A Duck’s Charm

I once worked in an office too long ago to matter now.  My boss had a secretary, whom he said walked like a duck.  I don’t think it was the way she walked, but the way she followed him around the office.  All the time.

He wished he could fire her.  She was that incompetent.  But the human resource policies in firing were complicated and he didn’t fire very well.  So she kept following him around the office.

She was not without her redeeming qualities.  She had a certain charm that turned certain men’s reasonable heads to mush.  Such allure didn’t mess up our office dynamic, but it wreaked havoc on visiting clients.

An executive from another state fell for her charm and did my boss a great favor by hiring her away, bragging about how he had raided our office.  A couple months later, he fired her.  The duck, pardon the crack, wasn’t all she was quacked up to be.

In that same time frame, I worked with a lot of youth pastors.  On a retreat, I met this one guy that took me three seconds to realize he was a jerk.  I don’t use four letter words casually. 

But he did have a certain charm and so kept moving from one position to another.  Every few months a pastor of an even larger church would hire this young man away and brag about his find.  I’ve no doubt every senior pastor he left breathed a sigh of relief. 

We tend to be wowed by appeal that on closer investigation glitters more like sawdust than gold.  We, who are enchanted by the outward appearance, are, as God told Samuel of old, unable or unwilling to perceive the heart.

I watch the church, the political, and the social scenes and I see the old “falling for a duck” syndrome everywhere.  The attraction is not only about physical features.  We fall for first or singular impressions on the resume – again and again.  We are wowed by the “too good to be true” trick because we have difficulty living with the ambiguity that we human beings are a mixture of diamond and clay, every one of us.

I wonder why it is so difficult for us humans, endowed with such stellar powers of reasoning, to take time to reflect, to study nuance of thought, to ponder, to get to really know people, not for what they seem to be, but for who they really are deep down inside.  Instead of seeing the person, we look past her or him to what we can gain from acquiring that person.  For every election, every hero worship, every hiring, every visitor is about how we can benefit.

While in college, I became very impressed with a U.S. senator whom I once met at a prayer breakfast.  He did a lot of good for my state and had a particular concern for the more vulnerable in society, especially the elderly.  Then one day, he was caught up in an FBI sting and wound up in jail.  In discussing the case, a friend said cryptically, “Bad men do good things.”  And likewise, it also can be said that good men do bad things.

Just half a decade after that sting operation, a trinity of American televangelists made a mess of all the good they had done worldwide – all the poor they had fed and clothed, all the people they had reached.  In those post-Watergate years, I so wanted to believe that there were people in leadership looking out for the interest of others.  There were – and are.

We so want to deny that our Hollywood stars all have feet of clay.  We hope that our next hire is someone that will take our team to the heights.  We wait for the next superhero to walk through our doors. 

At the same time, we write off anyone with a glint of fallenness as beyond hope.  We cannot handle brokenness and glory in the same vessel.

Tomorrow will inevitably disappoint.  But I trust I have the wisdom to find the diamonds in the rough and not be blinded by those whose charm is only skin – or feathers – deep.

"Let them eat cake!"

We mean well, we really do, when we try to say nice things upon seeing the plight of others.  “Send them away so they can find something to eat, Master,” his followers told him, as if so many of them could find anything of substance in that wild country.

“Let them eat meat,” said Emperor Hui of ancient China, when hearing his poor subjects were short on rice.  And Queen Marie Antoinette is said to have expressed that famous line, “Let them eat cake,” on being informed French peasants were starving during a great famine, as if they could get their hands on enriched foods at a time when no food was attainable.

The response of the Master in that first story was to tell his followers they themselves were to provide food for the hungry.  Never mind that, in the ordinary, this was an impossible task.  But the Master was no ordinary thinker or doer.  He certainly was not one to let the obvious get in the way.

Our temptation, even in our best moments, is to judge the source of the need in others.  “Is his sickness his fault or his parents?” we ask, just as those same followers of old did.  “If you are out of work or are not rich, it’s your own fault,” our leaders echo.  Surely the poor and the sick and the lost are to be blamed for their own situation.

And even if they are? 

The Apostle Peter said it this way, “What I have I give you.”  No questions asked.

A man and his little son walked into our food pantry yesterday.  We were closed, our shelves waiting to be refilled this morning.  It was raining out and the two had gotten wet on their long walk, only adding to their plight.  The man started to explain.  “I lost my job two months ago and…” Sometimes people want someone to listen to their story.  In this case, he was trying to show just cause for his asking. 

