT also recognize that “children in cities need a variety of places in which to play and to learn” (Jacobs, 80), so we have art galleries in our building and invite the youth to participate in our street soccer matches. I am having the most fulfilling adventure I have ever had, and contrary to orthodox city planning which emphasizes mobility, privacy, and grass, I find that the more I stay still and rooted in my concrete wasteland of a home, the more I learn and enjoy myself.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Making a Subculture with Cardboard Boxes
Subcultures always begin when groups of like-minded individuals have a passion for something that is not part of their direct mainstream world.
My birthday was the other night. I spent a week trying to get a soccer ball so we could put together a game. Finally, someone gave us one to use.
So Monday night on my birthday, we grabbed cones from the closet and blocked off the alley adjacent to our house. We set cardboard boxes for goals and started playing.
Not long after kickoff did we realize that somebody was making a lot of noise on the third floor of the parking garage. I yelled to them, not knowing if it was rambunctious kids or drunk men bickering. They came to the edge, looking down at our impromptu soccer pitch. They had also been playing a game of soccer in the garage, so they came down to join us.
Most of them were high school hardcore kids decked in band T-shirts, tight jeans, and studded belts. We exchanged high fives and got our game on.
A few minutes into the new game, a man came over and dismissed us, explaining his position of authority and the fact that we were not allowed to close off the street to play soccer. So we walked two blocks and set up a new pitch in the parking lot.
The kids were from out of town and only came to the city because of the music and arts festival called Kipona (one of the only two annual events I can think of which draws white people to the East Shore after 6 PM).
We played for long hours, up to 10:30 PM. The kids pointed out the diversity of our group. They asked who we were and asked if "this was real life" when I told them we all lived together. People of different backgrounds were coming together. The high school kids were following their own fashion and music trends. We were following our own culture's trends of collegiate social activism. The two cultures bridged the gap and created a subculture.
All subcultures have opposition. They often take time to make a place their own, geographically speaking. Minor Threat toured across the states and played house shows to promote the ethics of Straight Edge living. Skateboarders are often kicked out of sweet skate spots, and they just continue to the next place until they are again displaced. We followed the same trend that night. We just wanted some community, some straight-forward human experiences. Authorities wouldn't allow it, so we ran from them.
Tonight, we played soccer in another parking lot. Two nights in a row we have played. Harrisburg does not know what is coming. Something as small as soccer can unite people. But there is something deeper and more human inside of it than the game itself. In it we see freedom from rules and restrictions that hinder the joy of being with others. Seriously. Harrisburg does not know what is coming.
My birthday was the other night. I spent a week trying to get a soccer ball so we could put together a game. Finally, someone gave us one to use.
So Monday night on my birthday, we grabbed cones from the closet and blocked off the alley adjacent to our house. We set cardboard boxes for goals and started playing.
Not long after kickoff did we realize that somebody was making a lot of noise on the third floor of the parking garage. I yelled to them, not knowing if it was rambunctious kids or drunk men bickering. They came to the edge, looking down at our impromptu soccer pitch. They had also been playing a game of soccer in the garage, so they came down to join us.
Most of them were high school hardcore kids decked in band T-shirts, tight jeans, and studded belts. We exchanged high fives and got our game on.
A few minutes into the new game, a man came over and dismissed us, explaining his position of authority and the fact that we were not allowed to close off the street to play soccer. So we walked two blocks and set up a new pitch in the parking lot.
The kids were from out of town and only came to the city because of the music and arts festival called Kipona (one of the only two annual events I can think of which draws white people to the East Shore after 6 PM).
We played for long hours, up to 10:30 PM. The kids pointed out the diversity of our group. They asked who we were and asked if "this was real life" when I told them we all lived together. People of different backgrounds were coming together. The high school kids were following their own fashion and music trends. We were following our own culture's trends of collegiate social activism. The two cultures bridged the gap and created a subculture.
All subcultures have opposition. They often take time to make a place their own, geographically speaking. Minor Threat toured across the states and played house shows to promote the ethics of Straight Edge living. Skateboarders are often kicked out of sweet skate spots, and they just continue to the next place until they are again displaced. We followed the same trend that night. We just wanted some community, some straight-forward human experiences. Authorities wouldn't allow it, so we ran from them.
Tonight, we played soccer in another parking lot. Two nights in a row we have played. Harrisburg does not know what is coming. Something as small as soccer can unite people. But there is something deeper and more human inside of it than the game itself. In it we see freedom from rules and restrictions that hinder the joy of being with others. Seriously. Harrisburg does not know what is coming.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
God of the Most Wretched
When we think of God's creation, we think of fertile green hills, lazy blue skies, towering mountains, or perhaps even powerful lightning. One would seldom find a kindergarten Sunday School classroom painted with skyscrapers and row-houses, much less parking garages.
We kind of separate God's creation (Earth) and man's creation (urbanity) as good and evil. In some ways, maybe they are just that.
