Spirit On The Margins

On January 20, the church celebrates the life of Alessandro Valignano, a Jesuit Missionary (1539 - 1606). 

The spread of Christianity in the Americas accompanied a policy of colonial conquest. But, in Japan and China, the Jesuits insisted on a different approach. This involved distinguishing Christianity from any hint of colonial interest and even from European culture.  Instead the Jesuits sought as far as possible to root the gospel in the culture and mentality of their hosts.  Alessandro believed it was essential that the church assimilate itself to Japenese and Chinese culture.

This is exactly the approach we use at City House, only we go a step further. Not only do we meet persons on the margins where they are and not where we want them to be, we also let go of any agenda about religion.  We believe that God is already at work in each person we encounter. We just support people in deepening that awareness. They already have everything that they need.

But even back in the 1500s, Alessandro was living out the values of assimilation that we honor in our work.

Wikipedia Alessandro Valignano

We held the orientation session for the “Will You Drink From This Cup?” program last Tuesday night. What a powerful group of people that was assembled. Learners were passionate about forming friendships with persons on the margins of society, and allowing God to form and shape them in those relationships.

Those of us in the middle class want to be respectful of persons who find themselves on the margins.  We think that we shouldn’t refer to “the poor” as “poor,” when they are in our presence, as if that would be insulting to them.

I have had the experience of speaking to middle class groups and having a person who finds themselves in poverty with me. I will refer to our work with “the poor” in front of them. I ask them afterwards if that is respectful, and they always say, “Yes, that is what I am. I am poor.” 

At this orientation session, learners were concerned about this subject. As one of our faculty members said, “They already know they are poor.” Then we all laughed at our quirky little insecurities.

After a potential violent confrontation between two participants in a spirituality group I was leading (see posting entitled, ”Welcoming Prayer”), I came back the next week with some thinking from a book entitled, Jesus and Nonviolence, A Third Way, by Walter Wink.  Yet once again, it is a very evocative book.

I read this quote from scripture to the group. (everyone present was Christian)

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for any eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evil-doer.  But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.” (Matthew 5:38-41)

Walter Wink goes on to say “there are three general responses to evil: passivity, violent opposition, and militant non-violence articulated by Jesus himself….Jesus abhors both passivity and violence as responses to evil.”

“Why then does he counsel these already humiliated people to turn the other cheek? Because this action robs the oppressor of the power to humiliate.  The person who turns the other cheek is saying, in effect, ‘Try again.  Your first blow failed to achieve its intended effect.  I deny you the power to humiliate me.  I am a human being just like you. Your status does not alter that fact. You cannot demean me.”

“Then the oppressor has been forced, against his will, to regard this subordinate as an equal human being.  The powerful person has been stripped of his power to dehumanize the other.”

“Why then does Jesus counsel them to give over their inner garment (their cloak) as well?  This would mean stripping off all their clothing and marching out of court stark naked!”

“Under the apartheid regime in South Africa, the authorities had for a long time sought a way to destroy a particular shantytown, without success.  Then one day, after most of the men and women had left for work, the army arrived.  The soldiers announced that the few women there had five minutes to gather their things and then the bulldozers would commence to work. The women, perhaps sensing the prudery of the farm boys who largely made up the army, stood in front of the bulldozers and stripped off all their clothes. The army fled.”

“Why would Jesus advise them to walk the second mile?  Imagine then the soldier’s suprise when, at the next mile marker, he reluctantly reaches to assume his pack and say, ‘Oh, let me carry it another mile.’ Normally he has to coerce his kinsmen to carry his pack, and now you do it cheerfully and will not stop!  You have taken back the power of choice. The soldier is thrown off balance by being deprived of the predictability of your response.”

So, the group of participants talked about it that night. It was hard for them to see. But, I couldn’t blame them. Our society doesn’t operate this way. To them, this seemed really foreign thinking, just as it does to the rest of us.

We brought it down to a practical level. One of them brought up a recent incident on a bus, where someone kept staring at him, as if trying to provoke a fight, and then followed him off the bus trying to taunt him.  Eventually, the bus driver called police.  With some creativity, we came up with the idea that he could have disarmed this individual with humor. He could have said, “I apologize, I must really look ugly to you for you to stare at me like that. I will try to do a better job next time of looking nicer before getting on the bus.” We all laughed but also agreed that it might have made for a different ending than a call to the police.

I had a delightful meeting this week with Ben McEachern, Senior Pastor at Northridge Fellowship Church in Rogers Minnesota. Along with the pastoral team at Church of the Open Door they are the most open evangelical pastors I have met.  I’m sure there are many more that I just have not yet had the chance to meet.

Northridge Fellowship

In my opinion, the media tends to portray all Christians as members of the Christian right and all members of the Christian right as evangelicals. Hence, all Christians must be evangelical. Then the media has tended to go on to portray people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as representative of all evangelicals, hence representative of all Christians.

What has been so refreshing to me is meeting and listening to some very faithful and bright evangelical pastors like Ben, who are clear about what they believe and not afraid to say it, but who are open to listening with respect to others with differing theologies and points of view.

