When Ceilings Collapse

I remember being shaken awake, urged out of bed, and told not to worry—everything was going to be okay, I was going to be okay.

It was June. The sunny skies of Southern California unexpectedly turned to grey, and torrents of rain began to fall over night.

And then the ceiling collapsed at 5AM—directly over my parent's bed—destroying the entire room as water and debris flooded in. My parents were lucky—they had been up all night trying to keep up with all of the water which was leaking into our home through the exposed ceiling. We had just begun construction on our house, and we had no roof. No one had expected rain in sunny California, especially not in June.

When their ceiling collapsed, my parents shook my sister and I awake. We were soon out of the house and safe from being crushed by debris. We, too, were lucky: the ceiling directly over our bunk beds collapsed shortly after we left.

But everything was okay. Our ceilings collapsed, but no one was hurt, and our house was put back together again.

Two years later, on September 11th, 2001, I was shaken awake with the same fearful urgency and reassured that everything was going to be okay. I watched in horror as the ceiling of our entire country collapsed and those mighty buildings fell. I watched the planes crash, the flames consume, the bodies leap.

But I trusted my parents. I was nine; of course I trusted them. Everything was going to be okay. I was going to be okay.

I still believe them: everything is going to be okay. Our house is not the same as it was before the ceilings collapsed. There are still a couple of cracked windows all these years later, reminders of the terror of that June morning when my whole world caved in. Furniture was destroyed and never restored. When our ceiling leaked in last year's huge rain storms, the fear of the memory sent shockwaves of panic through us. But everything is okay. Our house still stands. Though earthquake or fire or storm or violence could strike at any moment and bring my house down once more, destruction does not have the last word.

But the destruction of 9/11 was much worse than physical destruction, much more than an attack on a building. It was an emotional and spiritual destruction, violence which pierced through our very souls. It was, and still is, unfathomable.

Yet our reaction to the unfathomable violence of 9/11 has been just as unfathomable. Like repairing our collapsed ceilings by destroying our neighbour's, our violent reaction does nothing to heal our wounded souls. We will never bring back the lost lives, and the towers, even if they were to be rebuilt, would never quite stand as they once stood.

But our souls can heal. We have witnessed violence beyond what any of us could have ever imagined, but witnessing does not require mimicry. Witnessing demands action, but the action we choose is up to us. Lessons can be learned from Norway's reaction to the terrorism in their own country.

"I think July 22 will be a very strong symbol of the Norwegian people's wish to be united in our fight against violence, and will be a symbol of how the nation can answer with love," said Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

The Amish, too, could teach us something about how we react to senseless violence. Writes Donald B. Kraybill:

Amish faith is grounded in the teachings of Jesus to love enemies, reject revenge, and leave vengeance in the hands of God. As a father who lost a daughter in the schoolhouse [shooting] said, "Forgiveness means giving up the right to revenge."

Everything will be okay. I believe in the possibility of our liberation and the power of love to heal and free us from the pain of the horrific violence with which we are still struggling to deal ten years later. But destruction does not have the last word. Rather than being extremists for war, we must be, as Martin Luther King, Jr., writes in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, "extremists for love." Only through extreme acts of love can we conquer destruction, re-build our nation, and heal our terrorised souls.

My Favourite Culture

I have just started my semester, and already I have written two essays, given a 30-second speech, and sputtered out Spanish I was unaware I knew whilst under pressure. The semester is going great. Today, I'll meet the last teachers I've yet to meet. There's a lot going on this semester, and it really feels like real college now, unlike last year which felt . . . weird.

My first major assignment is a "cultural artifact" speech. Basically, we have to bring in some item that represents a culture to which we belong, and give a short (2-3 minutes) speech on the artifact, the culture, and the significance of the artifact to the culture and the culture to us. It's a short little thing, and the options are endless. The example speech was about knitting needles, if that helps you understand how broad the term "culture" is being used.

Culture is a weird thing for me though. Biologically, I am white, but most of the "family" I actually know and see most often is from Honduras, my step-mom's family. From my step-dad, I grew up with Polynesian cultural influences. Growing up in culturally diverse Los Angeles gave me bits and pieces of other cultures too, so I don't consider myself any particular race. I decided I didn't want to do any sort of race-based culture for my speech.

I thought about theatre arts, about Harry Potter, about environmentalism and political activism, about all sorts of culture to which I belong, but nothing screamed "Pick me! Pick me! I am your culture!" like my faith. Forget race, forget arts, forget books and politics; I identify with the very long history of my faith, from ancient Israelites all the way to today. They are my ancestors, and their culture is mine.

Except how do you get up in front of a bunch of college students and tell them about how much you love the Bible without boring them all to death? Or worse, leading them to think you're some crazy right-wing, Bible-thumping nut who uses the Bible as a weapon? As much as I know my faith to be something beautiful, despite all of its flawed history—or perhaps because of those flaws even—the idea of standing up to say that and risk the burn of being judged for it terrifies me.

