Story in the Skin: Skin's Altar #1

Barbara Brown Taylor has lifted a huge blind spot for me; at least, if I was not blind to this before, I did not know it:  “Each of us has a unique body ‘signature,’ which consists not only of our distinctive physical characteristics but also of our posture, our gait, our way of using our hands.”

 I have been raptly seeking the audible story so far in Los Angeles.  I had forgotten the story told in our skin—eyes that tell of power or fear, hands that tell of cheer or gloom, shoulders that tell of confidence or of time spent in a deep shadow.

 Already I am remembering things I did not notice at the time. A Homegirl Café host, carrying a story of fractured and missing family, who looked me in the eye the whole time she told her story.  Her gaze was one of power, not defiance but acceptance and embrace.  Or the server who smiled brighter when I asked her name.  She did not fear me, a stranger; she was grateful to be known, which I would not have known had she not smiled.

 To Taylor, “the daily practice of incarnation” is “being in the body with full confidence that God speaks the language of the flesh.”  I think my proper response to this is wonder.  As much as I talk an emphasis of Christ’s humanity, do I look for it around me?  If I did, I think I might be awe-struck more often than I am.

 Because “God loves the bodies of hungry children and indentured women along with the bodies of sleek athletes and cigar-smoking tycoons.”  Therefore, just like any voice can carry the sound and power of The Voice, so can all of our bodies embody the Word Made Flesh.  Our bodies are going to tell a story anyway; why not tell the one that includes, heals, and redeems all stories?

Sourdough Toast & Guardian Angels

Young men are outside the Bakery again, washing the floor-to-roof windows.  Perhaps they help the patrons eating inside see the world more clearly.

I sit in a corner booth of the Homegirl Cafe for brunch, the gracious Lampea bringing me coffee and mango agua fresca.  Mango is my favorite fruit; this drink has become my new favorite refreshment.  This morning I see, from the specialty coffee to the pork chorizo and the most exquisite sourdough toast  that I have ever eaten, that the Homeboys and Homegirls practice excellence in their work.

[The Bakery and Cafe food is supplemented by Homeboy Industries' own garden.  Check out this vid by another L.A. group working on gardens all over the city: http://www.ted.com/talks/ron_finley_a_guerilla_gardener_in_south_central_la.html? ]

"Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ." Colossians 3.23-4

When I ask Lampea her name, and if I will be in the way if I study, she smiles a bit bigger.  There is light in her smile.

[Any names mentioned in this blog have been changed to protect confidentiality.]

I eat steadily, read some, and when business picks up I pack my things and move to a counter in the Bakery.  I assume my nourishment for the day there is done.

Then a Stranger speaks to me: "Did you just move from one place to another?"

"Yes, in case someone needed my table."

"Well that was a very nice thing you did."  The Stranger, a woman working for the Cafe, then clears a table on the side which has a plug near it, so that I might continue to use my computer.  Her kindness sparked my courage to talk with her.

Though I hoped for it, I did not anticipate how I would be fed by more than food that morning.

I hear a story from this stranger of heartbreak, of a distant family, of a kidnapped son.  Of prison terms and felony and being lost.  But the end of the story, I find, changes the rest of it.  Because the end of her story—really, the end as far as she has discovered—is one in which she has found herself.

"I had to learn to forgive myself."

In working with her case manager, if she was really serious about changing, she needed to have her gang tattoos removed.  So she was sent to Homeboy.  The tattoos on her wrists are nearly gone, and the ones on her fingers invisible, after 11 sessions.  It's a long process to remove the pieces of her old life.

"It's not about what you do right; it's about what you do wrong and are willing to change."

She found people who were like her at Homeboy.  She credits Homeboy, and the people there, for all of the changes, along with her "guardian angels" (literal angels) who she feels like she has "worn out" in looking out for her.  She credits Homeboy's capacity to "never give up on people."

"I have seen people do some stupid shit, they go to jail, then Homeboy hires them right back."

