In Good Company

Last Wednesday I had surgery to remove a cyst on my vocal cord. Surgery went well, but afterwards I discovered my tongue wasn't working properly. The doctor believes I have a "stunned nerve". No one knows how long it will last, and he says my body will simply fix itself when (if?) it's good and ready--that meantime there's nothing to be done about it.

The day after surgery I needed to work off some agitation and energy with a good, hard swim. I was really frustrated at what a chore it was (and still is) to chew, to swallow, to speak. Funny how a thing like that can affect my whole attitude, my peace, patience, self-control... All the fruits of the Spirit go rotten overnight. I'm such a baby! Could this be the worst malady I've ever had to deal with? It's no fun, for sure. I'm biting my tongue daily, and when I talk my words are slurred and have to be very deliberate. As I labor to articulate, I self-consciously wonder if people think I'm just mentally "slow".

As I started my swim, I also discovered that it's quite tough to sweep water from my mouth, especially in a flip-turn. But as I stayed the course and concentrated, I choked less and less on the water and was able to have an almost-normal swim.

So, even though it added fodder to the frustration I was trying to burn off, it was good to swim. But on this summer Saturday the city pool was quite full, and I had to share the only lap lane with a young woman. She had a toned physique, wearing a one-piece swimmer's suit, but she was surprisingly slow. When I'd pass her, as I learned to harness my errant tongue and quit choking, I began to notice that her breaststroke was maybe the worst I'd ever seen. There were no propulsive sweeping arms and frog kicks. Rather a goofy curling up, almost into a face-down fetal position, then stretching out. She was really lousy, though she had an athlete's physique. Maybe she's a runner or aspiring triathlete who doesn't know the first thing about swimming, I thought.

Yet she kept swimming next to me for a good half hour. I took off my training gloves near the end of my swim, and she was standing at the wall also, so I turned to communicate... but I wasn't supposed to be talking yet and was dealing with this tongue issue. So instead, I lifted one hand, spread my fingers and quietly mouthed, "Fah moe!" and pointed down the lap lane to signal my final five laps. As I swam, I thought about whether I could find a nonverbal way to give her just one or two tips on swimming when I was done, but when I stopped she'd already crossed under the lane line and was on the other side of the pool.

As I stood against the wall, packing my gear, a woman in a lounge chair smiled lingeringly at me. At first I wanted to be flattered; I'd fought my way through a tough post-surgery swim, I was feeling good about it, maybe I was looking good too! Then I wondered if maybe she'd heard my neighborly but pathetic attempt to speak to my lane partner.

Just then, a bouncy female voice said, "Thanks for swimming with me!", and my wannabee swim partner walks past, big smile on her face, ambling on something like her toes, arms flailing limp below the elbows and knees all akimbo, teetering toward the restroom.

After a quick elbow-jab to myself "You idiot!", another set of lights in my head went on: I was being branded. Both the swimmer and the spectator saw me as disabled too. The lounge chair smile had that friendly yet condescending pat-on-the-head kind of quality to it. I've employed that smile many times. And it left me frankly feeling demeaned to be smiled at from above like that... to be on the other side of that transaction for a change and remember my feelings from her side of it. She wasn't purposely demeaning me, but neither was I her equal.

My swimmer friend on the other hand seemed genuinely appreciative of me, a fellow-struggler, doing our best together, getting good physical activity and not judging one another. OK, maybe I judged her a bit, but only as a coach judges a student. We formed a fellowship of the uphill strugglers. She heard my stammerings and awarded me immediate membership in a society I didn't ever want to be in--but was also somehow proud to be in.

She and I saw each other one more time as we walked out of the gates a few feet behind one another. I was tempted to strike up a conversation but quickly remembered I couldn't talk. And I thought better of it anyway... I had a sense God was showing me something here I didn't want to miss, a first-hand experience of the condescended-upon. And also this alternate universe where less than "perfect" people draw strength from one another. And I had a sense that the timing of the experience was exquisite, that God wasn't frustrated about my tongue problem or panicked by it. Rather that maybe this was the next chapter in my story, like it or not: the Author decides that, not me. And in that moment, something began to shift for me, a releasing of anxiety, something that said this isn't an out-of-control crisis but a journey, a path downward from the Rim of the World Highway of my privilege, power, position and relative "perfection". A path of unknowing, of frustration, of humility... and humiliation. A path that will require trust, and maybe some courage, to turn the page.

