Love includes. Love accepts. Love gives.
Love is patient. Love is Kind. Love listens. Love wants only more Love. Love keeps no record of wrongs. Love rejoices in Truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.
Love is…

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What is this present moment? And how can I live in it and love it if I do not understand what it is and what it could be? I don’t understand infinity… how I try… so hard… to grasp the idea of something eternal. My friend says that infinity and eternity are brother and sister. They touched and created Space, and then Time, and then Power, and then they all got together and created Reality. They created the present moment. The present moment is infinite. It goes on forever. I am everything that I ever was or will be, all at once. I am the worst of myself, the best of myself… I am in the moment as much as I ever was… or wasn’t. Detract Time, and understand that everything is but a single moment of existence. Detract Space, and understand that everything is connected. Detract Power, and realize that we are all dead without the Spirit. We begin to see that Reality is nothing more or less than a dream. Somehow critical, and yet meaningless. Simultaneously alive and dead.

I understand that nothing inside of me occurs in linear fashion. There is nothing chronological about existence, really… especially inside of perception. We use our senses to create a mental image or understanding of the world. Then we project ourselves into it. We decide who we are, and what is happening, by marrying our senses to our imaginations and creating what we believe. Actions demonstrate beliefs. Honestly there is no better enunciation of our values then our behavior. There is no better creation of imagination then life itself. We show ourselves and each other what matters, what we see, what we consider important, what we care about. We show each other how we feel, how we love, what we like, what we want….

I’m changing like the snake that sheds its skin to grow a little bigger, a little brighter, a little smoother, a little stronger…. But the process itself is uncomfortable. It’s like digging my skin into the rocks to peel away the old parts. It’s frustrating when there is much effort for little change, forgetting that the little change is necessary for the big change. I long for people to notice it, so that I can tell that it’s real. But like everything, I get lost inside that longing…. Forgetting to notice that other things are peeling away. Why do I sleep different, and dream different, and love different? What’s happened? Who am I becoming?

I trust it. But I am still nervous. It’s not funny, the subtle irritations that crawl under my skin like beetles that crawl into the dusty grey dirt outside my front door. I had a dream once a few years ago that these beetles had names, the three of them that landed on my arm. They were called selfishness, judgment, and apathy. In the dream I felt panicked when they landed there, as though I could do nothing about it, until I had the clarity of mind to reach over and brush them to the ground. Today, I want to take the blunt end of a screw driver and smash those beetles to pieces before they wreck my life.

My heart beats a little faster sometimes, when I notice the subtle rebellions. The simple way I can know better, and do it anyway. The way that emotions can swirl around inside me until I’m scowling at strangers…. The way that I can pick apart another person, from top to bottom, inside and outside, until there is nothing left but dust…. Without ever opening my mouth. Everything happens inside my head while I smile or stare out the window. The way that I say No. Here’s the flow, there’s the river… Go. But I stop, I turn around, I go the other way. I never address it, I pretend it’s not there, while it rushes past my toes, the cold, refreshing bubble of crystal clear current knows the truth, and somewhere deep inside of myself my greatest desire is to splash and swim and lay on my back and let it float me downstream, closer to God and closer to Love…. But I stay. I keep my feet planted on the reality of life that I know and life that I can see and touch and smell… the life I can hear in my ear when it speaks to me of different options and other ways, the life that tells me how much better it will be if I just decide what I want and go after it, without sinking my foot into the water and just listening… to the sound…

I’m nervous that the sparkle will go out of my eyes and the whispers will leave my heart when I’m busy with something more ‘real’. I’m nervous that I’ll choose myself.

Simultaneously I understand that it’s not possible for these fears to be completely realized. I could never wander far enough away without falling down and waking up. I could never cut the rope that is tied around my soul and pulls me closer, and closer, to the light above me. Someone said that pain is necessary for correction, but suffering is a man-made condition. It happens when we don’t let go of our pain. It happens when we fall in love with our pain and we hold hands with it in the moonlight for the rest of our lives. It happens when we enjoy our own sorrow. When it feels so good, to be so sad. It happens when we nurse it, and milk it, and make it grow into something profound and deep and hollow.

If pain was a person, he would require introduction before he would go on his way. Like the drunk at the party who needs attention or he’ll be there until someone turns off the lights and he sleeps in the hallway, where someone will step on him when they get up in the middle of the night to go the bathroom. Pain is that guy. There are a lot of those guys in my life, the life that has happened all at once, the versions of myself that have been hurt, and loved, and wounded. The life that will not move forward in completion until certain things are sorted out and introduced.

How many variation of emotions, how many possible perspectives that contradict each other can be squeezed into the shell of this life? How many reactions, how many predictions, how many dreams and relationships and communities will fit in this reality? Perhaps that’s why it is the infinite moment, the eternal present. Because I think that there is no end. Even when I think that the walls of the universe will absolutely burst… or I imagine that space itself could not contain it… it’s only because I simply cannot understand that space, like time, is forever.

~~

I thought of her yesterday while I fastened a leather strap to my ankle. I wonder where she is… if she’s alright. It’s been about two years since that sunny afternoon in Portland when she whispered with Brian for a moment while they sat on the sidewalk next to my truck. When she stood up, this piece of leather was in her hand.

“I’ve been wearing this for something like five years, but I want you to have it. It’s my favorite leather,” she told me as she showed me the star cut into the double layer of animal skin and the snaps that held it in place. My eyes were wide as I thanked her and tried to fasten it to my wrist. I remember how embarrassed I was, much later that day, when I realized that it was meant to be worn on my ankle. It’s wide and worn, more so today than it was two years ago, but only because I didn’t take it off for nearly a year and a half. Shane has been wearing it for quite some time, but when I found it on top of his closet cabinet yesterday I kidnapped it back and snapped it in place.

“What will they think?” I had asked myself as I drove to meet them on the streets of Portland. I was lost in my thoughts, maybe too self-aware…. I was clean, I had taken a shower at the truck stop, and I was painfully convicted of the double life that I live too often on the streets. “Why would I tell them unless it’s necessary?” I reasoned with myself about the reality that I didn’t often tell people on the street that this was a ‘project’… I just told them that I lived in my truck. To most people, I’m just homeless.

That’s who I was when I had met Autumn and Brian the day before while I walked around town with my friend Amanda. I had noticed Brian playing the guitar as we crossed the street, and I was curious… teenagers dressed in torn fabric stitched together with dental floss, carrying backpacks covered in various patches and sharpie marker, safety pins and key chains. Hair full of dread locks that don’t look entirely purposeful, skin covered in piercings and home-made tattoos, scrapes and bruises… Who were these kids? Why were they out here? Brian belted out some heavy metal to the tune of an acoustic guitar and explained that Autumn was the musician, and she’d be back in a minute.

“She sings in Spanish, because she lived in another country for awhile. She’s actually good, I’m just messin around,” he told me. A few minutes later, the cops told Brian that he couldn’t sit on the windowsill of the business behind us, even though it was closed. I was instinctively angry, but Brian said that “the cop is cool, he gave me some combat boots one time.”

She bounced around the corner with a smile and jacked the guitar from Brian. He was right, she was better, and her songs were beautiful.

It’s a strange feeling, to sit back in a moment… to live it again in my mind… to understand it on a level that wasn’t possible at the time, with all the lessons learned in the distance between the two spaces. I am the same girl, in the same skin, that sat there on the pavement with them that day, talking about adventure and freedom, life outside of a corporate dream, travel and perpetual motion, mind altering substances, the Myth of Development, the downward spiral of mankind, the evolution of the collective consciousness, the future…. But despite all the ‘sameness’ of myself, my soul is different. I’ve grown in understanding and truth in ways that just… can’t be expressed.

~~

I told God this sunny morning alone in the scratchy yellow South Dakota grass that it’s incredibly ironic… the things that I used to dream about, the things that I wanted for myself, with this life that I’ve been given… I don’t want them anymore. It’s like I was dreaming inside of a box. My dreams could only get so big, and I thought they were just huge, because I was blind to the box entirely. I had these beautiful dreams for myself… but they were so physical… so human. Looking at them now, all that just seems… dead. It’s like somehow in the last two years, God has taken a crowbar to my box. He stuck the metal down in the cracks and popped the sides off, one by one. I think I saw them as they fell… and when they landed I think I saw the dust rise with impact. It must have been the lid of the box that came off most recently…. Because lately… all I can see is this clear, blue. The most beautiful blue in the world.

The possibilities of a life without limitations…. How to describe what that feels like? My fingertips danced on top of the breeze this morning while I pondered that thought… and I smiled into the sunshine when I realized… That. It’s exactly like dreaming on the wind. And there’s no more fear in that. Nothing left to be afraid of.

~~

There was this moment, as I walked with Autumn and Brian across the bridge in Portland toward the army supply store and I was walking kind of behind them, taking photos of the way that they walked together like the happiest couple in the world, their dog keeping the pace in between them… and I slowed down to look out over the water, the skyline, the buildings, and the grey clouds creating this peaceful almost-rainy scene for my photos. I was captivated by the moment… like something about this exact instant was going live forever. Like time itself is a photograph, and with pure love, we can freeze a moment for eternity to be accessed from any other space and place in our journey toward divine purpose. I believe it… I know it. Because I can still take a breath on that bridge, under that sky, with the city stretched out at the water’s edge. I can still feel the coolness of the air on my cheeks and the softness of my sweatshirt. I see Autumn bouncing toward me from further up the sidewalk with a bright smile and a twinkle in her eye. I am quiet, living in a moment lived once before and thousands of times still to come, as she falls into step beside me and we approach the highest arch of the bridge. Just before we get to the top, she holds something in front of me and I stop walking. White and pale pink flowers trimmed in gold stretch across a wide metal bracelet.

“I want you to have this. Pink really isn’t my color. Will you wear it?” she asked. Her voice was sincere, and I felt her heart. I know the feelings. I’ve felt them. Different lives… a different view out the windows of my eyes… but the sameness. It’s undeniable. I was only momentarily speechless as I nodded and touched the beautifully designed piece of jewelry.

I still have that bracelet… still wear it all the time, and get compliments on it all the time. Last week, two pieces of the metal fell apart and I had to place the bracelet in a drawer until we can fix it. Like everything made up of atomic particles, it falls apart, but the gift given is eternal.

I must have been feeling the same freedom that I felt this morning in South Dakota when I asked Brian where he would go, if he could go anywhere. It’s such a fun question. I asked myself that this morning, and the answer made me laugh. I want to go to Portland, where I met Autumn and Brian. And then to California, where I fell in Love with God. Maybe New Mexico, where I fell in Love with life and with Shane. And then perhaps a village in the middle of nowhere somewhere other than America. But by the time I get to Portland, the wind may have carried the dream elsewhere…

When I asked Brian, he told me that he wanted to go to Aberdeen Washington to the bridge where Kurt Cobain wrote most of his songs. I laughed. Back in Mississippi I was more than a little obsessed. I read Kurt’s journal, his red notebook, and it was enlightening. It was beautiful. It was profound. The man is a legend. I have a collector’s edition boxed set of Nirvana CD’s around here somewhere, and I used to have a huge poster of him that a friend gave me once… a poster that said “I’d rather burn out than fade away..”

