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.

Change comes from unexpected places....A morning at the Domestic Violence women's shelter

Thinking today about Domestic Violence in faith communities - because I got to give a presentation about how shelters and DV advocates can help women use their own faith to recover and heal from Domestic Violence.

Studies consistently show that women of faith are more likely to recover and heal emotionally and in life from the wounds of domestic violence and abuse IF their faith is part of that recovery and healing.

These Advocates-in-Training were an interesting group: an ex-Catholic priest from Brazil; a young Muslim woman, ex-church members disillusioned by the behavior and anti-everything spirit they see among Christians; a number of cultural and "holiday only " Jews.

One women - who looked about 18 but must have been in her mid-late 20s, said she used to work for a national Abortion Advocacy group.  She said, "We hated the 'God calls" from women who felt guilty about their choice."  she then said, "Every woman. EVERY woman who callecd our hotline was in poverty, afraid, and alone. They all were afraid they couldn't raise a child. I remember one woman with 2 little kids...pregnant again. One of those husbands who wasn't out of work...he just didn't work....ever.  She was Catholic and was afraid she'd go to hell."

The woman described her conversation with this caller. She said, "My job wasn't to talk her into anything. So I just asked her questions like, 'did she believe God loved her? Did she believe God was forgiving?"

As she's speaking, I hear her compassion for the women at the other end of her crisis line phone. And, my heart is sinking because I realize she was "helping" these women justify taking the life of their unborn child. And, I knew the emotional and spiritual cost that decision would - sooner or later - exact from their hearts. whether through hardness and dissociation or PTSD and tearing regret that would feel like a wound beyond healing.

Then, the young woman said, "I wouldn't have described myself as a person of faith then. but now I do. What I discovered was, the women who believed. You know, the God calls....they may have been poor and afraid, but they weren't alone. They had God."

What a Jesus moment. I thought, in a flash, of the woman caught in adultery. And, how, historically, many Christians have been offended that He didn't confront her with her sin and that scripture never records her "confessing and asking forgiveness." Instead, Jesus extended grace and kindness. Before he said anything else, he said, "I don't condemn you."  And this, to a woman condemned by everybody.  After all, she was an adultress (at least) and quite probably in the sex trade - selling her body for money.

Yet, Jesus SAW her. Loved her. Refused to condemn her.  Even when he said, "Go, and sin no more," we have no record of her "making it right."  Interesting. Breaks all the rules!  Aren't we supposed to see our sin, confess, and THEN we are forgiven? isn't that how it works?

Yet, here is the young woman - not saying, "I found Jesus" or "Now I'm a Christian and I'm pro-life."
Instead, she honestly said - in front of a room of her hip. "not religious" peers - that the "God people" had changed her. Their faith - seen in the midst of panic and shame and a decision whether to give in to fear and "solve" a problem by having an abortion - had actually changed HER.

Here she was - making eye contact for SO long with me as I talked about faith as a "defining moment of identity" for many people. And shared my own story as an example.

You see, I found Jesus through the story of that woman "caught in the act" and the men with their stones of judgement and death. And Jesus. Kneeling there in front of her. Putting Himself between her and the stone-throwers. Doodling in the sand with his finger.

"I didn't know anything about the Old Testament or new Testament or theology," I said. "I only knew that Jesus was SO smart. How did He know to tell the guys with the stones 'let the one among you who has never sinned throw the first stone'?....

All I knew was I liked this Jesus. And, I wanted to be loved like Jesus loved that woman."

The young Advocate-in-Training sat across the table from me. Her eyes looking into mine.

I wondered what Jesus was doing. Right at that moment. In her heart? 

How was he showing himself to her?  Calling her closer?

I realized, on the long walk home, that God is never too proud to meet us wherever we are. On the Abortion Advocates hotline. On the street, caught in the act of whatever we're doing that we should be.  In the privacy of our minds where we harbor doubt and give in to fear.

He meets us there. And doesn't condemn us. And draws us close.

