Spirit On The Margins

Jim Dodge, City House’s Founder

These are excerpts from a sermon delivered by Jim Dodge, City House’s founder.

A few months ago I received an email from a clergy colleague asking if I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I replied back that no, I will still living in the darkness with no light at the end in sight.

My friend had heard that I had been dealing for a long time with a pressure related wound that just would not heal.  And even as I come before you today a part of that wound is still not healed after almost two years since it first started. 

Forty years ago I was serving in the Army in Vietnam.  Like many others I was exposed to the chemical called Agent Orange.  A few years after that exposure I was diagnosed with cancer, the treatment for which caused nerve damage, which then weakened the muscles in my legs.  That weakness became so significant over time that I have had to rely exclusively on a wheelchair for my mobility. 

One of the consequences of continual sitting is that one is prone to develop pressure wounds.  Without adequate feeling for a warning, these things happen.  As much as one tries to be careful with shifting weight and checking skin color, pressure ulcers occur and that’s just the way life is for those who use wheel chairs. 

The one that I am currently dealing with is in the sacrum area of my body, just above the tailbone.  After the surgeon finished the initial operation of removing the unhealthy tissue, I had an opening about 6 inches long, 4 inches wide and 1 inch deep.  I was absolutely devastated and sank into a darkness that shut down my life.  I was told that I had to lie in bed on my stomach or side.  I had to be in positions where no pressure was put on the wound.  My whole life came to a screeching halt as I found myself homebound with all my plans and activities cancelled. 

At first I was in denial about the extensiveness of this whole thing.  Give me a couple of months, I told myself, and I’ll be OK.  But healing didn’t happen by the timelines I set for myself. I would spiral down even more and often found myself in a deep abyss weeping uncontrollably. 

In the course of all of this I found myself arguing with God.  I would demand some action.  Do something.  Fix this.  You who raised Christ from the dead could certainly heal a wound.  I would remind God that people were praying for me.  Do you hear them, God?  Are you deaf? 

On and on this one-sided conversation would go.  When I finally calmed down enough to listen, I heard a quiet voice within me say, “Trust me, Jim.”   “Well, God”, I said, “ if that is indeed you speaking to me, could you give me some more details, like how long this will be, and could I see some evidence of some healing.”  All I heard back was “trust me”. 

Meanwhile the wound was not healing.  I needed more surgery.  The great medical device called a wound VAC was not closing it like everyone thought it would. I went through 40 treatments at the hyperbaric chamber hoping to get a better blood supply to the wound.  I changed doctors.  A skin graft was done.  Days became weeks that became months.  Will this ever end?  My faith and trust in God seemed strong one day and weak the next.  I was on an emotional roller coaster.  As much as I wanted to stay the course trusting God, I often found myself in the darkness. 

And so I continued to wait in the darkness believing that hope does not hurry and that the deepest truths are revealed in waiting.  Each day I would seek to surrender more and more to the grace and love of God.

I wanted to believe that everything has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to our life in God.

I tried to see each day as a gift and enjoy that day and not get caught up thinking about that future day when all would be well.   An unlikely friend helped me see that.  My friend’s name is Elwood.  He grew up in the projects of Chicago.  His whole family was drug addicts.  He came to Minneapolis, but continued drinking and using, engaged in criminal activity and was jailed. He was living in the darkness of addiction and crime.  After being released from prison he stumbled drunk into the Salvation Army in downtown Minneapolis.  There, when his life was at the bottom, he surrendered everything to God.  He started going to AA, got a minimum wage job and was determined that he was not going to slip back to his old life.  

I met him at his job site where I led a spirituality group.  He came week after week holding on to the hope that God would somehow take care of him.  He’s been sober 6 years now and proudly wears his medallion around his neck.  I meet with him periodically and see a man who is still living on the edge financially and whose life is still pretty fragile, but is always positive.  “How do you do it, Elwood?” I ask.  “I just trust God, Jim,” he replies.  And I’m humbled that this high school drop out living in poverty seems to have a deeper faith than this seminary trained pastor living a comfortable middle class life.

Elwood Williams’ Story

Over time my wound started healing bit by bit.  The doctor gave me permission to be up more and more.   The darkness had lifted a bit, but the cloud of uncertainty of when this will finally be over is still there.  

I’m coming to believe that no matter what my physical state might be, on the inside, within the depths of my soul, God is at work renewing me.  I’m coming to believe that I, like the Apostle Paul, am one of those who is weak, who is poor in spirit, aware of my own emptiness.  And, in admitting such a state of my life, I allow God to fill me with His love and grace and then paradoxically become one of the strong ones.  Paul, dealing with his own thorn in the flesh, realized that God’s grace was indeed sufficient for him.  And in his weakness became strong.   

