Trying to follow

Shane Claiborne shares a beautiful picture of loving sacrifice by Mother Teresa in his book, Irresistible Revolution:

People often ask me what Mother Teresa was like. … She was short, wrinkled, and precious, maybe even a little ornery, like a beautiful, wise old granny. But there is one thing I will never forget - her feet. Her feet were deformed. Each morning in Mass, I would stare at them. I wondered if she had contracted leprosy. But I wasn’t going to ask, of course. “Hey Mother, what’s wrong with your feet? ” One day a sister said to us, “have you noticed her feet?” We nodded, curious. She said, “Her feet are deformed because we get just enough donated shoes for everyone, and Mother does not want anyone to get stuck with the worst pair, so she digs through and finds them. And years of doing that have deformed her feet.” Years of loving her neighbor as herself deformed her feet. -pg. 168

It’s an awe-inspiring story, certainly not something to scoff at. It speaks of sacrifice out of genuine love for others. Imagine for a moment that there was more to that story… You see, the Mother Teresa’s digging through the shoe bin for proper shoes is a noble act, she actually has many other pairs of shoes in her closet as well. The sandal’s that were being referred to in this story were her ‘charity shoes’ she wore them to appear more sacrificial and ‘like the people’ when she was doing charity work. However, when she attended fancy dinners she had a nice pair of high heels (she was a short lady you know). When she traveled around on speaking campaigns she had a good pair of running shoes and a pair of Birkenstocks. Oh, and meeting folks like the Queen or president’s required other shoes that matched her attire for the occasion. Does this diminish the awe you feel at Mother Teresa’s sacrifice? Before, you get to worried and shocked, I completely made up that addition!

Bear with me for a moment while I try to explain what that illustrated. But first, a picture of my shoes:

I didn’t pull these out of the bottom of a bin of donated shoes, I actually purchased them new and have worn them since. I really enjoy my shoes, they’ve served me well and I hope they will continue to. Before you think I’m trying to be all self-righteous let me explain: These are not my only shoes. I like wearing these shoes, but on many occasions I do not. I don’t wear these shoes to work. I didn’t wear them at the wedding I was in this summer. I leave them at home when we are meeting new people or attending a ‘formal’ event. It’s not just about other people either, I have a different pair of shoes to run and bike in, another pair for playing soccer and still another for hiking. Not that self-righteous anymore. Bored from hearing about shoes yet?

You see, I want to wear Mother Teresa’s shoes. Not literally, but in the sense of the sacrifice that she made by choosing to live a life in such a way that she only had enough for what she needed. Mother Teresa had one pair of shoes, and they seriously messed up her feet. I imagine those are the shoes she met the Queen in, and I don’t think the president scoffed at her when she chose to wear them. Why is it that we recognize and our touched by the sacrifice of Mother Teresa that we here about in a book, but we’d scoff or think it odd if I showed up for a formal dinner with holes in my sneakers? It wouldn’t be very long I think before someone, a co-worker, family member or friend offered me a pair of shoes to replace the ones I have. Few people look at the guy with holes in his shoes and think of it is awe inspiring sacrifice as we do Mother Teresa.

Another thought provoking piece from Adbusters. This is a painting from one of the pages of the recent issues.

Disclaimers from me: I in no way want to encourage or suggest that George Bush should be waterboarded. I think it is an inhumane and gruesome torture practice. Nor do I think Bush’s support of, involvement in or encouragement of torture in any way makes him deserving of equal treatment.

I simply think the painting is a profoundly thought-provoking piece.

I’ve been emailing with a friend concerning politics and this question came up:

“I have never understood why some people want the government to provide services that the Church is supposed to be doing. For example, isn’t is our job as Christians to take care of the poor?”

(below is part of my response)

“Here’s a story related to your question about Christians taking care of the poor.
When I lived in Nashville, I had opportunities to be involved with the homeless in the city. I did that primarily three different ways.
1) I worked with an incredible group of people called Food Not Bombs. It was a group of people who gathered together ever Sunday and prepared a large meal, went to the Veteran’s memorial in downtown Nashville and feed and ate lunch with about 40-50 homeless every week. The group of people where not Christian at all, but rather a rag-tag bunch of folks who shared an ‘anarchist’ philosophy (topic for another time, but trust me, it’s not bad). They were wonderful, caring, consistent and loving people.

2) The church we attended did not have any consistent ‘ministries’ during the time we were there. The general ‘ethos’ of the community was to go out to eat somewhere every Sunday afternoon after church. I encouraged, asked and pleaded with people to join me in hanging out and feeding the homeless in lieu of or in addition to eating out, no one ever came. No one. I encouraged and pleaded with the pastor to invite a homeless advocate to come and speak at sunday service or right after about the homeless, to educate and inform and help us learn what we could do to help, he never let us do that. And it’s not that our church was full of bad people. They where nice wonderful and caring people. Individually I think they probably did a lot of neat things to care for others. There was a homeless guy who started coming to our church for a while and they treated him with the utmost respect. But, if you asked me if the ‘church’ collectively did things to care for the poor I would say no.

