Loved...as in "I am..."
"You are..."
"Be..."

" in a world where you can be anything, be kind..."
Remind
Help someone find
Whisper from behind...
And call from the road ahead...
Into every mind
Where fear winds
Its lies and discouragement. And the world says you can't. And you won't. And you aren't.
Speak
This true word...
That I am loved. You are loved. Your name is beloved.

#lovewins

 

I've been experimenting with video postings on Facebook. For those of you who know that I'm somewhat technology challenged (was once the Dummie on which my son-in-law's programmer interns tested "is is clear enough yet?") this might be amusing.
HEY...I'm doing okay...except I don't know how to talk and show a photo at the same time.

IF you want to hear the video, send me a friend request on FB or check out my timeline.

This poem came after weeks of fog and wildfire-generated smoke residue in California. The fog felt grey and sad. Like a veil between me and the sun. Reminding me of those LONG midwestern winters where the sun pretty much went into hiding from October til May and, in the middle of it. you wondered whether the sun really existed at all.

the mural LOVED came in the middle of a week that didn't feel like love. I didn't realize how deeply sad I would be at John McCain's passing. His character and honesty  was like a small LED light breaking the fog of the current political environment. Realities that have made me weep (not symbolically, actual sobbing)...565 children still held captive by our government. STILL not returned to their parents - many of whom were deported. Many told "drop your asylum request and go home if you want your children to be returned."
A dear friend has been hospitalized repeatedly in the past year - nearly died at least 3 or 4 times. In the chaos, she missed a critical date for review of her Social Security Disability approval. Send a huge stack of documents proving her hospitalization(s) and was disapproved even so.  Now, threatened with removal of the only support she has, she could find herself homeless again. TOO MUCH! .... That's what the 20 BILLION dollar cut in HUD funding actually looks like.....processes looking for any way to deny people.  

Another best beloved just can't get thing together to go to rehab. Gathering the fragments of her life and pain to actually RISK making a change is overwhelming.  And, I am overwhelmed watching her.

All this...and I find the mural with one word LOVED.  Loved.  And I keep thinking about that. Returning to that. Pulling up the image on my phone when I'm feeling overwhelmed and deeply sad at the state of the world and the silence of much of the human community.

So, this poem came out. Reminding me of what is true.

If YOU are discouraged. If your justice heart, like mine, is rocked with pain and confusion. If you want something to be different and realize - like me - that the only thing you can control is YOU.

Here's a small word of encouragement.

"I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart. I have overcome the world."

Jhn 16:33

I am loved
You are loved
be loved

Beloved....

Recovery. Community. Grace. Chit Chat in the Tenderloin

It's AUGUST! What happened? It's like whiplash!

A beautiful report about Chit Chat Cafe, our women's 12-Step-based support group here in the Tenderloin.
About 2 1/2 years ago, God started nudging me about the real need to help women in recovery integrate their spiritual lives with the hard work of becoming and staying clean and sober.
I began to connect with women leaders in the 12 step community here in SF to ask advice. I attended an extensive training with Celebrate Recovery to see if their approach was a good fit for women in the Tenderloin.
Everyone said, "This is a GREAT idea...It's such a need...YES....start a group."
But no one could help - and I didn't know how to start a group or how to structure the group to fit Tenderloin women's unique needs.
I finally put the whole idea on the back burner. I respect the process and wisdom of the 12 Step community that says meeting and groups are not "therapy" they offer peer support. Because I've never been in recovery from chemical and alcohol addiction, I just plain don't qualify.

So I waited. More than a year.

Enter Karina, an intern with Because Justice Matters and Esther Movement Ministry. She came to learn and serve. AND brought with her years of recovery work....the 12 Steps had been integral to her own healing and relationship with Jesus.  So, we began Chit Chat Cafe, a women-only group. Karina brought her wisdom and understanding. The group started slowly and grew.

Now...WOW. This group hosts 4-9 women every single week. We have been exploring and sharing "experiences hopes and dreams" about each step....questions like "when did I experience the care of God?" or "What does it feel like to realize I'm powerless?" One week we talked about the safety of knowing God is THERE...."a power greater than myself"...about knowing that means we aren't alone in the struggle to become and stay clean and sober.

Every single week we LAUGH. Women tell bits of their own stories. Last week we talked about regret....and HOPE.
This is SO beautiful. I wanted to share it with all of you. Because God did it! And, it has become a small, fierce light of HOPE for women in the Tenderloin.

My dream in starting Chit Chat Cafe was 1) to support women in their drug and alcohol recovery work and 2) to create a place and process where women could bring their growing faith and their growing Recovery together.
And THAT's exactly what is happening.