“Let’s go then! I’ll take you.” I told Brian. I was planning to head to Seattle anyway. I didn’t know that Aberdeen was an additional 2 or 3 hours from the city. Even if I had known, I don’t think I would have cared.

We were crammed in the truck like sardines, with Zuzu and Sadie laying on pillows in the backseat and the three of us across the bench seat, with everything I own and some of their gear in the cab with us.

Autumn was full of questions about the Project. The moment after a long pause when she burst out suddenly, “I think you’re a genius!” is something that periodically pops back into my mind when people tell me that it isn’t “wise” to live without a savings account or a “real job”.

Aberdeen is a little coastal town, mostly abandoned, and there aren’t any signs or landmarks to point the way to the Kurt Cobain memorial. We only knew that it was a bridge… but there are lots of bridges in Aberdeen. We walked under two or three of them, and I got out my phone to look it up on google maps. It didn’t help and I can almost laugh at the memory, considering how often I tell Shane to put his phone away these days. Exploration and the human imagination, the necessity of meeting strangers and asking for directions is incredibly potent in comparison. It was dark when we found Brian’s dream… under an ordinary bridge, spray painted with hundreds of thousands of messages scrawled in bright colors; a tribute to the grungy musician who wrote a lot of his songs sitting in the dirt next to the water, drinking beer with the homeless guys and scribbling in a red notebook.

“What do you say to a dead guy?” Brian wondered. “Thanks for living!?”

Our laughter bounced off the concrete and I picked up a piece of cement for my friend Tom’s rock collection.  Something told me Tom was probably a Nirvana fan. A message written in sharpie across a splatter of green graffiti caught my eye. “Shane, with us in spirit.” I snapped a photo for him. He and Amanda were the only people that knew I had taken these kids on such a road trip. Most people would probably worry… afraid of something that they didn’t understand. Assuming that their own fearful instincts were more aligned with the God of the Universe than mine were…

Some things are better kept quiet until it’s all said and done.

I dreaded the moment in which they would get out of my truck. For 70 miles, I prayed for God to change something…. To alter the inevitable outcome… I prayed and gripped the steering wheel while Autumn and Brian slept soundly next to me. When I saw the city skyline in the horizon, a peace settled over me and I relaxed. Let it go…. It’s eternal, after all.

Where would I take them? Where should I go? I knew they were hoping to catch a train eventually. Catch, as in jump a freight train headed to some unknown destination and adventure. But in the meantime, there was a party they were trying to go to. Still… Somehow I followed the highway and ended up in a train yard under the east end of the city. It was perfect, and I was bitter about it. I parked carefully, gently, hoping that they would keep sleeping. A man walked past my truck, and I jumped. He asked me for a cigarette, and I gave him one. Zuzu started turning in circles on her pillow. I was afraid she would wake them up, so I tugged her fur. She cried, and Autumn stirred. They were awake in a few more seconds, and I was begging God to stop the rotation of the earth and the passing of Time.

The moment is still alive. I’m still on that bridge in Portland. I’m still under that bridge in Aberdeen. I’m still in that truck, parked next to the train yard while they sleep. I’m still driving a little too fast through the black night as the white lines fly under my tires and the music plays softly on the radio, the wind dancing with my fingertips out the window… I’m still saying hello… My eyes are still full of broken tears and my lungs still sing in agony and worship. My heart still beats with a love on fire… And all the faces and places that have embodied that love are living under my skin and shaping each thought that forms on the other side of my eyelids. We are still together. There is enough air for all of life to breathe in unison. This dream… is for both of us.

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“Puppy!” I said, even though it looked to be almost a year old. I began to stand up. I needed the comfort of a dog after this long day. “I’m gonna go say hi to the dog,” I told Shane, who was sitting on the concrete next to me, behind Chris and his wife. As I took a step forward, I noticed that the dog had crossed the gravel lot and was bumping noses with something much smaller that I couldn’t see over the head of the man sitting next to me.

“Look Shay!” I heard Rob’s voice as I took another step forward. “It’s the puppy I saw yesterday that I was telling you about!” I took another step toward the dogs and saw the little thing that the black dog was bumping noses with begin to take shape in the darkness. It was tiny, and skeleton-skinny, and some sort of German Shepherd mix. It looked like it was only a couple months old, and it was trotting right to me, looking over its shoulder at the black dog, who was now going back across the street.

I remember Rob mentioning this after his adventure in White Clay yesterday. He said he almost came back with a puppy, and I gave him my wide-eyed-you-better-never-do-that look. He told me that he had seen a little shepherd mix running around, and the guys had told him that someone in a minivan had just dropped him off. “They do that all the time I guess,” Rob had explained. “People just take dogs down there and drop them off, and the guys take care of them as well as they can, and then sometimes people come by and pick up the adults and adopt them. Like today, someone came and picked up the dog Carla was taking care of… you remember Oreo?” he said. Of course I remembered Oreo; she looked a lot like Zuzu and I had thought she was the prettiest one.

Pine Ridge and White Clay are full of dogs. They are running around everywhere. Most of them have a home to go to… a place where they sleep at least, but they are all too skinny and covered in fleas, ticks and mange. The people who live here are in such deep poverty themselves that they can’t raise a dog in the way that most Americans take for granted. “The puppy followed one of the guys away before I left, or I probably would have taken him. No one would have cared either way. Those dogs don’t really belong to anyone,” he had said. It’s different in White Clay. Most of the people who live there do have a house or a home somewhere, a place that they stay. But they come down to this little town to drink away their trauma. Most of these guys are veterans, and they stay down here almost every day, sleep down here entirely too often, and don’t take care of themselves. Taking care of a dog isn’t even on the radar, let alone a priority.

I reached down and scooped up the little dog, and he immediately fell asleep in my arms. I whispered in his ear, and sat down on the pavement while he slept.

“You like that puppy?” asked the guy who must have taken a liking to him. His name was Dennis. I nodded at him. “Is it yours?” I asked him. “No, but I was thinking of giving it to my daughter, Cherish. She might like it.” He said. “Not that we need another one running around by my house.”

“What’s his name?” I asked him. Dennis shrugged. “Whatever you want it to be,” he told me. The guys had all been calling him something different since he had arrived, and I knew it didn’t matter if I gave him a name or not, the guys would call him whatever they wanted.

“Do you think you could give me a ride home?” Dennis asked quickly.

I looked at Shane, who was in the middle of conversation with Chris and his wife, and then glanced at Bubba. The three of us had ridden here in the cab, and the back was full. I guess one of us could lay down in the back seat… we had done it before. But I wasn’t the one driving, and the driver decides. “You’ll have to ask one of them,” I said, not knowing which one of the boys would be driving home. I nodded at both Shane and Rob. “I’m not sure.” He caught Rob’s eye first and asked him for a ride. I watched Rob’s eyes widen as he looked at the truck. He shook his head no, but he couldn’t get the words out. “Ummmm…. I don’t think so, but I don’t know.”

Dennis sat down across from me and asked me where I was from. He was pretty drunk, and a few minutes later he started making jokes. “MMmm, that puppy is looking good. You might want to send him over this way, I’m getting kind of hungry,” he said. I squinted at him. Chris had been talking earlier about eating puppy in Vietnam. It was a gross conversation. “Whatever dude,” I said, hoping to change the subject. “No seriously!” he teased. “Those hind legs are like pork chops, and the front ones are like drumsticks. I hear it tastes like chicken.” He said. Catching himself, he turned to his friend. “I’ve never actually tried it, have you?” he asked him. His friend shook his head no and he continued. “That doesn’t mean I won’t though, send him over this way,” he waived at me with a smile.

“You’re not fooling me.” I stated.

“Foolin? I’ll show you fooling. Put him down and you’ll see me skin a dog right here.” He said.

The thought was so horrifying to me that I told myself I would never set the puppy down around this man, joking or not. But he changed the subject. A little while later his friend asked me if I had a “picture thing,” and when I didn’t answer he made the hand motions like he was taking a picture. “You and that puppy, with the moon shining behind you… beautiful.” He nodded into the cool night air, smiling at us as though he approved.

“That’s one Lucky dog,” the man next to him said matter-of-factly. “There you go! His name is Lucky!” he announced with pride. I laughed at the reference to a word I usually change to blessed, but for some reason I had included it in my journal earlier that day as though it was the only word that fit the situation.

“Jesus, God… are you trying to send me home with a puppy right now? What the hell… I don’t want a puppy. I have a dog. And we have two dogs and a cat. Just stop it.” I muttered to myself.

But a little voice whispered to my heart. “Who said it’s for you? This is Joseph’s dog.”

A peace settled over me as I buried my face in between the sleeping puppy’s ears. “That doesn’t make any sense. But okay, if that’s the truth…. “ I whispered back. We had an understanding. If this was Joseph’s dog, and I was supposed to bring him home with me, then we would be taking Dennis back home too.

For the next hour, the little puppy slept in my lap while I talked to the guys who were showing up to hang out here on this little concrete porch in the dark. I was standing in the light of the street lamp, holding the puppy and impatient to find out what would happen, when a few more guys noticed the dog. “Wow, you like that puppy?” one guy said. “You should take it with you.”

This guy doesn’t know me at all, I told myself. Why would he say that to me? I don’t want a puppy!

“Seriously,” he continued. “It’s nobody’s dog. It won’t have a good life here.”

What do you know? These dogs might not have a great physical existence, but at least they’re around people all the time and they get some love, I told myself. It’s better than being left in a kennel at home while everybody goes to work for 8 or 9 hours a day. THAT is a sucky life, if you ask me. These dogs have it made. And besides, it’s beautiful out here. They have space to run around free and chase cows and horses and stuff, I said to myself as I thought about Tuffy’s dog Missy. This is a good life.

I gave that guy a skeptical look and Chris came up around my right side. “Oh…” he muttered. “You holding that puppy huh?” he said as he put his face close to the dog and examined him in the darkness. “You should take him. He’s not gonna live if you leave him out here.” He told me.

“What? What do you mean he won’t live?” I asked. “He won’t survive the winter,” Chris explained. “Look at him. He’s already too skinny. You see that dog over there?” he pointed at the black dog that I had seen crossing the street. I nodded. “He won’t live much longer either. He’s all covered in mange. That dog right there,” he pointed at the dog in my arms. “He’s gonna die.”

I hugged the dog to my chest in defiance. No he won’t! I told myself. He won’t die. Where is all of this coming from?

“I’m telling you the truth,” Chris said. “That dog, he’s got a 50/50 chance….” Time froze in that moment. What did he just say? As if by the magic of the soul, he repeated himself and emphasized the numbers. “He’s got a FIFTY-FIFTY chance… and that dog is gonna die.”

That’s it. If you give this dog a 50/50 chance, then he’s gonna live, because I’m going to say YES.

Two seconds later, Dennis walked around to Shane. “Hey man, can I get a ride?” he asked him. Shane looked at me, looked at the truck and looked at Rob, who by now was handing out clothes from the back to a little group of women who had arrived a few minutes before. “Where do you live?” he asked.

I looked down at the puppy in my arms and kissed his forehead. Alright guy, I can already tell how this is going to go… and you are Lucky.