As I sit here in my apartment on the cockroach-eaten recliner I found in the basement, gazing out my window toward a land which was once a green expanse of flourishing trees and plants, my meditations are interrupted by an eight-story parking garage whose lights all too often keep me up late and wake me up early. Had this cement structure never been erected, I would quietly watch the residents on the hill enter and leave their homes. I would see the trains depart from and arrive at the station. I would notice the bridges which connect separate worlds....and the people who cross them, leaping from one life to the other. Instead, I see the silver Honda and platinum SAAB rest all day in second-story safety until they are taken back across the river at rush hour before the geographically-honest residents step upon their nocturnal streets.
But today, I returned to my meditations, noticing the cross-shaped pillar between the Honda and the SAAB. The pillar crucified my self-ignorance and brought to life my identity. My meditations now tell me that if I can see God in this, then I am richer than this bankrupt city.
Never has their been a better view than to see God in the most tyrannical artificial structures.
We kind of separate God's creation (Earth) and man's creation (urbanity) as good and evil. In some ways, maybe they are just that.
As I sit here in my apartment on the cockroach-eaten recliner I found in the basement, gazing out my window toward a land which was once a green expanse of flourishing trees and plants, my meditations are interrupted by an eight-story parking garage whose lights all too often keep me up late and wake me up early. Had this cement structure never been erected, I would quietly watch the residents on the hill enter and leave their homes. I would see the trains depart from and arrive at the station. I would notice the bridges which connect separate worlds....and the people who cross them, leaping from one life to the other. Instead, I see the silver Honda and platinum SAAB rest all day in second-story safety until they are taken back across the river at rush hour before the geographically-honest residents step upon their nocturnal streets.
But today, I returned to my meditations, noticing the cross-shaped pillar between the Honda and the SAAB. The pillar crucified my self-ignorance and brought to life my identity. My meditations now tell me that if I can see God in this, then I am richer than this bankrupt city.
Never has their been a better view than to see God in the most tyrannical artificial structures.
Friday, August 20, 2010
The Perfect Mess
Around the turn of the twentieth century, there was a movement in the western world to beautify urban places. Non-residents were finding the economic means to become tourists, and cities took advantage of this by creating civic centers and other things which made the city aesthetically pleasing. In 1900, Harrisburg was the first city of the movement to coin the term "city beautiful."
My maternal grandmother grew up somewhere between State Street and Market Street in a neighborhood often referred to as "The Hill" or "Allison Hill." In her day, this was the pulse of the Burg. The real part of town. The developing world of "City Beautiful."
Today I thought it would be cool to bike past Grandma's old church and then ride by her old residence. One thing about The Hill has lasted: life. The neighborhood comes alive in the early evening and stays alive throughout the night. Single mothers watch cars go by from their porches. Shop owners come out on the stoop to have a smoke with a friend.
But today, Allison Hill is not considered to be City Beautiful. Quite the opposite, actually. Many refer to the place, with all of the recent foreclosures and declining economic conditions, as a ghetto. And the racial demographic is profoundly darker than in my grandma's day.
An era of "White Flight" struck in the late 60's and 70's. Hurricane Agnes attacked, lifting the mighty Susquehanna up from its trench, and many people with the privilege to leave left (white people). The nuclear emissions of the Three Mile Island incident about 7 years later only complicated matters further.
As I bike through The Hill today, I get stares and glares. I attempt gestures of greeting and I am repaid with a cold shoulder. A dozen people crowded the porch of my grandma's old next-door neighbor, but they all looked at me like I was a foreigner.
Realizing that I just didn't fit, I turned around to bike to Midtown. There, my friend Josh had put together one of many art shows which are held in the city every third Friday of the month. Sipping wine and tasting fruits, white people browsed the art on the walls as potential consumers. The pieces were going for hundreds, even thousands of dollars. I felt more comfortable in this place. These were my people. Civilized art admirers, avid readers. But the culture was more forced. After all, "3rd in the Burg" is a planned event. People travel from their homes to view the galleries. The Hill has a natural culture in the sense that its residents don't get to make many decisions. They are born into a situation which requires them to be where they are, and they act naturally in that place. They don't go out into public because it's a certain day of the month. They shoot the breeze where they live because that is where they live.
In the beginning of time, God made a messy world. Adam probably took hundreds of years to name all of the animals, especially when one considers all which must be extinct at this point. God created a very diverse world: birds and fish, plants and sea, male and female. And it was very good. Until Adam and Eve weren't living in it. That's when it wasn't very good.
I saw a glimpse of the messy world when I began to bike away from the art galleries. A black man sitting on a stoop called out to me, asking for a quarter so he could get a beer. I had nothing at the time, so I turned around to personally inform him of the free wines at the art galleries.
The man kindly let me know that he didn't want to "go in and disturb things." He then proceeded to tell me he always kept watch over the street to make sure people were getting along okay and loving each other. He told me that God's love is pure and that people should forget about bombs and do something good. We talked for quite some time, mostly on the topic of being good to our neighbors and digging our own soil, and we occasionally had a few laughs as we condemned the selfish worldview of the people who work in the capitol building a few blocks away. He told me he'd be around there every other night, and I told him I'd return to visit again.
