Saturday Morning Beating

I heard sobbing -wet sniffling, mouth breathing and little groans. It was coming from behind me. It was far away but unmistakeable. I looked and couldn't see anything. Then from the vacant lot, next to a trash-filled alley behind two foreclosed houses, I saw a small figure.

He is limping. Blood rides his panicked breath and almost hits my flannel shirt. He is ten years old and I know him. His left eye is swollen terribly. It is almost shut. I imagine him getting punched. I can see, smell, almost feel the beating. He is making a line for his house where he can feel safe again. I try and grab him and find out what happened. He doesn't say anything. He is afraid. He fears that they will get him worse if he tells someone. He goes inside. His mom isn't home.

Before I heard the sound, I was digging a hole with a young kid from our church. He witnessed the whole interaction. He was wide-eyed and frozen when I got back. "Are you ok?" I asked him. "Yes," he replied. In his world young kids don't get mercilessly beaten. He was in disbelief. "That was scary for me," I admitted to him. "Was it scary for you?" I asked. "Yes." We kept digging quietly thinking about what we just saw.

The kid just wanted to shoot some hoops. There is an old basketball goal in the alley behind one of the boarded up houses. Kids play there because there isn't anywhere else to play. Illegally dumped trash, broken glass, old tires and used oil containers line the court. It is no place anybody should play. If you're an elementary school kid on the block, there is no place safe to play. You just take your chances. Parks are the opposite of safe in the city. There are old guys who talk loud and drink out of brown paper bags. Older kids want to test you and hassel you. It is better to stick close to your house most of the time.

But even sticking close to your house is no guarantee. Later I learned that group of high school boys beat him up for fun because they were bored and there was no one to stop them. The beat him to a pulp, for no reason, on a Saturday morning.

Two hours later, he came out - cleaned up, still red marks on his face that would soon be black and blue. He helped me replace a bad brick in the foundation of the house our church owns. We were chipping it out with a hammer and pry bar. I let him swing hard and wild even though it might hurt my hands. He needed to hit something, to break something, to know that he wasn't always the one getting hit, the victim. He chipped the bad brick out with a few powerful smacks of the hammer. He gave it a real beating.

S'more Community

Last Sunday night I got a hankerin' for S'mores. But I didn't want to have them alone. It is strange how something really fun like a barbeque or a swimming pool is terrible if there aren't others to share it with. S'mores are the same way. They are the type of food that is really an excuse to get together and spend some time talking, laughing and chasing your brother with a flaming marshmallow at the end of a stick. They aren't made for singular consumption. How depressing it would be to make s'mores on your own. I almost did it. But I came to my senses and invited some friends to share them with me.



I initially decided to share my s'mores with the dudes from our church that live a few blocks from my house. But then it occurred to me that maybe some of the kids in their neighborhood might have never had a s'more before. Something about the combination of sugar and fire delicately masked in the inherent responsibility of a stuffy graham cracker was sure to be fun for the kids. So I packed up the marshmallows, wood, firepit, chocolate and graham crackers in the back of my truck and drove the 3 blocks to the community house. We set up the little clay firepit on the concrete walkway in front of the house a few feet away from where we found a hypodermic needle a couple weeks ago and where there is still some gang grafitti on the sidewalk -The Great Outdoors. Kevin got a five gallon bucket of water in order to prevent anyone from burning alive and we got busy building a fire.



Sometimes I overestimate some of the experiences of kids in the city and underestimate others. For instance, most of the littlest kids know the word "foreclosure" and "eviction" but very few have ever seen a wood fire in real life before. None had tasted a s'more. A few of the kids mistook the fire for a grill - others acted like they knew what was going on but most of them didn't. They were acting cool but were really curious about the wood and smoke. One of the kid's moms had to explain that we were having a "real fire" that could hurt you if you touched it. So we roasted marshmallows - in reality most of the kids burned them to crunchy, bitter sweet ash. As the little white pillows sizzled and glowed, the kids, in a joyful panic, blew on the them to extinguish the sugar-fueled flames. When the chocolate all ran out, and it was getting as dark as it gets on a city street, a ring of kids began to form around the fire. They were loud and obnoxious, fun and free. They burned a bunch of sticks even after I told them not to. They all tried to make the funniest animal sounds they knew. One person started a story and the next person around the circle added to it until the plot grew too ridiculous to continue. And we all escaped the neighborhood for about an hour. We were the loudest. We were the coolest. No booming car stereo or big wheels or even goofy obnoxious teenagers could compete with our fire. We were the neighborhood for an hour. We were it. People gawked at us. I only wish we could have seen the stars past the street lights. They're up there even if you can't see them all the time. Glints of crystal brilliance dulled down by the glare of the city. I guess the stars are a lot like the kids. I saw them that night and it was beautiful.