Ten minutes later, Shane walked up to me and asked if I would be willing to lay down in the backseat on the ride home. “We’re taking Dennis, aren’t we?” I said with a smile. Shane nodded. I nudged him with my arm and nodded at the puppy in my arms. He smiled. “You want to keep him, don’t you?” he asked. I nodded again with a sheepish smile. “For real… another dog?” he prodded, but I could tell by the smile on his face that he wasn’t going to disagree. He sighed. “All right then, get your little butt in the back of the truck.”

I waited for the guys to say goodbye with the puppy snuggled up to my chest in the backseat. Even by the pale white light of the street lamp, I could see the fleas infested in his fur. What are we doing? God, you are crazy. This is nothing like Indy. This dog doesn’t even have his first shots. I have no idea what’s wrong with him or how old he is, or what it’s going to take to get him to gain weight…

When Dennis got in the truck, he looked into the back seat and saw me holding the puppy. “Aw. Are you taking that dog?” he asked me. I nodded at him in the dark. “Good.” He said matter-of-factly. “You’ll be good to it, and it might live. No puppy soup for me,” he laughed.

After we had dropped Dennis off at home and we were headed toward Tuffy’s house, I told the guys about my encounter with the whispers of God, and about Joseph. Shane instantly agreed, and I told them that Joseph probably doesn’t even want a dog. I have no reason to believe that he does. Especially some mutt German Shepherd we picked up in Whit e Clay. “His name is Lucky,” I explained. “And Trust me, this doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t plan on telling him until it’s about to happen… but someday we’re going to run into Joseph on the road, and I guess we’ll tell him then… ‘dude, I think we have your dog…’” I said. Rob finished my thought. “And we’ve known it since the day that we got him.”

We all smiled into the darkness as we bounced along the dirt road toward Tuffy’s house.

~~

The screen on my cell phone revealed that I had missed a phone call from Joseph. When I called him back, he was sitting down to have lunch with my friends Greg and Julia, and I instantly felt a pang of regret for interrupting one of these precious few moments of fellowship between them. And yet, I was intrigued by the broken phrases that I could hear my friend telling me through the poor reception that I was getting in Alice’s living room.

“We’re leaving…. Heading to Oregon… around the first… next Thursday.” I heard him say through the scattered static of my cell phone. What?! I thought it would be at least another month before he was ready to move along. The next sentence came through the speaker clearly, like Joseph was sitting right next to me. “We’re gonna stop along the way and try to track down some hippie kids living in a camper somewhere in South Dakota,” he said. I laughed in my cell phone, joy welling up inside me, amazement and wonder at this unexpected piece of good news.

I told Shane and Rob about this new revelation; the impending visit of our friends, and their eyes were wide with joy and curiosity. I told them the story about their visit the best I could from what I had gathered through the static on the phone, and we all held our breath for a moment and looked at Lucky. I watched Shane’s face. “I told him that we had a surprise for him,” I said softly into the silence between us.

He smiled, and I was relieved. I knew that he had grown attached to Lucky in just the few short days that he had been sleeping next to Shane’s side of the bed. “But you didn’t tell him what it was?” he asked.

“No, I figured that should be done in person,” I answered him. “That way,” I laughed, “he doesn’t have time to think about it first.”

~~

For days, I wondered how to tell Joseph that we had his dog. When God had whispered to me in White Clay, I had imagined giving Joseph a dog, not a puppy. I had no reason to believe that Joseph would be coming to see us so soon… I thought we would raise him a good little dog and then give it to him sometime in the next year, as our paths crossed again on these long stretches of highway between here and the great state of Oregon. Little did I know…

As my mind wandered through different scenarios and created different phrases and conversations that would offer Joseph this crazy, fuzzy little gift, I couldn’t imagine what he would say. I couldn’t picture it. I was almost sick with worry that he would say no, despite my logic that it wouldn’t matter either way. It was a full-out argument inside my head, until one day I was sitting on the porch, and I heard another whisper. “Do I ask you to do things that are not for the ultimate good?”

I knew the answer was Never. I was ashamed of myself and stared at my feet on the old weathered wood of this quiet front porch. “You are responsible for saying Yes to Me. But that’s it. Stop worrying about anyone else and their answers.”

The thought occurred to me that God might be asking me to do something else in this very moment, something else that I was missing while I was lost in my head, thinking about Joseph and his visit. I pushed my worry out of my mind and agreed to go along with whatever happened…. To go with the flow of life, and stop over-thinking things.

Suddenly, it was Thursday, and we had woken up early to start work. Rob and I climbed into Bubba and headed over the hill to help remodel an old mobile home for a local pastor, while Shane dug the post holes for a new railing along the back steps at Tuffy’s house.

Rob and I became wallpaper professionals in one afternoon, and we had finished half the kitchen by lunch time. I was hoping when we ran out of wallpaper we would call it quits for the day, but Rob was determined to finish leveling the floor in the bathroom before sunset. I figured that we had better cell phone reception on the top of the hill anyway, so I brought Rob’s phone with me and set it on the concrete blocks outside the mobile home while we worked.

We had just finished the flooring, and cleaned up the workspace when I went to grab Rob’s cell phone. A missed call lit up the screen. It was time to go meet Joseph and Greg at the gas station downtown.

~~

The three of us sat across the bench seats in Bubba, waiting for Joseph and Greg and watching Lucky, sprawled out across my lap with his tongue hanging out. We reviewed the events of the last 9 days since we picked him up in White Clay. He had been so skinny when we got him! But after a little de-wormer and some evaporated milk, he had fattened right up. Now he had the characteristic roly-poly belly that a puppy his age should be boasting. Tuffy had mentioned that he might have mange the morning after we had brought him home, and we had rushed him to the local animal control office to have him looked at. The last thing I wanted to do was risk the health of Tuffy’s dogs. Shane and I had waited 45 minutes to meet the vet, hoping that we would be able to afford his fees. When he arrived and took a look at Lucky, he told us that he was “a good looking dog, about 12 weeks old. No mange, ticks or fleas,” he had said in surprise. We explained that we had given him a good flea bath the night that we had brought him home from White Clay. The vet offered to give him all of his first shots, including the rabies vaccine tag and a little red puppy collar, all for 5 dollars. We couldn’t believe it. We had watched him steadily gain weight and play with the other dogs around the ranch for the next week, giving him plenty of toys to chew on so that he wouldn’t destroy anything in the camper. Shane had even installed a little “puppy-gate” next to his side of the bed so that the puppy couldn’t get out and poop on the kitchen floor those first couple nights. But after getting up every time he whined at 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning, he was potty trained in less than 5 days. The first night that he didn’t wake us up until 6am was a small victory. A lot had happened in a week, and we had given the little guy a lot of Love.

Lucky stood up in my lap and crawled over Rob as Joseph appeared next to the truck. He wagged hit tail hello and I smiled at the two of them. God, you have to do this because I don’t know what to say! I thought to myself. Shane and I climbed out of the passenger seat as I could hear Joseph’s exclamations of surprise. “Well hey there, aren’t you cute! What’s your name?” he asked. “Lucky,” Rob answered as he smiled at Joseph. “Well you are Lucky to be joining this crew,” Joseph said as he pet Lucky on the head.

I was hugging Greg and laughing to myself. That’s what you think, Joseph.

We changed the subject and talked for a bit about other things. They invited us to dinner and we invited them to Tuffy and Alice’s. “But before you make a decision, I’ve got to tell you a story first,” I said. I had been hoping that the boys would tell him for me, but they kept looking at me, waiting for me to tell him about Lucky. “Uh Oh, that sounds loaded,” Greg laughed.

“So…” I wondered how to spit this out, but the words just popped out of my mouth before I could think it through. “I think this is your dog,” I told Joseph while I looked from him to Lucky and back again.

Joseph laughed out loud and took a step toward the dog. “That’s not a story, Shay” the guys all said in chorus. “I know, I know, I’ll get to that part,” I said, wondering why that sentence had come out the way it had. “That’s not a story,” Joseph said, “That’s a fairy tale.”

He had said the words with the kind of gruff dismissal that actually brought me relief. Thank God he isn’t pretending to be super happy about this news, because it would leave me concerned about the truth. I took a deep breath, and tried to explain how this had come to be.

“You know me, and you know the way things work with me. I don’t know how to explain it, but we were in White Clay, and God said… well… this is just your dog, and that’s all I know. It doesn’t make sense to me either. We’ve been babysitting him for a little over a week, and we’re willing to keep babysitting him if necessary, you know… what happens next is up to you.” The words came babbling out of my mouth in a hurried fashion, nervous about what was going to happen when I stopped talking. Rob added, “You’re free to say No, in other words,” with a little chuckle. I held my breath.

There was a silence, as Joseph reached out to pet the puppy. He blinked and I could tell he was thinking about what to say next. “You don’t have to decide right now,” I said. “Something to think about. But please come to stay tonight at Alice and Tuffy’s.”

We all agreed to go to dinner at the Pizza Hut here in Pine Ridge and talk more about it when we got there. I asked if he wanted to take the puppy in his car, and he said “he can ride with you, for now.” My ears perked up at his answer, but I dampened my hopes for a moment so that I wouldn’t read to much into it. “Besides, there’s no room,” he added. I nodded and we piled into the truck to drive the two blocks to Pizza Hut.

As our truck weaved through the crazy traffic downtown because of Pow Wow weekend, I looked at Shane. “What do you think?” I asked him. Shane smiled. “He likes him. I think he’s going to say yes.” I almost bounced out of the seat in excitement. I was no longer able to dampen my feelings. “Oh, I hope, I hope!!!” I giggled as I rubbed Lucky’s head. “I was waiting for you guys to say something, but you didn’t…” I teased Rob. “Hey, this is your thing, not ours… can’t be putting that on us.” He laughed.

We parked the truck in the lot next to the Pizza Hut, and we all held our breath as a large black dog was almost hit by traffic as it crossed the street. The reality of life for most of these dogs is kind of terrifying. I let Lucky out of the truck to go to the bathroom, and he went to the patch of grass along the road and squatted like he had been potty trained all of his life. On the way back toward the truck, he found a little corn cob and brought it along as a chew toy. I couldn’t take my eyes of him. I knew that if I did, I would give away the insane swirl of emotions going on inside me as I waited to hear what Joseph would have to say about this.

We put the puppy back in the truck, and as we walked inside, Lucky and I got our answer. Joseph said “the only reason I can say Yes is because Greg told me that he would give him a ride to Oregon.” I thought my smile was going to explode my face. I could believe it, because God is really that awesome. I put my arm around Joseph as we walked into the restaurant.

“I’ll play my part in your fairy tale,” Joseph said as he opened the door.

~~

“I was just telling Greg that I’d never have another dog,” he said during dinner. It confirmed my suspicions as God had been whispering to me in White Clay. It was true, this had made no logical sense. But I find that God is very rarely logical, and far more often God is radical and idealistic. He can be that way, because he knows everything and his plans are the ultimate Good for everyone involved.

When Lucky, Greg and Joseph drove past the cross on the hill and out of sight the next morning, I felt like my heart was going to burst out of my chest. For a moment, as I stared off into the sunshine, the world seemed to sparkle like molecular fireworks. As if the air in front of my eyes was filled with glitter, everything in the world came alive with joy and gratitude. The awe I felt inside of me was spilling out into a wild rhythm of dance and laughter. Even my breath itself told a story… “This is obedience.”