“Never mind,” I said, “you can come back for more tomorrow.  For now, I’ll give you a few things to hold you over,” as I grabbed a loaf of bread, a can of stew, and a couple other items as well.  You don’t need to prove anything to me, I was thinking. 

According to one Chinese saying, “a person who has integrity and honor won’t accept food handed out in contempt.”  The story goes that a man passed by a beggar, looked down at him and with contempt threw him something to eat.  Looking up, the beggar smiled, not the way the benefactor had expected. 

The poor man said, “Sir, I am poor in my body, but not in my ethics.  I would be grateful so much if you would treat me the way you want to be treated – like a friend.  But since you treat me like that, you do not save me, because I would rather die.”

This benefactor probably thought that all he had accumulated was his own doing, much like the man in the parable who loved building bigger barns with which to hoard the work of his own hands.  Yet those who love God know that everything we have is a gift, not of our own making, but of divine love.  We, who really own or create nothing, are mere stewards of that impossible grace.

One of my all-time favorite passages in Scripture is the one where the writer says that when Jesus saw the multitudes, he had compassion on them.”  His first response was not to evaluate or to calculate or to postulate.  It was to have compassion.

How do we have compassion?  The Golden Rule is a good place to start.  Treat others as you wish to be treated.  Doing to others as you want them to do to you is a principle found among great teachings the world over.  The truth is we only understand compassion as we realize our need for compassion ourselves.  In the end, we learn to give, not out of our bounty, but out of our lack.

A faith network for Cully

Had one of those evenings last night that came off very satisfying.  As friends, we’d been itching to convene people of faith to see if we could take our efforts at providing emergency food and clothing to the next level in Cully neighborhood.  Could we ramp up our endeavors in development while building on our record of relief?  Could we provide people in need jobs and training, creating jobs even, in addition to offering free food and used clothing?

Cully is a wonderfully demographically diverse neighborhood of some 13,000 souls.  One out of five residents are foreign-born, a fair representation from five continents.  At the multicongregationally-supported Northeast Emergency Food Program (NEFP), we display signs in nine languages as over half of our thousands of clients are non-native English speakers.

Yet the eastern end of Cully is one of those economically depressing parts of the city, neglected by city and county.  While the west end gentrifies, the east end languishes. Census Tract 76 in the east sports a rate of 38% at or below the federal poverty line.

And here we sit – our faith-based emergency food and clothing program – right in the middle of this Cully East End.  Northeast 72^nd Avenue, a narrow street with no sidewalks for our clients on foot, divides one mostly white tract with one of the lowest median incomes in the city from another with a slightly more prosperous demographic and majority non-white.

Annexed late by Portland, Cully remains an odd network of potholed, undeveloped and privately owned streets providing form for randomly-sized lots ranging from barely sustainable to small plantation.  On the one hand, the neighborhood evokes a small-town, even rural pristine natural feel.  On the other, it remains neglected by some of the most basic of city utilities, transportation services and retail outlets, its most thriving business centered in the triangle residents would prefer to see burned to the ground.

There are some very good stirrings in Cully – a “Main Street” rezoning project and a drive to eradicate the neighborhood of its most infamous blight at the triangle.  The area has an active neighborhood association and some very engaged citizens who have successfully campaigned for a much improved Cully Boulevard, a new as-yet-undeveloped park, and a new community garden.  Meanwhile, its schools are coming alive with reform-minded leadership. 

The faith community has a presence as well, with a scattering of churches, and representation in key civic posts.  But by and large, faith makes a weak presentation in this public square.  What houses of worship exist are often small and struggling, making little dent in a world fast changing and far too bewildering for many of the faithful to comprehend, let alone influence.

Even so, there are very good signs that this sub-community is stirring with fresh vision and passion.  I met with a handful of such faith people last night in the fellowship hall of Grace Presbyterian Church, a quasi-town hall for the Cully Association of Neighbors’ monthly gatherings.  Our group was much more modest in size.  We filled one round table.  But what we lacked in numbers we more than made up for in creative vision.

The meeting, convened by the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon (EMO), was attended by a total of eight, one of those one-year-old Micah, of Mosaic Church, our good-natured canary-in-the-mine who let us know when it was a decent hour to adjourn.  On the other end of the age scale was another good-natured fellow, Andy, who has resided in Cully for 55 of his 88 years.  Andy came representing Luther Memorial Lutheran Church, home to NEFP. 

I looked around the table and recognized a Pentecostal (me), Evangelicals, Andy the Lutheran, and a Roman Catholic.  Numbered in this small gathering were a union laborer, an entrepreneur, clergy, a retiree, and students.  What drew us together was a common belief that faith has something significant to say in a neighborhood high in chronic unemployment, low median income, questionable or non-existing enterprises, and lots of children deserving a fighting chance at a decent future.