Some Drunks Guys Out Front of my House

I struggle a lot with the idea of community. My church title is "Community Pastor." But sometimes I don't really like people as much as I should. They can be a real pain. Pastors aren't supposed to say stuff like that but all of them feel it.

My wife and I live in a large house in the 'hood. We like to think we bought the house to use as a "ministry tool." We have self-righteous delusions of gradeur about the house. Dreams that it might one day house haitian orphans, hurricane victims and single moms with blacks eyes and five kids. But most of the time, it is just a large heating bill for rooms that we don't use. It's not that we don't want to have more people stay. We just don't want the "wrong people" in our house. It is our space. Our sanctuary. Our belonging.

Yesterday some guys invaded our space. At about 6pm as I was leaving out the front door, a guy in his twenties yelled something incomprehensible at me from a maroon minivan with no license plates in front of my house. It was cold and raining so I went over to his car and asked him what he wanted. Three heavily tattooed men stared back at me from the minivan. A woft of alcohol air immediately annoyed me. One of them was smoking a joint. Their car wouldn't start. I secretly thought to myself "You bums - get off my street. Get out of our community. You are what is wrong with my neighborhood. You are the problem. You are why kids can't walk down their own street and why old people have to buy bars for their windows." But I used my most manly deep voice and asked what was the problem.

They had run over a tree branch and the wires under their car had pulled apart. And there the car came to rest, in front of my house. Like a wounded skunk in our front yard - I didn't want them there and I didn't really want to deal with them. You just want it gone before something bad happens. And the three drunk thugs were enjoying their high directly in front of my house. Master grammarians, they were using the F word as a noun, verb, adjective and participle with vocal inflection in much the same way Papa Smurf might employ the word "smurf." If I called the cops, they would know it was me and I would get retribution. If I didn't call the cops, they might be out there all night. If I fixed their car, I would be helping them to drive drunk. My two next door neighbors were freaking out. "If you help them, they'll rob you. Don't help them." The worse part is that these dudes knew where I lived now. If I made the wrong move, they might break into my house, steal and vandalize it like some guys did to the house next door to mine. So I did the only thing I knew how to do. I left. Sommer and I went and ran some erands and hoped they'd be gone when we came back. Like the levite in the story of the good samaritan, I pretended to be too busy to help. "I can't help you guys. I have to go."

When I returned an hour and a half later, they were still there. In fact, they had called some friends to help them. And profanity filled the air like fireflies on a hot July night. Finally, their friends pushed the van to the next block and they were gone. And I couldn't be happier. They were out of my neighborhood.

"Who was a neighbor to the man?" Jesus asked.

Community is difficult. We might get robbed and vandalized. We open ourselves to be victims. And it would be great it if weren't for the "wrong people" always getting in the way.

"Merci" Mr. Tarantino

I know pastors aren't supposed to watch Quinten Tarantino flicks. We're supposed to wear v-necked sweaters with leather patches on the elbows, sit in wing-back chairs sternly reading manuscripts of 19th century sermons by guys with thick ideas and thicker beards - carefully weighing the theological implications of their systematic discourses. But sometimes the deep truths of God are found not in bound volumes but in the thinly veiled holiness of a movie. Movies are the parables of our time. They are the new stained glass illumining the dusty truths we proclaim in church. You really ought to watch Inglorious Basterds and then read the rest of this entry. Beware - it is disturbing.

The bottom line of the film is that we are the real Inglorious Bastards - it is not Bradd Pitt or the Nazis. It's us. We are the shameful Bastards because we prefer revenge to mercy. As an audience we want a whole roomful of Nazis to burn to death, we want a Nazi Hollocaust. We want a bloodbath. We want lex talionis (eye for an eye). It brings us banal pleasure to imagine people who have betrayed us suffering.

The first thing I noticed in the opening scene was the number of times the French word, "merci" was spoken. It was the only word not translated to English in the subtitles. It would be easy to overlook except it is translated "thank you" one time to clue us into the fact that is wasn't translated before. In the opening subtitles, Tarantino gives us the sublimal message of the film "Mercy."

But the world hates mercy. From the beginning to the end of the film, the characters are bent on revenge for the brutality they've suffered. The Jewish-American characters decide to murder anyone in a Nazi uniform - they then scalp their victims in order to mentally torment the Germans as a form of revenge that breeds fear. The young Jewish woman who runs a movie theater gets revenge for the murder of her family by plotting the death of the Nazis. Everyone gets revenge and the movie is a bloodbath. (Most Christians focus on criticizing the violence but the violence is meant to criticize us.) If we had the power to get bloody revenge, would we?

