Supper

Concrete came by my place a couple times last week for supper. He does this a few times a week, just stopping in when he is cold or hungry or needs to get away from the other guys. I made him some pork chops I had gotten out for such an occasion and he exclaimed about how good they are. The second time he came I wasn't around but Lisa made him the remaining chop, for which he was grateful. But what he really wanted, he said, was spaghetti. "I'm trying to get you to make up a big bunch of spaghetti", he said the next day. "Lots of meat and green peppers, red peppers, yellow peppers, orange peppers, in a big pot." 

So the next night I dragged my wife and a couple of my catechumens with me and we all made a bunch of spaghetti in the church kitchen, complete with as many different colored peppers as we could find. I had been conflicted about whether to make it at the church so all the Guys could partake or to make it at home where Crete could warm up while he ate (he doesn't go inside churches). When I asked Crete what he'd prefer I was told (as I should have known) "I don't run nothin'."

We pulled the picnic tables under the covered walkway and, along with a bunch of other Guys, all ate outside in the cold with Crete (I usually don't insist on this, but I did this time). Joel and Kenetta did a great job with the food and everybody ate a lot. Most of the Guys packed up a plate or two and took it back to the Hill where the fire was keeping them warm. But a few cold souls ate at the table. Sarah gave Sammie as much petting as she wanted and Joel chatted up Howard, Crete and Eddie over at the other table. Trevor kept Gail company inside and was helpful as usual cleaning things up. 

I hope Concrete knows by these tiny gestures we sometimes make how much he means to us and that he can see that our lives have been changed by his presence. Of course, such a wish falsely presumes that he is as self-centered as I am. 

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Poverty Porn

An above average treatment of the issue of poverty, especially as it relates to making others rich, can be found here.  

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Incorporating Individuals

Willette said to me on Thursday evening after prayer, "Thank you for this service. Now maybe I'll make it through the week." I must admit that I was a little surprised by the comment. Willette comes to EP rather often, so it is not as if she just happened by in a moment of spiritual necessity and found the requisite manna from heaven. She was thanking us for being present, for opening the church, and for leading the office. Her statement made me think, and still has me pondering. I wonder if it has not revealed some of my own myopia and even selfishness.

I wrote about presence in a post for the blog a long while ago. The essence of that piece was the importance of constancy and physical presence, day in, day out. But that piece also focused on how our presence for the office brought us in communion with the homeless, and how the constancy of that presence was the foundation for us all to be transformed through friendship with one another. In that vein I think we have come to stress the office in two main ways: (1) as a fundamental part of the day, as routine and necessary as brushing one's teeth, and (2) as a practice that, through its mere observance, will transform us in spite of ourselves as, for example, in bringing us in contact with the poor. These two emphases have, for me, become slightly pathological in that the emphasis seems to be on me. The office is something that I need to do, day in and day out (literally through MP and EP), and it is something that will transform me. What is lost in this pathology is the notion of liturgy as "work of the people" and the realization of the office as an extension of the Eucharist. It seems that I have found an encroachment of individualism even in the commitment to corporate worship.

Willette reminded me of this because I often lead the office with a rather perfunctory attitude (much as I might brush my teeth), sometimes even as a chore that needs be done. It's not a glorifying admission, but true. Willette comes, as I expect Shirley does too, in part to step into the Kingdom for a few minutes during the week and find refreshment. Willette has challenged me, albeit unintentionally, to see the office now also as part of the preparation of the altar for Sunday -- we are an altar guild of sorts. We gather morning and evening to bring the cares and anxieties of the world into the congregation, piling them upon the altar. On Sunday Christ's body will be broken, and with it the altar will be cleansed and renewed. We are, in a way, sanctifying this world by faithfully gathering its sins and bringing them to the altar. 

This is to say that while we are being transformed by stamping the time-card, by just being present, we are also making Christ's presence real during the week for all who need him -- not in the way that the priest makes Him present at Sunday mass, but as the priest has already made Him present and presented Him to us, forming us into the Body. The office is part of the preparation for Sunday, but equally it is part of Christ's presence to His people. It bears all the marks of the already and the not yet. 

It is worth bearing this in mind (even if this is mostly a self-referential meditation). When we gather during the week we are doing more than we know, making God present in the world. The presence we offer is not just to the guys but to Onye and Willette and Shirley and everyone else who is weary and heavy laden (myself included). We come to the office to be in the presence of God, to sit at the Trinitarian banquet, and so our participation in the office should bear all the care and attention with which we come to the Eucharist. For even as we seek sustenance, by doing so-- by seeking faithfully-- we also create a space in this world where the finding is possible for those around us. We say the office not just that we may find transformation but that we may offer it through our service, "always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies."

