Observer vs. Participant

This week a friend of mine came to town to visit, so we decided to head down to one of the PIFA events at the Kimmel Center. It was such an incredibly beautiful day. We walked by countless tulips, hyacinths, and daisies, but best of all the pear and cherry trees were all in bloom. The cherry trees are starting to lose their petals and are making these piles of pink all over the sidewalks. As we were walking we saw a bunch of teens skateboarding and picking up these piles of pink petals and throwing them at each other like snowballs. There were also several of the once abandoned and overgrown lots that have been reclaimed by nonprofits in the area. Those once trash filled lots are now mowed and filled with community gardens. It was all a beautiful picture of new life and I'll be honest in saying it came as a shock. I didn't even realize it was happening, but I think at some point in the last few months I'd lost some hope. It was as if all of the life happening around me, and all of the reclaimed spaces was a much-needed reminder that God is always in the process of redeeming his people and his cities regardless of what I'm up to.

I pondered this for a while, while I went to the storytelling event with my friend. Almost every story shared had to do with a time when that person felt excluded from a group that they felt that they should be included in. Walking home from the theater we walked down Broad Street, or “The Avenue of the Arts.” It's a beautiful place to be at night because Just in front of you is City Hall and the tall buildings on either side of the street are lighted with colored lights that shine upwards and illuminate the outside of the whole building. It's like walking down a colorful corridor that is so full of life. I remember driving down Broad Street as a kid and loving it. I couldn't stop looking out the windows and wondering what was happening on those lively streets. So then it dawned on me, I'm not looking at Philly from behind the windows of a car anymore. This is my home now and I get to participate in all that's happening on the busy streets. Not only do I get to participate, I am in the process of participating.

So then I thought about this; how often do we exclude ourselves? How many times to we look at a group of people and think of all the reasons why they are not like us, or why we don't fit in with them, when really we're already part of "them?" I think far to often it is easy to observe and forget that we are currently playing a role whether we are aware of it or not. My actions, everything I do or say, as an impact on the way that others will respond around me. I participated in an acting seminar once as a middle school student and one of the tidbits that stuck with me was that acting is only 10% action and 90% reaction, just like life. My environment has an impact on me, but I also have an impact on my environment. It's made me take a more serious look at myself and ask the question, how often am I considering myself an observer and not seeing myself as the participant that I am? Another thing that stood out to me is that I am a participant whether I am conscious of it or not and whether I'm pleased with my participation. It's easy for me to start a new initiative or go out and serve in the city and see the ways that I am participating, but what do I do with the times when I'm just walking down the street, or just sitting on my porch?

I guess I have to admit that I'm not too proud of my participation grade lately. I let my health take me out of the picture. I've let life happen around me without taking part in a meaningful way. I know that God hasn't called me to do much, but he's definitely called me to prayer. He's definitely called me to love my neighbors and called me to seek Him in this city. I've been so self focused that I haven't done much of anything. As you pray for Philly this week it would be great if you could pray against discouragement, but also give thanks for the things that God is already doing here. A number of groups are actively trying to reclaim abandoned city space for good. It's encouraging to see the ways that so many people are moving to the city with hope for restoration whether they are Christians or not. That vision has encouraged me and pulled me out of my funk, so I know it's possible that hope is happening for others as well.

Perseverance

I hate to sound all woe-is-me in this post, but I’ve been thinking a lot about suffering lately. In case you don’t know anything about my story, let me fill you in a little bit. The summer after I graduated from high school I started struggling with stomach problems (pain, nausea, vomiting, etc.). I struggled with these things for 8 years and they got increasingly worse until finally, last year (February 1, 2010) I had a surgery where they happened to find the problem by chance, fix it, and told me I would never be sick again. That probably counts as the happiest moment of my life and it led to a lot of rejoicing and praising Jesus.

Now, one year later, I’m back to struggling with the same symptoms. There have been more Emergency Room visits, more medication, more doctors telling me they don’t know what to do for me. I know that there are worse things and that everything else in my life is really good almost all of the time, but I’ve had a hard time in these last few weeks not being depressed and really really angry. The question that pervades is always the why. Why did this happen, and why did I need a year to be healthy just to go back to being sick? In a way it feels like it would have been easier to just be sick straight through.

So like I said, I’ve been thinking a lot about suffering and this is what I’ve come up with:

1) God does not see things the way that we see things. I talked about this in an earlier post, but I found this great Anne Lamott quote in the mean time. “…I remembered the seasonal showers in the desert, how potholes in the rocks fill up with rain. When you look later, there are already frogs in the water, the brine shrimp reproducing, like commas doing the Macarena; and it seems, but only seems, that you went from parched to overflow in the blink of an eye.”

2) I’m beginning to think that God’s ideal place for us is when we are pushed to the very limit of ourselves. I know for me that being sick and not being able to do much of anything on my own strength has forced me to look hard at my brokenness. It’s an ugly sight, and often more than I can bare, but I know that at the very end of me I find Christ, which is more beautiful than all of my uglies and everyone else’s uglies put together. There is this great Rumi poem called “The Root of the Root of Your Self” and one of the stanzas goes like this: “Don’t go away, come near./ Don’t be faithless, be faithful./ Find the antidote in the venom./ Come, return to the root of the root of your Self.”

The other thing about being pushed to your very limit is that you are no longer looking up and forward with a skip and a whistle, instead you look down at your feet and push hard to take the next step. The most major change I remember about going from sick to healthy was that my perspective totally changed and for the first time in years I was able to think long-term and set long-term goals. I was terrified to go back to the place where I could only see as far as tomorrow, but here I am. One thing I realized is that I think that being shortsighted is exactly where God intends me to be. When I’m looking down, I see an awful lot of flowers.

3) The last thing that I’m learning is about perseverance. I don’t know how everyone else responds to struggle, but my favorite defense is to numb out. If I’m ignoring the problem and pretending it’s not there, it may not go away, but at least there is some temporary relief. I’ve found this to be incredibly unhealthy. What I’ve learned is that when I’m stretched to my absolute end and I’m ready to give up and numb out, the Lord calls me to just keep my eyes on him for a little longer and he gives me (and you) lots of promises that he will be faithful to that. The best part about this is that I don’t have to do anything besides keep my eyes in the Lord’s direction. Let me point out that I am still incredibly bad at this, but at least I’ve figured out what I’m supposed to do. I feel like knowing that has brought a lot more meaning to this Roman’s passage for me:

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into the grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Now only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” Romans 5: 1-6

Suffering produces perseverance because at some point we have to learn to keep looking toward Christ, and if we don’t, we’ve already lost. The best part is that God promises to be faithful and that if we keep looking, he’ll rescue us…“at just the right time.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Israelites being stuck in the dessert and sinning again at every turn. I’ve become incredibly aware that I would do the same in that circumstance. When I was younger I would have liked to think that I would have chosen better, but the reality of life has showed me that I never choose better. What I’ve also learned though is that it’s in the struggle that we find Christ. The Israelites may have sinned to the point that they didn’t even get to glimpse the Promised Land, but I guarantee that they saw more of God in the clouds of fire, the parting of the sea, and the manna from heaven, than their descendants found in really large grapes.

As I think through this God-prompted perspective change, I’m wondering a lot about what that means for my time in Philly. I think my expectation was (and still is) that God called me here to do something that will produce results. I don’t know if that means that I will ever see results or even that I will do anything productive here. I’ve been wondering if God has just called me and others to walk in Philly through this part of the struggle, because through struggling we will eventually find hope for this place. Please pray for my city and Pray that God’s will be done here and that his glory be revealed here.