Anyone hired by Homeboy must go through an 18-month program which includes work and classes (AA, Narcotics Anonymous, Fatherhood or Women Empowerment classes, etc.), must be drug tested regularly, must meet with case managers and therapists, and this Stranger-turned-Friend says the whole process is one in which healing, belonging, and empowerment to stand and be responsible are all offered, over and over—if only the Homeboys and Homegirls take them.

Which they have been doing near a quarter-century.  And my newest Friend, she has seen her family come closer recently through tragedy.  She has found a marriage with someone who cares for her as she needs.

Though this week held disappointment for my summer at first, this day has changed my tone entirely.  All because a woman of redeemed life chose to seek out and be kind to a stranger like me.

[Another wonderful video recently shared by a friend of mine carries a similar-yet-unique story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbMwcCvOqPM ]

Disappointment, Yet Reverence

 I finally arrived in Los Angeles yesterday, and today went by Homeboy Industries to let them know I had arrived and was excited to begin.  The short version of the story is that they were not ready for me, and the coordinator will not be able to meet with me to figure out a definite spot in which to work until mid-June.

 Already the words of François Fenelon—that "the true Christian, whatever the misfortunes which Providence heaps upon him, wants whatever comes and does not wish for anything which he or she does not have"—are testing me.  I will be on-site at Homeboy, sitting, watching, talking, taking notes, and the like, but without a specific job I can imagine 3 weeks here will feel like a waste.  If I am to “want whatever comes,” then perhaps Barbara Brown Taylor’s words on reverence will help me.

 “Reverence is the recognition of something greater than the self—something that is beyond human creation or control, that transcends full human understanding.”

 I will have to remember that my coming out to Los Angeles this summer is bigger than me.  It is greater than my creating; it is not in my control.  Already this thought has dropped my level of agitation. 

 "God certainly meets those criteria, but so do birth, death, sex, nature, truth, justice, and wisdom."

 I intend to spend these first weeks practicing reverence in this place.  When I am eating in the Café, when I am reading in the Bakery, when I am sitting in the Headquarters, I will struggle to prayerfully hold the people who walk by me in the reverence that the imago Dei in all peoples deserves.

 Too, I hope that this type of mindset will help me to see the habitus of community at Homeboy more clearly.  The life that has grown here has been in the works for 25 years.  It is a healthy community, vibrant, which means to me that the mysterious complexity of the Kingdom of Heaven has been revealed here; if I fail in this reverence, I might be one to whom Jesus will say, “The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it… In fact, the kingdom of God is among you!” (Luke 17.22, 21).

 I pray that I might give reverence this summer to the Kingdom of God among us here at Homeboy.

Due to a Rush of Life

In my last post, I spoke a bit about the idea of living in holiness, that in fact holiness is all around (and within) us and we are meant to draw it out.  I just finished reading C. S. Lewis' "Perelandra," the second book of his very Christian "space trilogy," and was brought back to what is actually happening when I think of walking in holiness.

I will leave all spoilers aside and focus on one chat.  A Human, named Ransom, is explaining what it means to obey God [whom the Lady to whom Ransom is talking calls "Maleldil"], and the Lady responds thus:  "Oh how well I see it! We cannot walk out of Maleldil's [God's] will: but He has given us a way to walk out of our will."  This way of holiness to which my mind gravitates, this path of wisdom by which I see all Creation ordered (and all new life in the Kingdom brought forth), is to walk out of my will—rather, to walk my will into God's.

And to do this, I must choose to do it every day.  That way of life only actually brings life, in fact has life of its own, in so far as I have habitualized it.  This week I have begun reading some excerpts of G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy as a devotional, and this morning I ran across this: "The variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death."  Without a death of some kind, without an ending or stoppage, humans will habitually continue along the path on which they have been walking; therefore, for a new habit to have life in me, something in me must die.

