Meet Charlie: from homeless to helping others

“I was tired of living under a tree.”

That’s the response you’ll get from Charlie if you ask how he first connected with Interfaith. He’s reluctant to go into details. What comes across is not so much embarrassment as a profound sense of humility; Charlie just doesn’t think his story is anything special.

An Army veteran, Charlie spent most of his adult life addicted to drugs and alcohol after returning from Vietnam, and over the years he weathered more than a few storms on the streets of Escondido. That is, until five years ago when someone told him Interfaith had programs for veterans. On that day, Charlie decided he wanted help.

Like everyone who comes to Interfaith, Charlie’s case workers took the time to find out exactly what his needs and skills were, and used this information to determined what kind of assistance would serve him best. These assessments are a vital part of the case management process because whether the problem is addiction, disability, mental illness, lack of food, or lack of housing, the goal isn’t merely provide relief – the goals is to build sustainability. Unlike many agencies, Interfaith can walk someone through a comprehensive continuum of care services that will enable them to eventually live truly healthy and sustainable lives one day.

Initially, Charlie became a resident of Interfaith’s Veteran’s bunk house where he was provided with the immediate shelter he had been lacking for so long. Eventually, however, he was identified as an excellent candidate for Interfaith’s Fairweather Lodge program. Charlie agreed and he became the third Lodge’s first resident. Now Charlie lives within an intentional community of adults with similar challenges who operate their own business together.

Charlie is quick to point out that this job gives him a sense of purpose and accomplishment that he had been missing in his life for a very long time. Perhaps most significantly, like many people who have come off the streets and learned to live healthier lives, Charlie’s biggest desire is to give back, so he’s eager to start helping out as soon as he’s eligible, saying, “Interfaith has given me so much.” There’s a gratitude in Charlie’s words, driving him to contribute, and a sense of pride that he actually can.

I’m telling Charlie’s story because it isn’t uncommon. Interfaith’s family tree is crowded with people who spent years living on the street, struggling with addiction, or marginalized physically and financially due to physical or mental disabilities, but who have now learned to be healthy, productive, self-sustaining, and even strong enough to give back to the community in some way.  I know the same is true for other social service agencies as well.

Unfortunately, we live in a time when people are hurting more than ever (last year alone Interfaith served 35,800 individuals), yet the political climate in America is again rapidly becoming hostile toward social help under the mantra that helping people is actually hurting our communities.

Balderdash.

People need more help, not less. Granted, it needs to be the right kind of help; the kind that builds capacity, not co-dependence. True help must walk people through a process that leads to healthy sustainability. But that kind of holisitc, capacity-building, wellness-producing work requires more time, more services, and more money – not less. It requires public money and private money. It requires federal and state grants, private foundation support, and individual household contributions. It requires lots and lots of people rolling up their sleeves and helping those who cannot yet help themselves (last year we utilized over 5,000 volunteers).

Like it or not, we all pay one way or another for people who are poor, homeless, mentally ill, or otherwise debilitated in some way. Why not commit, as a nation, to do so ethically? We can build strong systems of care that eventually lead people like Charlie to contribute to their communities, rather than relegate them to the streets – or to jail – where they simply tax our communities.

In short, the creation of a strong and healthy community requires the participation of the whole community; the rich, the poor, everyone.  Everyone has something to give.

Charlie gets that. I look forward to the day when everyone else does too.

Technorati Tags: Charlie, economy, Escondido, Homelessness, Interfaith Community Services, Politics, poverty

Should Christians be the most powerful people in the world?

On facebook this morning I took a line I’d crafted related to recent thinking on gender issues and reworked it. Here’s the original line, taken from a paper I wrote Monday about much of the Church’s teaching on gender and sexuality:

Men are domineering leaders who, through sheer expression of their potency, conquer hostility in the marketplace and reluctance in the bedroom, bringing forth a dual harvest of subservient wealth and children as their enduring legacy.

Personally, I don’t believe this is what it means to be an authentic man, but, unfortunately, many Christian men and women do (including many pastors). I think their belief betrays a fundamental error about the nature of Christian power in general and the nature of Christ’s power in particular.

So, today, while thinking of the recent idiocy surrounding the so-called Ground Zero Mosque (which, is an imaginary figment of right-wing propaganda), I took that line and reworked it:

Christians are domineering leaders who, through sheer expression of their potency, conquer hostility in the world and reluctance in the heart, bringing forth a dual harvest of subservient nations and converts as their enduring legacy.

Obviously, I don’t believe this is true either, but I think it is what many Christians believe – that the consequence of Christ’s victory on the cross is that Christians should come to rule in this present age, whether that be through governmental power (i.e. the Religious Right), cultural power (entertainment media), commercial power (business success and dominance), or familial power (husband/wife, parent/child). For me, the very nature of the gospel, and especially Christ himself, speak directly to these issues in a remarkably clear way.

Then in the comments, Jonathan Brink asked me a provocative question:

Jason, how would you say that to my 8 year old son?

Hmm. Good question. I took Jonathan’s prompt and asked my own 9 year-old daughter, Alannah:

“Alannah, I have a question for you. I have a friend who says that being a Christian means we should be the most powerful people in the world. What do you think?”

“What? Who’s this friend?”

“Oh, just someone I know on the internet.”

“Um, No.”

“No? Why not?”