So, it should be no surprise to me that those who attend only episodically or even only once may be blessed by the office. The office is a liturgical reminder and enactment of Psalm 121, fulfilling the daily cycle: "The Lord shall watch over your going out and your coming in, from this time forth for evermore." The office is in part a sacramental sign of Christ's enduring faithfulness -- that He will be present and available bodily -- that "He who watches over you will not fall asleep."

Willette's statement should be no surprise, but I had lost sight of what we were doing.

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Giving to Him Who Begs

Today when I arrived for morning prayer I noticed a well-dressed young man, probably in his early 30's, that I had not seen before. He worked his way through prayer with us (as he was not familiar with the BCP), and exchanged the peace afterwards. As everyone finished exchanging the peace he introduced himself as a pastor and approached C saying that he was in a bit of a tough spot. He had a flat tire on his vehicle. A local man was replacing the tire, but the pastor had only half the necessary money to pay for the replacement, which would cost approximately $120. Could we help him? 

C offered him whatever was in the poor plate at the back of the church. On this particular morning that amounted to about $10. I volunteered to go across the street to the bank and withdraw some money to make up the difference. I doubted that I had enough in the bank to cover the full difference, but I was willing to contribute whatever was there.

As it turned out I had enough money in the account to give him $60 to cover the other half of the cost of the new tire. When I handed over the money to Pastor D he asked if we were at the church every morning. We replied that we were, and he followed by saying that he would be back tomorrow to reimburse me.

At breakfast C admitted that he was a little scandalized by my giving the man $60. I admitted that I was too but that it hadn't fully hit me yet. I just gave away $60 to a stranger. Why? Or, as my wife would put it: Why!?! C, A, and I were all reasonably confident that I would never be reimbursed as the man had promised. This is a self-conscious skepticism on our part, born of being conned and lied to repeatedly. So, why did I give this man the money if I was skeptical of his honesty, and especially when the request was for so much?

An oft overlooked passage spoken by Jesus is "Give to everyone who begs of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you." (Matt. 5:42) What do you do with an exhortation like that? Does Jesus really mean "everyone"? Does he not mean something a little more restricted, perhaps "give to all Christians" or all "decent folk", or to all those whom you have no reason to believe are lying?

Matthew 5:21-48 consists of a series of expositions in the format "You have heard it said... But I say..." So, before we put caveats on the exhortation to give to everyone who begs, consider that the exhortation comes on the heals of "You have heard it said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth'. But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer."(v38-39) Jesus tells us not to resist the evildoer and then in the same rhetorical unit exhorts us to give to everyone who begs. The implication seems plain: Do not offer evil in return for evil; to him who asks of you out of greed, respond to him from your charity.

The scandal of this passage is that Jesus implies that "being reasonable" about giving, to deny the gift when it is a poor investment or the recipient is not virtuous, is to return evil for evil. It is to return the beggar's sinfulness in asking with my lack of charity.

If I thought that I could get out of this scandal by suggesting that Jesus' exhortation was not a part of the "eye for an eye" reversal but perhaps the one following, I find no help. For the one following is "love your enemies". The exhortation to give is sandwiched between expectations of the agency of evildoers. We might abbreviate the passage:

Do not resist the evildoer. Give to everyone who begs of you. Love your enemies.

Jesus cannot be called naive in his exhortation to give freely. He explicitly locates his exhortation in the context of sinful world full of evil requests. And yet he says to us that giving freely of ourselves is the way to take up his yoke. We are not called to control this world, but to offer ourselves as living members of Christ, who is love, and who poured himself out for us.

There is a part of me that is still shocked that I gave away $60 dollars this morning with little or no consideration of the "reasonableness" of doing so. But I don't see that I had many options if my actions are to be accountable to Christ.

And tomorrow, if Pastor D returns with $60 to reimburse me, then I will have to confess my lack of trust that he would do so. My giving is still incomplete, because through skepticism I did not realize Godly love in the transaction.

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Breakfast

Breakfast as usual this last week. Friday Joel and Sarah came to Morning Prayer and then over with us to eat. I suspect that they come because i make them - they are part of the Catechesis class at St Joes and have voluntarily committed to coming to the Office and serving the poor once a week - but they never seem too put out about it.