Cory

Aug 5, 2009

I Live in a Gated Community

Janet and I took a lovely trip to Richmond, VA last week, mainly to celebrate her "victory lap" in her crisis pregnancy work and to then see the area a bit.

On Friday we visited Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's large plantation estate. Jefferson owned 140 slaves, which he inherited and kept. He said that slavery was abhorrent but never could see how to unwind it… meaning no doubt that he couldn't see how the southern states—or his own indebted plantation—could survive economically without cheap Black labor. How difficult it always is, I sighed, for those who benefit from inequality to envision a more just solution…because it would be costly to their own interests.

Afterwards we ducked into a nearby hilltop apple farm and winery just before it closed. The only other customers remaining in the tasting room were an Anglo couple our age just down from New York to start their holiday weekend adventure in the area.

After a moment of pleasantries shuffleboarded up and down the bar-top like so many mugs of beer in an old Western movie, the man asked us with curious empathy, "So how is it, living in California?" When I took a deep breath and blinked as though my brain just turned on its warning flashers, he explained further, "I mean… with all the immigration problems you have there and everything?"

I think he was bracing himself for woe begotten tales of swarming masses of dark-skinned, dark-eyed invaders, breaking down barricades, rushing up from the border, ravaging the womenfolk and looting and pillaging what rightfully belongs to us white settlers, by God.

When I didn't give him quite what he was looking for, an answer on which he could pour out Conservative compassion or at least East Coast condescension, he tried again. "The entire drive down from New York, all we heard on the radio was about the defeated California ballot initiatives and your immigration problems; which of course we ALL face."

I suppose I should have thanked him for giving me a chance to correct my initial reply, but I guess that didn't come to mind. "Get a life—or at least a CD player" was about all I could think of, and that didn't seem helpful.

I did tell him that the California economy has become largely dependent on hard-working immigrant laborers; and then I quickly commented on the lovely mountains outside and went out on the patio.

Here we were, probably still on Thomas Jefferson's 5000 acres, he a man who said slavery was abhorrent but never could figure how to end it. And there I was, espousing appreciation of Latino immigrants. With what praiseworthy attribute? That they provide cheap labor to keep our economy going.

Once outside, I wanted simultaneously to forget about the dialog inside, simply enjoying the fading light on the smoky mountains distant, and at the same time to be frustrated about the encounter. This guy’s comments smelled of the same scent of historic classism that surrounded us on our trip, which ran through the beginnings of the New World (a Williamsburg epitaph: "She was a woman admired by all the classes") through America’s Founding Fathers (many of whom were slave owners and guaranteed that "right" in the Constitution), to the silky-slick KKK robe and head-shroud ominously confronting me at the Richmond Museum a block from the Confederate White House.

Let's face it, this is always about protecting our way of life, protecting our privilege from those who do not share in it. Because it is undeniable that others cannot share our privilege without it costing us something. Jefferson couldn't get past the economic cost of abolishing what he called a heinous institution, though of course the cost actually paid to abolish slavery by force was astronomically higher for everyone involved.

Most people would be in favor of equality, of justice, if there were no reciprocal cost on those who have gained from the inequality, from the injustice. And that would be me. Frankly, I’m certain this is at least part of the reason I cringe inside when I hear the word “justice”.

On Jefferson's wall hung a then-current map showing Mexico’s border extending all the way north to Canada. Today that same land, with all the resources it possesses, "belong" to the USA.

So I passively participate in this geographic game of "winners and losers", and as the current victors we must protect our interests from the vanquished, and from all other huddled masses.

Therefore I live in a gated community, as do all my fellow Americans. It's called the US-Mexico border, and the gates are currently being made stronger, the walls higher, the urgency heightened. The same is done to dams when the inequality between water levels grows greater and threatens to break the barriers. Or in prisons when deplorable conditions cause the inmates to rise up. Rather than relieve the pressure, we strengthen the barricades.

So yes, it is difficult living in southern California, being this close to the dam, seeing the leaks in it, the pressure points in the system of separate-and-unequal we continue to perpetuate and benefit from, to accept it like our forefathers as an unfortunate but unsolvable “given”.