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I had been sitting in the office of a local organization for a couple hours before the meal and the concert, listening to the guys in the band while they talked about what it was like to live provisionally. They didn’t know I was listening; I was working on my computer in the back room while they talked in the front office, and I smiled to myself when they talked about the miraculous way that God had provided for them since they began touring. One of the kids had told a story about finding fifty dollars on the ground right when he needed it most, another kid spoke of a man handing him a hundred dollar bill, telling him that “God told me to give this to you,” the day before his electricity was going to be shut off. His light bill was exactly one hundred dollars.

I smiled to myself because I know that feeling. I’ve experienced it. I’ve lived it. And they are exactly right… there is no way to explain that other than the awesomeness of God. But I had a strange feeling in my stomach while I listened to the responses of their audience. The “whoa, that is awesome,” responses were so frequent and repetitive, and the voice that spoke the words sounded exactly like the turtle named Crush in the movie ‘Finding Nemo.” It was totally California, totally air-headed surfer-dude-speak, and it was annoying the bejesus out of me while I worked. I actually thought that the guys in the band might be wasting their words on whoever was listening to them and responding that way…. But I chastised myself and reminded my heart not to judge the situation so harshly.

My ears perked up again when one of the guys in the band said something about not having enough money to get back to Seattle. The surfer-dude guy asked them how much they needed, and offered to help “raise the money”. The guys in the band blew him off, saying “no dude, don’t worry about it. We’re not. God will provide.” But the surfer-dude kid was persistent.

“You don’t understand. I’ve raised fifty thousand dollars since I got saved,” he said. “Tell me how much you need.”

Something about the way he said those words turned my stomach. I wasn’t sure what it was that bothered me until much later, after the show, when I knew who was behind the surfer-dude voice and how he ‘raised money’… Even then, it wasn’t so much that I knew what had bothered me, as it was that I had the words of Paul bouncing off the walls inside my head: “Through the spirit, not of man, lest any man should boast.”

I had watched after the band played their 5 songs on the little stage decorated in Lakota artwork, in front of a crowd of 95 white people from mission teams, churches and outreach ministries, a crowd speckled with about 10 locals that had stumbled drunk across the street from the liquor stores in White Clay… I had watched as the surfer-dude voice stepped up to the microphone after the 5 song show and told the audience that “the band doesn’t know I’m doing this, but I pried it out of them. They don’t have enough gas money to get home. They need 167 dollars to get back to Seattle Washington.”

My heart sank. I knew what he was doing.

“Can we do it guys?” he continued. “Can we get them enough gas money to get back home? I’m going to hold a collection now to meet our goal of 167 dollars to get this band back home to Seattle.”

A man in the audience called out “where’s the hat?” and the preacher dumped out a bucket that had been sitting next to the microphone. Within seconds of the bucket being dumped, a tall native man who had been standing next to the stage, a man that I recognized from our trips to White Clay, stepped forward and dropped a dollar bill and some change into the bucket.

God… the Holy Spirit… the divine presence in my life, must have slapped me hard in the face in that moment. My soul was screaming into the wind and lighting that struck down in the clouds behind the stage…

“I tell you the truth! This man with his dollar and few coins has given more today than all the others… For while you gave out of your abundance, he gave out of his poverty. He gave all that he had to live on.”

I was frozen… transported in time…. And as I watched native after native walk toward the stage and drop their coins and dollars into the bucket while the surfer-dude kid in the yellow shirt told the crowd “don’t get up, I’ll come to you to collect, just please help in any way you can.” As the story played out in front of my eyes I reeled in shock and dismay.

Why would you ask them for money!?? Why don’t you point out the truth!! Why don’t you call out the crowd of people and remind them who has given the most!? What are you doing?

As soon as I had been able to, I stood up from my blanket in the grass and walked to the back of the lawn to lean against the fence and smoke a cigarette. I remember that the preacher had told us the other day that they were paying the band 400 dollars to come out and play. I wondered where they had gotten the 400 dollars in the first place. I wondered if it was money donated to help the tribe, under the name “Lakota” while the money was being passed on to white kids from Seattle. “Are there no musicians on the reservation that could use some money? I bet the locals would play for you and ask less than 400 dollars,” I thought to myself. “Is it because they are a “Christian” band?” I wondered.

I watched as the guys in the band handed the surfer-dude kid a stack of their CDs. They had mentioned during the show that they were selling them for 5 dollars, and I was disappointed again. Always, always, always selling something aren’t we? When I saw the surfer-dude kid walk around, giving them away to certain people during the Round Dance, I wanted to shake him as he went from white person to white person handing out CDs, completely overlooking the native men who had given the first dollars in the bucket. I watched one native man grab the corner of his shirt and ask him for a CD as he walked by, and he gave him one. Thank God. Because if he hadn’t I might have tackled him and beat him to a pulp at that point.

No wonder I found myself sitting here, staring at the dirt and crying, after the event was over and after all the white people had walked through the gate to their minivans. What happened? What do I do? I watched the surfer-dude kid as he gave the band a cow skull, an item significant to Lakota culture, and I watched him as he followed them around like a groupie, soaking up their gratitude for his ‘fundraising’ efforts.

I thought about the band, and I prayed for them. They have a 21 hour drive back to Seattle from here to talk about this event amongst themselves. Will they see the story of the widow’s mite like I had? Will they understand who was the greatest in this story? Will they be humbled and humiliated like I am every time I am forced to accept financial gifts from people who have less than I do? Will they feel what I feel? Will it change them as it has changed me? I pray…

As the tears burned in my eyes and a fire burned in my chest I shook with rage at the sight of the surfer-dude and the ‘church’ where I was sitting. What are you?!

My thoughts were interrupted. “Sister, who is your God?”

I turned to see Chris sitting next to Shane on the concrete blocks that line the garden next to the gate. He was a little more sober than he had been earlier, when he went through the crowd elbowing some of us and telling us “Fuck you white people! Fuck all of you.” I’m not sure if he started with us, but I watched him do the same thing to 10 or 15 other people before he raised his middle fingers high above his head and shook them at us while he walked through the gate toward White Clay. He had mentioned that he “thought they’d have more grub than that shit,” referencing the small bowl of nachos and the few bites of watermelon that had constituted the free meal. I laughed when he had elbowed us to curse us, because something in me felt as though he was justified in his opinion of white people in general. I had called out to him as he walked through the crowd. “For the record, I agree with you dude!”

As my eyes met his and I blinked away my tears, he reached out to gently touch my arm. “Sis,” he repeated. “Who is your God?”

I took a deep breath and thought about that. “It’s a big question, I know.” He said.

Another deep breath. “My God is everything. He’s everything that is everything. He’s all that ever was or ever will be. He’s truth. He’s life. He’s the essence of everything good and beautiful. He’s the light in us, all around us, and among us.”

Chris nodded thoughtfully, and I knew he understood. His God and my God are the same God, whether or not he realizes it. “Are you guys with a church?” he asked next. Shane beat me to the punch when he said “NOOOOO” with so much passion it made me laugh. “So you aren’t going to preach at me, huh?” Chris asked with a relieved chuckle. “Good! I’ll be honest, I don’t understand you white men. You know, I prayed to your God once…” he looked at me again. “Sis, I prayed to your God. Once. He didn’t answer.”

He waited for me to respond, to argue. So I told him the truth. “He answered you. He always answers you. It’s just not always the answer that you wanted, or the answer that you hoped to hear.”

He studied my face. His hand went up to his chin and he thought for a moment. When he turned back to me I knew he had something more to say. I leaned in a little closer and he told me a story. “In Vietnam,” he said, “My friend was laying in the hut, his legs were…” Chris swept his hands across his legs and his eyes squeezed shut as if he saw it when he spoke it. “They were… and I was holding him. And I prayed to your God then,” he said. His eyes were seeking understanding in my face, like I was going to unlock a door for him. He squeezed his eyes shut in pain and shook his head. “But he… he drained out while I was holding him. What… I had prayed to your God then. Once. But…”

I turned my eyes away. I knew I couldn’t tell this man the truth any more than I could tell the surfer-dude the truth about his fundraising. How do I tell someone that watched their friend die in their arms; God answered you, but he told you “No.” He let your friend die. It was his ‘perfect will’.

Yeah… no thanks. I can’t bring that news.

For the next 45 minutes, while we watched the sun set and the storm travel in a circle around White Clay, Chris told us horror stories from Vietnam.

“I would be about two clicks from a village,” he said as he pointed toward the row of trees across the small yard where the stage sat empty, except for one native man sitting on the edge of the painted blue wood drinking a beer. “About that far away,” Chris said, “and I would wait and watch. If I didn’t like it, I would call in an air strike…” he made his hands move like an airplane out from his chest. “They would drop napalm. The women and the children would run screaming,” he said as he squeezed his eyes shut, “on fire. Their skin was burning…” his voice got quieter. “We find them in a spider hole eating rice. We drop grenades in there,” he said, covering his face with his arms in self-defense of the memory.

Chris told us he can’t go into one of the local restaurants and the little shop here in White Clay where an Asian woman works, because it gives him flashbacks. He wakes up every night with nightmares. That’s why he drinks, he says, to numb the pain of memory. He suffers from the effects of Agent Orange, and he can’t have children. His wife was a nurse in Vietnam, and she can’t have children either. There’s no one to pass on his Lakota blood and his family name. He and his wife have thought about adopting, but as the Agent Orange takes its toll on his body, he won’t live much longer. The life expectancy on Pine Ridge is the lowest in the western hemisphere already, without the issues caused by war chemicals.

“Hey, I’m just askin, not to offend…” Chris said to Shane, tapping him on the knee. “But why did y’all spray that shit on us out there?” he asked. I knew that he was speaking of us in the broader context of our race, not me and Shane specifically, and he clarified that as well. “I mean, the government, why did they spray us with that chemical, if it was gonna make us not be able to have kids? Why would they do that?”

We all shook our heads. We don’t know the answers. I stared into the remaining gray clouds still illuminated by the last rays of sunlight and took a deep breath. There was no need for answers to those questions, because there just aren’t any answers in me that will comfort people who have been through this kind of thing. Only God can comfort him. I bowed my head and eyed the grass around my shoes.

It’s amazing that this man is relieving my burdens… the burdens I felt just an hour ago; the burdens that brought me to tears. Why is it that my experiences with Christians make me want to scream and cry and shake the shit out of them, they make me not want to live this life or do these things anymore… They bring me to the point of misery…. And that misery is healed by the wounds of a veteran who drinks away his own pain and needs someone to talk to.

“Do you think that your God could forgive me for the things that I’ve done?” Chris asked aloud. I looked up at him, and he caught my eye. “Sis,” he asked me softly. “Do you think if I prayed and asked your God to forgive me for the things I’ve done, do you think he would do it?”

The church people would jump on this. “Yes!” they would say. “Let’s pray together right now and ask God to forgive your sins, so that you may be restored in Christ Jesus!” they would say. I took a deep breath. Shane spoke first.

“I know he would. I know he already has…” he said.

THERE. Yes.

“Then why do I still have nightmares? I even asked him once… a long time ago. My old lady had one of those things, those necklaces with the cross on it… what do you call that?” he asked. “A rosary?” I guessed. “Yeah, the one where you hold it and pray. I did that; asked your God to forgive me. But the nightmares still wake me up…. Every night.” He said.

