Treasure in the Mission

Treasure in The Mission

Papusas! Where's Sylvia?

Saturday night in the Mission. Best burritos and papusas EVER. Hanging out with my YWAM sisters, Laina, Kelsey and Sylvia.
 

Suddenly, a woman I sort-of, kinda recognize is shouting. Rushing toward me. She grabs me in a bear hug. 

“I’m D,” she says. “You remember me.”

And then, in an instant, I do remember.

Except  she, frankly, doesn’t look AT ALL like the woman who lived on a sidewalk in the Tenderloin a year ago.

Her smile doesn’t remind me at all of the angry, aggressive, sometimes raging drug dealer who I once saw beat a man with her fists in broad daylight.

Her warm, enveloping hug doesn’t bring to mind the night I found her, trembling with cold and soaked to the skin, waiting for her “boyfriend.". Leaving her “post” could get her in trouble with her ‘upline” – drug dealers from East Bay who supply street dealers in the Tenderloin. So she waited in the rain.

I look her over with hungry eyes. Her skin in clear. Her eyes shining. She is about HALF the size she was when she lived in front of my home and workplace.

“I lost 130 pounds!” she exclaimed.

“You look SO good. So happy. What’s happening?”

Her boyfriend (whom I hadn’t noticed….sorry about that dude) shook a ring of keys.

“We have a place,” D. said. “We got housing. They offered us [a studio in the Tenderloin] or here. We picked here!”

She hugged me again. I hugged her back. D. said,

“It’s home. The rent is paid. The lights are on. There’s food in the fridge,” D. said. “After that, everything else is extra!”

“You don’t look like your old self. You look so HAPPY!” I said.

She laughed. “I AM happy!”  We continue to talk…

“YWAM is the only thing I miss about the Tenderloin,” D says.

“How are Tim and Karol (our YWAM base directors)?” she asks.

“So good. Good things are happening.”

“And Jan and Trevor?”

Now, Jan and Trevor are YWAMers. A so-so-kind couple from England. Trevor fixes things and brings sanity to  our accounting department. They're the Bay-Area Alpha Course leaders.

At YWAM SF, Jan wrangles hospitality. Imagine something like managing a youth hostel with random people arriving and leaving at all hours from all kinds of places….with a different staff “greeting” each week of the year. AND creating beautiful rooms to welcome them. That’s Jan.

On the streets and in the YWAM base. On the phone with someone inquiring about hospitality….everywhere, Jan calls people “Treasure.”  With a British accent, of course!

You’ll see her chatting with a ragged, bent old man. Homeless for years. Needing a shower and shave.  She’ll smile. She’ll say, “Can I pray for you, Treasure?”

A street kid? “Hello Treasure, how are you?”

A woman in a soiled sequined corset and tight, frayed leggings “chatting up” the guys in front of the park?  “Good morning, Treasure, I’m Jan.”
D., a traumatized, angry woman selling crack in front of the YWAM base? "Treasure" again.

And Jan hugs. Jan prays. Jan slowly builds relationships of trust. She’s so non-threatening. So kind. So ready to pray, believing her beautiful Jesus cares about every single need.

***

So, here we are, meeting D on a crazy-busy street corner in the Mission.

“Who are Jan and Trevor?” her boyfriend asks.

“You know Jan,” D. responds. She smiles. She hugs herself …. That action speaking a thousand words, somehow.

“You know Jan.  I’m her treasure.”

Loving without Agenda

How do 8 MONTHS fly by without a single blog? Hmmm…No excuses here, folks.

SO… during the past 2 years, my colleague, fellow YWAMer and friend Lillian Medhus and I collaborated to create a Domestic Violence support group curriculum for Muslim women. Lilli had the hard-won relationships, friendship and trust. I had some experience facilitating and creating support groups for survivors of abuse. Together, we stumbled, tried, grouped and re-grouped our way to a quality, culturally sensitive, faith-based support group curriculum. The first of its kind as far as we know.

In March, the curriculum LAUNCHED as a published book. Evidently somebody in the crowd that day is connected to PASSION TALKS 2017…a TED Talk-like effort to create dialogue and intelligent inquiry in the Christian community.

