"Do you have good religion?"

Ever since reading The Children, by David Halberstam, I've been a huge fan of Rev. James Lawson. (Did I mention huge?? Completely in awe of him, might be more accurate.) So, I was excited when I got to church last Sunday and noticed that he was the scheduled preacher of the day. As expected, he did not disappoint.

"Do you have good religion?" he started. The topic already interested me.

"I know God has a hand on my life, but I have questions about what religion has convinced me to believe," he continued. I'm quickly getting sucked in and started wondering, "How is he going to break this down...and what is he going to say that I can apply to my life?"


It was very apparent to me that Dr. Lawson doesn't live in his Civil-Rights-hero past. He is very much in the present. However, to illustrate his point, he told about his experience on the Freedom Ride. He explained that during the stop where they were beaten and then arrested and put in jail, they experienced a lot of hatred and terrible actions. While in jail, they dealt with one guard in particular who was terribly abusive. Yet, even while experiencing the hatred and evil that came from him, Dr. Lawson recognized, "This man is a neighbor according to Jesus."

Wow. My faith just came alive again! All of a sudden, I had a new realization of what I do and why I do it! In the incidents I briefly explained in my last post, the drug dealer is a neighbor. The guy who was so "out there" on drugs that he traumatized several people is a neighbor. The guy who jumped me a few years ago for a few dollars is a neighbor.

Dr. Lawson went on to explain how they approached the situation in the jail cell. "We will try to treat that man the way he did not treat himself," he told everyone and then explained to the guard, "You are still a child of God and we will still treat you as our neighbor."

Again, wow. That is powerful stuff!

And what was the result of their actions? 

Change.

Did it work for everyone? No. Was it over night? No. Is racial reconciliation perfect today? No. But by approaching everyone as a child of God, what Dr. Lawson realized was that, "We have the opportunity to help our neighbor and to help them come alive--NOT by asking them if they have been saved!"

Dr. Lawson realized that the most powerful way to demonstrate Christ is not to ask if they've been saved or to work on "saving" them. After all, we can't save someone else, anyway, can we? The most powerful demonstration of Christ is to treat the person like a neighbor who doesn't even treat himself that way.

Our world is different today because of what people like Dr. Lawson did back then. How can I do my part today to make the world different for the generation behind me? The lesson is no different and it is no small statement.

Treat even the seemingly most "untreatable" as my neighbor.

Maggie's Cleaning Service

I went to dinner with one of the college students last night. Now that she's in college, we go to dinner every once in a while to talk and catch up. As she has continued in college, she has found that, unfortunately, most of her friends from high school did not. Though she keeps up with some of them, most have babies now and she doesn't feel like she has a lot of similar interests. I am so impressed with her determination to persevere on her own. She often feels like the lone rider on her trek to graduate from college.

I am in awe of her hard work. Not only does she commute an hour back and forth to Denton each day to attend school at UNT, she also works with her mom cleaning houses and mentoring her brothers and sister. She's the oldest. She wants to ensure her siblings move in the right direction as well so despite her exhaustion, she makes sure to help them with homework, talk to them about college, and help the oldest brother try to figure out what he wants to be and encourage him to find a direction after high school.

When we get together, she often tells me about working for people who have so much money that they don't have to think about if they can afford something. She never speaks with any condescension. As she tells me, it's always with surprise that people can afford stuff at a whim and with no thought about the cost.

Last night as she was talking, she said one day she wanted to hire "Maggie's Cleaning Services" to clean her house. Since I knew she and her mother clean houses, I thought maybe her mom worked for someone else and that was the name of the company. She laughed and said, "No, I joke with my mom and call her Maggie because the people she works for call her that. I guess they think 'Margarita' is too long of a name to say."

We laughed about the ridiculousness of that. Quite honestly, I was rather irritated and appalled. Who gave anyone the right to change or shorten her given name? Why do people think they can do that? Does Margarita sound too Latino for them? I'm guessing 'Maggie' sounds more like a name in their community so they just decide to call her that. How insulting!

