Rooted in Community

What does it mean to be rooted in community? For me, a few of the markers are… Sharing weekly dinners, prayers, laughter and tears with “our place on Derry,” which has become my family in Harrisburg. Spending time with the Reinfords every Thursday and being part of DJ, Marina and Havah’s growing up. Seeing familiar faces on the street as I walk to work every day, and being greeted as “neighbor” at the corner store. Knowing the people at community meetings, and being recognized as having something to offer.

In a word – relationships. That is what makes me feel most at home and most connected here. Yet it goes even deeper than that. The nature of life brings changes to relationships, as people move on or move away. What does that mean for community? The beauty of it is that community can transcend place, and rootedness is not dependent on particular people.

The people who know our hearts most and with whom we have shared our lives will always be a part of us – that deep bond of community is not easily broken, although it may change. Even as we think about dear members of “our place on Derry” moving away, we like to say that it is “extending” the community (all the way to Belize!) – and although we won’t be able to share kitchen ingredients and everyday life, we will still be part of eachother’s lives.

For me, as I think about my decision to stay long-term, my rootedness to this place is not dependent on the particular people who are here. Four years ago last month, I made the commitment to Harrisburg – and specifically to South Allison Hill – having fallen in love with it during my time at Messiah College. It was “the problems and the hope” that first attracted me – the very real challenges of poverty, blight and crime, yet the persistent efforts of a strong network of community organizations, leaders and ordinary people working hard to make their neighborhood a better place. This is the community that I have chosen in a broader sense, and although the people may change over the years, the commitment that draws us together remains the same.

Thank goodness “community” is not one-dimensional. For even as I hold dear the relationships in my community of people on Derry St – which may well span the globe one day – I sink my roots ever deeper into my community of place here on Allison Hill. This is a testament to “community” as a living and breathing organism, which at its best is flexible enough to grow and change as its members do – as we are simultaneously shaping it and being shaped by it.

Choosing Freedom.

I was struck by my pastor's sermon today, which focused on living a redeemed life. He talked about how we are often so aware of our brokenness and our wounds that we can get stuck in them, and never allow ourselves to move past that to fully embrace the freedom Christ offers. While self-awareness and reflection are certainly crucial as we work through our own particular struggles, I believe there is wisdom in seeing that there must be that next step of finally leaving those things behind in order to truly live in redemption.

For me, my struggle for a long time has been this deep "wound" of feeling alone, abandoned, unloved. Even as I write these words, it sounds like a broken record because I have felt stuck in this place for so long. In recent weeks and months I feel like I have made some progress, slowly but surely learning to appreciate and enjoy time alone, and rediscovering the things that are life-giving for me. In some ways it feels like it is constructing a new way of life - one that still allows lots of space for people but is not so dependent on them, instead rooted in my belovedness and purpose in God.

I don't pretend that I am "fixed" or that this struggle is completely behind me - there is plenty of regression to old patterns that makes forward progress slow, yet forward nonetheless. But I am ready to turn off this broken record, to embrace and claim freedom from that which has trapped me. I realized today that staying in that place has not only caused me a lot of pain, but it has also held me back from being completely who God is calling me to be, and from being able to do the work of building the Kingdom.

This is a wound that I have been comfortable with for way too long, and have allowed to control so much of my life. I don't want it to be my "crutch" any longer - I want to walk (and dance!) in freedom. My pastor's challenge today was to walk out of the doors as a redeemed person - embracing and believing that God changes us, and living as a changed person in light of that. Redemption for me is living in freedom. Freedom borne of knowing and believing that I am deeply and unconditionally loved. Freedom that allows me to love others deeply yet without fear of abandonment. Freedom to care for others with no strings attached. Freedom to invest myself in the things that are important to me without wondering if I will be the only one. Freedom to enjoy the little things in life without needing anyone else to share them with. Freedom to hold the uncertainties of the future with open hands. Freedom to readily see and recognize all of the gifts that are present in my life right now. Freedom to be happy by myself - while still being surrounded by a community of people who care.