As many of you know from a prior post, I have been engaged in my own grieving process about my decision to go half time at City House.  I have been revisiting one of my favorite books that has supported me in finding meaning in times of transition. Making Sense Of Life’s Changes - Transitions - by William Bridges.

“Every transition begins with an ending.  We have to let go of the old thing before we can pick up the new - not just outwardly, but inwardly, where we keep our connections to the people and places that act as definitions of who we are.”

“Endings are the first phase of transition. The second phase is a time of lostness and emptiness before life resumes an intelligible pattern and direction, while the third phase is that of beginning anew.”

Bridges makes the point that in our culture, we tend to skip over the inner work this all entails. We have this belief that if we just address the external circumstances that everything will be okay. But, the reality is that life is not this mechanistic. It is only when the inner life and outer circumstances are in alignment, when meaning is once again restored, that we can move forward with fullness of life once again.

It is an acknowledgement of the classic death and resurrection theme found in Christianity.

When I can embrace this, I find myself feeling much freer internally. I can wait and watch with anticipation for what God might be doing. I can resist the siren song of the culture to rush on with things, when just the opposite response is called for.

Hi everyone,

I made the decision last week that my position with City House needed to be reduced to half time, in light of some funding challenges. I am in the early stages of grieving and could use your prayers.

I don’t have much energy for keeping up the blog right now. I know that my energy to engage in this again will return in God’s time. So, until then, please consider looking at all of the past blog posts and make some comments. I am notified whenever someone makes a comment and I promise to reply to any comments you choose to make.

God bless.

Tom

Based on true events and filmed in Rwanda with genocide survivors as cast and crew, Beyond The Gates (a movie) tells their shared story of humanity in the most inhumane circumstances.

In April 1994, a secondary school in Kigali, Rwanda called the Ecole Technique Officielle (ETO) being used as a UN army base, became a refugee camp.  Belgian UN troops, school children, NGO workers and over 2,500 Tutsi citizens and their sympathizers took refuge against a raging genocide while the Hutu militia, clad with machetes, clamored outside the school gates.

Five days later, the UN troops withdrew from the school, taking the whites with them.  Within hours, almost all of the Rwandans were dead.

Beyond The Gates is about the choices we make when we are free to choose.  In the tragic circumstances of the Ecole Technique Officielle, would you have left with the UN troops on the fifth day or would you have stayed?

This is a powerful movie. One of the main characters, when faced with the choice of fleeing to safety or staying for an almost certain death, turns to another character and says, “You asked me where God is in the midst of all this suffering.  The answer is right here. I can’t ever remember feeling God’s love so profoundly. My heart and soul are here. I feel like if I left, I would never find them again.”

His decision and actions are so Christ like - very inspirational.

Beyond The Gates, the movie

“Can you drink the cup?  Can you empty it to the dregs?  Can you taste all the sorrows and joys?  Can you live your life to the full whatever it will bring?”

“But why should we drink this cup?  There is so much pain, so much anguish, so much violence. Why should we drink the cup?  Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to live normal lives with a minimum of pain and a maximum of pleasure?”

“In the midst of sorrows is consolation, in the midst of the darkness is light, in the midst of the despair is hope….The cup of sorrow, inconceivable as it seems, is also the cup of joy.  Only when we discover this in our life can we consider drinking it.”

Quotes from “Can You Drink the Cup?” by Henri Nouwen.

We are reading this book as a community of learners in the new City House program, “Will You Drink From This Cup?” The quotes came back to me over and over this week as I listened to people in both the mainstream and on the margins of society.

I heard the anguised story of a young man who lives with the terror of memories of his life growing up amidst violence.  He said, “People see my smiling all the time, and underneath I’m crying.” He has a lifetime of grieving the violent death of people close to him. He has nightmares about the violence done to him as a child and that he has pepetrated on others as an adult.

“The truth be told, I would rather die. Jesus, take me right now. It would be so much easier.”  He can not go back to his old life and the world into which he would like to move won’t accept him. He feels profoundly alone. And yet, something causes him to live with hope.  “I know that something is God,” he says.

In yet another conversation, a middle aged man begins tearing up as he tells me about the ongoing challenges with his rebellious teenage son. As I listen, more of Nenri Nouwen’s quotes come to mind.

“We didn’t choose our country, our parents, the color of our skin, our sexual orientation.  We didn’t even choose our character, intelligence, physical appearance, or mannerisms.  Sometimes we want to do every possible thing to change the circumstances of our life…A cry came out of our depth: “Why do I have to be this person?  I didn’t ask for it, and I don’t want it.”

“But as we gradually come to befriend our own reality, to look with compassion at our own sorrows and joys, and as we are able to discover the unique potential of our way of being in the world, we can move beyond our protest, put the cup of life to our lips and drink it, always carefully, but fully.”