Meantime, I sit here on comparative Easy Street, a mere cipher of Jefferson, and like the great man I honestly can't imagine how we could unwind the inequality that exists in my own day, in my own town, while it's still in our power to do so peacefully…possibly because all the options seem to involve too much sacrifice on my part. May others lead us where we do not want to go yet history shows us we must. Before it's too late.

And until that happens—maybe even to speed its coming and diminish own my fear—I’m committed to easing that pressure against the dam, reaching over the wall, maybe even dislodging a brick or two in the process. The less pressure there is, the less threatening it all seems, and the more creative we might yet become. I’ve heard it said that “God is not a God of charity, but of justice.”* If that’s true, and I think Scripture bears that out, I want to open my mind and heart to God’s agenda, as difficult and scary as that might seem from my privileged perch.

For All Who Are Thirsty

My previous meditation talked about attending Mass some weekday mornings. The desire came from a sense that I was missing the mystery of the liturgy and the Eucharist by attending contemporary churches for the past 30 years. Recently, we've found some type of middle ground attending a lovely Episcopal church near us, where the experience below took place on Easter Sunday...
Cory
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For All Who Are Thirsty
As usual these days, we arrived at St. John's for Easter Sunday service just as the procession was starting. Which of course on Easter meant that the only open seats were on the front row of the side (transept) chapel. What we didn't expect is that we'd have the best seats in the house.
About five feet away, off the end of the front rows of the main (nave) seating facing the altar, was a woman in a brightly flowered dress, often smiling, singing out... sitting in what was clearly her life-sentence wheelchair. Occasionally her son ambled over adult laps down the row to rest on hers, a happy boy with Down's Syndrome.
In what might be expected to be a parade of "beautiful people", it became quite moving to watch everyone come to the altar for communion... the woman in the wheelchair just the first of the lame, the infirm, some leaning on canes, others sitting in wheelchairs; all of the rest of us humbly on our knees, hands outstretched to take hold of the broken Body of Christ, the Bread of Life, necks craned to receive the Cup of Salvation.
And all of a sudden I saw with new eyes that these fine people were dressed in their Easter finery not out of pretense, but as part of their act of worship and celebration of the day. Because no one was attired so fine as to be above the humility of bended knee, outstretched and beggarly hands, hungry as baby birds in the nest for what gifts Jesus had to give us.
A little boy, maybe three years old, was hungry too; he wouldn't let the cup pass him by without getting a drink. Other children came forward, as they come every week here, as Jesus bid them come, whether for a blessing upon their heads or for an experience of the Eucharistic mystery they hardly understand; which, after all, is true of all of us. Maybe in some ways, children understand with their hearts more than we understand with our heads.
There's a cacophony of comings and goings at the altar every week that I simply can't take my eyes off of. Today it was multiplied into a banquet feast, Fr. John moving from end to end and back again giving the bread to every supplicant, trailed by four lay leaders providing wine.
And the rhythm of broken, "imperfect" bodies coming forward, punctuating the pageantry, was stunning. I thought of Bob Cratchit's report to his wife in Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" about having taken Tiny Tim to church on Christmas morn, that "Tiny Tim was happy that people should look upon him and remember who made the blind to see and the lame to walk." Here they came, only their outward appearance more clearly showing their want of God's touch than mine. And what a seat I had to look upon them.
Finally, in the last group to the altar was a man I hadn't seen approach the rail. He seemed to struggle to hold the communion wafer, almost hiding it in his fists. A kindly, knowing lay minister with the chalice extracted his wafer and dipped it in the cup, then placed it on the man's tongue, adding a compassionate touch to his shoulder. Only when the man arose did I see his cane, his uncertain gait and his withered hands.
And as he wobbled back slowly up the side aisle between me and the lady in the wheelchair on the end of the aisle facing forward, her Down's Syndrome boy playing peacefully between dad and grandma, my eyes suddenly became wet.
As he went along, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?""Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life." (John 9:1-3)
What a display of the work of God I was privileged to celebrate, not only as an historical event, but as a firsthand witness, on this Easter Day. All of us imperfect, all of us needy; hungry and thirsty at the foot of the empty cross.
Cory
April 2009

A God Who Weeps

I wrote this in early May, just after the twin disasters of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar and the earthquake in central China. It seemed right for Good Friday.
May the mystery and work of Jesus be fresh for you this Holy Week.
Cory