Recently we "prayed out" 3 "trainees" (interns by another name) as they prepared to leave Because Justice Matters and return to college.  These 3 lovely young women had been coming to Chit Chat all summer. Sharing themselves and their own trek into life with a bunch of women mostly old enough to be their mothers.

As they shared about leaving, each one was SO sad. "I'll miss you," they said. "Thank you for letting us come."
The women prayed for them. For new experiences. For success in school. For the "next step in your life."  One woman, who lives on the streets and copes with severe mental illness prayed, "Go. Be Safe. We won't forget you."

I wish you all could come to Chit Chat. Sit in that circle and read the Steps that help women find themselves and believe in themselves again.
To sit with women who once thought they were lost in homelessness and addiction and see them encourage and call each other to grow and change.
To laugh together. To share a meal and welcome someone new. And to believe. Together. That change is possible and God can make us new creations.

Thank you all for support. Encouragement. And for believing in me and in what I'm doing here in SF.

Love to you all
Nothing is impossible!

JULIA

She's EDENMade...

EDENMade

I moved to SF in 2013 with a dream to create paths of healing friendship with women sex workers. I was drawn to the strip clubs and massage parlors. Came to understand that the women I met on the streets and in the single-room “apartments” scattered throughout the Tenderloin all had their stories of exploitation.

Many had sold their bodies as the last, remaining “resource” in a life where both safety and safety nets were non-existent. Some grew up in families where their boundaries had never, ever been protected or respected. How would they know their bodies were their Own? How would they understand that NO is an answer? Children whose boundaries were violated grew into women without boundaries.

Sex work was a means of survival.

I saw, in real time, that “sex trafficking” wasn’t just a problem “over there” somewhere. It was – and IS – a current, RIGHT NOW crisis for women on street corners and small town "gentlemen's clubs." In massage parlors and escort services and hotels and truck stops and on college campuses. It is HERE and it is NOW.

Because Justice Matters is establishing the foundation for EDENMade, our official ministry dedicated to reaching women in sex work through relationship, resources and presence.

Our team – Lynae Byler (Nurse, leader, connector-of-people, healer, one of 12 children in a Pennsylvania Mennonite family....a power house woman) and Karina Espina (a Venezuelan, bi-lingual, recovery-informed firebrand who lives on a sail boat in Alameda harbor with her beloved husband and partner James).

We are nurturing a small group of volunteers. Developing a training process. Collecting make-up for “outreach” gift bags. Praying a LOT.

We've been meeting monthly with volunteers to pray. Plan a training for folks ready to "sign on the dotted line" and other interested Bay Area folks this spring or early summer. By fall, we will start monthly, focused "getting to know you" outreach in one strip club - probably the New Century...about 5 blocks from the YWAM base at the corner of Larkin and O'Farrell.

This is an answer to prayer that began in 2010. It is a big reason why I moved to San Francisco. It is HAPPENING and God is in it!

 Want to know more? Want to come to San Francisco and join our team? Want to pray or send gift bag bling or support me financially?  Let me know.

julia@becausejusticematters.org
608-332 6056
357 Ellis Street
San Francisco, California 94102

#metoo....Time to Talk?

 

Been thinking about the #metoo movement. How, it started with "regular women" - like us. Then, the tsunami of women in entertainment. In government. Business. Judges, University Professors, CEOs and famous writers.

These high-profile voices brought power to the movement. And, in the process, the witness and words of the "regular women" and the "organic-ness" of the movement got detoured.

It really IS important that women-of-influence break their silence. And, it is equally important that we - all women - come together....give each other permission to speak...believe each other...support healing...create safe spaces to speak and listen together.

SO...

I want to try to create some spaces for speaking and listening. Safe spaces. Spaces in often silent places - like churches or a knitting shop...Somebody's living room or the unique community of the workplace.

I need your help:

1) Do you think this is a good idea?

2) What would YOU hope to see happen if a #metoo group gathered in your "place?"

2) What is your "place?" Who would gather there? (could be online...at your house...in a church or other "gathering" space)

3) What do you fear might happen if you gathered women together to invite them to speak and listen?

4) What's keeping you from doing this now?

5) Wanna talk? PM me on Facebook. Send an email to: pferdehirt.julia@gmail.com
Add a comment to the thread on my Facebook page - if there's a discussion....join in.

Let's Speak. Let's Listen. Help me get this ball rolling....

Happy Day-After Christmas.

LOVE, Julia

PS: Putting this on my blog for "public consumption."

www.becausejusticematters2013.blogspot.com

Feel free to send to others.

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."