As I tried to find another culture about which to share, I could not help coming back to my faith. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that talking about my faith and its culture is exactly what I needed to do. It is the only culture about which I could talk with such passion—something I'll need if I want to engage anyone and get a good grade—and, I realised, talking about my faith is exactly what being a priest involves. While writing on this blog and talking to friends about my faith is nice, standing up to give a speech about my faith is something entirely different—and a skill I need to practice. If I am too afraid to even tell college students about my faith, who can I tell?

My cultural artifact? The Book of Common Prayer, the book which, in the 16th Century, sought to bring a divided nation together without sacrificing anyone. As Catholics and Protestant reformers fought viciously for control, a brilliant Queen declared that we could, somehow, be both Catholic and Protestant. Without killing each other. It is a book which connects a 19-year-old college student living in 21st century Los Angeles to 16th century Europe, to 1st century Israel/Palestine, to the slaves of ancient Egyptians, and to so many others, living, dead, and not-yet alive, whose cultures may differ so vastly from my own. Yet we pray the same prayers and we eat the same bread and wine. Despite whatever differences we may hold, we share the same humanity, and that is, really, what my favourite culture is all about.

Genesis 9: Never Again

Genesis 9. I was going to include this in the last post, but this (like everything else) is one of my favourite parts of the Bible. I grew up with the story of Noah and with God's promise to Noah, but the story was taught to me with one small but major difference in comparison to what I read in the story now.

As a child, I remember learning about how evil and wicked humanity had become and how angry God was. Noah sure was lucky God was able to cool down enough to save Noah and his family, even though God was still very angry at everyone else. After the flood, God promised Noah, almost grudgingly, not to ever flood the whole earth again. Mostly because it just didn't work out, not because God was sorry people died. For all the reassurances that this God was a loving God, this God sounded pretty unstable and wrathful.

When I reread the Bible for Lent, I was surprised, again and again, to find that the God in the Bible wasn't actually such a horrible being. In fact, Noah's ark quickly became one of my absolute favourites as an example of the loving God about whose rumoured existence I had so much doubt. Instead of the "Well, now you realised how pissed off I was; hope you finally learned your lesson!" sort of speech from God to Noah after the flood, God (I was shocked to read) starts off by blessing Noah and his family.

"I give you everything," says God. "Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood." (9:3-4) Instead of scolding or warnings, God gives all of creation to Noah and his family, reminding them only to respect the sanctity of all life. It might seem hypocritical, but God follows up with a promise to Noah: "Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." (9:11) It's like God's repentance almost. Never again, God says. Enough with destruction; even the lives of so-called "sinners" are sacred.

But my absolute favourite part of the story is the rainbow: "'When the bow is in the clouds, I will look upon it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.'" (9:16) Until rereading the story last Lent, I had never known that the rainbow was a symbolic reminder to God, not us. I always thought it was a reminder that we had done wrong, but God forgave us, that God was overwhelmingly forgiving. But that's not how (at least in the English translations) it's written. It is a reminder that God had "done wrong," and that God was truly and humbly sorry.

God can really seem like a jerk sometimes. Things don't always seem fair. A friend commits suicide, and you question how God could possibly let such a terrible thing happen to such a good person, how God failed to protect them from the struggles they faced, why God burdened them with more than they could bear. If God is so perfect, so infallible, so all-knowing and all-powerful, did God just not care? Or was it for some stupid "greater purpose" that God decided to throw away a life just like that?

When I see rainbows, I think of Dumbledore, whose obsession with working for the "greater good," no matter how many lives it cost to obtain it, cost him the life of his sister. "Where your treasure is, your heart will be also," he has engraved on her tombstone. It is a quote from Matthew 6:21.

I can't tell you whether God makes mistakes or not—that's a bigger discussion than this story really is about—but I can tell you that it very often feels like God has made a mistake. I get angry with God and demand an apology and an explanation. Suffering is incomprehensible.

But rather than tell me it is fair, I deserved it, or I'm too stupid to understand, God says sorry and asks me for forgiveness. God says, "Never again," and puts a rainbow in the sky to remind Godself of the promise made. "I give you everything," only learn from my mistakes, says God. Respect all life as holy.

And just as God humbly asks our forgiveness, just as we must forgive God, so to must we ask each other forgiveness and forgive each other. Never again, we must say, even though we know we are imperfect and will forget. The story of Noah's ark is about forgiveness.

Resentment

I was beginning to resent my job. I mean, I love my job. I work at a small, family-owned restaurant with wonderful people. The customers are nice. I get food. I get tips. When I screw something up (which I did recently), my managers are gracious and patient, happy to help me out rather than just scold me for being imperfect.

But resentment began to creep in as my work schedule meant I would not be able to participate in my favourite thing, the thing which got me through the hard parts of last school year: choir.

