who are your people?

This was a question posed to me about a week ago by a good friend.  I paused as I held the phone to my ear.  I talked for a minute or two, and then my friend again asked, “Who are your people?”  pointing out that I hadn’t, in fact, answered the question.

Like in most congregations, there are multiple congregations under one roof. That is the case here, most definately.  And while there are probably more than 2, it is easiest to boil it down to there being 2 distinct communities that call this church home.  If you’re paying even a bit of attention to this blog, you’ll see that 90% of these posts are about the “Wednesday Night People.”  (I didn’t actually do the math, but if you’d like to…)  I fell in love with these people the quickest and the hardest, and they are very challenging to love long-term, I can see that reality from my cushy one-year post.

So why was I, initially, unable to answer that question with a confident “The Wednesday Night People!”?

It probably gets at a deep-seeded “people-pleaser-peace-keeper” mentality that we don’t have time for here, really (you’re welcome).  And I know that’s part of it.  

But the other part is that, essentially the “other group” at church, well, they look like me.  That’s where I come from.  And without them, well, there’d be no church for the Wednesday Night People to come to on Wednesdays or any other day for that matter.  And I do love these other folks, too, quite a bit.  And they are hard to love too – they just look shinier on the outside is all.

So I was trying to tell my friend that they were all my people, which is true, but it wasn’t matching what I had been lamenting and celebrating and mourning in our conversation up to that point.  This urban ministry thing (what a terrible moniker, by the way) has caught me off guard in the way it has compelled, propelled, repelled, and ultimately called me.  And while I don’t deny the other people in the congregation, I was finally able to spit out (with conviction, I might add) “The Wednesday Night People are my people.”  

To put those sounds to the air rushing out of my mouth was a true confession and an affirmation of something that continues to reveal itself as central to the calling I have to ministry.  

This is scary.

bat, man

Before I got on the bus for the Wednesday night festivities, I saw a baby bat on the ground in the parking lot.  I thought it was dead.  It was not.  I took a video of it crawling, but haven’t uploaded it yet to post here.  It made me scream a little bit, as I thought it was dead and had gotten rather close to it.  Then, while on the way to pick up the first person on the bus route, the wind (it was really windy) blew open one of the bus doors and shattered the entire window.  The sound of shattering glass is really something to hear – I haven’t heard it since I broke my grandmother’s clock many years ago (sorry, grandma).

The rest of the night was really quite fine, considering how it began.  I was sort of braced for weird and wild, and it was a full moon, too.

they’d do anything for a free meal

This past week, I heard the phrase “they’d do anything for a free meal” uttered with that flip of the tongue that is unmistakeably unmasked digust.

The church here consists of wide range of people who call the place home. For some, it’s been their most consistent home in the most literal way. For others, this is the church they have grown up in, traveled with it to its various locations, and remember when the pews were packed.

To do the kind of ministry the church is doing, it needs all the people who call it home, and I dare say, a few more.  The people who consistently show up on Wednesday nights come for the whole night.  They eat, they worship, they play in the gym or go to the adult class, they go home.  Some take home extra food.  Some take home craft projects from children’s church.  Some of them come back on Sunday for worship too.

It can be hard to be open to people who smell a little, or a lot.  It can be hard to be open to people who don’t have good manners.  It can be hard to be open to people who don’t know how they’re “supposed” to behave at church.  It can be hard to reach out to people who seem to be so unlike you in so many ways.  

It can be hard to be open to people who avoid you.  It can be hard to be open to people whose formality seems a foreign language.  It can be hard to be open to people who only seem to be frustrated with you.  It can be hard to reach out to people who seem to be so unlike you in so many ways.

In my own way of saying “why can’t we all just get along” I’ll mention Luther who said that we’re all beggars. Point me to the bread, please!

stood up

A bunch of the kids who come to church on Wednesday nights come on their own. Their parents may know where they are, but that’s about it. So, I’ve been trying to make contact with the parents to try and involve them, in the most basic of ways, in the faith lives of their children. We don’t want to “do anything” to their kids (baptize, for instance) without the parent’s input, whatever that might be.