Pastor McEachern described in depth his passion for overseas mission work with which he has been personally engaged.  He talked with confidence about his congregation’s readiness for reaching out to the poor in the Roger’s area.  I could hear the yearning in his voice as he described his hope for that to happen soon.

We discussed the difficulty of reaching out to the poor - the tendency for all of us to start out with the attitude that “we” are going to help “them” that need us. It is natural and quite human.  But, it is a place of power and privilege from which we come which turns off the poor and creates mistrust.

We talked about the particular challenge of being evangelical in reaching out to the poor. Within that tradition, the focus is on bringing souls to Christ.  It can create a challenge to building trust with the poor when they sense that one has an agenda like this. And yet, one has to be true to one’s faith tradition.

We both acknowledged the need for humilty when congregations reach out to the poor.  One must go to them before expecting the poor to come to us.  And, if one goes in with the attitude that this is a child of God and that in some ways they too are a gift to us, it goes a long ways towards breaking down those barriers of mistrust.

I like Ben a lot. I hope God has something in mind for his congregation and City House to work on together.

Our volunteers often lead retreats with City House program participants. One of the ways of engaging people spiritually is through art. Inviting individuals to make a collage, for example, supports one in making meaning out of life, whether rich or poor. Art has a way of speaking to and expressing the soul in ways that words sometimes can not.

Last Sunday, Krista Tippett’s program on Minnesota Public Radio aired a story about The Rural Studio. It is a program in western Alabama for student architects to transform dilapidated structures into “shelters for the soul.”  

Mason’s Bend Shelters 

This short video clip stunningly portrays the spiritual importance of beauty in all of our lives.  In the context of the intense poverty portrayed here, architecture is used as social art with raw and basic materials.  “These are very spiritual people and they needed a place to worship,” says one student architect.  “I go to church a lot. I wanted a place to be alone with God and pray”, says a resident whose home was transformed.

The Wednesday night group that I lead is a permanent sober housing program where all residents have been homeless. I like to start each session with an opening meditation that is generically spiritual so that the group is inclusive of all faith traditions. One of my favorite sources is Today’s Gift, a daily e-mail I receive from Hazelden, well known for its chemical dependency treatment programs.  

Thought for the Day

I always end up rewriting parts of the reading though. They are from books written by middle and upper class people in recovery. While the participants in the group totally resonate with the ideas, they often will not understand the language.

So, weekly I am reminded about the breakthrough work of Ruby Payne, PhD. in Bridges Out of Poverty.  Books are written in what she calls a “formal register of language.”  That is the standard sentence syntax and word choice of work and school. It has complete sentences and specific word choice. 

Bridges Out of Poverty 

Persons in poverty use a “casual register of language.”  It is like the language between friends and is characterized by a 400 - 800 word vocabulary. Word choice is general and not specific. Conversation is dependent upon non-verbal assists. Sentence syntax is often incomplete.

I chuckle as I read this. I can’t tell you the number of sessions I have been in where the participants (persons that are poor) are in conversation with each other and I don’t have a clue what they are saying. Their non verbal cues and short hand language can leave me mystified, but they are all laughing at their insider jokes.

Of course I have also come to understand that this is their way of having fun with me. They love the fact that they know what is going on and I don’t. When I point that out to them, they start laughing and using their insider language all over again. I always feel honored by their trust when they begin to translate for me.

What have you learned about dealing with this “register of language” difference?

A City House volunteer that works with a group of men in a chemical dependency treatment program recalled the following discussion. In that group, the men take turns leading.  Whoever was leading that night noted that he was someone who had a lot of drama in his life. In fact, he said, “I think I am as addicted to drama as I am to drugs.”  If drama in his life was missing, he created some to “get his fix”.

RS Eden 

 He went on to say, “But I have discovered a new way to get high without the drugs and without the drama. Now, giving to someone else gives me the same feeling.” The light bulbs in the rest of the guys in the room went on. They all shook their heads with vigor that this was true for them as well.

Anyone else heard constructive ideas about replacing an addict’s high?

A fascinating conversation we are having at City House is how to describe what we do. Some people are bothered by references to “the poor” on our blog masthead. It sounds like we are referring to persons with disadvantages as “less than”.  We are actually trying to make the opposite point. That is, we think we need “the poor” more than they need us. It’s just that when we turn toward the middle class world of which we are a part, “we” would never understand what it is that City House does without describing the “them” that we serve. It may be a sad state of affairs, but it is the truth.

We were in a meeting with one of our social service agency partners the other day. We were talking about new approaches to doing retreats for their residents. Not many women had been signing up and those that did hadn’t been showing up.

 The program manager was reminding us about the “present moment” nature of those we serve.  Persons in poverty find themselves living in survival mode.  The current crisis, and there are lots of them, gets their full attention.  Addicts in recovery are into instant gratification.  Those who come from multi-generational poverty never learned our middle class rules about being on time.

I remember when we first started our work at City House. It was challenging to get used to this tendency. If our middle / upper class rules are violated, we tend to get angry and judgmental. It feels disrespectful. After all, we are here to “help them.” How dare they.

A tip for you. You need to let it go. If you truly want to help and if you truly want to open yourself to being transformed by “them”, then you just need to let it go. Forget your mother’s judgmental voice in the background telling you to be on time.

Thoughts?