I always remember my mom telling me, "I named you Janet. If I would've wanted you to be named Jan or Janice, I would've named you that." I don't like when people change my name for me. I understand an unintentional mistake, but I will correct them if they call me something other than my name.

I'm going to try not to speculate and make comments about why I believe people have shortened Margarita to a more childish sounding name like Maggie. Instead, I'm going to hope they are reading this and have an a-ha moment of how degrading and insulting that is. I hope they will apologize to Margarita and any other people they might have disrespected in that way and make it a point from this day forward to take the time to learn and pronounce each person's given name no matter how different it sounds to them.

Names are important. We were each given a name and unless we decide to change that name, it isn't anyone else's right to change it for us.

Unforgettable

Lisa Nigro (also see #27 in this link here or see her in a video played during last years' Oscars here) is probably the most unforgettable person in my life. I met her while on a spring break mission trip in college.

I had never been big on mission trips. The mission trips I had always known were “door knocking campaigns” where you knocked on someone’s door and prayed with/for them. I didn’t care for them because 1) I didn’t want someone I didn’t know knocking on my door just to pray with me and leave, and 2) I felt like if people wanted someone to know God, a one-time shot and never seeing them again wasn’t going to miraculously do that; there needed to be an on-going relationship. So, when the opportunity arose to go to Chicago and volunteer in an inner city ministry, that seemed to make a lot more sense.

Once there, we worked primarily through a church. Because of the minister’s relationships, we were able to volunteer at several different agencies around the uptown neighborhood. One of those places was the Inspiration Cafe. I remember walking in and Lisa tried to find us things to do. Cleaning wasn’t what we wanted to do. We wanted to work with people, but there were no people there and she seemed to be trying to accommodate eager college students.

During that time, Lisa and I ended up in a conversation. Somehow she agreed to hire me for a 6-week internship that summer. I went back at the end of May and began working with her. The entire first two weeks I was there, my entire job was to, “get to know the people.” Though that seems to make a lot of sense to me now, I was there for a job. I was there to learn how to run a café that catered to formerly homeless people. I couldn’t believe she would pay me to get to know people. Lisa taught me that people who are homeless have thoughts and opinions. And she taught me that their thoughts and opinions are very valuable and sometimes have insight that we don’t think about.

So, for the first two weeks, I sat with the guests, ate breakfast, and talked about politics, the Bulls, and how life was in the city. I learned about 12-step programs, Alcoholics Anonymous, and many organizations that served homeless people (the respectful ones and the rude ones). The guests of the café (all people who were working toward sobriety, getting a job, and getting off of the street) were my teachers and my friends.

I watched as Lisa interacted with the guests. I never saw pity or a do-gooder feeling on her part. In fact, when someone relapsed (or was on that path) into their drug addiction, I could see that it hurt her. But I also learned from her that holding people accountable was important. They were dismissed from the café, but always welcomed back with open arms if things changed.

I also watched Lisa work with restaurants and funders. She expected everyone with whom she interacted to value homeless people just as much as they valued the other people they served in their own restaurant or interacted with in their own lives. I’ll never forget Lisa’s reaction after a fancy restaurant she had solicited brought sandwiches to serve to homeless people in Lincoln Park. The very next day, Lisa was on the phone speaking with the person in charge at that restaurant. She asked them if they served sandwiches in their own restaurant (which they didn’t), then challenged them and asked them why homeless people deserve sandwiches if that’s not something they serve in their own restaurant. I don’t remember if the restaurant changed what they brought to serve or if they quit coming altogether, but I remember the lesson loud and clear…Just because someone is homeless doesn’t mean he/she deserves “less than.”