Are we Inglorious Bastards? Would we like to see a Nazi Hollocaust? Would we like to torture the people who torture us? Do we take pleasure when our enemies suffer? Do we embrace mercy and forgiveness or do we want revenge? But is there a different way to live - a Jesus way? In this way we are called to be the opposite of an inglorious bastard - we are invited to live in the unforced ways of grace as a glorious child.

All Hale Whale Jail

So yesterday a lady came in and gave a workplace trust and respect presentation. I had prepared mentally for this - I would be on my best behavior. No jokes. No snide or sarcastic remarks. Still, I think I offended the trainer but it really wasn't my fault. In this case, the blame rests rather firmly on the Killer whales. But they can't help it. They're natural born killers.

Some of you may be aware of the recent killing perpetrated by an orca at the Orlando Florida Seaworld. Tillikum, the killer whale, murdered his trainer by pulling her in by the pony tail and drowning her. Apparently their warning labels fail to dissuade people from the reality that they might get killed. I am not sure what this means but with a slight re-arranging of the letters in the name Tillikum, you end up with "U Kill Tim." Luckily Lake Michigan is whale free. But it does seem weird that people would be shocked that a killer whale, killed someone. It just makes sense.

For instance, if everyone called a particular guy "Domestic Violence Bob", I am pretty sure I would steer clear of Bob. And I am certain no one would go swimming with Bob or have him entertain a large stadium full of young children and their families. You would probably think: "Man, Bob must have done something to deserve that name." But for some reason with marine mammals, we don't hesitate to put lunch wrapped in a wetsuit into their tank and expect them not to eat us. Tillikum committed his third murder at the end of February. We all suffered the unbearable irony of hearing the public relations people at Seaworld defend the orcas saying, "It isn't in the character of killer whales to kill." And in Florida, where Tillikum could get the death penalty, his sentence was commuted to life at Sea World - a fate worse than death. But back to the training.

Everything was going well. I sat up straight, was respectful, participated and even asked an insightful question about gender differences and body language. But no amount of self-restraint could have prepared me for what came next. It was a video called Whale Done: The Power of Positive Relationships. It featured, you guessed correctly, the killer whales of Seaworld Orlando. The mantra of the video between every segment was, "If you can learn to trust a Killer Whale, you can learn to build trust and respect in the workplace." The silence of my disbelief prefaced any observable reaction. The video was a management video - about how you could control employees in the same way the trainers control the killer whales at sea world. I began to wonder if the woman I supervise would ever murder me during a routine updating of the database. The video continued to talk about how the whales felt respected so they performed. I couldn't believe what I was watching.

And then it happened. Like a submarine under extreme deep sea pressure, I sprung a leak. Air shot out of my notrils and I made a snorting noise. I tried to hold my mouth so I wouldn't spring more leaks but nothing could be done - the ship was sinking. And then I started laughing muffled and uncontrollably. Luckily I was in the back on the room. A couple people looked back and apparently they too felt the giggles. The guy next to me started laughing and rocking back and forth in his chair. One of my other co-workers blurted out a warning to one of the sea world trainers in the video as the whale jumped out of the tank, "Look Out!" Soon the room was aroar in a disrespectful and raucous laughter. It was just too ridiculous. The lady giving the presentation looked dismayed - these whales had turned on her. They were all laughing at her presentation on respect. We couldn't help it. We were not made for cubicles and presentations on respect. We were meant for laughter.

I guess there are certain things that we just can't help. For killer whales, it's murder. For guys like me it's uncontrollable laughter at things ubsurd.

You can't keep people in a tank when they were meant for something bigger. They might be cool for a long time, even years. But sooner or later, they want to break free, laugh and dance and snort. At the end of the day, I couldn't help but think the orcas of seaworld had brought us closer. The presentation wasn't a total loss. So to the orcas and to the downcast facilitor. I must tip my hat and exclaim for the world to hear, "Whale Done!"

skyscrapers, gutters and everything in between.

From my work cube, I can see the top of the NorthWestern Mutual insurance building where the I see the silhouettes of the folks who make six and seven figures. They drive Lexus SUVs and wear monogrammed shirts. I am at ground level so I also see the homeless guys who collect used cigarette butts and smoke them down to the filters right in front of the my cube window. I see the highs and lows from my cube. As much as I hate it, sometimes my cube keeps things in perspective.

I read psalm 88 and psalm 89 this morning. These two back-to-back psalms seem like Danny Devito and Arnold Swartzenegger in the movie Twins. Scholars think they are connected but it is hard to tell by just reading them. Psalm 88 is dark and depressing. God is far off and the writer sounds almost suicidal as he proclaims, "darkness is my closest friend." Psalm 88 sounds more like a Metallica ballad than scripture. By contrast, Psalm 89 is perky and praisey. It is the Karen Carpenter of Psalms - syrupy sweet and filled to the rim with flowery phrases of deity and doctrine. Both are difficult to swallow.

