doing that thing we do

One of my favorite books is an oddly skinny and fairly short book by a monk named Mary Lou Kownacki (who immediately earns points for fantastic last name). In A Monk In the Inner City: The ABC's of a Spiritual Journey, Kownacki recounts her life in the inner city of Erie, PA. Her first entry, "Abandoned Places", has echoed in my mind consistently in the years since I first read the book."What do I do here?" she muses. "I play. I teach. I get to know my neighbors. I plead a case for presence, beauty, community, and call to follow God into the wilderness." I relate to these words on so many levels as I live my own life in a trailer park, not so much the inner city but a desert in its own right. And so I have been asking myself the same question.

What do we do here? We show up. I have said for many years that 90% of mentorship is showing up, and our time here in the trailer has only cemented that belief. We show up and band concerts, at football games, at school open house nights. I once heard someone say that much of what we find in marriage is someone to "bear witness to our lives", and I think that is true here as well. Kids need someone to bear witness to their many attempts, and the certain successes and failures that will ensue. They need someone to bear witness to the shaping of their lives, the living out of their childhood. Their parents do not always do this, some because of irresponsibility, others because of working two jobs or not having a car. And so we show up. We bear witness. We fill the silence with cheering.

What do we do here? We cook. We introduce kids whose diets consist mainly of microwavable fare to the wondrous world of produce and home cooked meals. We are Sunday afternoon lunch. We are Thursday night dinner. We are apples and grapes and carrots and broccoli, which they hated at first and now wolf down like it's candy. We are milk and water instead of soda and mostly-corn-syrup "juice".

What do we do here? We drive. A lot. More than us showing up, we make sure that kids can show up for their own lives. That they can get to their band concerts, get to school, get to the doctor. I have realized how poverty can limit the scope of opportunity for kids. They want to play basketball, but have no ride to the games. They want to join a club, but can't get to the meetings. They want to go to church, but are as car-less on Sunday as on every other day of the week. They want to be healthy, but have no way of getting from home to a dentist's office and back. And so we drive. We help them be present to opportunity, instead of dreaming of such things from a living room in a single wide.

What do we do here? We play Uno. And Apples to Apples, and catch, and hide-and-seek. We answer the door at odd hours to rejoice over new-found treasures. We go to the park. We go to the zoo. We make space for children to be children, kids whose lives are often spent being parents to their parents, or at least to themselves. I will be honest: I often don't feel like playing. Sometimes it sounds exhausting, and I avoid it even when I have no real excuse to. But play may be one of the most important things we do, and so we play. As one whose own childhood may have been short on play at times, I have a feeling it is more redemptive for me than I am aware of.

What do we do here? Like Kownacki, we plead a case for family, for community.To our joy and surprise, those who have moved from the park still com back on Thursday nights, shuttled in and out by one or another of the adults here. Last week, we had fourteen kids, only to realize that only four of them actually live in the park at the moment. Some of them never have been part of the neighborhood; they were invited by one of those who lives (or lived) here. What do we do? We celebrate birthdays. Tons of them. The birthday banner goes up, presents come out, and cake is served. The presence of community has made our home the preferrecd place for celebrations, and we rejoice in that.

And perhaps, like Kownacki, we plead a case for following God into the wilderness. Moreso, we attempt to tell the story of how what we thought was a journey into the wilderness has turned out to be a trek into a deep, deep well of life, no matter how turbulent it can be sometimes. We love to invite people into our home because we feel like we are inviting them into the presence of God among the poor. We are inviting them into what God can do with imperfect people who set aside comfort for the sake of love, even if we get it wrong much of the time. We invite people to see the face of Christ all around us. Sometimes I want to shout from the rooftops that God is present when we go with him into what Mother Teresa called "the dark holes, [where] our Lord is always really present."

In the end, what we do here (when we are able to step outside of ourselves) , is give thanks and bear witness to the miracle of God at work. I often feel like opening the hollow door of our tin-can-home is like Christmas. I can't believe I get to live here, get to watch the Father at work. If you're reading this, consider this an invitation to what we do here.In the end, it's really what God does here. We just show up.