Having that actual conversation is another thing entirely.

“Who is it!?” is yelled through the door in response to my knock. We had set up a time for me to come and visit, so I am not a surprise. “I’m Laura, from over at the church!” I yell back through the closed door, which goes against my grain entirely. “Who are you looking for?” is yelled back. (I am beginning to wonder if this is how the whole visit will go. Oh, I hope not!) So, I yell back “Delores!” Not surprisingly, the response that is yelled back is “She ain’t here!”

I wonder if I just talked to Delores. Probably. Ah well, I’ll try again, as I yelled back through the door that I would do just that. I just hope there is less yelling.

kids say the #$%^&-st things!

Tonight on the bus, we all witnessed a moment when a kid says something that tells you how it really is at their house.  And this is coming from a family that, quite frankly, doens’t hide much in the first place, according to my midwest, white collar, rural, “everythings-just-fine-cuz-here-we-are-in-the-pew” sort of living.

The 3 kids (mentioned in the post before this one) are laughing that their dad has fallen asleep on the bus.  The oldest is mad that he keeps leaning on her in his sleep.  As we’re pulling into the parking lot, the kids are yelling at him to wake him up.  The youngest suddenly pipes up “wake up you lazy #%ithead” with a lilt to his voice and a tone that suggests he has suddenly channeled his mother.

“Little pitchers have big ears,” sings John Prine.  This kid has taken it all in.

(I stifled my laugh for hours, people.  Hours.)

we can handle the truth

About a month or so ago, I had a brainstorm for an interactive sermon.  I can’t recall what the text was that I was preaching on now, but I ended up focusing my sermon on lies and truth.  In order for the sermon to work, I was going to need congregation participation.  They’d played along when I’d asked them to do other unfamiliar things during worship, so I held out hope.  

As I explained to people what they would have to do (read the piece of paper, boldly, and then tape it to me – I was wearing a shawl type thing), they eagerly reached out for different signs.  What I had tried to get across to them in this brief explanation was that they were reading lies, things that are untrue about them, but that we sometimes believe.

 

just gimme some truth

One of the ladies took one of the signs, read it, and then looked at me, clearly handing it back, saying “But I don’t believe I’m worthless.”  I reminded her that these were lies, and that this was sort of a skit, so it didn’t mean it was the particular lie she believed.  With this settling in, she thoughtfully took the sign that said “I’m unloveable” and said to me “Now this is one I believe.”

For those interested in the technicalities, I had the sign at the top in the picture “Jesus is bigger than our lies” on the inside of the shawl-like thing I was wearing, so after they taped all the lies to me, I turned the shawl around for the big reveal, the truth.

The interaction I had with people before the service even began really impacted me. The sermon I preached was about as direct and heartfelt as it could be, and i’m not even sure I stuck to the script, so to speak.  It is hard to believe the truth sometimes, especially the truth of the Gospel when it’s in direct conflict with what everyone else tells you, directly or indirectly.

That sermon illustration hangs on my office wall now, cobbled together with tape and pins.  I just couldn’t throw it out.

thankful for the bus…mostly

 

i'm gonna love you til the wheels come off...

Happy Thanksgiving!  It’s official – the day is here and I am lounging on my couch, watching the parade on tv. Rick Astley was just on some sort of float of puppets from cartoon network.  America, you’ve just been rickrolled.

I am thankful for this internship placement.  This place is teaching me more than I’ll probably ever be able to articulate, although thanks for reading the blog as I try to articulate all that I can perceive that I am learning.  But sometimes, being the bus monitor on Wednesday nights pushes my patience, my tolerance, and stretches any grace I have been given.  It’s gotta groan from the strain it feels sometimes.

One of the significant differences between, say, your “average” pew-sitters in the church and these “city folks” I work with is while a polite, middle class Lutheran isn’t going to share what they really think about someone they don’t like or ‘care for,’ to use the polite lexicon, while the “city folks” are gonna lay it out there.  The folks on the bus generally lack an inner monologue.  If they had a filter, it’s clogged or has a very generous filtration system.

