Category Archives: neighborhood

Why I am a bad neighbor

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Before I write this I must at the very least include a giant asterisk that clarifies the reality that due to my health I am unable to engage as fully as I would like or as I feel like I should. As I have said before, there are many factors that eat up my time and energy. Chronic back pain steals hours and days of my time. My chemo regimen also eats up about 10-13 days a month of usefulness. Appointments with oncologists, radiologist, brain surgeons, and naturopaths eat up another significant portion of time. Getting regular MRI’s, CT scans, getting my INR checked (my blood thickness related to my previous clotting and embolism issues), etc. also take up a large portion of time. And then there’s the emotional element of not knowing how much time I literally have and therefore the desire to spend more time with my family and less time with…with you…and my neighbors. So this blog was written more out of the dichotomy between desire and reality than anything else, between what I want to do and what I can do, between what I know i should do and what my body allows me to do. What a mess life can be!

I find being a neighbor hard. Seriously difficult.

I love showing hospitality, we have people in our home all the time. Inviting people into our house is something that both brings us joy and, for the most part, comes pretty easily for us (not quite as true for my son as it is for the rest of the family). I also love running into neighborhood people at the cafe, while walking down main street, etc. but when it comes to actually seeing and knowing those neighbors who live on my street…I’m pretty pathetic. I’m sure it depends on where you live and what type of people live on your block, but what I’m finding is that it takes much more intentionality to actually meet and get to know my immediate neighbors. And I just have not done the work! It is intimidating to me and sounds like a lot of work to find excuses to go to a neighbors door (one who I have not met yet). I’m not against doing that, and I have done so on different occasions, but when it comes down to my actual activity I seem to always find something else to occupy my time. The reality is that I’m just not that great of a neighbor.

We talk about neighborhood a lot in our life and work. In Grassroots Conspiracy neighborhood language is pervasive and important. And I do know hundreds of people in my downtown neighborhoods…but on my actual street…I’m pretty pathetic. I am. We had a new set of people move in a few months ago and did we bring ’em cookies? Nope. We have a few elderly women that live on each end of the street and have I ever tried to be available to them? Nope. There are homes on our street where I couldn’t even tell you how many people live there let alone their names…let alone say that I’ve had them over for dinner…let alone say that I’ve brought them some bundt cake.

The reality is that it just takes more work. I’d rather go sit in a cafe and meet people as they enter or exit because it is easier.* It’s not as if I dont know what to do nor is it that I’ve never been willing to do it. No, I’ve written a bit about it in the past and our family has done some intentional things in the past in order to meet those who live on our block (from putting our garden in the front yard to going door to door we’ve done different things at different times), but when it comes down to it I just find it incredibly hard.

Again I want to justify my actions a little bit. We knew more of our neighbors in our last house. We moved here in October and I got sick in May. So there has never been a real solid time where we’ve been free to invest as fully as we’d like. But regardless of my health I still have the same set of desires, the same expectations (though these expectations are not fair to myself or my wife), and the same level of awareness of what I’m not doing (or not able to do). Regardless of my health I am able to recognize that being a good neighbor can be just plain ol’ hard. It requires a different set of rhythms to ones life…rhythms that may be more difficult for you–they’re more difficult for me for certain.

I hope that you’re able to find space in your life to be present and available to those on your block. I think it’d change your life (though I’d go out on a limb and say that it’d probably make it harder in many ways…relationship always does that!). I think it’d be worth it. And I think I’d like to learn from you.

I hope that I’m able to find space in my life to be present and available to those on my block…but until then I’ll probably continue to park myself at the cafe around the corner.

 

* I’m not trying to downplay the value of going to a public space as a means to get to know people. I can’t imagine ever giving this up as a valuable practice. Rather this is a blog where I’m doing some general griping and simultaneously criticizing myself… apparently even some of the good things I may do…not sure this is the best way to go about writing this blog…but it is what it is right?