A God Who Weeps
I just finished attending a weekday morning Mass at the nearby Catholic Church. I sit here and ponder: When hunger increases and food grows more scarce, or when disaster casualties mount, sometimes my heart sinks with each sad report, and it turns from bright red and warm to a cool steel blue.
I can almost feel it. My chest exhales and I feel something like a loss of body temperature. My heart stops sinking only by cooling itself, another slight cooling of passion and hopefulness.
Then I go after faith as something to blame, go after my expectations of God and grouse at his potency if not his unconcern, his laissez faire way of overlording this world in the midst of pain and need. Can He do nothing? Who is clanging the steeple bells to rouse... God?
This is where I suppose it turns from a faith-in-humankind issue and becomes a faith-in-God issue. The fateful twist of the accusing finger away from our combined culpability to the one seductively simple Scapegoat.
As I drove away from the church toward my office, I listened to the gorgeous, and for me emotive, 17th century sacred choral "Miserere" by Allegre, rendered from David's penitential mourn in Psalm 51. It's the wail of the world, and of all who live there, vocalized by voices straight from heaven itself that pierce every octave of my soul. Heaven bewailing the misery of man. Heaven crying with us, grieving our sin, mourning our fate in ancient Latin words that I wish I understood but barely need to. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love.
And I recall the priest's words as he held up the communion host today: "The body of Christ, broken for you." Broken. Broken for a broken world; for a broken me. The body of Christ, Cory, broken for you.
Between his body and his blood given, can there be there any question of the heart of Christ also being broken? Scripture says Jesus wept. Was there ever a religion that claims that God weeps, that He mourns, that he breaks for us?
"Weep with those who weep," Jesus says. Is that what God does too? It wouldn’t be enough for me if that's all He were capable of doing. Yet there is something about this weeping, this broken heart, that speaks to my heart, that resonates with my experience of life for 54 years: God does not swoop in and right every wrong. Yet. He does not feed every hungry child. Yet. He does not, whether he is able or interested or potent or all or none of the above; He does not.
Sermons promising that this time he surely will no longer finds easy space in my heart. And I think that explains why I gain strength from this expression of Jesus' Church, the Church of the Perpetual Crucifix, the Church of Faithful Sufferers. Why? Because I myself can feel some tiny part of the pain of the world, and I have seen pretty close up that there are no glib, neatly-tied-up answers or perfect endings in this life. But I can show up anyway, just like the 60 other people at church this morning of diverse age, ethnicity and economic status.
No promises from a positivist pulpit. No hanging on the words of a preacher for the comfort I lack, relying on him and his stirring words to bolster a flagging belief that everything will work out the way I want it to work out.
Instead, just the sacramental homage to a God I love but don't always like in the way He superintends things. Instead, gazing up at a God-man who didn’t take the easy way out. He hung there until it was finished, stayed in the pain, drank the dregs.
There is a rhythm of faith in this place, of faithful-ness. A faith that accepts the ache, and has even discovered a way to integrate the ache into the very experience of faith itself. Because the ache is life; it's real, and I refuse to deny it or fear it. After all, I only fear it because my faith walk hasn't been holistic enough to integrate it fully. Yet.
But today I realized that it's not only about us participating in the sufferings of Christ; it's also about Christ participating in the sufferings of us. Not just "once for all" in his death, but something quite immediate, available, a traveling and hurting together. God with us. Emmanuel.
I turned out from my short drive to the office and detoured instead to a coffee house to write this. And while I waited and listened and reflected at a long turn signal, I sensed my fear of faithlessness turning away too, the music and my heart embracing the same beautiful aching groan that heaven was heaving, letting it in from the cold to warm my heart, cradling the truth of it, transcending words. Too deep for words. As deep called unto deep.
And right then my eyes caught sight of something very strange: a trinity of vertical purple flags without any markings, inexplicably standing beside the traffic light, side by side, flapping in the breeze. Like Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all arrayed in the very color of the Passion, the Pain, the Broken Heart, broken for us.
A God who weeps.
And now, praise be to Him, my own heart warming again by the spirit of the suffering faithful Christ, I can weep too.

Together in the Crucible

I took my California colleagues to visit World Vision's Tijuana project last week. It's always great to visit the people and the program. Last year I made 6 trips, and I returned home each time thinking that day was the best visit ever. But this time my heart stirred with less comfortable feelings.