After a few minutes C and E came in for a bite. We talked about dogs for a while. Sammie my dog is always at prayer and so if conversation runs dry we can always talk about her. She loves most of the guys but especially E, since he is wont to give her a little of what is on his plate. C told us about the program he is in in Chapel Hill to try to get hooked up with transitional housing. So he is bussing up and down the eight miles three or five days a week to go to meetings with various folk. He complains that the staff is all volunteer and so they often don't show up. He also relates story after story about why "he hates cops". "I don't want to hate anybody", he says, "but I just can't help it." He told us one story about standing at the bus stop waiting for a bus and being told that he couldn't loiter. "I'm waiting for the bus", he protested, "along with all these other folk." But the cop knew him as a homeless man and made him move off the sidewalk to a bit of dirt beside one of the buildings. They police the homeless so tirelessly in Chapel Hill, C says, that most of the guys he knows come up to Durham. But even in Durham, he says, if the police don't like you, or don't like the homeless in general, they can make life hell. One guy consistently calls them "cockroaches", apparently.

T was quiet and well mannered as usual. Earlier this week he went over to Whole Foods and got us some cereal when we were running low. This man's generosity and faithfulness amazes me. He mentioned that he just managed to rent a room somewhere across town and he was worried that the couple he rented it from were - for some reason - going to be arrested. Barely enough money to get himself a sub-par room he still shows up for prayer, Eucharist and Bible Study, and insists upon contributing to the needs of the saints week after week, day by day.

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Because the Real Reason to Help the Poor...

...is that it is a boost to the economy. See the story here.
Please forgive the sarcastic cynicism, but perhaps the poor would be better served if the relationship of poverty to our capitalist economy could properly be named as being of an entirely different sort. At any rate, it's nice to see that altruism (on behalf of the economy, of course) is on the rise.

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What's In a Name?

Lately I have been wondering what it means for us to use the word "homeless" in reference to a particular person or group of persons. It's a linguistic practice I engage in all the time but one to which I have paid little sustained attention. For example, in conversations with my wife I will frequently refer to the "homeless" or "our homeless friends" at St. Joe's. And I suspect that, like me, most of us think nothing of using "homeless" as an indexical marker, a sortal by which to name a person or persons. However, it occurred to me today that, as a primary means of distinction, this readily available and handy denominator, while presumably applicable in the majority of cases it is used, is nevertheless perhaps not the most charitable descriptor available for our use.

For starters, the use of the adjective "homeless" as a primary designator opens subtle but no less insidious possibilities for the individual and collective exploitation of the already oppressively subjugated. After all, there's no glory (and thus, little point) in relaying to a colleague that I happen to have breakfast with some guys from my church every morning. But to mention that I daily share a breakfast table with the homeless, well, that's a much more personally advantageous way to tell the story! In such a case, my breakfast companions' plight can quite easily become my profit simply by use of that two-syllable word, "homeless." Indeed, by employing that otherwise seemingly harmless term, a great deal of social capital can be had at the expense of those with little to no capital whatsoever.

Secondly, and more reflexively, I think it is worth asking the question as to whether or not I would like to be identified primarily through descriptors the possibility for the rightful application of which I would be less than enthused to have so highlighted. What would it be like for the generally perceived "negative" features of my daily existence to be raised to the level of a primary marker? "Oh, there's Adam, my lazy friend." "Hi, I'd like you to meet my unjustifiably self-satisfied buddy, Adam." "Let me tell you what my unreasonably rotund friend from church did the other day." How many of us would like to be so denominated? Though ostensibly innocuous, I would imagine a less potentially damaging means of identification could be conjured than "homeless." I certainly have difficulty conceiving a scenario wherein I would be comfortable referring to my friend W primarily by the term "homeless" while in W's presence. What, then, does that say about how I use the term?

Thirdly, and on the topic of identification, how might the use of the word "homeless" as a frequently recurrent signfier promote the creation of a static and behaviorally short-circuiting identity among those so named? Here I have in mind friends whose various inclinations (imagined or otherwise) have, through externally generated reinforcement, become their primary (and often sole) means of self-description such that they cannot conceive of themselves apart from those descriptive terms. If one grows up in a home, for example, where one is called "stupid" with any significant frequency, it often becomes painfully difficult to imagine oneself in any other terms, effectively trapping such a one in an unnecessarily generated prison of identity. "Homeless" could thus function, not as a description of one's current domestic circumstance, but as an integral (metaphysical) feature of who one is. Yet, how would/could such a one ever begin to think of themselves any differently after having been (repeatedly and reinforcingly) so damned?

Lastly, I wonder how much the primary use of "homeless" as an indexical term is a function of our desire to create distance between our bourgeois selves and these, the phenomenologically "other". To what degree does "homeless", as a fundamental category, quarantine the terrifying possibility that we might otherwise be confronted with an actual person whose naked and common humanity, freed from all externally imposed, carefully constructed, and calculatedly constraining labels, might be seen to have legitimate claim on our lives and possessions? What kind of buffer or boundary does "homeless", as a primary designator, create for we who are apt to use it? At the very least, I wonder what it would be like if I discovered that "the homeless" folks with whom I share breakfast primarily referred to my friends and I as "the homed." What would the use of such a label, the differential grammar of which is rooted in economic class/status, do to my understanding of the nature of our relationship or their perception of me as a (classed) person?