The bus was packed last night and I think people were feeling feisty.  The heater doesn’t work, so there was lots of complaining about that.  Then one person in particular felt it necessary to talk about who was going to hell and was quoting biblical passages (complete with “thee” and “thou” – the way the Bible ought to sound, ya know) to support his claim.  He got loud enough and it, quite frankly, pissed me off enough that I finally was able to say in even, measured tones “This sounds like a conversation you should have in private. I don’t think you get to decide who goes to hell or heaven.  God’s the one who is in charge.”

Do you want to know what I wanted to say?  I wanted to say “coming from someone who is high all the time, possibly even right now, what do you think the Bible says about that?”  (I did not say it.  Repeat.  I did not say it. Thank God.)

Terrible, terrible, terrible, Laura.  Mind you, this was on the way to church, so during worship when I wished this person God’s peace, I really made sure I looked him full in the face when I said it, headphones in his ears and all.  This kid has had no good news in his life, and that’s what church is to him, even if he doesn’t “appreciate it.”  

Do any of us fully appreciate the grace that is given to us, even as we look at one another in terrible judgment, feeling feelings that are opposite of love?  Nope.  So thank God for God.  

Thank you, God.

(i am) directionally challenged

did we have prayerful contemplation on the bus? no.

For those of you who know me well, you know my directional abilities are limited.  Over the years I have learned that when I am among many voices in a vehicle and the driver is trying to figure out which way to go, I must remain quiet. 99.9%* of the time, I am wrong.  I say left, it was right.  I say right, it was left.  I can’t even do reverse psychology on myself. It took me a long time to figure that out – the being quiet part, I mean.  My gut is so reliable for me on most other levels, it was hard for me to discredit my strong gut feeling about going right versus left.  I learned.  I now keep my mouth shut when a poll is taken in a vehicle.  Well, most of the time.

*I do need to mention 2 memorable times when I have been correct.  One was back in the mid-90s (I know, I know) when, after a friend’s wedding, 2 carloads of very directionally certain but considerably drunk people needed to get back to a farmhouse for some sleep.  We ended up on a dark country road, everyone out of the cars pointing and insisting.  I was sober and ended up yelling to get everyone’s attention, insisted on the way we would go, and was right.  (whew! there was no precedent! they could have hurt me!)  The other time was just this past August.  There were 2 of us and we had pretty limited directions: “when you see the Taco Bell, you’re golden.”  Oh really?  We didn’t even have a certain name of the place we were trying to find.  I saw a few landmarks I recognized and got us there.  I was proud.  I mentioned it more than once that night. As you can see, it just doesn’t happen that often.

Why am I writing this post?  Well, the stories above are better than the one that actually inspired me to write.  Well, not better, but more applicable to the title of this post.

Last night, while on the church bus, we were to pick up a regular member in a different place.  I told this to the bus driver.  We only had a street name (Lodi), no actual numbers, but I figured we’d just go by the place where this person used to live and find them.  I shared this information too.

Our bus driver, John, (here’s a post I wrote about him earlier) drives fast.  He stops for pedestrians, red lights, and passengers to get on and off the bus, but it’s always a thrill between the stopping and the going.  We got to Lodi, just a mere block from where this woman used to live, John hit the gas, and off we went barreling down Lodi.  I said to John “She’s on Lodi.  We need to slow down and look for her.”  John replied in the affirmative by pressing down on the gas.  “But where are you going?”  Still pressing on, John says, “Yah, Lodi.  That’s where I’m going.”  We turn onto James Street.  “But this is James Street, not Lodi.”  Now we’re barreling down James Street.  John says “Yah, she lives up here.  Lodi.”

Well this makes no sense.  I glance at a passing street sign to be sure we’ve not switched into some alternate reality. “John, we’re on James Street, not Lodi.  She said Lodi.  This is James.”  The bus keeps on.  “Yah, Lodi and James.”  “No,” i say.  “Just Lodi.  We’re not on it anymore.”  John then points “She lives up here.”  Ah ha.  No matter what I had said to him, he was heading to where she lives now, which is not on Lodi street, but (everyone, now) JAMES.