I came away sobered, maybe sad, having seen and heard from many people there about the impact of the economic downturn, especially on the poor, but on everyone else as well. Perhaps most vivid was driving down Revolucion Avenue, the main touristfare in Tijuana, devoid of tourists; shop fronts flung open wide, shopkeepers keeping vigil outside, yet without shoppers inside. Drive-by voyeurism of an abandoned populace. And it drove home the point that this economic slump is hardly confined to America.

These downtown store owners are not our microloan borrowers; yet they are still entrepreneurs trying to make a living for their families. The enterprising, the proactive, the hard-working, feeling the pressure of the economic screws turning, mixed in with the border’s gangster-on-gangster violence which scares away the few remaining tourists who might otherwise still come with precious dollars in their pockets.

Tijuana is a brackish place, where my friend and colleague Mauricio must pay his rent in dollars but receives his salary in pesos. Now the peso has declined from 11-to-$1 down to 15-to-$1 and his math becomes increasingly difficult.

People still go to work; they're not giving up. Others are getting second and third jobs or starting small income-generating activities on the side. The volunteers somehow are still amazingly active, planning new activities. They are wonderfully faithful and inspiring, although Mauricio tells me that some volunteers are having to cut back in order to concentrate on making ends meet at home.

The unknowns are trying for everyone we met. Occasionally women even choked up talking about the economic impacts on their families, clearly concerned for the future as well as the present. "Finances are so difficult right now, as we must buy in dollars but sell in pesos. My husband is a butcher and his business is really struggling."

Yet some beautiful kindnesses are emerging as well, as is often mercifully the case when people see themselves as being together in the crucible. We met a group of 5 women who have formed a sewing cooperative business. "We give each other credit here, so people can still get what they need." "We share food with each other and make it into a meal all our families can eat."

A pathos for me, compared to other visits, was that Rosaria, the leader of this sewing business, seemed pensive if not apprehensive. Maybe I’m reading too much into her countenance, but it struck me as an acknowledgement that the necessary ingredients to make their business succeed were no longer as simple as a good idea, a little financing and hard work. Other forces lurked in the shadows, forces she could not control nor predict. She wasn't backing down, but she wouldn't be naively self-confident either. Hers was not the bright-eyed, can-do spirit we all love to see and that I've become so accustomed to encountering among poor entrepreneurs in Tijuana and around the world.

Janet and I recently watched the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and I easily think of little Frodo Baggins, setting his sights on mighty and ominous Mordor, no Pollyanna nor pretense. The risks are enormous but the call is clear, and he doesn't back down. The story is so compelling of course because this is the best kind of commitment, the kind we hope we ourselves might make if called to do so in a darkening hour.

In this environment, I'm reminded again that this is not the season for expecting the highest highs and the biggest gains. Rather, there is a call to faithfulness despite the risks and the shadows, to keep on keeping on, to putting one foot in front of the other and getting through this time... together. Like our friends in Tijuana are doing each day.

And a call to solidarity. Janet and I plan to visit Mauricio and his wife Vanessa in their home soon, to see the parts of Tijuana I never get to see, to just be together. And I think I'll spend some dollars there.

Simple Gifts

Simple Gifts

Last night, Janet and I watched a fairly silly "documentary" entitled "What Would Jesus Buy?", with a self-styled preacher and his choir traveling to various luxury and "big box" stores around America during the Christmas shopping season, challenging people to "spend less and give more." Despite the dicey "B-grade" quality of the movie, the movie title’s question remains valid, especially in this season. And while it may have seemed simply "fringe thinking" last year, now with the sudden turn in the economy, the movie may end up being hailed as prophetic.

Janet and I had already decided to give fewer gifts this year, but to invest more of ourselves in each... more presence than presents.

But I sense an unarticulated cultural shift happening, more widespread than one family taking an unmarked detour off the consumer shopping superhighway. Soundbites in the movie depicted shoppers demanding top quality namebrands and saying they are more than willing to go into debt to exceed their children's gift expectations. The clips seemed not only typically freakish as media interviews often do, but this year seem repugnantly out of place, like crabbing about President Kennedy's politics a week after his assassination or being anti-American after 9/11.

Worse, they were like a bitter window showing us "the way we were" back "before the Fall." Because of course we were all caught up in the consumerist mindset, only to greater or lesser degrees.

And this is my point of personal struggle. I find myself squirming regularly at how, until just recently, I was so often discontent with my possessions, entertaining thoughts about "my next car", how our condo is really too small, remembering how easily I could plunk down a few dollars for a Starbucks drink that didn't really sound great yet seemed like a way to—just maybe—pamper myself.