Bastards, two dads, unplanned pregnancies: the Birth story of Jesus

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What a crock! Have any of you paid attention to the lyrics to “Away in a Manger”? Really? Jesus didn’t cry as a baby? Have you ever bucked hay before? Try sleeping in it! You ever see a baby that never cries? That song is just one example of how we have romanticized and thus taken away some of the power of Jesus’ birth story.

How cool is it that Jesus was the bastard child of an unwed teen mom? How cool is it that Jesus has two daddies? How strange is it that Jesus was poor? That he grew up as an illegal alien? That he spent his formative years in the ghetto? That he pooped his pants as a baby. That Jesus had to be potty trained. Potty trained!

The story of Jesus’ birth is not a romantic pretty story of God coming to meet his subjects. No, it is a story that completely captures the experience of humanity in so many ways. When we dull it over we ruin the reality of the story. We miss the beauty of the gift.

Here’s the Christian birth narrative–

A divorced God* decides the only way to bring hope and restoration back to humanity is to work within it. So he sends himself in Jesus as an unplanned pregnancy to a poor teenage mom. He was a child who had to not only hold the tension of having that stigma but he also held the tension of having two dads, one was Joseph and the other was Yahweh–both fathers, both real, both belonging to him. He was born in a barn ’cause apparently daddy number two wasn’t on good speaking terms with his family in Bethlehem. Their impoverished family soon had to flee to Egypt where he grew up as an illegal alien until he was able to return back home to Nazareth–a place that you NEVER want to live and always want to be leaving. It’s the ghetto, it’s Detroit (sorry Detroit).

We’ve missed the story and I think we’ve missed out because of it. Christmas season should propel us to reorient our lives not only around the ideals of the Kingdom of God but around the manner in which that Kingdom was brought to earth. Single moms in our neighborhoods must be cared for! We can’t give them the ugly eye when their kids act up with the store, we must extend grace! The ghetto can’t be avoided as a place too dangerous for us in the burbs (or wherever you live) because Jesus grew up there. That’s his hood…and I  if I were you I’d try to go where Jesus goes ’cause I think he was on to something. Whatever we think about gay marriage maybe we should have space to honor any two individuals regardless of gender who want to love on a child–Jesus seemed to do alright. Maybe we should be gentle with those who come across our border because like Jesus it’s quite possible they’re running from hell on the other side. Maybe the Christmas story is even more than just a season of giving (though that’s pretty frickin’ important and totally fits the story too) but it’s also a season of reorienting our view of humanity because of how Jesus chose to redeem all of it…even Detroit.

 

* All throughout the Bible a metaphor is used referring to God as a jilted lover. As someone who has given his bride (us) everything only to have us turn our backs on him and demand a divorce. Even though he repeatedly says that he hates divorce (’cause divorce so often sucks. We know that) he, in fact, within the metaphor (and everything when talking about God is in fact a metaphor isn’t it?) is a divorced and hurt groom still waiting for things to be made right. God totally gets divorce and thinks that it sucks.

Listening People Into Free Speech

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Listening might just be the best thing we can do to care for another. There are so few people in this world who are willing to listen. We all want to be heard but few of us want to hear. A phrase that emerged out of my schooling experience was “listening people into free speech”. Beautiful. That’s an experiment that many of us should step up to, listening people into free speech.

It’s important, I think, not simply to hear people but to truly listen to them. Listening first and foremost requires asking questions, shutting up, remembering what was said, and responding when appropriate. It’s often when we actively listen that we learn how and where to serve our neighbor.

I know I don’t do this perfectly. As a matter of fact I recently frustrated a neighbor due to my poor listening. But how great and how beautifully simple would it be to develop a community of people whose primary concern was listening those around them into free speech? This is what I hope becomes a defining characteristic of the Grassroots Conspiracy movement here in downtown Vancouver. Listening. It’s simple. It’s subtle. And it’s strangely transformational.