Together we account for a significant amount of relief work in Cully and beyond.  NEFP alone serves half a million pounds of food and 50,000 articles of used clothing to some 11,000 unduplicated clients each year.  The Society of St. Vincent de Paul and local congregations also carry out a good deal of care.  We also are at the forefront of numerous efforts at food sustainability, health and wellness, micro-enterprise development, and neighborhood transformation.

The key word in that last paragraph is together.  That was something we were doing for the first time last night, coming together as Cully people of faith and identifying what we were doing separately and how we could move forward corporately.  Concerns identified included:

•   immigration issues 
• lack of employment and economically sustainable work 
• language barriers
• the need for personal advocacy in banking and health
• healthy, affordable and culturally appropriate food
• available and affordable transportation
• skill training
• zoning changes to foster community-serving businesses
• a community center for children

Far from discouraged by the overwhelming needs, we left energized.  As a group we are determined to continue the dialog, to explore what more we can do to take our commitment to serve those in need to the next level, and to be a stronger voice in the public forum for change for the better in Cully neighborhood.

If you’d like to join the discussion and get involved in this Cully faith network, email me at nefp@emoregon.org or leave a message for me at the NEFP office at 503-802-7384.

Taking a stand at the pole

My youngest, the most shy of the four, makes up for it with a contagious sweetness.  She wanted to be at school really early this morning, so I agreed to drive her.  “See You at the Pole” Day for Christian high school kids. 

Hannah invited a friend and was confident she wouldn’t be by herself.  Even so, as she got out of the car, I encouraged her that if she was the only one there, she wouldn’t be alone.  Thousands of kids would be meeting at similar school flagpoles across the country to pray.  “Allie will be there,” she said, matter-of-factly.

As a dad, I couldn’t be more proud of her for taking such a stand.  All four have made it habitual to do so, usually taking stands that go against the common grain.  Which, I guess, is what a “stand” is.  Just like their mother’s favorite Far Side shot of a sea of penguins and one shouting, “I just gotta be me!”

Robert serves in Afghanistan, and while even those who oppose the war tend to be supportive of individual soldiers, his work is certainly not public front and center – or crowded with joiners.  He chose this war over the other one, he said, because he believed in it.  And so he stands guard or goes out on missions in a remote, dusty place called Kandahar because he believes it is the right thing to do.

Stephen and Hope, the two middle kids, are perhaps the most vocal about taking stands, not the least of which was not saying one word for a whole day, as when they observed the Day of Silence as high school students.  Such a stand wasn’t all that popular with their fellow classmates and certainly not with their church friends.  But they remained silent in the face of criticism and misunderstanding.  As Hope said, “No one deserves to be bullied, Dad.”  For whatever reason.

As parents we like to take credit for what our offspring achieve.  But mostly it’s about giving them roots and then letting them fly.  Allowing them to fly means just that – releasing them to live out their roots as best they know how.  The roots their mother and I gave them were the core of our faith – love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as yourself.  They’ve been flying ever since.

No, Hannah, you won’t be alone at the flagpole today.  Allie will come, and even if she doesn’t make it, your Maker will be there with you - and your dear old earthly dad will be proud of you.

Gone is the neighbor I never knew

He popped his whitened head through the fence one day, while repairing a broken post, and said, “Good fences make good neighbors.”  Now the house lies dark, a “For Sale” sign posted.

I’ve always endeavored to get to know my neighbors wherever we’ve lived.  New Jersey, Florida, Texas, Missouri, Taiwan, NW China, and a brief stay in another Portland house.  I think this has been the hardest neighborhood of all.  We hug a busy street, no sidewalk, high fences on the other three sides.  Not really a neighborhood as much as a collection of isolation wards.  Early on after moving in, I went over to meet each of the adjacent property owners, to no avail, though my chicken eggs opened the door a crack at one house. 

This elderly gentleman, with whom we’ve shared a backyard fence these past three years, was also a breakthrough of sorts for our good neighbor plan, or so we thought.  But apparently he understood the need for boundaries in relationships more than the relationships themselves, at least as far as neighbors are concerned.  However, as a follower of Jesus, I live with the idea that the onus of friendship is on me, not on my neighbor.  And so, from time to time, I’ve tried to make contact.

Then one day earlier this year a couple who live on the other side of him informed me that this neighbor’s wife had died.  I was doing my Easter tradition, passing eggs around to our neighbors, eggs from our five laying hens.  I left a carton on his darkened doorstep.