So today, I choose freedom - and I pray that I will grow in that as I strive to keep choosing it every single day.

Good Alone.

Curled up in a chair with the sun streaming through the window, for the first time in a while I recognized and appreciated the gift of silence and solitude. As good as I know this is for me, most of the time I expend a lot of energy avoiding being quiet and being alone. I try to fill my life with people, tasks, noise - afraid to pause for fear that I will encounter my deepest insecurities. I have distorted aloneness to symbolize rejection, believing that when I am alone I am not cared for, I am unloved - and thus, I avoid it at all costs.

Yet Henri Nowen speaks truth into this, saying that we are all alone - no one experiences life as we do, and that is the human condition. But we have a choice - we can experience that reality as a wound, as a deep and destructive loneliness, or we can allow God to transform it into a holy and healing solitude. In this solitude, God creates the quiet center within us that we so desperately need, and fills us with Peace and Love. We have to be open to this, though, and create the space in our lives and hearts to allow it to happen. 

I am guilty of not doing this very well. Too often, I try to make myself feel fulfilled by spending time with people, working on projects and tasks, or planning exciting things. While all of these are important, when people aren't around or projects fall through or I tire of planning, I am left feeling empty again. Then my tendency is to go to the other extreme, of escaping the pain through someone else's reality on a TV show or the comfort of sleeping and making it all go away. Neither of these responses leave space for God, though, or invite God to fill my emptiness and make me whole again.

So I cherish mornings like this, when I am not trying to fill my life with busyness or escape it with distractions. I choose to be alone, to be with God, and it is good. That is true solitude. And I am grateful for evenings like last night, when spending a Friday night alone did not cause dread but rather enjoyment - getting in tune with myself and what I want to do, and finding rest, joy and purpose in giving myself a home "spa" treatment, researching vacation spots, cleaning the house and putting my room in order.

As I have more moments like this lately - experiencing aloneness as a space where my best self can emerge, rather than being crippled by my worst insecurities - I have hope that God is not finished with me yet, and that I will continue to learn what it means to be good alone.

Facing Race.

That’s what this conference was called, but it’s about more than just that. It’s about facing all of our privileges and the power structures that we’re not even aware of – until someone gives it a face, a voice, a story.

This is what I faced. The fact that I have never fully recognized my privileges as a heterosexual woman – that I have never even had to consider the experiences of trans-gender women or lesbian women who identify with male characteristics, much less how that is compounded by being a woman of color. Because I fit within the norms of gender and sexuality that have been constructed by our society, this has been an invisible community to me. Until there was a face, a voice, a story. Of women who identify as female but whose bodies society feels free to scrutinize for male characteristics. Of women (and men) who endure ridicule, violence and even death because of how they identify themselves – and to which the media and the general public is largely ignorant.

I faced, again, my privilege of whiteness – that although I might be “enlightened” enough to be attending a conference about race and seeking to engage these issues, when my mind gets overloaded I have the privilege of turning “off” that engagement – because I, unlike women and men of color, am not forced to constantly engage my race. I have never had to wrestle with questions of “what category do I fit into?” like the bi-racial daughters of one presenter, one of whom identified as white and one as black on the Census form. I have never been harassed and excluded from public spaces like an African-American teenager from Baltimore shared, who is organizing her peers to address it. And I have only ever engaged the school-to-prison pipeline and prison-industrial complex from a detached, academic standpoint – never experiencing the oppression and dehumanization of the people of color who are trapped in it.