I tried to accept that this year would just be different. I tried imagining myself sitting in the pews each Sunday, part of the congregation. I thought of the freedom that would come with not needing to go to rehearsals each week and not needing to be at church for five hours straight on the Sundays my choir (there are two, and we switch off each Sunday) would be singing.

Like Taylor Swift said though, "It turns out freedom ain't nothing but missing you." I couldn't, try as I might, avoid feeling resentful toward my job for preventing me from singing. I realised I would be less motivated to go to church; depression would be given more chance to creep in without the weekly choral defense.

Quitting my job, however, is not really an option. While technically, yes, I could walk out whenever I felt like it, and no one could stop me, I need the money, the work experience, and the world outside of school, church, and family. And I promised my dad.

As we've struggled to have a good relationship through my "I'm an adult now; I don't need you; I know everything" phase through which most new adults seem to go, breaking my promise and flat-out defying what he asks of me will not make me happier at all. Fighting with him has worn me out enough as is, and I know, despite my 19-year-old arrogance, that he has a point in pushing me to have this job, rather than just earn money through odd jobs.

But giving up choir for work will lead only to me resenting not only my job but my dad too. I cannot, I realised, go to work resentful. Only two options exist: get rid of the resentment or get rid of the job. Getting rid of the job is simply not an option right now, so, somehow, I had to address the resentment and find a solution with which I could be happy.

The solution, which I came across last night, is so simple it hurts. It should not have taken me a month of growing, festering resentment to find such a simple solution: tell my boss I just can't work Wednesdays nights, the night my choir rehearses, once September starts. If I can't pick up a different shift at that job, I can handle one less shift for a few weeks while I search for a second job. Funny thing about having a job, it somehow makes people more willing to hire you (which is maddening when you don't have a job).

The world, miraculously, is not over. I can work and still do what is most important to me. Even if I've had to give up some things I really did not want to, as long as I still have my choir, I think I'm okay with giving some things up.

Housing the Hundred Thousand

This past week, my alarm was set for 2 o'clock in the morning each day. Dark blankets were draped over my windows to block out light so that I might nap during daylight hours. When my alarm went off, I quickly dragged myself out of bed, groggily attended to emails while preparing to leave, and then found myself, miraculously, at "headquarters" by 3.45AM, grabbing a quick bite of particularly flavourless fruit and planning our route for the morning with my teammates before beginning the morning's work.

The work, however, was worth being up before dawn: we were surveying the homeless in our community in order to find the most vulnerable and begin the process of getting them off the streets and connected with the already-existing resources they need. We were taking part in The 100,000 Homes Campaign, a nationwide campaign which "brings together change agents from across the country to find and house 100,000 of the country’s most vulnerable and long-term homeless individuals and families over the next three years." (from their home page)

The zone my team was assigned to cover was one of the least populated areas. While I was disappointed to not have the profoundly moving conversations friends from other teams shared each morning when we all returned to headquarters, one of my teammates kept reminding us that it was a good thing that we weren't tripping over the homeless with every step: it means the community's current programs are already making an impact.

Every morning, however, was filled with heart-breaking stories. The youngest person surveyed was 19-years-old—my age! Of the 131 people surveyed during "Registry Week," 58 had a "high mortality risk." In other words, these are the people the community is going to push to get into housing and medical care right away. The city committed to housing the first 20 right away, and a total of 40 minimum by 31 July 2013, the "deadline" for the 100,000 Homes Campaign. One person has already been housed.

Homelessness, admittedly, was never my "thing" about which to be crazy. It seemed to me just a tragic fact of life: homeless people will always exist. Not only were the homeless "those people" to me, but they were those people whose problems were beyond my ability to help. Worse than blinding myself, I fully accepted that they were there and suffering but decided they just simply weren't worth my time to help. "That's not my ministry."

There was a contagious energy at headquarters each day. I had walked in for the first time Sunday afternoon, vaguely skeptical that much could be done or that this effort would be all that different from any other effort by guilty, privileged, white people trying to act charitable, but I walked out Friday feeling like something was really happening. One person already housed, and all those people involved ready to keep on working to really make something happen. It was like fire, spreading through headquarters and lighting every single person with the drive to make change. 

The world has been looking dismal lately. It seems no one is willing to do the frightening work of making the change we so badly need. Our political system is a mess, the economy feels like it might just completely vanish at any moment, and natural disasters seem to be becoming more and more frequent and destructive each day. It's been hard to look at the world and feel like there's any hope.

But there was hope in that room. Not just vague hope or some far-off, sentimental nonsense about "one day," but a very concrete and determined hope that something was happening, right here, right now, and we were going to be the agents of that change. There was contagious, almost desperate energy in that room of catalysts, not mere spectators. We didn't just talk to the homeless or count them; what we were really doing at 4AM was taking the first crucial step in the path to housing: determining the needs of the people. With one person already housed within mere days, I know something is actually happening, and I know I am a part of that. 

I am a part of the miracle of the housing of the hundred thousand.