I'd love to think these types of thoughts are actually going out of style. All I can say is that they currently seem out of style, because of course anti-Americanism has more recently been on the rise and it's not inappropriate anymore to complain about Kennedy's politics.

But I'm hopeful there may be some longer-term correctives taking place. There's a section in Studs Terkel's oral history of the Great Depression where interviewees are discussing "flappers". I thought a flapper was just a dancer, but apparently to those who lived through the Depression, being a flapper was a synonym for those who embraced whole-hock all the excesses of the Roaring Twenties. The label became repugnant after 1929, such that no one interviewed wanted to be associated with it, though of course the excesses were endemic.

And this also is my fear: that we who've lived as participating adults through the past decade will be judged just as harshly by history and by our own future offspring as history now judges the 1920's; that soundbites like those in the movie last night will be played over and over to future generations in black and white to illustrate how we got ourselves into The Great Crash of 2008. True, the clips are caricatures, but only by degree, not by culpability. I've asked a couple friends who lived through the Great Depression about my concern that we’ll be similarly judged, and they are convinced of it.

I know a ministry leader who went to prison some years ago for unwittingly participating in an illegal transaction. And that's the type of 'guilt' I'm feeling, the guilt of unwitting participation. Maybe I didn't realize the consequences that would ensue, but we succumbed to credit card debt, and we would not have been able to buy our condo without “creative financing”… and we thanked God for the provision. In those and in a thousand other ways, I and my fellow citizens have embraced luxury as necessity, lived above our needs—if not above our means, and “bought into” to the feeding frenzy of consumptionism.

Yet this year seems different. I've hardly seen any ads such as: "This Christmas, surprise your wife with a new luxury car you're not even sure she'll love," or "When only the best will do..." True, I don’t watch much TV. But luxury-item retailers seem to be laying low... they are in trouble, they are hoping buyers will still want "the best", but they sense that they will turn off too many others with general-audience ads like this. I honestly feel great compassion for them: they didn't participate in anything we didn't all take part in, but now their financial futures are tied to these increasingly-shunned businesses. And in fact, it's because we all participated in that value system to greater and lesser degrees that they jumped into those previously-lucrative markets... some becoming generous financial supporters of God's Kingdom efforts with their profits.

So while this seems to be possibly a cleansing/correcting era ahead, at the same moment it's a sad time as I realize the possible impact that even healthy corrections will have on many good people.

Yet far from fearing that God will abandon us in the fog of economic turmoil, I have a sense he is calling to us through the fog, and now with a few competing siren songs removed, we can begin to hear his voice a bit and perhaps stumble toward him. I hear him calling me now toward the peace of simplicity, and I find myself gingerly making first steps toward the sound of his voice.

Cory
December, 2008

The Great Inspiration

The threads of last week were very interwoven for me. Election Day found me hosting a group of 10 visitors to Tijuana, where once again we visited the poorest squatter slums, met wonderful people and saw their pride in their businesses and outreach efforts.

While meeting the microbusiness operators is always inspiring, what moved me most was hearing from a gaggle of volunteers who told us all that they are doing to improve their communities. Our discussion started slowly, with Eliana, the first volunteer to speak, seeming rather tentative and stiff. But as she told us about training children in Christian Values and how, when she realized that many came without eating and began feeding these undernourished kids with her own food, how other volunteers then pitched in to help and more resources were added... She got everyone excited in her own enthusiasm and commitment.

The last to speak, Maria, recounted how she’d organized a boy's soccer team, although she knew nothing about playing the sport. The new team lost every game miserably at first but slowly the boys gained skill and respect in winning; and now she has organized a girl's team too. But I think Maria is actually the biggest winner, as this woman with a third-grade education spoke to us with head high, eyes wide and an infectious love for these kids.

Crammed between these bookends were a dozen other women, all volunteers, all passionately responding to needs in their own communities, building lives, sewing bedspreads - which they proudly displayed - to make extra money… but more importantly, sewing a neighborhood out of a slum, each woman a patchwork piece of the strengthening social fabric of their community.

Thursday, I arrived in Washington D.C., right after the historic election of the first non-Anglo to the White House. What a stimulating time to be in the nation's capital, regardless of how one voted! Plaudits were gushing in from all over the world, foreign writers hailing the return of the American Dream, re-invigorated with fresh evidence that anyone can grow up here to do anything.