“Well, first of all, I know some people say that we should make everyone Christians, but I don’t think so. I think if you’re Jewish or whatever, that’s not wrong. It’s not wrong to be Jewish. And, if we had all the power that would ruin everything! I mean, the only one who should have all the power is God. That way we would all have a leader.”

Wow. She covers alot of ground in that answer. Freedom, power, evangelism, and a sense of God that transcends religion. You can tell Alannah had thought about this before my question. We continued our conversation. I wanted to share with her my own thoughts about how Jesus exercised power in a surprising and truly revolutionary way, and how his life informs and empowers his followers’ recapitulation of that same pattern.

But what do you think? How should Christians wield power? Can they? What ought to be the power relationship between ourselves and non-Christians? Or between us and other family members? Between men and women, parents and children? Or between Christians and the State?

Technorati Tags: Church and State, Gender, Gospel, Politics, Power

Real Political Reform Doesn’t Bother With Elections

(I originally wrote this in the fall of 2008 for Ecclesia Collective – right about the time everyone was falling all over themselves about new hope in American politics. In light of the hangover that is the Scott Brown election, it seemed appropriate to re-post.)

I have a confession to make: the American Presidential race has become my favorite spectator sport lately. It really is amazing – the subtle innuendos and outright assaults. For pure brutal entertainment, the UFC has nothing on American politics.

Then there are the promises.

Depending on who you believe the next President will either repair the greatest collapse of capitalism in history, make the middle class richer, stop the hemorrhaging of American jobs overseas, unleash an army of patriotic civil volunteers, kick our dirty foreign oil addiction, develop clean energy sources, or win the war on terror.

All this gratuitous half-truthing has created a perception of politics that is rather grotesque. When was the last time you heard someone in casual conversation use the word politics or politician in a non-pejorative way? And yet, we buy it. It’s like we get all dressed up for the theater and pretend not to see all the stage hands dressed in black moving props around. Or, maybe we’re just collectively crossing our fingers and hoping for the best.

Here’s the thing: whoever is elected, whatever policies are implemented, whatever legislation is enacted, it won’t be enough. Real people will still fall through the cracks.

Take, for instance, Ivan Crawford and his family. This time last year the 4 year-old from Findlay, Ohio was celebrating a triumphant battle with cancer and enjoying the memories of a recent Make-a-Wish sponsored trip to Disney World.

But by the end of November, their financial burdens were taking a harsh toll. Unable to pay their electric bill, the Crawford’s service was shut off by the local utility. With temperatures outside dropping dangerously low, Ivan’s mother lit candles so her family could stay warm. While they slept, the candles caused a fire which killed Ivan, his mother Michelle, and sisters Yaniella (11) and Victoria (7). Friends and neighbors expressed shock and disbelief; nobody even knew the family was having trouble paying their bills. (Click here for the story.)

Like most of life, the Crawford’s story is complicated. There are no clear-cut villains. This tragedy occurred because of an array of hard circumstances, unwise decisions, bureaucratic apathy, and friendly assumptions. However, it’s a dramatic example of a sad reality. The fact is, it’s not difficult to imagine a typical American family in a typical American neighborhood living in desperately hard circumstances without their neighbors ever knowing about it.

And that cuts to the real meaning of politics and the current state of politics in America today.

At it’s heart, politics is not about government or leadership. When Socrates (through Plato) spoke of the polis, he referred to a community of people who “gathered together many associates and helpers” because nobody is “individually independent.” That is, we gather because we need each other to survive. In this way, relationally meeting the needs of others within the polis becomes a problem of justice – and Socrates defined justice in exactly those relational terms.

Hence, real politics is simply the collective practice of meeting each others needs. Stripped down to its spirit, it’s actually what Vaclev Havel calls “anti-political politics,” that is, living lives of, “practical morality, as service to the truth, as essentially human and humanly measured care for our fellow humans” (from his speech, “Politics and Conscience”). Real politics means taking care of one another.

Socrates thought (and today we seem to agree) the best way to care for one another was to create the right kind of government with the right kind of politicians. But Socrates wasn’t able to solve the problem of justice because real politics requires the cultivation of a genuinely virtuous people. In fact, this is the great dilemma of Plato’s Republic, and the great failing of all Modern governments; no matter how you organize government or legislate policy, virtue doesn’t reliably follow. Love cannot be legislated.

The early Christians had their own thoughts about cultivating this kind of community and it didn’t involve government as we know it. Instead, they practiced koinonia, which  means joining intimately together with Christ’s death and resurrection (1 Cor 10:16). It means bypassing human systems and going straight to the source of divine love, and in a radical innovation, Paul (unlike Socrates) affirms entrance into koinonia for everyone regardless of race, gender, or class (Gal 3:28). Virtue, then, including mutual care and leadership comes not by class or coercion, but by the the Spirit of God.

If we’re going to see real political change, it must come from the ground up, not from the Oval Office. People at the neighborhood level must enter together into the koinonia of Christ and radically care deeply for others; bearing the others burdens, feeding each others families, and paying one anothers bills without precedent or permission from any governmental authority. It means becoming, in reality, a taste of the hope to which all of humanity has aspired.

That’s political reform I could endorse.

DAGJQNGUGWNE

Technorati Tags: Ecclesia Collective, Plato, Politics, Scott Brown, Socrates, UFC, Vaclev Havel