I took another deep breath. The root of the issue. I looked him straight in the eye and leaned forward. “That’s about the KNOWING. You need to know that you are forgiven, and forgive yourself.”

With my eyes focused again on the patch of grass between my feet, despite the darkness, I could feel the glow of God’s presence in the space around us. I had been thinking, while the pastor was preaching his little sermon tonight, that there is no way to escape the American Church and continue forward with my favorite kind of life. No matter where I look and where I go, if I am in poverty or helping those in poverty, there are people who will disappoint me in the name of Jesus.

In the midst of my unexplainable anger I had wanted to run away, I had wanted to go someplace where no one would ever ask me if I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ before they hand me a sack lunch. I wanted to go to a place where no one would invite me to church service on Sunday instead of sit down and have a normal conversation with me. I wanted to go to a place where people don’t pat themselves on the back every time they give something away. Where they don’t print it in the bulletins or post it on facebook. I wanted to go to a place where the church isn’t the building or the ‘members’… the church is inside of us. The Kingdom… is inside of us.

Here in the dark, I could feel it. I could see it. I could touch it. In this holy communion with someone who is so open about their brokenness, the same brokenness I feel inside myself every day, the same brokenness that brought us together while I shed my tears into the scratchy yellow grass… In this moment the Kingdom was alive. Our burdens were lifted up into the heavens, just a little… and I am grateful.

Chris taught us how to say “see you again” in Lakota, because the language doesn’t have a word for “goodbye.” He thanked us for talking to him; for letting him get some of that stuff out of his heart and into the wind. He doesn’t talk to his friends about it, because they’ve all lived through it themselves; even his wife is a veteran from Vietnam. Chris doesn’t want to bring up their own pain in an effort to release his own, so he keeps it to himself. “Sometimes,” he said, “I just need to talk.”

He waived at us when he walked toward the gate, and I stood up to look around. The volunteer family from Pennsylvania was sitting on the back porch of the little house next to the office, and we could see the light on and here them laughing. But my eyes were locked on the man who had fallen asleep on the stage after he finished his beer. His dark maroon shirt stood out against the bright blue paint, and I decided to go sit down next to him and have a cigarette. I told the guys my thinking and headed in his direction, but stopped short when I got to the front of the stage. The man was fast asleep, but even before I noticed that I knew the real reason that God had prompted me to walk in this direction.

The little sermon that had been preached was about the power of words and labels. The volunteer family from Pennsylvania had written words on stones and filled two buckets with them. One bucket was full of hateful words and labels, and the other was full of positive words and labels. The preacher had taken the negative stones and made a show of throwing them over everyone’s head to the base of the wooden cross erected on the other side of the property. It had gotten the “wow” effect from the crowd that he was probably hoping for, and when he was done, he had read off the words written on the positive stones. He had dumped them at the foot of the stage, and I was expecting him to call people forward to receive a stone, but he didn’t… so they were still there.

I knelt down in the darkness and searched the words written on the stones. Within a few seconds, I had found the one I didn’t even know I was looking for.

I picked up two of the stones and asked the guys if we could go find Chris across the street in White Clay. He had only walked away five minutes before, so maybe we could catch him while he was walking. I knew that was where he was headed, because he said that by this time, his old lady would be waiting for him with a beer.

We walked out to the truck, but Shane and I decided to walk the short distance between here and the empty porches where people like to sleep at night.

We walked all the way up and down the main street of White Clay and didn’t see Chris sitting anywhere. “Is he magic?” Shane asked me. “Where did he go?” He could have gone inside one of the bars, I thought to myself. So maybe we should wait.

In my left hand, I clutched a stone that said “Hopeful,” and asked God to help us find Chris.

Rob pulled up with Bubba, and Shane tried to reason with me. “We’ll come back tomorrow,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll see him again. Don’t worry about it babe, we’ll give it to him sometime,” he said. I climbed into the truck reluctantly. “Seriously?” Rob asked. “He’s not sitting around here?” We shook our heads. “Drive back one more time,” I asked him. As we drove back in front of the old 555 building, we recognized an orange bandana and a yellow shirt. Rob pulled into the drive next to the building, and we got out.

Chris was watching us from the concrete step of the building, sitting next to a woman his age and another man a little younger. He waived at us as soon as he saw us get out. “Hey! Come meet my old lady!” he said. I clutched the stone in my right hand while he introduced us, and as soon as we finished shaking hands, I put my hand on his shoulder and placed the stone in his hand. “This is for you, friend.”

He blinked hard and looked down into his hand. He turned the stone over as though he knew exactly what it was. Written on the dark grey stone under a splatter of orange colored minerals was the word “Forgiven.”

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But as my fingers wrapped carefully around the stem of the little white trumpet, I knew that if I didn’t pick it, it would spend the remainder of its life here, above our heads, unnoticed by the people passing by, unappreciated in its elegance. As I plucked the stem from among the rest of the flowers, I promised to love it.

For the next 45 minutes I walked around New Orleans, returned to my home under the bridge, carried on conversations with people and went about my life, but the flower never left my hand. Every few seconds I would look at the little white trumpet; the light purple and gold rising out of the center with the most subtle magnificence, the opacity of the leaves and the sunlight behind them glowing against the stark contrast of life under a bridge. But it was in a moment that I spent sitting in my truck, my eyes fixed on the flower in my hand and my heart full of gratitude that it sacrificed its life to bring my day a little joy and color… it is that moment that rests in my memory.

~~

Weeks later I glanced over my sunburned shoulder at the nicely painted sign posted at the other end of the beach. “Cinnamon Shores” they called it. A nice way of saying “really sandy brown water.” On the other side of the dune is a large cluster of beach houses and condo’s that go for more than half a million dollars. Up and down the beach, no matter where we look, this is what we see.

We’re staying at an RV park that a friend was nice enough to put us up in for a couple days. Her RV is like the Ritz of mobile travel, beyond my scope of understanding. As we were driving into the park, past all the cookie-cutter symmetrical beach houses lined up in perfectly proper rows on the sandy dunes leading up to the water, I felt nothing short of absolute shock. My chest tightened and I couldn’t breathe as the truth began creeping into my mind like stagnant water that had never been stirred until just this moment.

Rob told me the other day that people like to pretend that they know and understand things that they really don’t understand at all. “For example, it’s like a tiger. You can see a picture of a tiger. You can study it and learn all about it from a book. You can know all the facts about a tiger. But you don’t understand the tiger at all…”

Hm. I’ve learned a lot of things from books that I like to spout off to strike up conversation. It’s why I’m so entertaining… but I guess I don’t really know or understand those things. I’m just regurgitating someone else’s truth. But there are things that I do know. Things I’ve lived. Things I’ve been through. The road has taught me far more than college ever did.

“So how do you get to understand the tiger? How do you really know what a tiger is?” I asked Rob.

“You would have to see it in its natural habitat, for one thing. Even seeing a tiger at the zoo isn’t exactly the real deal… or seeing it on television. TV isn’t real. I think a lot of people think they know everything because they’ve seen it all on TV…” he told me.

Exactly. And they can stay inside their houses all day because their television is their “window to the world” and they can learn and understand and know everything from the little box in the living room. But truthfully…. It’s not a real world.

It struck me like lightening. “So, I think to actually understand the tiger, you would need to do life alongside the tiger. Live with the tigers in their habitat and observe… participate. Try to adopt the experience.”

That’s the closest we can get without being born a tiger. In the same way, out here on the road, we are doing life alongside all different kinds of people, walking all different sorts of paths and journeys. We hang with the economically poor because we’re more comfortable with very little, and we’re attracted to the spiritual wealth found in physical poverty. We hang with the economically ‘stable’ because they can help our friends in poverty, they can help us, and because far too often, they suffer from a spiritual poverty that is much more devastating than skipping dinner or living without electricity. We live with single moms, extended families, adoptive and foster parents, good parents and bad. We do life with criminals and sex offenders and murderers and prostitutes. We love the disabled, the drug addicts, alcoholics, the mentally ill, the elderly and the war veterans. We live with church deacons and pastors and CEO’s and entrepeneurs. We hang with blue collar and white collar and no collar. We live with people of every race and color and ethnicity and language and immigration status. Each time we do life alongside a family or a person we understand a little better… what this world really is, and what love really looks like.

But I’ve got to be honest. I’ve experienced the American suburban life, with the swimming pool in the backyard and the trampoline and the neighborhood watch and the mini vans. I spent a short time in my childhood in a very comfortable economic situation. Never spoiled, my mother had me raking leaves and running lemonade stands for spare change, but we never worried about food or the mortgage on the house. Until one day…. And then we did. And then everything changed. And then I learned about poverty.

As we’ve traveled and I’ve done life alongside the wealthy, I had a Hollywood picture of rich people. I honestly thought that at some point, either in their childhood or in their future, they are going to lose everything and hit rock bottom. There… at the bottom, they meet God in the form of kind strangers who love them. They learn why the poor inherit the kingdom of heaven. They learn why Jesus told the rich man to sell all of his posessions and follow Him… and they walk away forever changed. Unable to focus on their stuff, they focus on Him. This is what I thought. I think I learned it from movies, where the rich are always in the middle of some kind of rapid paradigm shift in which the world caves in around them and they either choose good and change their lives or they choose evil and die in the end.

Maybe it’s not that far from the truth, I’m not sure. I’ve walked alongside the wealthy in my travels and I’ve never really met someone who fits into that Hollywood picture. I still don’t fully understand that tiger. But I do know this. That as we drove past all the obsene abundance on the beach that day, it was as if my mind was swallowed by my deep understanding of poverty, and it’s stark contrast to the wealth around me.

“When someone steals a person’s clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to the one who could clothe the naked, and doesn’t? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry, the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to those who need it, the shoes rotting in your closet belongs to those who have no shoes, and the money which you’ve hoard up belongs to the poor.” – Bazal The Great

I choked on my deep despair and hurt. Don’t you understand?

As the question escaped the imaginary vocal chords in my head I was slapped in the face with the truth. NO. They don’t. Because to understand something, we have to walk alongside it. And it’s entirely possible that the people in these 3 story prisons with bay windows and wrap around porches imagine the TV to be a real world. They may even imagine that writing a check is the kind of charity Jesus was talking about.

But Shane Claiborne wrote, and I agree, that I don’t think when Jesus said “I was hungry and you fed me,” he really meant “I was hungry and you wrote a check to the Salvation Army and they fed me.” It’s not the same.

For the first time, as our truck weaved a path through these American riches, my imagination concocted a life that is born into economic wealth. A childhood heaped with pressure and expectation and the love of money, a teenager focused on stuff and gratification and missing life. An adult completely delusional, completely out of touch with the harsh reality of Life on this Planet. How did this happen?