“Listen John, we’ve got to go back to Lodi.  That’s where she said she’d be.  Turn around and go back to Lodi.”

I must tell you that you don’t have quiet conversations on this bus.  It’s a bus, so there’s noise, especially when you’re barreling around bumpy Syracuse streets.  I’m trying to tell you that I was having to speak loudly to him and him to me.  But I know as my confusion grew with where he was going, and my frustration with the situation and my not having control of the vehicle, well, let’s just say he could hear me fine. We got back to Lodi. “John, when we get near her old place, pull over and honk.”  John pulled over near where this member used to live, and there she was.

There were only 2 other people on the bus with us at the time.  Dennis, who calls his home “The White House” and often talks about helping W. move out come January 20, said somewhat incredulously to me “I think you could be president, Victor Laura.”

Man, this is a post about my being right, isn’t it.  Well, I guess it could also be said it’s a post about my being directional in a different kind of way.  At least I wasn’t drunk.  (If you missed the story near the top of the post, this comment looks scandelous.)

training collar

 

The best photo of my chin yet!

Another post on the clerical collar.  You can read the other posts I’ve written about collars here and here.

 

On Wednesday night, a few new kids had come with a few regulars.  As they were standing in the food line, one of the girls caught my eye and said, as she pointed to both sides of her, “they’re new!”  So, I came over to introduce myself to the new girls.  

For kids who have never been to a church, saying my name with “Vicar” in front of it is confusing.  Actually, I’d be willing to bet actual money on it being confusing for kids who have been to church.  I didn’t really know what it meant before I got the title either.  (Here’s a little word study I did on vicar.)

Is it important for me to have a title?   Yes and no.  On the yes front, it seems important for me to have this title with the teenagers here.  Their boundaries run a little blurrier and they test me in all sorts of ways, so I’m trying for some consistency.  (Although, I must say, the teenagers often call me “miss.”  Hilarioius to me, but it works fine, too.)  And for the older folks, they can just call me “vicar” without having to remember my first name.  (I am the 18th vicar here, so you can hardly blame them.)

On the no front, it can get in the way at times, which is what inspired this post.  And I think I can have people’s respect without a title.  I know it, actually.

After I asked the names of the girls and said them a couple times, I said, “Well, my name is Laura.  I’m a vicar.  It’s a funny name that means I’m practicing to be a pastor.”  Then I pointed at my collar and said “This is a collar that reminds me I am practicing to be a pastor.”  They looked quizzically at it and I said “Here, you want to see it?”  They all looked at it and touched it and that was that.  (I promise this conversation didn’t sound so….so…. scripted!  Reading it makes it sound like I had a lesson plan.  Not true.)

Truthfully, I don’t know if they used my name the rest of the night with “vicar” in front of it or not.

What do you think?  Those of you who have been or are in the position of having some sort of title, weigh in.

future voter demographic

I was talking to a few kids who come to Wednesday night stuff at the church.  They are in elementary school and they were busy telling me what they would be for Halloween, the party at school, the trick-or-treating. One of the boys suddenly sat up straight in his chair and said “You know what’s better than getting candy?  Voting.”  So I inquired if they would be voting at school to which both nodded vigorously “yes.”  The one said “I’m voting for Obama, but not just because I’m black.  I believe what he says.”  The boy next to him, in response to this statement said “Well I’m voting for him because I’m black.”  We then talked about what an important, historical election this was.

It made me remember when my 3rd grade class divided into 3 campaigns for the candidates running in 1980: Reagan, Carter, and Independent John Anderson.  I was on the Anderson campaign, and we were hungry for the swing votes.  Our platform: new playground equippment, pop machines, and McDonald’s in the lunchroom.  Chewing gum during class seemed so passe, and ultimately sunk both Reagan and Carter campaigns.  The swing votes were tired of hearing the same old thing from them and Anderson won by a landslide, to thunderous beating on desk tops and to chants of “An-DER-son!  An-DER-son! An-DER-son!”

I shudder now to see all our campaign promises were fulfilled, just after our term in office.