Creating habits is what humans do; it is not derived from a lack of authentic vitality, but rather an overabundance.  "It might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising.  His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life... Perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony," much like a child seems to be, whereas human grown-ups are not.

To live in the habits which draw out holiness is to live a kind of magical life.  It is to be in harmony with the sun which always rejoices in rising each day, with the God who so loves even these little things that God says, "Do it again!"  Chesterton confesses, "In short, I had always believed that the world involved magic: now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician."

Today, I hope to live out a day that God would see and say, "Do it again!"  Today, I hope to live in the magic inherent in what God is doing all the time, a magic which I do not see to be much different from holiness.

An Altar in the World: Begins My Readings & Reflections on My Summer Volunteership

"The tender flesh itself

will be found one day

—quite surprisingly—

to be capable of receiving,

and yes, full capable of embracing

the searing energies of God.

Go figure. Fear not.

For even at its beginning

the humble clay received

God's art, whereby

one part became the eye,

another the ear,

and yet another this impetuous hand.

Therefore, the flesh

is not to be excluded

from the wisdom and the power

that now and ever animates

all things. His life-giving

agency is made perfect,

we are told, in weakness—

made perfect in the flesh."

—St. Irenaeus (2nd century; trans. Scott Cairns)

As I begin work on my field journals of reflections and observations, preparing to arrive in Los Angeles next week, I read the beginning of Barbara Brown Taylor's An Altar in the World, of which the above poem is its epigraph.

She has given me a most helpful framework for making the mundane sacred in her Introduction:  "Whoever you are, you are human.  Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.  So welcome to your own priesthood, practiced at the altar of your own life.  The good news is that you have everything you need to begin."

I have everything I need to educe what is holy around me because holiness—in which I include "wisdom of God" because the way of wisdom is often invoked as the path to holiness in God—is around me in all Creation (Ps 8.3-4; Prov 3.19; Wis 7.22, 8.6, 14.2).  I have everything I need because I myself have a holiness within me, which is part of God's grace (i.e. "gift") given to all humanity (Gen 1.26-7, 2.7; Eph. 3.7-12; Ps 8.5).  To bring forth the holiness of God within human beings and within creation is in fact the charge given to all who follow the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Ps 8.6-8; Eph 2.10, 3.10-12)—summed up by Christ's extension of the Law (Matt 5.43-8, 25.34-46).

[*Note:  I am most definitely proof-texting here, not a valid way of making a point from the Bible at all.  But Psalm 8, Matthew and Ephesians are all texts with which I have wrestled strongly and so intend to expand on them later.]

To bring out the holy in a present moment is to awaken to God all over.  Humans are invited to do so often, yet just as often Christians in our present society are distracted by their own present agenda; the trick is to act like one of the "royal priesthood" (1 Ptr 2.5-9; cf. Ex 19.5-6, Rev 5.10) and give honor to the sacred mundane.  

Taylor uses Jacob's dream (Gen 28.10-22) to make her point:  "Jacob's nowhere, about which he knew nothing, turned out to be the House of God.  Even though his family had imploded, even though he had made his brother angry enough to kill him, even though he was a scoundrel from the word go—God decided to visit Jacob right where he was... The vision showed Jacob something he did not know.  he slept in the House of God.  He woke at the gate of heaven.  None of this was his doing.  The only thing he did right was to see where he was and say so.  Then he turned his pillow into an altar before he set off, praising the God who had come to him where he was."

If anyone wishes to grow closer to God, holiness is the way—or, rather, holiness is an inherent component.  The first step of this path is recognition that this holiness comes from the grace of God, before and through all creation; the second is naming it and honoring it as we go about our lives.  By this, hearts are kindled; by this, lives are changed; by this, all creation is redeemed.

I resolve to hold this idea before me as i work in the midst of Los Angeles—Chinatown and Koreatown especially, with other nearby neighborhoods also coming to Homeboy—so that I can better honor those whom I see and nurture any dormant seeds, kindle any dormant flames, of the holiness of God all over.