Another question. Another truth. We shelter ourselves. We’ve eliminated our connections to each other. I go to Walmart and buy a Tshirt, and to me, that’s the whole story. But in the reality of Life, my choice to purchase that Tshirt contributes in the tiniest of ways to a whole heaping pile of hurt for other people. Literally everything produced today is at a great cost to something or someone else. The planet is a priceless resource by itself, and we’re eating it at a rate that simply cannot be sustained. The cockroaches of the world. Crazy as it may seem, I wouldn’t be nearly as upset about that if everyone could at least survive on the planet. But we don’t just kill the earth to give us our little sundresses and our beach houses and our golf carts. We kill each other. We aren’t even feeding everyone. Thousands of children will die because of hunger in the time it takes someone to read these few pages… and even while they are starving to death, we are using their families, their lands, and their countries to feed our never ending need for MORE.

The wind was whipping my hair around my face as I tried to process the whole picture flying by the passenger window. Wide eyed and breathless, shocked, angry, desperate, guilty…. Emotions swirled in circles with the wind.

Do you know how many people had to suffer, had to sacrifice, had to die for you to have that? Do you hear the groaning of the spirit as we slaughter the earth? Can’t you hear them screaming?

My soul cried out at the empty little 3 story boxes and cried out at my own life and body simultaneously… for the atrocities I’ve directly and indirectly participated in by my very existence. These people in South Texas might not know. We can give them the benefit of the doubt. The disconnect between the purchase of a life of wealth and the suffering it creates is by so many degrees that it’s no wonder that we will never see the whole picture unless it’s presented on a television screen. And that’s not the same as understanding. So what do we do?

“If any man has material possessions, and he sees his brother in need and doesn’t help him, then the Love of God is not in him.” – John 3:17