This “somebody in the crowd” emailed me in July, asking me to submit an outline to PASSION TALKS. “Cool” I thought. “A chance to expand the reputation of Because Justice Matters in the Bay Area.”  So I submitted.

All the while I’m thinking this one of those “get churches together” deals. No biggie.

Then, the emails start coming. Special formats for power points. Lists of people from all over the COUNTRY who are speaking or attending this thing. A link to an online training for presenters.  What?

Whoa…this is actually a BIG deal. I sweat. I barge into our YWAM base director’s office…”TIM! THIS IS A BIG DEAL. WHY DIDN’T ANYBODY TELL ME?” (Yes I know all caps means yelling. I didn’t ACTUALLY yell but…)

I buy new black dress pants. (That helps).  I start to pray a LOT about what I’m going to say.

I’m not nervous because of the crowd or that stupid things I say will archived on the web-o-sphere forever. Not because all the other presenters seem to be professorial or something. But, because of what I believe God wants me to say.

“If you love with a single agenda, you will poison the water.”

When God first said these words to me in 2013, they sounded cool and spiritual and “deep.” But, frankly, I didn’t have a clue what they MEANT.

 What does “agenda” look like?  I want to see “good” outcomes for people I love. Isn’t that okay?

 I want young women working in strip clubs to leave. They are not body parts for sale.

I want my friend in addiction to get sober and off the streets.  How can this “poison the water?”

I prayed to understand. Then, I heard an acquaintance say, “We just want to go to the Castro and love on those gay people.” I cringed.  “Those” gay people? Who wants to be “loved on” by some complete stranger as if you were a project?

Then, I remembered my friend Bobbie telling me about a Christian neighbor who “just wanted to convert a Jew…and she really wanted ME to be her Jew.”

Months later, a visitor to our “skid row” neighborhood here in SF confronted a man on the streets. This visitor said, ”I saw you here last time. I really care about you, but when are you going to decide to stop living like this?”

This agenda-driven “helper” had no idea that our YWAM staff had spent months building this person up. Giving him small responsibilities in our drop-in center. Telling him in a thousand ways that he was worthy of love and relationship. Because he didn’t believe he was worthy of anything – let alone sobriety and a happy life.

Cringe. Cringe. More cringing.

I looked in the mirror. How often do I act as if my job description is “fix them for their own good” rather than “Love without agenda?”

Guilty. “Agenda” loves with a “catch.” Looking for a result. And assuming to know what that result should look like and when it should happen.

Agenda-driven love withdraws when the result doesn’t happen. It is different from the generous grace….the unearned kindness… the patiently held space that marks the way Jesus loves.

Loving without agenda requires me to meet somebody where they are. To know them and let them know me. To give and receive relationship. And to keep doing that kind of love, whether my friend grows or changes or chooses the “good thing” I wish they would choose.

It means responding to another’s timing. Another’s journey. Rather than inserting my own. It means sticking to my job description, regardless of the outcome.

Even if that outcome. That good thing is knowing Jesus – the best and most life-giving “good thing” I know.

So what about the DV Curriculum, the PASSION Talk and buying new pants?

I want everything I do to speak of and live out the way Jesus loves. I want everybody on the planet to know how unconditionally they are loved and how completely Jesus knows and values them. That includes every woman in those DV support groups.

In creating the DV curriculum, agenda-free love meant creating a resource for Muslim women. Using their language and honoring their faith. It meant respecting and meeting them where they are – searching for freedom from Domestic Violence. Agenda-free love requires me to respond to that journey – not insert my own.

My desire that everyone might know Jesus and His love can seem to conflict with this call to love without condition or requirement. I need new models to.respect and respond rather than fix and insert. To risk generous grace. And to trust that if I love, God will make Himself and His love known even when I don’t say a word.

 The PASSION TALK is happening in 2 weeks. I’ve got the new black pants and some 20-something here at YWAM can help make my power point slides presentable. I want to share my own challenge. My struggle toward a vision for grace instead of fixing. For kindness without conditions. For trusting God enough to risk love without agenda.