I learned many lessons during that short summer internship. And I went back many times throughout the rest of my college career. I don’t stay in touch much with Lisa, Harry, Cooper, Richard, Tommy, or the others I got to know that summer. But when I do reach out to contact them, they always remember me. They always welcome me back. What I learned from all of them was invaluable and impacts me every day of my life and was extremely unforgettable.

"Use another word, please"

Ever hear the phrase, "That's so gay!"...or how about, "He's such a retard!"? I could go on with racial terms as well, but I think you get the point. Every once in a while I hear phrases like that being tossed around casually. Though it's not usually adults who I hear saying it, I don't often hear adults stopping it either.

I don't believe people really think about...and maybe don't care...that those phrases are offensive to people of those groups. When I hear someone say something like that, I often ask them what they really mean. All too often, the derogatory term is often used synonymously with words like "stupid."

Though it's one thing to correct our own behavior (and something we don't always do), it takes even more courage to gently correct others. However, a group in Springfield, Oregon has figured out a way to do this...inspired and initiated by a student who simply turned to another fellow student one day and said, "Use another word, please."

After coming up with the idea to do a school-wide campaign, the racially diverse group of freshmen, sophomores, and juniors took time to do preliminary research seeking to discover how widespread the problem was. After creating tally sheets and monitoring disrespectful language for two weeks, they noted 80-90 racist comments, 30-40 sexist comments, 30-40 able-ist comments, and 50-60 homophobic comments.

Recognizing there was a need to address the issue, they launched their campaign by creating buttons and posters and designed a pledge that had to be signed before receiving a button.

Since the campaign started, one teacher noted a decrease in the number of fights at school. District data supports his observation: suspensions went from 318 during 2004-05 to 142 in 2005-06. Suspensions for fighting dropped from 86 to 38, and suspensions for defiance from 176 to 11.

It's amazing what consideration for each other can do. So next time you hear a disrespectful comment, how about kindly saying, "Use another word, please!"

The future...as if it really mattered

As I was watching Meet the Press, something caught my ear. Tom Friedman, a New York Times reporter, wrote a book (From Beruit to Jerusalem) after spending time in the Middle East. He explained, "These are people who hate others more than they love their own kids; more than they love their own future." I wonder if this couldn't be applied to some of the kids in our inner cities. Kids and teenagers are in such dire situations (some self-inflicted, but others that have been created for them before they were even born) that I believe their sense of resentment and hatred may be stronger than their love for their future. Resentment and hatred is much more tangible that believing in the future.

Friedman went on to say, "The role of America is to be the guiding light there."

My question is:

How do we expect the United States to take care of another country's business when we can't handle our own?

A while back I read a book by James Garbarino, Children in Danger. The book compares our inner city war zones to those in Beruit, Belfast, and Mozambique. There isn't much difference.

Characteristics Garbarino mentions of war-torn foreign countries:

• malnourishment
• witnessing/knowing about violent deaths
• lack of emotion
• anger

In Mozambique, 42% of adolescents (out of 119 surveyed) had witnessed a murder. In some housing projects in the United States, up to 33% had witnessed a murder. Many more knew someone who had been killed, even if they hadn't witnessed it.

Though Tom Friedman continued to talk about our conflict overseas, we might could learn something from his theory:

"We've got to find another way...Listening is a sign of respect...If you just go over and listen to people and what they have to say, it's amazing... But when you just say we're not gonna go to Damascus, we're not going to listen to the Syrians, you're never going to get anywhere that way. I'm not guaranteeing you you're going to get somewhere the other way, but all I know, you sure increase the odds if you sit down and just listen."

Has anyone ever thought about listening to people in the inner city?? Friedman made the comment that what we're doing in the Middle East isn't working, so it can't hurt to try something different. I would argue that it's the same for our inner cities right here in the United States.

"Listening is a sign of respect."

Allow me to reiterate what Friedman said and apply it to our inner cities.

"I'm not guaranteeing you you're going to get somewhere the other way, but all I know, you sure increase the odds if you sit down and just listen."