My life is somewhere in between these two psalms. I want my relationship with God somewhere in the middle too, like my like my relationship with a helpful Home Depot employee, cordial, rationale, task-oriented, not too pushy but not too aloof, reasonable, unemotional. But maybe this isn't God. Maybe God doesn't want a relationship like that. Maybe he wants our highest highs and our lowest lows. Maybe he wants to broaden our experiences to encompass higher highs and lower lows - that we might be fully human. This seems to line up with what I have seen in the live of Saints.

I once read this author who thought that Christians, and specifically mystics, were prone to bouts of depression and mania. This particular author believed that people of faith - followers of God, could see the universe much more clearly than anyone else. They experienced the lowest lows and the highest highs. Believers feel the height of connection to and empowerment by God through his Holy Spirit and also the depths of darkness as they reflect on topics such as the crucifixion, hell and sin. We speak in tongues and serve in slums. Christians live on both ends of the spectrum - mania and the darkness. And we experience a greater total sum of the spectrum of life because of this. Perhaps the middle of existence is the least palpable to the mystic, the Jesus follower, because its stability is like a calm sea for the sailor - doldrums. The mystic craves the presence of God and the presence of suffering because the are usually linked - like Christ himself.

So why not live big? Why not take risks? Why not do the things that God is calling you to do? Invite the rich and poor into your home. Raise your hands into the sky in prayer. Come alongside those who suffer. Pray for a miracle. Expect transformation. Lose your lifestyle. Be more real. Get out of the spiritual doldrums and live at the poles of life where the most real things happen.

C.S. Lewis speaks of heaven as like earth only more so. Everything is heightened - experience, emotion, intellect, sensory input. Even tiny blades of grass feel like little knives in heaven because we aren't used to the intensity of reality. We've lived too long in the middle. Suffer or praise with the full intensity of heaven - with fervor as if your days were numbered. Because they are.

Little Cesars and the Red Box

Michael Jackson once wrote a song called, Smooth Criminal. I wonder what the opposite of a smooth criminal is because I was hit by one of those yesterday.

As I walked into the arid brilliance of the early spring mid-afternoon, a thousand tiny glints of sunlight flashed back at me from the ground next to my truck. Broken glass. This had happened to me before. I knew the drill - it would be a pain in the butt. As I came closer to my truck, I noticed that the metal on my car door was gouged and bent next to the broken passenger side window. "Rookies. Punk Rookies!" I am not a criminal but any criminal worth his salt, knows that you break car windows with ceramics - most commonly part of an old spark plug. the reason for this is that it makes less sound - a slight pop. These fools had used a piece of metal and when that didn't work, they pried the edge of the glass until the metal bent and broke the window. This little difference meant that the damage is 1800 dollars instead of 200 dollars. The worst part was that once they entered the vehicle, they searched it a got away with nothing. Nada. Zilch. My co-worker, who used to be a Sheriff's deputy thinks they wanted my GPS unit which I had a mount for on the dashboard. My wife had it in her car that day.

But what really sucks is how one little sinful act is taking up so much of my life. So I have begun the annoying process of trying to get my car fixed. I had to call the police, file a report, call the insurance, take the car to a shop for an estimate, call the insurance guys back, call the glass guys, take a picture of broken window, have them say they can't just replace the glass and then thank them for taking the time to do it. Then I have to pay he 500 dollar deductible, talk to my wife about why we need to change our budget that month and why, through no fault of mine, that our date night has gone from Magianos and the Imax to Little Cesars and the Red Box. Our kitchen cabinets will need to wait another month and we can't drive my car without the heater on full blast at the moment. I will need to confirm with the auto shop, find a ride to work for next week. Wait for them to see if they have the right parts. Bum rides and take the bus to all of my nighttime stuff. And then finally after two weeks of straight annoying, I get my car back in almost the same shape as it started. I almost wish the dude would have taken my hundred dollar GPS unit. I almost hope he had got some crack and a pipe stem to smoke it in exchange for it. At least then someone would have benefitted from this. But as it stands, my car got beat up for nothing and I have to deal with it. What a bummer.

I guess all sin is like this. It starts with being consumed with our own desires. And then we haphazardly, and sometimes sloppily violate someone. We don't think about what it will do to them. We don't think that our five minutes of selfishness might cause 2 weeks of strife to someone else. We just think about getting our high - whatever our own personal crack high might be. Admiration, sex, job security, gossip, appearing clever, etc. And we wreck others as we search for a cheap high. I guess what I am saying is that we do more damage to others than we realize. I have done more damage to others than I realize.

I want to apologize to anyone out there whom I have violated with words or actions. I am sorry for the pain I have caused you. I am sorry that my momentary selfishness caused lasting harm to you. And I hope that I can be forgiven and I hope that I can make restitution in any way possible.