“So how are you doing, really doing?” My African-American friend of 30 years, Deacon Maurice Campbell asked, as we sat together enjoying football and food after worshipping. I knew he was referring to my being robbed last month in my garage. I hesitated to respond, I did not want him taking what I said in a wrong direction. “I’m changed.” I reflectively responded. “I see people differently. I don’t think one can go through that kind of thing without being changed.”
The day after my laptop was ripped from me by two youths prowling my alley, I stayed inside the house. The space I was familiar with, where I felt safe and in control. I wanted to pull in the fences, circle the wagons and gather some weapons. My world might be smaller but at least I would control it. But God is a paradigm changer especially for human beings who insist on taking charge and are incessantly seeking spaces which (falsely) promise more comfort and control. For those of us the shift is titanic. It is a game changer. Why was I afraid? Did I feel I was going to be robbed again? Was I punishing my naïveté with an all too familiar sledgehammer of shame? If I had just not taken my laptop out in the garage….I should of never been sitting in the garage in the first place…How foolish I was to be polite and pull the dog back from going at them… Why didn’t I just let Lucy bite them, that is what they deserved! And how could I be so stupid thinking I was a football tackle lunging at not players but real thieves, they could have been carrying weapons-what’s wrong with me? I should know better than that after all these years! What’s got into me? My surprising reflex response was highly uncharacteristic and frightened me. I could have been …….? Sitting safely in the stillness of my house I could already hear the voices that were sure to come. Yet there seemed to be more. For over 30 years I have lived my life with one leg in the White world and the other in the Black. I have often laughed with my congregation saying, “I have lived over ½ my life in the African-American community--and I am still not Black!” And for the most part I have never really felt threatened- in fact I’ve always sensed that my neighbors were a bit overly protective and watchful of me and my family. Also I carried a bit of-what I’ve come to realize as “self- pride”, that I was different than other white people, because I treated all peoples equally- always giving them the benefit of the doubt. What other posture could a boy growing up in white suburbia and then moving into an all black community take? And besides, wasn’t that what a pastor was supposed to do- especially a white one? I couldn’t be prejudiced, not ME? But now I somehow felt older, more vulnerable, and changed. I had not changed addresses for 30 years and no one ever did that to me! This was my space-my world, the place I felt safe. As one of my companions in ministry who came by my house to check on me commented, “It really is quite amazing that for 30 years you have been able to live within this unviolated virgin space.” Yes, it was amazing. And my salvation is a pull onto a new playing field. This place is where the rhythms of honest vulnerability and human fragility replace the old rules of self-made security. Where rhythms of trust and confidence counter all the “you should of’s”. Yes, I am changed and am beginning to get both legs moving to a new rhythm.
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Tuesday is my Sabbath, not “my day off,” but my Sabbath. For almost three decades I have broken the 4th commandment, so I figure for the last one I should try to get it right. That sunny September day I wanted to visit my youngest daughter who was starting her first day of graduate classes at Northwestern University in Evanston and I was also entertaining the idea of one last swim in Lake Michigan. I am a “have suit and goggles and will travel” type of swimmer. The pull of the coarse sand and the deep blue waters were far too seductive on that particular day for me to practice abstinence- even if the beach gate was padlocked. So I found a hole in the fencing and illegally slipped in for a bit of Sabbath refreshment.
Coming out from a refreshing fall swim, I encountered a sailor standing beside his beached 14-foot fiberglass sailboat, a toy I also enjoyed in my youth. As I commented on the beauty of the place and the joy of sailing; he stated that he was a substitute CPS high school teacher on the west side for the past 10 years and that he was accessing the boat and water for therapy. I told him I had pastored on the west side for 30 years. “Well, at least your still standing to tell about it!’, he retorted, “most days I come home feeling like a punching bag freshly pummeled by a steady rhythm of F-YOU’s.” Ahhh, I thought an “old life-robbing rhythm on an old field.” We talked for a few moments and I headed up the beach to dry off and start my trip home. I thought about my sailor acquaintance the next day as I walked into the beautiful gymnasium at Chicago West Side Christian School. I saw young men from our youth ministries (YMEN & God’s Property) running up and down the court. These young men were playing on that “old field,” the one that pummels you down like a punching bag. But they were playing to a different rhythm, a life giving rhythm, one where THANK-YOU’s replace the F-YOU’s. Marcell, born with cerebral palsy and awkwardly running down the court with clubbed feet, maybe best pictures these life-giving rhythms among us. During the game the moment of opportunity came and Marcell lined his toes carefully behind the 3-point line. His unselfish teammate tossed him the ball and with his unparalleled, upper body and arm strength, Marcel gracefully flipped the ball into a rainbow arc- NOTHING BUT NET! A life-giving rhythm lifted both teams and fans. Again it came back to me, “a new rhythm on an old field.” As a pastor who was “still standing”, I wanted to tell about it. My next Sabbath I sat with my dog, Lucy, in my garage using words to paint a picture of this “new rhythm.” Two youths, walking to the “old rhythm on the old field,” forcibly seized this story as they grabbed my laptop computer. “I’ll give you money for that computer!” I screamed chasing them after being dragged down the alley hanging onto one of their legs. Running to their get-away van, he hurled the battle cry of the “old rhythm” with a passion that could of killed if they were bullets, “F-YOU!” I am still standing to tell about it. More importantly- WE (the Jesus-Followers at Lawndale) are still standing to tell about it and to LIVE it. Yes, on the “old field” but with a renewable energy outside of ourselves. The presence of the Resurrected Jesus pulling us through Word, Community, and Prayer. An “old field with the new rhythm” THANK-YOU! |