I almost want to bring the starving Indonesian children to the doorsteps of those who live in mansions. I wish I could. Is that activism? I want to present everyone with a choice… in the way that the scriptures say that everyone will be shown the way of Jesus and the early church. People said lots of great things about the early church because they shared everything voluntarily. If a stranger in their community did not have enough to eat, it’s said that the members of the early church would literally fight each other over who was going to get to skip a meal so that the stranger would be able to eat. In today’s church buildings, we make excuses and ask people to ‘come back tomorrow.’ What happened to us?

~~~

I’m reminded of the flower in New Orleans as I explore my next steps. The abundant life I’ve been given is only available to me through the sacrifice of something beautiful, and to honor and reflect that beauty is a minimal requirement. I want to see that kind of appreciation from the people of our nation, at the least. And yet our apathy and our ignorance is astounding. We seem to despise our wealth at times, and we most certainly take it for granted. But Jesus said “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” and the apostles had a hard time with that statement. I know that personally I’m called to sacrifice, but what about mercy? What do I do with all of my angst about the state of our nation and the manner in which we ravage and pillage the globe to feed our idolatrous desires? Where do I put my anger?

Last weekend on the beach, we had sunburns that made our skin blister and bubble, making it hard to move, sit down, bend over or sleep. I was thinking about the danger of the sun after we realized that the dead leaves of an old potted plant had spontaneously combusted in the sunlight and turned the entire contents of the pot into ashes. The sun is powerful. Most of the time I think of the sun as joyful, or vibrant, or the giver of life and light. I think nice thoughts about the sun. But when my skin began to change colors and I felt as though someone had set me on fire, I wanted to hide from it. The thought of taking just 5 steps in the sunlight made me nervous. I sat in the shade for most of the afternoon with my music playing and a bottle of water nearby, making a necklace for an unknown friend and meditating.

The damage caused by the sun had struck me with the fear of God. I had never given that phrase much thought until now, but I imagine that we are to fear God in the same way that I was fearful of the sun.

But somehow that fear, and even the bitterness that I felt as my back began to blister, didn’t stop me from sitting in the sand with Shane the next day, eating a ripe tomato and teasing the birds as the sun shined on our faces.

I watched the water… and thought about that girl who had her arm bitten off by a shark while she was surfing. I have an irrational fear of sea monsters, and I don’t like water that I can’t see the bottom of. I tried to imagine being bitten by a shark and then deciding to go back into the water once it healed, like the girl did… and I suppose it’s because she loves the water. She’s not going to hold it against the whole ocean that one shark got her arm.

Whoa….

Zuzu turned to look at me in that moment and our eyes met as I pondered these things, the deep brown of her eyes resonating the truth.

My spirit whispered to my heart, “Forgive them.”

My eyes grew wide as my soul swallowed this understanding. The waves crashed against the beach and the sun lit up the world as I realized that it’s all the same. We don’t blame the sun for shining or the ocean for its sharks. We didn’t blame the wind that is twirling my hair intro salt water curls, when we were being thrashed by a hurricane or a tornado. Because we love them, and loving them means forgiving them for the damage that they cause. Even when the damage is loss of comfort, loss of mobility, loss of security, or even the loss of life. The deepest kind of forgiveness; the most holy of moments.

My eyes drifted back over my shoulder to the sign on the other side of the sand dune… “Cinnamon Shores.”

~~

The only thing that matters in this life is the planet and the people on it. How wealthy are we really if we are eating while others are starving? If we wear nice clothes while children clothe themselves in the rags we were going to throw away. If we cannot guarantee the right to live…. The right to survive… while vacationing at the beach in a half a million dollar condo, then who are we anyway?

Extending mercy, and even forgiveness, does not mean that the status quo must remain constant. It doesn’t mean that we continue down the current road unchanged. In fact it requires the opposite. Forgiveness is the first step toward reconciliation, which means to reestablish a close relationship… and relationships are transformative. Christ calls us to do hard things. To humble ourselves. To pick up our crosses, our sacrifice, our burdens. He calls us to remember that we didn’t earn it. That we don’t deserve it. That we are not loved more than anyone else. That we cannot live in apathetic complacency, because He doesn’t. His Spirit is groaning for the souls of His children. We have been called up and out to be passionately active in the restoration of the Kingdom.

We are alive in a time of the most dangerous lies. The most serious kind of make-believe. It’s time to ‘walk alongside the tiger’, and seek to truly understand the struggles of our brothers and sisters. This is to walk the roads with Christ… and before we make excuses not to give it all we’ve got, I’m reminded that God is Bigger. He’s bigger than debt, than mortgages, then electricity bills. He’s bigger than the government and bigger than all the systems of oppression and destruction. The Truth is bigger than the Lie. The Light is greater than the darkness. And Love Wins.

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“Ah! What just happened God? Was I supposed to just say goodbye like that? How will I find her again?” I questioned him through the smile that hadn’t left my face since I started the engine in the hospital parking lot.

The breath in my lungs swept through my body as I exhaled deeply and closed my eyes  for a moment while I waited on the red light. When I opened them, I was looking at the 6 faces waiting for the bus to stop on my left. The woman was watching me. I smiled at her. I watched the teenagers flirt for a moment before the light turned green and I was moving again. “Love…” I whispered to my soul as the world around me became a blur and my memory fixated on the blue eyes of the blond woman as they opened wide with surprise. Just a flicker of a memory from moments before, but I had lost the reason for her surprise. Why did I see that expression? Oh yeah, because I had opened my arms to give her a hug before I left, though I had only just said hello to her a half hour before. I giggled to myself. Hugs…

“Did I make another mistake today? Was I supposed to write down my info or something?” I asked the air in front of my face. So many mistakes today… so many. My heart was pounding again and my nerves were tingling. My breath came faster and I felt like I was going to spontaneously combust. “Let it out of me God!” I spoke into the wind. “I can feel your spirit… it’s too big for me I’m going to burst!” I told him. “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” came from my lips as I tried to release the burning in my chest. “That helped.” I stated as a matter of fact. “It always does.” The sudden whisper in my heart answered  the questions I had said aloud.

“No mistakes about that. Some things are supposed to be left simple, supposed to be left alone. You did the right thing.” A sudden peace enveloped my spirit and the joy of my adventure filled my mind. “Thank you,” I whispered. “I needed to hear that.”

My eyes popped open as I remembered the words of the blond woman. “You are doing important work, Shay. Don’t ever quit. Don’t ever, ever quit.” I smiled to myself as I reminded myself that her name was Allison. “I told her, God! I told her! I told her that I needed to hear that today! Thank you! How does that stuff happen?” Nothing left unsaid. Nothing left unspoken.

The realization that unnecessary doubt about my decision was an attempt to steal my joy. “I did the right thing…” I repeated the words I had heard in my heart. “For once, at least, today…”

~~

Earlier that afternoon I had knocked on Joseph’s door and listened closely for my friend’s voice. I was waiting for the familiar, melodic “come in!” that would signal for me to turn the door handle, but I heard only silence. I knocked again, and heard nothing.

My phone and my glasses were sitting on his couch from the night before, and I was going to need them if I was going to actually do this today. I turned around and sat at the top of the steps for a moment to pray.

A memory from our conversation the night before sprang into my mind. We had been talking about relationships, and how important it is for my marriage that both Shane and I are listening to the call of the Holy Spirit and being obedient to it. “There won’t need to be any conflict if it’s the voice of God, because if God speaks to you, and you share that with your husband, God’s going to give Shane a peace about it. There won’t be any room for conflict. And vice versa, if God is speaking something to Shane, you’ll have a peace about it as well….” Joseph had rightly told me the night before. There is something about Truth, that when it is spoken, it’s undeniable. So this morning when I woke up and Shane told me he was going to work on the truck, and that Bobbi and Dale needed some help around the yard, I was confronted with a decision.

In our community, we do almost everything together. We rarely split up, and when we do, it’s only by necessity. But before going to sleep the night before, I had a simple phrase on repeat in my mind. “Understand, recognize and realize the opportunities we are given…” I knew in my heart that the Holy Spirit was calling me downtown. I didn’t know why, I couldn’t explain it, but there it was… a pulling… and I knew that if I denied the call I would be left in a state of dissatisfaction for the remainder of the day. Yet, it was clear that Shane was being called into the garage, and that Rob and Greg were being called to yard work. So I pulled Shane aside, to stand with me on the gravel driveway in the shade of the garage.

“I’m supposed to go downtown.” I told him. In my heart I knew that Joseph was right, and if this was a call from God that my husband wouldn’t argue.

“Okay.” Shane said reluctantly. “But you’ll need to take your phone with you.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by his instant approval, but I was accustomed to at least a little bit of resistance to the idea of splitting up. The drive into downtown St. Paul would take me an hour each way, and he knew I would be gone for 8 or 9 hours.

“You know that Bobbi and Dale would be more than happy to have you work with the guys,” Shane told me with an expression that revealed his preference. “I know,” I smiled, and hesitated only for a second. “But this is where God is calling me.”

Shane smiled and said “Fine!” his sarcasm bringing me relief. This was my Shane. “Get out of here then, I don’t want you around me anyway!” We laughed, and I kissed him goodbye before heading upstairs to get my phone from Joseph.

Sitting on the top step, hearing nothing on the other side of Joseph’s door, I questioned myself. I would need my phone to do this… and my glasses if I was going to have to drive back at night. I wondered if I could risk it. I wondered if I could take Shane’s phone. I wondered where Joseph was or if he was taking a little nap. I wondered if I should wake him up. I wondered….

“God,” I thought to myself. “I’m trying to give you this little thing, this little act of obedience. I ‘m trying to listen for your direction in even the small things in my life. So if you want me to go, you’ll have to work this out…”

I heard a cough on the other side of the door. I leapt to my feet and knocked again.

“Come in!”

~

A few minutes later I was standing in the camper holding my cell phone charger and my Bible. “Is there anything else I need God?” My eyes landed on my camera sitting on the shelf, and I picked up the strap and placed it over my shoulder. “Anything else?” and I noticed my reflection in the full length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. I was wearing a grey Tshirt and Shane’s old jersey shorts. I looked kind of silly in a pair of man-sized shorts, rolled up at the waist so that they wouldn’t fall down. “I’m going to go to church looking like this?” I asked myself. Maybe I should bring a change of clothes….

“Whatever,” I thought to myself. The church service tonight was called ‘Bible Band’ and I was only planning on going because an older woman had invited us while we were downtown on Saturday giving away clothing from the back of our truck. She had handed us a business card with the times and the address on it and then continued on down the street. I will go to any church once, if I’ve been invited, so I was planning on attending. But, I thought… “if they don’t like what I’m wearing they can just get over it!” I said with a note of defiance before walking out of the camper and into the sunlight.

~

While I drove the 50 miles from Glencoe to St. Paul, I reviewed the feelings I had been having for the past couple weeks. There are so many adjustments to make since we received this camper trailer. I’ve honestly caught myself in moments of despair as I survey my abundance. I don’t want this much… I don’t need this much… I want life to get simpler and less materialistic and instead I’m getting a life that’s more complicated with even more stuff…. I had begun dreaming about hitchhiking through Canada toward Alaska with nothing but the pack on my back, my best friends and our dogs. The truth is that I’m being ungrateful. I’m a walking contradiction.

I remembered telling one of my friends that I think I’ll start feeling better about it when we park the camper on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota next week and start sharing our lives with the people there. The idea of going to White Clay and inviting people in to take hot showers, to use our bathroom, to sleep on our floors and in our trucks… the idea of cooking hot meals for dinner every night and sharing our food… and honestly the idea of giving a whole bunch of stuff away to people who need it is going to make me feel better. Especially if it’s a sacrificial kind of gift, especially if God asks me for the things that I’m attached to. It will help me balance my beliefs, my values, with this new life that God has blessed me with.

“God, strip it down,” I prayed aloud from the driver’s seat in Bubba on my way to St. Paul. “Take everything you want from me, I give it all to you. Strip it down…”

As the lines on the pavement blurred past us on the highway and Zuzu stuck her head on my shoulder from her spot in the backseat, I thought back to my adventures in 2010… alone on the road with my dog and my Creator, to the tune of the radio and the taste of RedBull on those long eleven hour drives. I remembered the days that I walked down the street begging God to empty my pockets, to take away everything that He knew I didn’t need. My shoes, my jacket, my money, anything that could be used and given to the Kingdom, I begged him to take it.

~~

When I pulled into the metered spot across the street from the Dorothy Day center in downtown St. Paul, I picked up my phone to text Preacher Todd and let him know that I was in the area, just in case he came down here today for outreach. I met Preacher Todd when Shane and I were on the road in 2011, and he is a kindred spirit. He “gets it” and he lives it out. I was hoping to see him, even if for only a moment, because his life is an encouragement to me and everyone else that he meets.

After I pressed the send button I hopped out of the truck and tied Zuzu’s leash to the parking meter. I dropped the tailgate and began hauling out the big bins of clothing and moving around the packages of socks that we had picked up the night before. I paused for a moment as a group of people caught my attention from across the little side street that runs parallel to the shelter. There were about twenty young people standing in a circle in the grass yard, and it looked as though they might be praying.

I squinted through my sunglasses, wishing I had my real glasses on so that I could see what they were doing. There was a truck parked next to the shelter that had “Jesus” and a few other words written on the side of it, and I wondered if this group was having a prayer meeting before or after doing some sort of outreach. I hesitated, wondering if I should go over and find out what the deal was, but unsure if I should walk away from the truck before even getting anything unloaded.

In this moment of hesitation, in the midst of this pause, I realized that three of the people in the crowd were now moving in my direction. “Wow, maybe they saw me unloading and they had the same thought!” I wondered as I watched them get closer. I squinted hard. “Yeah, they are definitely headed right toward me,” I said in my head, and as the three of them crossed over the curb and into the street where I was parked, I took off my sunglasses and squinted again.

Preacher Todd was smiling.

“Dude!” I was so surprised. “What? That’s so crazy!”

“Yeah I know, I just got your text message and happened to look over here and see your truck!” he said. God is awesome. His timing is perfect. Completely, totally perfect.

~~

An hour later, as I sat next to a man named Harold and shared my thoughts on the church and modern Christianity, with the Bible open and the scriptures pouring out of my heart and soul as though I’ve known them my entire life, I was sure that this was the reason I had come here today. If not for him, then for me, that I might share in this mighty communion with the Holy Spirit in fellowship to my brother in Christ. That we might clarify together our understanding of the dangerous directions of the church today; the absolute deceit that has infiltrated the places that we deem to be ‘holy’.

But when the afternoon faded and the hours had passed, when the shadows had traveled across the grass to keep me moving in circles around the tree, when the Bible was closed and we hugged each other goodbye, my spirit felt drained. It was only 4:30, and the church service I had been invited to would not begin for another two hours. I didn’t even feel that I needed to go anymore. The meeting with Harold had been my church, my holy moment on the side of the road here in St. Paul.

I was on the phone with my dear friend Julia when I saw the girl coming toward me with a look on her face that revealed her intentions, and when she was within ear shot she spoke loudly. “Girl! Can I use your phone?” I told Julia that I would call her back and handed my phone to the tough looking chick as she sat down in the grass next to me. She dialed the number and when someone answered, her first word surprised me.

“Bitch!” she said. I jumped. I couldn’t help but stare at her as her next few sentences contained a string of so much profanity that I wondered if she was actually trying to communicate or if this was a practical joke. After a few moments, I realized that she was in fact having a conversation with someone who apparently didn’t mind being called names. For the next few minutes, I watched as she bounced back and forth between two different phone conversations with two different women, using the same kind of speech patterns and language with both of them.

I don’t have a problem with swear words in general. My friend Q told me once that the only ‘bad words’ are words that we use to tear people down. And one of my other friend’s apologized to me recently for using ‘colorful language’ and I had to laugh. I get in moods sometimes where I seem to forget my vocabulary and curse ‘like a sailor’ as my brother says. But the way that this girl was speaking on my phone made me nauseous. It wasn’t just the language, it was the way she was using it.