Henri Nouwen Society website

This book is a great resource, filled with inspiring stories about the great saints, prophets, and witnesses of our times.  I highly recommend it.  Many of the stories are about great people that were in solidarity with the poor.

One such person is Mev Puelo. “She discovered a great talent for photography.  In trips to Brazil, El Salvador, Haiti, and elsewhere in the Third World, her photographs documented the life, struggles, and humanity of the poor. Her aim was to revere the human spirit and bridge the distance between persons.”

“She had wanted to give the poor a face, a voice. She always wanted to be identified with them…She became the poor she loved. She died on January 12, 1996 at the age of 32.”

I was really struck by this quote from her: “Jesus didn’t die to save us from suffering - he died to teach us how to suffer.”

The Book of Mev, by Mark Chmiel

Another great program by Krista Tippett on Speaking of Faith. 

“Dr. Remen is a clinical professor at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine and a leader in the growing field of integrative medicine, bringing together the best of modern knowledge both scientific and spiritual. We speak about her art of listening to patients and other physicians, the difference between curing and healing, and how our losses help us to live.”

Krista says, “The longer I do this work, the more aware I am of listening as a discipline and vocation — and something I do with and for all of you. This is a great privilege, and a gift.”

We, at City House resonate with this understanding. Our identity is grounded in being a listening presence among the poor. We experience it as gift, for the sake of the world.

“Rachel Naomi Remen would offer “prescriptions” that are somewhat countercultural. She would not have us neatly resolve to move beyond our failings and build on our successes. She would ask us to attend gently and patiently to the fullness of our lives — including and especially the losses large and small that define human experience.”

“Living well, Rachel Naomi Remen says, is not about eradicating our losses, wounds, and weaknesses. It is about understanding how they continually complete our identity and equip us to help others. She’s seen time and again how even deep pathologies and failures become the source of unsuspected strengths. She believes that however difficult our lives become or how fraught our choices, most of us never lose our capacity to be whole human beings. We may forget that potential in ourselves, yet it can reappear full-blown in times of crisis.”

“The expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss daily and not be touched by it is as unrealistic as expecting to be able to walk through water without getting wet. This sort of denial is no small matter. The way we deal with loss shapes our capacity to be present to life more than anything else. The way we protect ourselves from loss may be the way in which we distance ourselves from life… We burn out not because we don’t care but because we don’t grieve. We burn out because we’ve allowed our hearts to become so filled with loss that we have no room left to care.”

I believe that there is not only great spiritual wisdom here in how to deal with pain and suffering, but it captures the way in which we are in solidarity with the poor. It is universally human to experience pain and suffering, regardless of class. If we open ourselves, it becomes our crucible leading to a deeper spiritual life and character development.

 

Then Shall Your Light Rise

 “Living as we do in a world that suffers so much, two opposing possibilities can easily tempt us: either to turn our backs and live oblivious to the pain or to allow the pain to overwhelm us and despair to take up residence in our hearts. The truly faithful option is to face the pain and live joyfully in the midst of it. Those who suffer most remind us of how tragic and arrogant it would be for us to lose hope on behalf of people who have not lost theirs. They are teachers of joy.”

Joyce Hollyday

I watched the movie, The Secret, last night.  www.thesecret.tv  I have been hearing about it for months. It talks about the “Law of Attraction” - that we attract in life what we think  and feel about internally. At City House, we often make the case that none of us, suburban or poor, can take advantage of our resources unless we experience an internal transformation first. My experience tells me there is some truth in this law.

My objection is that it lacks the dialectic. It seems to ignore the issue of human limitation and weakness. Carried to an extreme, it leads to blaming the victim, or telling a poverty stricken child in Bangladesh that if they just thought and felt differently about their situation, they wouldn’t be in poverty.

One of my favorite authors, Rev Barbara Brown Taylor, www.barbarabrowntaylor.com says it quite eloquently. Our mind boggling technology and national wealth have allowed us to relieve so much suffering that we have begun to believe it should not exist at all. Where it persists, we work hard for awhile.  We employ experts, allocate resources.  We bring all our own best values to bear and are shocked that they are not welcomed. Then to tell you the truth, most of us withdraw, walling ourselves off from those who cannot be fixed and suggesting in one way or another that it is their own damned fault.  To help us feel safe from what has heppened to them, we conform to an unwritten code - live in the right neighborhood, eat the right food, make good investments, be a good person - and tragedy, like a tornado, should skip right over you.   Teaching Sermons on Suffering; God In Pain - page 121. 

While the addicts and criminals I encounter are certainly at least partially responsible for their situation, somewhere between a third and a half are mentally ill. Somewhere between a third and a half are multiple generational poverty. Their “stinking thinking”, as many of them will acknowledge has contributed to their life situation. But there is a lot about which “they” are not in control, no matter how they think or feel about it.

 Your thoughts?