We have to get back to the garden. We have to get dirty and be among the mess of creation. I am trying to be as non-dualist as possible when I say that not only should the white midtown crowd venture uphill, but those on the hill should also be hasty to welcome their guests. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of hospitable Allisonians and plenty of socio-economically-minded downtownians, but it certainly doesn't look at all like the diverse mess God made. We act as if the fall has not been lifted, as if we have been expelled from the garden and God has never invited us back. Or perhaps some of us see that God is welcoming us back to the rubble, and they realize that the experiences we have inside the mess leave us longing for more and more of the mess. Today, I didn't want to leave this man whom I talked with for so long.
We who deliberately enter the world of the first City Beautiful make a conscious decision to be present with our neighbors. Sometimes, our neighbors are other students with wealthy parents. Other times, our neighbors have no parents, three surgeries to pay for, and a drinking addiction which numbs their pain (Proverbs 31:6-7). We rejoice when they prevail and mourn when they suffer. Or maybe we find common humanity in our laughter. Whatever the circumstances and specifics of our practice, we are sharing this place and admiring its grossly messy beauty.
My maternal grandmother grew up somewhere between State Street and Market Street in a neighborhood often referred to as "The Hill" or "Allison Hill." In her day, this was the pulse of the Burg. The real part of town. The developing world of "City Beautiful."
Today I thought it would be cool to bike past Grandma's old church and then ride by her old residence. One thing about The Hill has lasted: life. The neighborhood comes alive in the early evening and stays alive throughout the night. Single mothers watch cars go by from their porches. Shop owners come out on the stoop to have a smoke with a friend.
But today, Allison Hill is not considered to be City Beautiful. Quite the opposite, actually. Many refer to the place, with all of the recent foreclosures and declining economic conditions, as a ghetto. And the racial demographic is profoundly darker than in my grandma's day.
An era of "White Flight" struck in the late 60's and 70's. Hurricane Agnes attacked, lifting the mighty Susquehanna up from its trench, and many people with the privilege to leave left (white people). The nuclear emissions of the Three Mile Island incident about 7 years later only complicated matters further.
As I bike through The Hill today, I get stares and glares. I attempt gestures of greeting and I am repaid with a cold shoulder. A dozen people crowded the porch of my grandma's old next-door neighbor, but they all looked at me like I was a foreigner.
Realizing that I just didn't fit, I turned around to bike to Midtown. There, my friend Josh had put together one of many art shows which are held in the city every third Friday of the month. Sipping wine and tasting fruits, white people browsed the art on the walls as potential consumers. The pieces were going for hundreds, even thousands of dollars. I felt more comfortable in this place. These were my people. Civilized art admirers, avid readers. But the culture was more forced. After all, "3rd in the Burg" is a planned event. People travel from their homes to view the galleries. The Hill has a natural culture in the sense that its residents don't get to make many decisions. They are born into a situation which requires them to be where they are, and they act naturally in that place. They don't go out into public because it's a certain day of the month. They shoot the breeze where they live because that is where they live.
In the beginning of time, God made a messy world. Adam probably took hundreds of years to name all of the animals, especially when one considers all which must be extinct at this point. God created a very diverse world: birds and fish, plants and sea, male and female. And it was very good. Until Adam and Eve weren't living in it. That's when it wasn't very good.
I saw a glimpse of the messy world when I began to bike away from the art galleries. A black man sitting on a stoop called out to me, asking for a quarter so he could get a beer. I had nothing at the time, so I turned around to personally inform him of the free wines at the art galleries.
The man kindly let me know that he didn't want to "go in and disturb things." He then proceeded to tell me he always kept watch over the street to make sure people were getting along okay and loving each other. He told me that God's love is pure and that people should forget about bombs and do something good. We talked for quite some time, mostly on the topic of being good to our neighbors and digging our own soil, and we occasionally had a few laughs as we condemned the selfish worldview of the people who work in the capitol building a few blocks away. He told me he'd be around there every other night, and I told him I'd return to visit again.
We have to get back to the garden. We have to get dirty and be among the mess of creation. I am trying to be as non-dualist as possible when I say that not only should the white midtown crowd venture uphill, but those on the hill should also be hasty to welcome their guests. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of hospitable Allisonians and plenty of socio-economically-minded downtownians, but it certainly doesn't look at all like the diverse mess God made. We act as if the fall has not been lifted, as if we have been expelled from the garden and God has never invited us back. Or perhaps some of us see that God is welcoming us back to the rubble, and they realize that the experiences we have inside the mess leave us longing for more and more of the mess. Today, I didn't want to leave this man whom I talked with for so long.
We who deliberately enter the world of the first City Beautiful make a conscious decision to be present with our neighbors. Sometimes, our neighbors are other students with wealthy parents. Other times, our neighbors have no parents, three surgeries to pay for, and a drinking addiction which numbs their pain (Proverbs 31:6-7). We rejoice when they prevail and mourn when they suffer. Or maybe we find common humanity in our laughter. Whatever the circumstances and specifics of our practice, we are sharing this place and admiring its grossly messy beauty.
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