I felt a sort of protectiveness toward my phone. All sorts of things to say began popping into my head… although I said none of them. I became impassioned with the desire to snatch my phone out of her hands. “That’s MY phone. Don’t talk like that into MY phone. I don’t treat people like that. And I don’t want you to use my phone to treat people like that. Give it back.”

But instead, when she ended her third or fourth phone call with one of these two women, I interrupted her attempt to dial back by asking if I could call my husband. “Yeah, go ahead,” she said permissively as she handed me the phone. I didn’t acknowledge her at all, I simply dialed the number for my husband. He didn’t pick up, so I dialed again. During the second attempt, the girl asked me if I would watch her lunch sack while she ran across the street.

“If that girl calls back, I don’t know, just go like this or something,” she said as she waived her hands in the air wildly to demonstrate how I was supposed to get her attention from across the little yard in front of the shelter. “Okay, “ I nodded as I listened to Shane’s phone go to voicemail. Yeah, right. I thought. I’m not giving this phone back to her again. She almost broke it anyway, trying to hit all the wrong buttons to check my messages to see if her friend was texting her! The screen is already cracked, I don’t need her to mess it up. I opened the passenger door of my truck and slipped the cell phone into the pocket of the door panel. Safe and sound.

A petite girl with short brown hair that I recognized from our adventure on Saturday interrupted my thoughts. “Are you out here all by yourself today?”

I nodded at her, glancing with gratitude at the tall man leaning against the fence a few parking spaces down the street. He had been standing there for hours, since almost the moment that I arrived, and had never left. He had listened carefully, I could tell, to my conversation with Harold, but he hadn’t said a word. He simply watched with a sort of quiet interest, and kept an eye on the various people moving up and down the street. He was a large man, much older than 50 I think, and he stood with the posture of gruff authority. I felt safe just knowing that he was there.

As the petite girl picked through the women’s clothing, a young kid in his late teens or early twenties came around the side of the truck and appeared at her side.

“Fingers!” she said with a giggle.

“Don’t call me that,” he snapped at her with a grin on his face. I watched their banter from my perch on the back of the pickup truck. “Do you have any men’s shorts?” the boy asked me. I was disappointed as I said no. “I’m sorry, I think most people have picked through them,” I said. “But you might be able to get a pair of jeans and cut them into shorts,” I suggested with a hopeful tone. “Na, I need something that I can go running in,” he told me. What’s with running lately? He was the second person who told me that he was going running today. “I don’t think we have anything like that,” I said. He kicked the donation bin with his toe as he mumbled, “shitty.” The girl snapped at him. “Hey! It’s nice of them to come out here with donations. It’s nice,” she repeated to make it clear.

I watched his face as he eyed the shorts that I was wearing. I eyed the shorts that he was wearing. They were thick, dark denim and past his knees. I guess those would be hard to run in. “I’ll just steal some,” he told the petite girl still standing next to the bins. Great, I thought. Way to be proud of that.

At that moment, the girl who had been using my cell phone earlier crossed the pavement in front of me to retrieve her sack lunch. “Hey, did those girls call me back?” she asked. I didn’t even flinch. “Nope!” told her quickly and averted my eyes to look at the kid named Fingers. A voice in my heart whispered… “Liar. The phone is in your truck. You wouldn’t know either way. They could’ve called…” But I ignored the voice and the girl as she walked back across the street.

The petite girl picking through the clothes and Fingers bantered back and forth for a minute, and I was annoyed by their flirting. The girl had just finished telling me that she has a crush on the pastor of one of these ministries here in town. The kid retrieved a bottle of water from my cooler, took a sip and then set the bottle down next to one of the bins. I watched him as he eyed my shorts again. So I told him what I was thinking. “These are my husband’s shorts,” I said honestly. “So I can’t just give them away….”

But he must not have heard me, because he was grinning when he asked me bluntly, “Can I have ‘em?”

I glared at him and so did the girl standing next to me. She whopped him on the stomach with the water bottle and I snickered. “Dude, she just told you those belong to her man, and what do you want her to do, strip down here in the parking lot and give you her shorts? I’m sure her man would appreciate that…”

I apologized insincerely. “Sorry bro, they aren’t mine to give.”

He nodded at me with a smirk as though I had failed somehow and he had won a prize. “Alright then.”

A few minutes later they turned to walk away and the girl reminded him not to forget his bottle of water. His answer was a slap in the face. “I don’t care, I don’t even want it, it’s warm.”

Forget that I had told him before he even picked up the water bottle that the cooler wasn’t cold, and neither was the water… But the ungrateful tone in his voice was enough of a disappointment by itself. The girl whopped him in the stomach again and let out a disapproving grunt. He shrugged and smirked at me again as though he had almost forgotten I was sitting there.

I waived goodbye as they walked away awkwardly, the girl obviously embarrassed about his attitude, the kid named Fingers… oblivious.

As soon as they walked past the corner of the truck where I was sitting and I was left sitting alone in the sunlight, my knees pulled up to my chest and the breeze blowing on my face, I remembered my prayer on the way to this parking space. “Strip it down, God.” I remembered. I looked at my shorts. But I can’t give these away, they aren’t mine! I told myself. And besides, I didn’t bring any clothes to change into…

I remembered my own reflection in the mirror this morning. I was the one who had decided to wear these shorts and not bring a pair of jeans. My eyes fell on the donation bins in front of me. The voice in my heart whispered. “It’s not like you don’t have 4 bins of women’s clothes sitting in front of you to choose from.” I heard the words of the girl from a few moments before about stripping down in the parking lot and felt justified. But the voice responded again, “It’s not like you aren’t used to changing your clothes in parking lots… it’s not like you haven’t done that a thousand times in the last few years. You could have done it discreetly.” But they aren’t mine! I argued with the voice. “But you have a phone, and you didn’t even bother to call and Shane and ask him.”

Ugh. The weight of my mistake fell on me like the judgment I had been passing out to other people. What was I thinking? I looked over my shoulder to see if they were still in the street, but they weren’t there. Neither was the girl who was waiting for her friends to call back. I stood up and looked up and down the wall outside of Dorothy Day, and they weren’t there. Only 90 seconds had passed since they walked around the corner of the truck, but both of them had vanished into thin air.

I stood up and paced around the parking space behind my truck, wandering through the bins of clothing and praying. “I’m sorry God…” I whispered. “What have I done? Would you redeem it? Would you give me another chance?” No one was around except the tall man leaning against the fence and I glanced up at him for a moment, wondering if he had heard my whispers. If he did, he didn’t show it. I continued talking to God as I squinted through my sunglasses at the sky above me, “Would you bring him back here? Or if not him, maybe send me someone else? Somebody that I can give these shorts to, and redeem my mistake?” Even as I whispered the words, the gravity of my failure pulled my shoulders down into a slump and my head felt heavy. I dropped my chin to stare at the pavement and sighed. “I don’t deserve that, I know. If I have to live with the guilt of my decision, then so be it.

I turned back to face my truck with a new resolve. I would go ahead and prepare myself for whatever would happen next, beginning with finding something else to wear if God decided to give me another chance. I dug around in a donation bin for a few seconds and found a pair of women’s blue jeans. They looked small, but they might work. I folded them and put them on the tailgate. I scanned the wall alongside the Dorothy Day center again, looking for a kid wearing dark blue denim shorts, but couldn’t see him or the petite girl.

The thought struck me that this incident with the shorts was not my first mistake. I had messed up before that, with the girl who had borrowed my phone. I had been a liar, and I had withheld something that she had asked me for. “Please, God…” but I couldn’t even finish my prayer. The knowledge that I didn’t deserve a second chance was weighing heavily on my heart. Still… I would wait to find out. As I strained my eyes to see the individual people along the wall of the shelter, I remembered that I had brought my glasses with me after I retrieved them from Joseph’s room. I quickly went to the cab and switched out my glasses. Standing at the corner I scanned from the left to the right, beginning at the main street and examining each individual up against the wall, looking for a boy named Fingers and the girl who had borrowed my phone. When my eyes had reached the end of the street, I noticed a figure coming around the corner of the cross street. I watched, waiting, until he appeared on this side of the sidewalk. It was Fingers.

I leaned forward in surprise. “Really? You’re going to do this for me God?” I asked him. I looked at his shorts and his Tshirt and I was sure it was him. Without thinking I bolted across the street and across the grassy lawn in between my parking space and the driveway of the shelter. “Dude!” I was yelling as I ran. People were staring at me. I didn’t care. “Dude! Fingers!”

He turned to look and when he saw me waiving and running he took a few steps toward me. “You still need shorts?” I asked him. Only a half hour had passed since he had asked me for them, but his mouth was hanging open, a pastry in his hand and food in his mouth, with his brow furrowed in complete confusion. Frozen in mid-chew. I repeated my-self with the slightest hesitation, wondering for a second if I was talking to his twin brother. This guy looked very confused. “Dude, you asked me earlier for a pair of shorts right?” I tugged on my shorts. His face brightened and he nodded. “Well if you want these, for real, I can call my man and ask him for them.”

I didn’t wait for a response, I just waived for him to follow me as I started walking back toward the truck. As we approached my parking space, he started talking. “Whoa. I was just trying to figure out how I was gonna get over there and snag me a pair of shorts,” he said, referencing his earlier comment about his alternative method of acquiring clothing. I didn’t answer, I just walked around to my passenger side with the pair of jeans from the donation bin in my hand and pulled my phone out of the door panel. I dialed Shane’s number.

As the phone rang I had a split second thought. Shane didn’t pick up when I called him earlier, what if he doesn’t pick up again? “God, if you want me to do this he’s gotta pick up the phone,” I thought to myself.

“So…” I said to the kid standing in front of me, watching me call my husband. “They call you Fingers because you’re a thief?” I asked him. I looked at the door panel while he gave me excuses. “Yeah…” a slight hint of embarrassment in his voice. “But I only steal from stores you know, not people. I figure, it doesn’t really hurt the store. I mean, I guess it could hurt the employees, but it doesn’t really hurt the store… I don’t think. I mean… I don’t know.”

Five rings later Shane answered the phone. “Hey babe!” I said. “I’m giving away your shorts.”

I held my breath. I know that he’s had these shorts for 6 years. His answer was a gift. “Okay, but you’re not going to have any shorts then either.”

“I know, I’ll figure something out.” I told him. “Thank you.”

When I hung up, I told the kid that he said it would be okay, but that I needed to change. He went around to keep an eye on the back of the truck while I changed in the passenger seat. The jeans didn’t fit well enough to button them, but they fit well enough for me to wear them while I found something else from the donation bin. I stepped out of the truck and the kid returned from the tailgate. I straightened out the shorts and handed them over while he thanked me.

“I know these were a gift to you, and now you’re giving them to me, and I would have had to steal some if you didn’t give these to me, and those jeans don’t look comfortable, and just thank you, really… this is great, you don’t even know.”

I didn’t even look at him while he was talking. For some reason I didn’t really care how grateful he was or was not anymore. That had nothing to do with my decision. Giving the shorts was an act of obedience, and that was all.

I walked around to the tailgate to go through the donations again and came back up 2 seconds later with a pair of sweat pants. Now why didn’t I find those the first time? I wondered. I asked the kid to watch the tailgate one more time. He was still standing there telling a woman going through the bins that he just got the best thing in there and he couldn’t believe it. When I returned wearing sweat pants and threw the jeans back in the bin, there was another woman there too, looking for summer clothes. I helped her find a pair of socks and then turned to see that Fingers was still standing there. He had an expression on his face like he had just been hit on the head with a two by four. I was surprised… what was he waiting for?

The woman going through the bins asked me if I was in charge or if this was my stuff or if I was going through the clothes just like her. “I just needed sweat pants,” I told her. “But none of this is my stuff, I just carry it around. I’ve lived out of a truck for 3 years, filling the back of it up with stuff and giving it away,” I explained. Fingers was standing next to her. Whomp. Another two by four hit him in the face. I thought he was gonna fall over. I didn’t realize until that moment that part of his attitude problem earlier was probably because he thought I was with an organization, or that I was getting paid to come out here and do this. The woman was surprised too. “So you’re not with anybody? What about a church? Are you with a church?” she asked. “I am the church.” I replied.

Somehow I knew that was what Fingers had been waiting to hear, whether he knew it or not. I turned to face him and said, “So…” with my hands on my hips. He slowly extended his hand to shake mine with an expression of disbelief. “Good luck… in everything that you do in life.” He said the words slowly, with a tone of sincerity that I hadn’t heard in him before that moment. I shook his hand and smiled at him. “Much Love.”

~

A few minutes later, while I was quietly thanking God for redeeming my mistake with the shorts, a woman came by to look through the clothes. I watched her as she eyed my feet. “What size shoes do you wear?” she asked me. That’s an odd question, I thought. I was barefoot, and we didn’t have any shoes in these bins. But I answered her. “Seven and a half.”

“Oh,” she said with disappointment. “What size do you wear?” I asked her in return. “Eight and a half, sometimes an eight,” she said. “Why, do you need shoes?” I was already going to the truck to get my shoes and she nodded. “Here, I handed her my canvas slip-ons and she took her dirty foot out of her flip flop. It didn’t look they were going to fit… it didn’t look possible. But as she stuck her toes in the shoe, it seemed to magically warp itself to fit her foot. “They fit!” she exclaimed. “Well then keep them, they’re yours.” I told her, smiling at God.

“Seriously?” I asked Him. “You had to check to make sure I got your point, huh?” and I laughed to myself. Looks like I’m going to the ‘Bible Band’ barefoot.

Less than 15 minutes later, the tough chick returned to ask if her friends had called my phone. Yes, of course they had, and this time I could tell the truth, hand her my phone and let her call them back. She was on my phone for the next hour and a half while I suppressed the constant temptation to judge her or to take my phone away. It’s not MY phone, because nothing is mine. It all belongs to God. And I can barely understand what she’s saying anyway, so how do I know what’s really going on in that conversation? I’m only getting half of it. Better to let God sort that out in her life.

“Whoever asks you, give to him, and whoever wants to borrow from you, do not refuse him.”

~~

Before I left to go visit the building up the street for ‘Bible Band’, the tall man leaning against the fence brought me a pink and red Popsicle from one of the trucks that drop off sack lunches around dinner time. He probably has no idea that his quiet presence in my life throughout the day was an inconceivable blessing. It’s the simple things really.

Like the blond haired, blue eyed lady in the hospital parking lot who mentioned that my headlights were still on before I ran barefoot around the block to the church service, I didn’t have time to thank her properly or ask her why she was sitting on the concrete with the hood of her car up. I was already a half hour late to a service that ended up being canceled because their parking lot was being repaved. But when I returned, I told Allison how much I appreciated the reminder about my headlights, and asked her if she was okay or needed help. Her husband appeared from under the hood and the next half hour was a magical blur of spirit filled conversation that is simply unexplainable.

I told her about the tall, quiet man who gave me a Popsicle, because I wanted to express to her that the intangible gifts of respect, love, concern, and compassion are not lost on those who receive them. If I was unable to show the tall man my gratitude, I could at least testify to it’s meaning.

~~

“I serve a Redeemer.” I said into the sunlight on the way home. “I guess I can’t learn anything if I don’t make mistakes…”

“No wonder you tell us to consider it pure joy when we face trials, and to persevere… because eventually, if you beat it into my head enough times, I’ll start doing it right… theoretically.”

I thought about my conversation with Harold and Allison, these holy moments that glorified the Kingdom… and then about Shane’s shorts and my cell phone, my lie, my judgements, my failures, and the way that they demonstrate my ugly humanity. I thought about my failure to be a living arrow, pointing to heaven, expressing with life itself that I am covered in grace and grateful for it.

And yet, in the midst of my failure God still talks to me. He still tells me the Truth. He still whispers to my heart. He still listens when I pray. And sometimes, He even gives me second chances.

The word “Redeem” means to set free, rescue or ransom. It means to restore the honor, worth, or reputation of, and to save from a state of sinfulness and its consequences.

“Thank You… for sharing the Truth despite myself. It’s amazing, really….”

The sunlight glinted through the branches of the trees over head as a smile made its permanent place on my lips for the rest of the drive home.

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

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