I must confess that I don't have much to offer by way of an answer or linguistic replacement (recall that the above is merely a reflection on my own deeply ingrained - and potentially bad - linguistic habits). Really, all I intend to accomplish at this juncture is the raising of a question. And, indeed, perhaps a case can be made for the continued use of "homeless" in the signifying capacity I have described above. But, for the time being, I think that the question is worth asking and our linguistic practices with respect to "the homeless" we encounter worth evaluating. Minimally, can we not envision a more intentional and charitable means of reference to these, the embodiment of Christ's person made present?

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Widow's Mite

There is a man, T, who lives in his truck in the church parking lot. He has been around St. Joe's now for a good while - perhaps a year. At first I didn't think he was homeless. He would come to HE on Sunday and stick around for coffee hour to chat. He never asked for anything. 

Since taking up residence at the church he has rarely missed a service of Communion or Daily Prayer. He comes to breakfast, sometimes eating and sometimes not (I think it depends on what the casserole looks like), but always politely conversing. I've never seen him drink, though he seems to be on good terms with the others at church that do. T is one of the folks that makes the work we do easy and joyful. 

This morning T and I said prayer together, just the two of us, for the first 15 minutes of the service. As we were leaving prayer, a woman who had arrived in time for the last few prayer asked for a bus pass to go job hunting. I said I would have to try to get one for her today because I was out. Then I turned around to the poor plate to see if I could fish the two dollars for the pass out of it. Before I could do so, T had opened his wallet, pulled out two dollars and given them to her. 

I smiled in awe of the beauty. 

I hung my head half-comically at my hardness of heart. I had been inclined to wait and see if I could get someone to pick up some passes later that day. That would cost me nothing. Then I had turned to the $60 in the poor plate to see if there were a couple of singles. Administering the poor plate costs me nothing, and by it I gain recognition for "serving" the poor. And it is mostly filled by those giving out of their abundance. The poor plate usually costs its donors nothing. 

But T had given out of his lack. Such a gift was costly and it must have hurt. With all the cash in the poor plate I could not have given more. It was a sacrifice I did not dare council against. 

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Expect more...

... not less patronizing and ridiculous coverage of poverty from the major news outlets. Our latest example of "simulating poverty": http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/02/02/food.stamps.economy/index.html

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Breakfast

Every weekday we have breakfast at the church parish hall after Morning Prayer. A couple of nice ladies from the Presbyterian church next door provide us with breakfast casseroles each week (these range from regular eggs and sausage to grits and chili and cheese and they are always a surprise). The purpose of this was originally to create a time each day when we would hang out with our homeless and poor friends, and not just co-exist in the same space with them.

There are usually at least two of us from the MP congregation that stay and eat. At least half the time one of the men brings his three year old son. The lad was originally shy of the homeless but once last month he expressed his displeasure when no one had yet come in to the table. Sometimes we are joined by a catechumen from the church who is required to serve the poor once a week. 

The number of people that actually come in off the street varies from morning to morning, depending on a number of variables like temperature and how much they had to drink last night. This morning we had four poor friends (two of which are also catechumens and have recently moved into a room together but they make a point to come the two miles across town to eat), one catechumen, and four members of the congregation. 

Y was particularly happy this morning to have passed her state exam to be a Certified Nursing Assistant. She printed out her resume on the computer so she could go over to Duke Hospital and apply for a job. W came in to eat, having been happier to sleep on his cardboard in the walkway than to stay at the hotel his friends had offered him. He didn't have his hat on and his graying hair reminded me that being on the street is harder for him than his casual, placid, if slurred, speech would let on. 

As usual, breakfast lasted about 45 minutes and all were full and caffeinated and ready to move onto whatever the day held for them. 

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Poverty as Conscientious Objection

Our whole modern economy is based on preparation for war and that is one of the great modern arguments for poverty. If the comfort one had gained has resulted in the death of thousands in Korea and other parts of the world, then that comfort will have to be atoned for. The argument now is that there is no civilian population, that all are involved in the war (misnamed defense) effort. If you work in a textile mill making cloth, or in a factory making dungarees or blankets, it is still tied up with war. If one raises food or irrigates to raise food one may be feeding troops or liberating others to serve as troops. If you ride a bus you are paying taxes. Whatever you buy is taxed so you are supporting the state in the war, which is "the health of the state," exactly to the extent of your attachment to worldly things of whatever kind. 

[Day, CW, April 1953]

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