I was there to host a small conference of microfinance supporters from around the country for a weekend gathering, which was held in the historic Willard Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue two blocks from the White House, just past Henry Paulson's office in the Treasury Department building. Abraham Lincoln had stayed a month on the property preparing his cabinet, the term "lobbyist" was coined from jaw-boning with presidents in the hotel lobby, and Martin Luther King put the finishing touches on his "I Have a Dream" speech while staying at the Willard the night before he delivered it into history.

Saturday at dusk, after the event ended, I strolled to the White House south lawn gate, autumn-colored leaves framing the facade and grounds. I found myself standing next to an older African-American couple who were gazing in silence at the White House, holding hands. I couldn't help but wonder ...What must be going through their minds? I decided not to disturb their meditations (prayers? thanksgiving? angst?) but felt some solidarity just standing peacefully next to them as we watched history change along with the unusually balmy evening light.

That evening I sat at a sidewalk bistro outside our hotel and read a fascinating book, Hard Times (An Oral history of the Great Depression), by Studs Terkel. A friend had passed along the book, though it had seemed to put some palpable fear of our own economic future into him, so I was not at all sure I wanted to subject myself! But the prior night I'd cracked it open and the very first accounts hooked me: about the "Bonus Boys", World War One veterans who were out of work and out of GI benefits and marched on Washington to demand a "bonus". Many camped out right on Pennsylvania Avenue, and finally Army troops under Generals MacArthur, Patton and Eisenhower were called in to force the protesters out at bayonet-point from the spot where I then stood Saturday outside the White House lawn... historic hopes crushed on the spot I now stood with a newly hopeful couple…

Reading Hard Times on the sidewalk of a 5-star hotel became an immediate encounter with the heart of the poor. Intermixed with stories of great hardship and pain were accounts of great compassion and inspiration. I felt the way many people feel who visit impoverished countries and return saying, "I expected to see the poverty, but I didn't expect to witness so much hope, joy and generosity."

Somehow the accounts of compassion and love in the midst of those hard times gave me a glimpse at our own nation's historic social fabric, albeit of a bygone and nearly forgotten era...

Kitty: "There were many beggars, who would come to your back door, and they would say they were hungry. I wouldn't give them money because I didn't have it. But I did take them in my kitchen and give them something to eat... I gave him a good, warm meal."

Pauline: "My neighbors were angry with my mother, because she fed hungry men at the back door. They said it would bring others, and then what would she do? She said, "I'll feed them till the food runs out."

Emma: "Sometimes we would see them on the railroad tracks pickin' up stuff, and we would tell 'em: 'Come to our house.' They would come by and we would give 'em an old shirt or a pair of pants or some old shoes. We would always give 'em food."

These 1933 realities seem so totally foreign to our 2008 sensibilities, just 75 years later. Housewives taking unknown hungry men into their kitchens?! What about safety? What about fear? For those quoted above and many others, there was a sense that

We are all in this together; we are all of a piece
We have something you need more than we do
So here’s my husband's suit
And some nice, warm food
I've heated it just for you
Instead of calling the police

One of our speakers in D.C. had reminded us that God not only loves but also respects the poor, and that His economy only works if we expect the best from them: integrity, repayment, industry, dignity. I sensed those very expectations in the above quotes.

I was overwhelmed by these stories. I recognized an ethic of mutuality that I thought was too dissonant with our "rugged individualism" to be an American attribute, rather something other cultures had and from which we could learn. But it turns out that we may only need to re-learn it, glory to God!

And depending on the direction the economy takes in the days ahead, we may be compelled to re-learn it.

I'm understanding more about Africa, more about the mindset of the poor in general, by reading a book of quotes from erstwhile middle-class Americans who "lost everything" in the Great Depression; yet maybe they gained the real treasure.

"For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he loses his soul?", Jesus asks us. Last week, I glimpsed the same vibrant soul in the squatter slums of Tijuana as I did in the intertwined stories of survival and support during America's Great Depression. Lives woven together in mutual support create the true social fabric of every community, whether a neighborhood or a globe, and may best reflect the community Jesus describes as the Kingdom of God.

Cory
November 12, 2008
PS: It's no surprise that every social fabric weaver above was a woman.