As I sat on a bench outside the hotel, eating an authentic Baltimore pork chop and getting barbeque sauce all over me, I considered how if I were black or if I were not dressed as nice, the hotel security would probably question my right to be there. Later, after buying a homeless man a sandwich, he sat on a bench outside the hotel – and after I went inside I saw him get up and walk away. My first thought was concern over whether or not he was actually eating the sandwich – and indignation if he had wasted my money. That was quickly followed by a recognition that sitting outside the Hilton was probably the last place he wanted to be – in fact, he’d told me earlier that the security would often tell him to leave. How could concern for $10 be more important than concern for a man, regardless of his circumstances, who was homeless and jobless? Who was not even allowed to sit outside an establishment where I was privileged to belong. And what about outrage over a system that makes it possible – even acceptable – for such disparities to exist? Even with a face and a voice in front of me, I still must overcome my tendency to protect that which is closest to me (my money, my pride) rather than turning the kingdom upside-down.

I had lots of honest encounters with poor people of color in Baltimore while waiting for the bus or sitting on the train. I pride myself in not being afraid of taking public transportation or going to the “bad neighborhoods” – but I kid myself if I think sharing a few minutes in the cold makes me understand their experience – it is merely a glimpse. When talking about a homeless person up the street, one woman said “I’ve been there” – and someone else said “everyone has”. But I haven’t. And smelling perfumes being sold on the train, one woman commented that “this would smell good on your skin but doesn’t smell good on mine”.

If only I – and we as white Americans – can so honestly face race, and our own privileges. We like to talk around race – even as I was explaining my initial discomfort of arriving at an unfamiliar bus stop after dark to a fellow conference-goer, I caught myself not immediately acknowledging the racial aspect of my discomfort – and this was to a fellow white anti-racist! Even the language we use is toned-down – to us it is “discomfort”, but the sisters and brothers of color at the conference over and over referred to it as “the struggle”. While we can choose whether or not to put ourselves in “discomfort”, the “struggle” is a constant one that cannot be avoided. One presenter said that his friends call him a “walking uncomfortable conversation”. That is what I (and we) need to be challenging ourselves – and others – to be in truly be facing race every single day.

Re-Learning...

It's been quite a while since my last post, and in some ways things in my life have changed tremendously and in some ways not at all. I have to laugh at myself because I need to learn again what the 'me' writing the post about control a year ago was saying. That's one of the funny (and sometimes frustrating!) things about life - I feel like I am having to learn the same things over and over again, because I never quite get it the first (or second or third... :) time. 

What I'm contemplating these days is again, how I try to control things. I thought I'd given up trying to control circumstances, I thought I'd given up trying to control people, but what I was left with was still this intense desire to be able to control myself. Maybe that sounds funny, but I really want to be able to understand and control my emotions, my moods, how I react to things - and it's harder than you would think! Especially when I find myself in a chaotic state, my mind goes into overdrive and I launch into trying to figure out what's wrong so that I can fix it - so that I can be ok. 

But analyzing doesn't really help - it only gets me worked up more, making the chaos bigger and me feeling trapped in it. And withdrawing doesn't help either - my walls come up to "protect" me from others seeing my chaos, which I can't explain or fix, but those walls trap me as well. As counterintuitive as it is for me, though, that's when I need to break down my walls the most - that's when I need to let people see me in all my mess and allow them to speak into it and be present to it with me. It's vulnerable and scary but also healing...just as letting go of control is terrifying but also freeing. 

The song in my head lately reflects where I am on this journey... 

"Dark Side" by Kelly Clarkson 


There's a place that i knowit's not pretty there and few have ever goneif i show it to you nowwill it make you run away
or will you stayeven if it hurtseven if i try to push you outwill you return?and remind me who i really amplease remind me who i really am
everybody's got a dark sidedo you love me?can you love mine?nobody's a picture perfectbut we're worth ityou know that we're worth itwill you love me?even with my dark side?
like a diamondfrom black dustit's hard to knowwhat can becomeIf you give upso don't give up on meplease remind me who i really am
everybody's got a dark sidedo you love me?can you love mine?nobody's a picture perfectbut we're worth ityou know that we're worth itwill you love me?even with my dark side?

Moving from fear to love...