3) I worked with a group called Nashville Homeless Power Project. They are an incredible organization of homeless and formerly homeless individuals advocating, mostly on a political level, for dignity, housing and human rights for the homeless. They practiced civil disobedience at times to make their voice heard, took mayoral candidates on an ‘urban plunge’ to experience a glimpse of what homelessness was like, they advocated for more humane laws to keep homeless out of prisons simply because they had no where to go, and a lot more. I loved working with them, but they where quite political, and though many were Christian and there was a spiritual (primarily Christian) element to many of the things they did, they were not exclusively ‘the church’ and much of what they did was to advocate for the government to do things the church by and large had failed to do. And they did a good job of it, they cared for the poor in our community.

I, just like you, only have a finite number of hours to work or help with any given organization, task, or need. That being the case, I had to split my time between those groups. If your goal is to care for the poor and the ‘least of these’ where would you commit your time to?

When I entered middle school my family moved to a house in Madison Wisconsin. It was our house, our walls, inside and out, and with that it began to take shape and look like our family. Somewhere early on, my mom painted some dancing, flowy stick figures of us on the garage door. The house is a purple color (my mom’s favorite) and the stick figures, a deeper purple, adorned the garage door.

I remember being quite embarrassed of this display of art when ever a new person would come by or drop me off from school or soccer practice or what not, I was a middle schooler and I wanted to be cool. Little did I realize just how cool it was. That house is a beautiful display of art. The kitchen cabinets black with white specks splattered all over, Jackson Pollackish. There are palm trees painted on the wall in the basement. There’s writing on walls in the kitchen, each room a different shade, or multiple shades. My mom painted one of the toilet seats once, but it slowly flaked off on our bottoms. My brother and I had painted our room the team colors of the Charlotte Hornets (way before they started offering official team color paints). I lacked in the creativity side, but my brother and sisters rooms have been unique pieces of art for years. I love hanging out at that house. My brother has farside cartoons painted on the door and the wall, graffiti of every shade covers the walls. My sisters room has changed so many times I can’t keep track, but it’s incredible the personality she and her room have had.

I don’t know when we decided it, but somewhere along the way we adopted The Big Orange Splot as our family book. It’s a little new-agey in it’s language, but it seems to embody our family. The story goes Mr. Plumbean lives on a neat street where all the houses are the same. A seagull drops a can of orange paint on his house and after some contemplation he leaves the splot and paints the rest of his house to fit all his dreams. One by one his neighbors try and persuade him to paint it back, but each time they go away and change their house to fit their dreams. The line goes, “My house is me and I am it. My house is where I like to be and it looks like all my dreams.” I love it.

I think the book, and my family’s house, seem to capture some of what the journey is all about. We had a conversation about cool a week or two ago on here, and I think this is what I was thinking about when I wrote that post. I want to break away from the unspoken rules and restrictions that we place on ourselves to conform. It comes in all places and avenues of life, but one place it definitely comes is in what you and your stuff is supposed to look like. God created us and the things around us to bloom and blossom and encompass God’s dreams for us, which many times our the stifled dreams that resonate in our hearts. I want my house to look like that.

We don’t have a garage in our new home, just a gravel spot for a couple cars. Every time I pull up to the back of our house I see the big backside of our house and I picture a beautiful mural painted there. Art is an amazing thing (my brother understands it way more than I do). There is a couple large murals on the sides of buildings in our community, amazing pieces of work done by youth in the neighborhood through a summer arts program. I stopped by and talked to them the other day about allowing them to use our house as a canvas, they sounded interested. I was so giddy with excitement about the possibility I called my mom as soon as I walked out the door.

Enough rambling, I’ll give you more details as they work out. But I’ll leave you with this thought or encouragement, break free of the need to conform, paint your dreams, fulfill others dreams, leave your job or any commitments that are keeping you from doing what your called to do. This is your orange splot.

I went to a community meeting yesterday and got to hear the crime update from the Inspector Michael Martin who is the commander of the fourth precinct where I live. He comes to the Hawthorne Huddle every month and updates the community on the safety and crimes in the area, allowing himself to be accountable for what is and isn’t happening. Yesterday, he shared a interesting bit of news.

Currently in 2008, North Minneapolis has the lowest Crime Rate in Minneapolis (According to Part 1 crime stats, which are all the serious and likely to be reported crimes). It is 2+ months into the year, and it is cold outside, but those are the same factors for the rest of the city as well, downtown, south, East Bank, etc.

What’s unfortunate, is that you won’t find a newspaper story anywhere about this encouraging bit of information. Why not? Your guess is as good as mine. According to the media, North Minneapolis isn’t a real place with real people living there, it’s an archetype for an adventurous place where danger lurks around every corner. Reality shows are big on TV, so are action films and murder mysteries, so the newspapers and local news stations compete by creating North Minneapolis into their own reality adventure. Don’t look at the news and tell me you know anything about North Minneapolis.