Dreaming, Eating, and Saying Goodbye

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A little over a year ago a group of people from the neighborhood met in our living room to dream about what our neighborhood could be. We dreamed about how neighbors could connect with neighbors, how neighbors could dream together, and how new things could emerge. It was a great dialog but honestly I don’t remember many specific things from it. The one thing I remember clearly is that after we had got to know each other, dreamed together, and decided that we’d each go back to our neighborhood in order to ‘make a difference’ Oso stood up and somewhat incredulously said “well that sucks. I just got to know all of you (few of us had ever met Oso before this night) and now we’re saying that I won’t see you again? That sucks. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want friends, I want more of this!”

Fast forward to yesterday when the group from our weekly Arnada Community Meal read blessings over Oso as he ate with us one last time before moving to Seattle. For nine months now we have been inviting people to eat together on Sunday afternoons. There’s no agenda, there’s no schedule, and no pressure on weekly attendance. From week to week you’re never quite sure who’ll be there or whether the food will be an epic success or an awkward failure. In general, however, 25-30 people drop by between noon and four and eat together. Oso has been a part of this group from the very beginning. I mean, this was what he was whining about on that evening of discussion so long ago!

It was beautiful to see some of that dreaming realized. It was beautiful to see how a bustling kitchen can be the perfect place for relationship to happen.

Oso, we’ll miss you’re claims of food superiority, we’ll miss you bringing your dog with you, and we’ll miss how you modeled what it looks like to center your life around the rhythms of a neighborhood.

May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face;

The rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,

May God hold you in the palm of his hand…even in Seattle

 

We Need Structure…but do we want it?

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When we talk about becoming a community who does life together and we speak of how we’re better off together than we are on our own we often run the risk of falling off into fanciful ideas and dreams that materialize into nothing. Intentionality is tough to come by. Follow-through is tough to come by. Action is tough to come by.

I’m speaking biographically here.

The challenge isn’t just that huge transition from dreaming to experimenting but it’s the mental shift that accepts that intentional structures can be of value…or, dare I say it, are essential to doing life together!

That’s right, I’m going to go as far as to say that for us to do life together, for a community to be shaped by the truth that we’re better off together than we are on our own we must have intentional (routine?) structures that draw us together, that invite us into doing life together in deeper ways, and that give us a venue for personal and communal transformation.

The idea that we’ll all be transformed and that we’ll develop into some sort of alternative special community through randomness, organic-y activity*, and an all out embrace of fluidity is a pipe dream. The best things in life happen with some level of intentionality.

So here in the ‘Couve I’ve been spending significant time trying to discern and dream up what type of structures will bring about the life that we so desperately need and desire. How are we shaped as individuals amongst the community? How are we shaped as a community amongst a larger neighborhood? How are we agents of transformation in a neighborhood within a city? The reality, I think, is that it’s hugely ordinary stuff. What’s not so ordinary about it is the willingness to commit to each other, the willingness to experiment together, and the willingness to commit to a way of life together.**

It might sound boring, but we need structures to sustain life together. Weekly community meals. Bi-weekly discussion groups. Theology pubs. Mom’s groups. Neighborhood associations. Monthly gatherings. Annual gatherings. Random gatherings. Meals. Meals. And more meals.

The question isn’t do we need it…but do we want it?

 

*  “Organic” as a term shouldn’t refer to things that are left on their own…though that’s how it’s often used and that’s how I’m using it here. I don’t know if any of you garden organically but it’s a whole lot harder than gardening with chemicals. It takes work, time, effort, intentionality, planning, etc. It’s not a loosey goosey process!

** I would add that it’s essential that this ‘way of life’ must invite us into something bigger than ourselves (not just greater than ourselves but even greater than us). If we’re not a part of a larger redemptive story then I don’t think we’ll ever break out of the ordinariness of life as most of the world experiences it.