I realized today why it is I struggle so much with the feeling of being "left out". It's something that's been part of me my whole life, and has to do with my need for belonging and my wounds related to that, but it goes even deeper than that. At its very core, it is a fear - a fear of being loved less, of being pushed aside, overlooked, abandoned. That is what I am afraid of more than anything else in the world - of that loss of relationship, of that deep aloneness. That's why I can alternate between clinging and distancing myself - defenses mechanisms that I gravitate towards, the first to prevent loss, the second to protect from hurt.

But I cannot live from a place of fear - it's a prison that traps me, and from which I act reactively and compulsively. But love is the opposite of fear - and I long for the freedom of living out of God's love rather than being controlled by my own fear.

Henri Nowen speaks to this:

"Throughout the Gospel, we hear, 'Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid, it is I. Fear is not of God. I am the God of love, a God who invites you to receive - and to let go of your fears so that you can start sharing what you are so afraid to let go of.' The invitation of Christ is the invitation to move out of the house of fear and into the house of love; to move away out of that place of imprisonment into a place of freedom."

This is my prayer, that a shift from dwelling in a place of fear to a place of love will happen in my heart, which only God can do. And this is the song that's speaking to me...

"By Your Side" - Tenth Avenue North

Why are you striving these days
Why are you trying to earn grace
Why are you crying
Let me lift up your face
Just don't turn away

Why are you looking for love
Why are you still searching as if I'm not enough
To where will you go child
Tell me where will you run
To where will you run

And I'll be by your side
Wherever you fall
In the dead of night
Whenever you call
And please don't fight
These hands that are holding you
My hands are holding you

Look at these hands and my side
They swallowed the grave on that night
When I drank the world's sin
So I could carry you in
And give you life
I want to give you life

Cause I, I love you
I want you to know
That I, I love you
I'll never let you go

And I'll be by your side
Wherever you fall
In the dead of night
Whenever you call
And please don't fight
These hands that are holding you
My hands are holding you

Letting Go of Control...and Learning to Trust

I am a control freak. I think I've always known this, but yesterday's sermon on "Confessions of a Control Freak" really hit home for me. I want to have some semblence of control over the important things in my life - a very human thing, to be sure. But I spend a lot of energy trying to get or maintain that feeling of control, and end up creating a lot of anxiety for myself. I hate the feeling of everything spinning out of control, being overwhelmed and not knowing what to do - and my tendency is to do everything in my power to fight against that.

But the truth is, I'm not in control. Let me repeat that, for myself: I AM NOT IN CONTROL. I can't control whether work will be slow or crazy or exhausting. I can't control the relationships in my life or my family. I can't control schedules (mine or other people's). I can't even control my moods or how I'm feeling most of the time.

It's a scary thing to admit this, but recognizing that we're not in control gives us a choice. Do I cling tightly, trying to make things go the way I want by sheer force of will? Or do I hold everything with open hands, releasing my compulsion to control and resting in the knowledge that there is One who loves me who is guiding each piece of my life and the lives of those around me? Clinging is the natural response, but trying to hold onto something that isn't ours to start with only creates frustration. But there is a freedom in letting go - we no longer allow the need to control control us. Rather, in offering back up to God all of the pieces of our lives, we trust that God is in control - and we don't have to be.

As I recognize my attempts at controlling as really a lack of trust, I must daily (hourly, minutely!) lay them down. My prayer is that I may grow and find freedom in a new kind of trust, by the grace of God.

"No Sacrifice"
Jason Upton

To you I give my life, not just the parts I want to
To you I sacrifice these dreams that I hold on to

Your thoughts are higher than mine
Your words are deeper than mine
Your love is stronger than mine
This is no sacrifice
Here's my life

To you I give my future
As long as it may last
To you I give my present
To you I give my past

Because
Your thoughts are higher than mine
Your words are deeper than mine
Your love is stronger than mine
Your thoughts are higher than mine
Your words are deeper than mine
Your love is stronger than mine
This is no sacrifice
Here's my life