Fences are good for some things, like protecting our chickens from mischievous raccoons or keeping our pug from wandering off.  And in this world of full self-exposure on the internet, boundaries are certainly underrated.

Robert Frost famously took to task the old English proverb, “Good fences make good neighbors,” writing, "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out / And to whom I was like to give offense."  Frost went on to say that nature itself seems bent on bringing down such barriers.

His observations about nature certainly hold true when it comes to my neighbor’s fence, whose posts lean precariously inward even more than before they were fixed.  There probably was good reason to build such fences in our neighborhood, and we enjoy the privacy as much as the next one.  But I wonder if the fences themselves have kept the neighborhood from forming or merely reflect the intent of its inhabitants to remain islands unto themselves.

I never got to know the answer to that wonderment from this man who exercised constant futility to maintain a wall that protected him from our pug.  He really didn’t know how to repair that fence.  If you’re going to replace the posts, at least anchor them deeply and with cement.  But who am I to judge?  Building fences has never been my forte.

Now his house of three decades sits silent, waiting for the highest bidder in a market begging bidders.  Meanwhile, I’ll be watching keenly for the “For Sale” sign to come down.  Quicker than you can say “Robert Frost,” I’ll be over there knocking on the front door, egg carton in hand.  After all, good neighbors bridge fences and mend breaches in relationships one good egg at a time.

In Praise of Work

On this Labor Day, I count it a privilege to work.  In the midst of the Great Recession, I hunted for employment for over a year, watching in vain as the family nest egg disappeared.  That year of job-hunting turned out to be the most difficult job of my life. 

Whenever I meet someone asking for work, I feel a strong connection.  Like I recognize myself in his or her face.  And it happens often; I now direct an emergency food program in Portland’s Cully neighborhood.

Recently a lanky, haggard-looking young man came in, stiffly asking how to do this (get a food box).  Never done this before, he said.  He appeared on the verge of tears, distracted by three children he struggled to corral even as he sought to find them food.  He’d been out of work for nearly four years and all he knew was construction.  Good luck on that, I thought but did not say as I placed the info for him, his wife and his children into our database, the ticket for three emergency food boxes every six months, enough to cover 10-15 days out of 180.

I understand.  I don’t have to try to imagine.  I sense the desperation tug at the muscles in his neck and squeeze at his heart and know the feeling.  At least his heart is young and his neck strong.

The job I found a year ago, part-time then, has become full-time, with benefits (sort off).  Even better, a great team to work with and a great cause to work for – providing emergency food for one out of every 53 Portlanders.

Our identity is not found in our jobs, I know.  However, work is part of the fabric of life, producing a sense of satisfaction that comes from being productive, doing good, and providing for family and others in need. 

When my kids were small, I taught them a quote from John Wesley, the eighteenth-century preacher:

“Earn all you can,

Save all you can,

Give all you can.”

Well, I’ve done better with the second two than the first line.  In our world, productivity, hard work, ability, and need do not necessarily coincide with income.  But until recently, work, albeit often lower pay, has come looking for me, not me for it.

Not everyone has been so blessed.  I’ve met people who struggled to find work long before the Great Recession and I’ve met plenty who are still hunting now.  It makes me grateful I have a job and all the more determined to live out that third line from Wesley.

When I enable someone to leave with a grocery cart full of food, I feel good, knowing I am blessing them in their time of need.  But I also pray for greater resources, tools to help them move beyond the emergency food box level.  The people who come to us don’t want a handout, they want a way out.  I wish I had the funds to hire a person trained to help those whose situations are more complicated, who can’t see their own way out, who struggle to overcome adversities that would swamp me too.

I understand what it is like to want to get to a goal and not see my way to it.  I also understand what it is like to give up on having a goal because to do so feels like bashing your head against a brick wall.  Been there, done that, and don’t want to go back.  Truth be told, I’ve never pulled myself up by my own bootstraps.  Whenever I’ve succeeded, there’ve always been others to give me a hand up, provide rungs for my ladder to success, hand me a flashlight in a pitch-dark tunnel . . . pick your metaphor.    

Meanwhile, for many, the situation is fairly straightforward: there are just not enough jobs to go around.   We’re starting a discussion among faith communities in Cully neighborhood this fall to talk about what we can do together beyond providing for emergency needs, maybe even turn vacant land and buildings into food and jobs.  Cully, a community with great ethnic diversity, has way higher than average unemployment.  It lacks many basic city services and ladders up which people can climb.

On this Labor Day, I find myself grateful I am able to work and have a job.  And as I renew my lifelong commitment to bless others with what God has given me, I set a new goal of making the Labor Days of the future days of celebration for others for whom today is no picnic.