And we are changed.  And I thought, "THIS is what real evangelism looks like."

Advent: Thoughts on Waiting While the World Burns

Advent. It's been so long since my family sat around the dining table every night and sang "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." So many years since a child placed one more square on our advent calendar each evening. I still have those felt squares. Each one a beautiful, hand-made labor of love. One year, I created them - one at a time. Scissors and felt and glue. Tiny beads and bits of gold. Night after night from fall until that first Sunday of Advent. "

A tree stump with a tiny sprouting branch. A small green leaf. "The root of Jesse shall spring a branch" A small cottage-like house with a thatched roof. "From you, O Bethlehem...little among the thousands of Judah, from you will come One who will rule Israel" An angel, with pearl-edged wings and lifted arms and a small, kneeling figure with long, dark hair. "Greetings, favored one!.... The Holy Spirit will come upon you and you shall give birth to a son."

Advent. A time to make our hearts ready. A time to make room in my heart for Jesus to be born. For Jesus and His ways to be formed again in me.

This Advent, the world is burning. Our nation is in deep darkness.
This Advent I will either choose to be a Light or I will harden my heart in anger.
This Advent I feel discouraged and afraid. I cannot convince anyone to change. I cannot convince anyone that trusting God while the world is in flames is freedom - not foolishness. I can't force anyone's eyes open to actually SEE human beings instead of images or fears.

I can only try to be Light and speak the words again.

"O Come, O Come Emmanuel. And ransom captive Israel. That mourns in lonely exile here. Until the Son of God appears."

Hairy Week, Smart Friends

Saturday Morning in the TL

This has been a hairy week. Monday someone had suicidal thoughts. Tuesday I didn't accomplish ANYTHING. Wednesday a woman who meets her needs by manipulation and control crashed Movie Day. By Thursday I decided nobody anywhere was allowed to have any more crises. The royal decree didn't work so well, but I tried!

With a week full of hearing stories of pain and hurt, I've been looking for wisdom. Well, mostly I've been muttering, "Helpmehelpmehelpmehelpme....I don't know what on earth I'm doing."

Good thing that I'm surrounded by wise people.  Here are the conversations that got me through the week (in my own words):

Jolene: No matter what happens, I can choose LIFE. It doesn't ever look the same for anyone, but in every situation, I can ask God, "What does it look like to choose life right now. Today. This minute?"
Tomorrow, it won't look like it does today. Maybe today I'm crying my eyes out. Maybe tomorrow I will have hope. But every day I can choose life.

Karol: That rhythms of discipline lead to life. That discipline isn't about punishment or 'doing right' to avoid God's displeasure. It's about practiced, steady, determined walking with Holy Spirit. In God's moment-by-moment presence. "I don't want to skip my quiet time because I don't want to miss what He has for me. The goodness of my time alone with Him."

Justine: In all the demands of being mom to three children under the age of 5, it's easy to just "keep going" and "keep doing." "I can end up believing I have to do it myself. And then I do it myself." Her wisdom is showing me how, in doing it myself I miss the opportunity to partner with God. To be carried and supported and built up by His love. Often, I can "pull it off" (what ever "it" is) but, in doing so, I miss the offer of intimacy and love that God wants to give me in the very circumstance I'm busy doing.

Laina: This week Laina recognized that she had two unique skills: a degree in nutrition and training as a life coach. So, she comes to YWAM San Francisco, intending to help staff the Discipleship Training School. A big need is someone to manage the kitchen - with 3 daily meals to cook for students, staff, speakers and other random people, someone needs to bring order out of chaos.
After a few weeks with Laina at the helm, the atmosphere of the kitchen has changed. People are coming to make coffee and hang out while she cooks. Students come to talk and help with dinner prep. She said, "Sometimes I just chop and listen."
Of course! Laina cares about feeding people good food. She cares about listening and encouraging people. She's not just managing the kitchen - she's making the kitchen into the heart of the base.

Tim: There is a difference between expectancy and expectation. The hopeful rising-up of expectancy comes from trust and a history of being loved. Of God's dependable care and Presence.  Expectation is something we try to define. We expect to receive. We are expected, in turn, to earn and deserve.  In expectancy, my heart is encouraged and free.  In expectation, I fear disappointment. I wonder if, when things don't look the way I expected, either I have failed or God has. In expectancy, my eyes are on the always-dependable, always-trustworthy love of my Father for me.

I am so grateful to live surrounded by wise, loving people.
After a not-so-great week, I was lifted up and brought back to shining hope by the lives and thoughts of my YWAM San Francisco family.

Article on Homelessness....Previous Post continued

http://aplus.com/a/canada-solves-homelessness-problems

Isaac Saul @Ike_Saul

Solutions to Homelessness: Thoughts from the TL

I just read an interesting FB post citing an article about a Canadian city addressing homelessness i a unique way (http://aplus.com/a/canada-solves-homelessness-problems)

Because I work with, love, am friends with and daily get to hug homeless women in San Francisco, this approach to homelessness interests me very much. I've been following the outcomes in Utah as well where cities like Salt Lake are seeing pretty drastic changes in BOTH the costs of helping homeless people and the actual results in terms of health, sobriety, ability to get jobs etc. 

Let me tell you one story that is a mirror of what I see EVERY TIME a homeless woman gets housing here. That housing creates a safety net where change can happen. 

D. lived on the streets. She is a survivor of horrifying childhood trauma and has had a rough life - in and out of addiction and mental illness. She was married at one time and had children (It's unclear how many) Her mental illness escalated when her husband became physically abusive. Her children were taken by Child Protective Services. To this day, she grieves these children and says, "I tried. I loved them. I wanted to be a good mother." 

When D lived on the streets, she used to carry a piece of 2x4 to defend herself. One day, I found her crouched on the sidewalk, pointing a piece of metal at passing cars - reflecting sunlight at them. She urgently called me to come and sit next to her. "Hurry up. If they see you, they'll catch you and put things inside of you." She assured me she would keep ME safe. (Oh Jesus! My heart cried out!). She let me pray for her, but she was pretty out of reality....Except the possibility of violence wasn't unreality. 

D let the women of Because Justice Matters (BJM)  love her. Let us pray with her. Sometimes came to Nail Day for coffee and brownies and kindness. BUT SHE WAS LIKE A SIEVE...SHE COULDN'T "HOLD" ANYTHING WE POURED IN BECAUSE DAILY LIFE WAS SO TRAUMATIC AND TERRIFYING. 

SO...about a year later, D's application for disability was approved (I think it was the 3rd request....BLESS her case manager, who had to lead her by the hand through every single step because she was too mentally ill to follow through on anything) Then, D had some money. Her case manager had been applying for housing. Then, one day D. came and told us she "had a place" We visited. It was in a filthy building. Third world squalor was the word that came to my mind. BUT it had a roof and a door that locked and, for the first time in years (decades? who knows?) D. could actually sleep safely at hight. What happened? Nothing at first. Then, we began to see changes. She began to wash her clothes. The started using her limited funds to buy clothes at Goodwill. Who knew D. was a vintage clothing diva? She stopped burning her hair off with a BIC lighter and got a haircut when a local non-profit brought in volunteer stylists. She gained weight. And, more and more, she began to make sense. Sometimes she still is "off" She is able to remember to take her medication which really helps her mental illness. She comes to Nail Day and sometimes to The Well. We laugh with her (she's absolutely hilarious when she's feeling sane and safe). We pray as often as she feels safe enough to let us. And, not long ago, a SF photographer saw her walking through the Tenderloin wearing a gorgeous vintage coat she found at Goodwill. He saw her striking blue eyes and weather-worn but still beautiful face. A photo of D. showed up in the San Francisco Chronicle. Today, it hangs in our office as a reminder. SO in all this journey, the turning point was HOUSING.