When Tradition Hurts

Holidays that typically require obligatory visits with family members you don't otherwise speak to, have unfriended, unfollowed or even blocked on Facebook are so hard, fraught with so many complicated emotions and dynamics.The commercials will tell you holidays are for families in matching sweaters with snow falling beautifully outside picture perfect windows and everyone laughing in front of a fire. Nostalgia will tell you that the family traditions you have always participated in are meaningful and that you enjoy them.

It's taken me 30 years to realize it's less the tradition and more the traditional food that incites nostalgic memories for me. I live in the South where we wear flip flops the day after Thanksgiving so first of all, there is definitely no snow falling. And secondly, I come from upper redneck to lower middle class Small Town USA where everybody knows ya mama'n'em and they also know all of ya biznass you'd rather not speak about in public. In that little place, in that particular social class, you're more likely to find two men tusslin' in the front yard because one of the Bubbas ripped the other one's Dale Earnhardt shirt than you are to find an entire family snuggled up on the couch in matching $70 sweaters.

Maybe the details of your family are different than mine but the traditions still hurt. Maybe you're struggling with family togetherness this holiday season for the same reasons I am-our families don't see us for who we have grown up to be and if we try to be that person with them, they patronize us, pat us on the head literally and figuratively, cut us off because our opinions don't matter or because we aren't supposed to have opinions in the first place, we weren't supposed to discover life's work that included anything other than making babies and stopping by for dinner on Sundays. Glennon Melton said this week  "Practicing authenticity with family is like practicing cat grooming in a lion’s den. If you’d like to practice being real and vulnerable and YOURSELF - don’t start with your family, start with your mailman. Because being real and relaxed has to do with going off script, with being a soul instead of a ROLE. Our families are where our roles are most deeply entrenched."

Can I take this moment to hold your hand and say "I feel ya, sister." Families are hard, sometimes icky, complicated, living-and-breathing-with-minds-of-their-own ecosystems. Can I also gently tell you one more thing I'm discovering this holiday season? Family isn't always everything. Sometimes the traditions we want most to pass onto our children have little to do with generations long discipline in the form of physical violence and shaming and more to do with a tradition of teaching them how to love each other, even when loving is hard. Hear me when I say that loving does not mean no boundaries. You love your children so you set clear boundaries with them. It is in this way that you can also love your family but not allow them to cross clear, concise lines without the same natural consequences you would lay out for your beloved savages at home. 

I'm also learning in this season to be gracious and grace full, to be fully loved and be fully loving. It has been incredibly difficult for me since my natural inclination is more along the lines of fire breathing. It is in this season of intense personal enrichment that I am learning to love people from a distance so that I can teach my daughter how to love fully with clear personal boundaries.

Storytelling

I went away this past weekend to be with my soul sisters and while I was there, I got to tell a story about motherhood in front of some of my favorite women in the world. Here is the story I told:

Tonight I wanted to share an epiphany that I recently had. If we’re friends and you’ve read my blog recently then you’ve already heard this but it was such a profound revelation to me that when I sat down to write this speech, I just kept coming back to it. I wrote a few different versions of this speech. I had so many ideas of what I wanted to say but none of them resonated like this one. So, last Sunday night I got out of bed at midnight and went to the computer.

I’ll speak about God a few times. As always, if God is not your thing, feel free to replace that with the Universe or whatever is most comfortable to you. I’ll also use the male pronoun just because it’s what I’m used to although when God speaks to me, it’s more the voice of a sassy black woman who calls me girlfriend.

Before I became a mother, I had all kinds of ideas about motherhood and what it would look like and how great I would be at it. I felt called to motherhood my entire life. I had this innate sense that motherhood was my purpose in life and because it was my purpose, I would be really good at it. I imagined I’d have all the answers, I’d always know what to do, and my child would never eat processed junk food because I knew better. Before I became a mother, I worked as a nanny for a family of academics. The mother was a Communication professor at Wake Forest and in the summers, she did research on the effects of TV and children; she even wrote a book about it. Because of her research, she didn’t allow her children to watch TV at all. I thought I wouldn’t either.

Fast forward four years and I know all of the songs on Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. 

 I thought that motherhood would look like joy and bliss every day and I would be the mother who went into her child’s bedroom at night just to watch her sleep because I was so in love and in awe of the person I was raising. And I do that but only because I am praising Jesus that she is finally asleep. I believed that my work experience with other people’s children inoculated me against first time momness.  In short, I was precious. And obnoxious. Bless my heart.

From the moment, I manufactured another person with nothing more than my own wits and uterus; nothing went as I had planned. I had a complicated birth and a baby with a severe lip tie that none of our doctors, nurses or lactation consultants caught in time to save our breastfeeding relationship. The shocking reality that motherhood was less joy and bliss and having all the answers and more like having my entire day dictated by a tiny person who communicated all of her emotions by caterwauling and pooping shattered my perfect and admittedly, limited perception of keeping another person alive.

A few weeks in, I found myself a sobbing mess most of the day every day. I called my OB one day and left a message on the nurses’ line. In between hiccupping sobs I said “I hate my husband, I can’t stop crying and sometimes I fantasize about killing him in his sleep.” Needless to say, it didn’t take long to get a return phone call and an appointment for that day. Those first few months of motherhood seemed to be a series of me finding myself in places I never imagined I’d go. That particular day ended with me finding myself at the pharmacy picking up my very own prescription of Zoloft. Thank God for Zoloft. Zoloft kept me out of the women’s state penitentiary.

During Fifi’s first year I was still stumbling through motherhood but in an effort to prove my worth and that I could actually do this and be good at it, I was hustling for my value by being the perfect organic, crunchy mama. I made everything from scratch, even Goldfish, as if Pepperidge Farm doesn’t have that shit down to a science. I practiced attachment parenting and believed that anyone who didn’t was raising an ax murderer. All of the problems and atrocities of the world could be traced back to a mama who sleep trained. Somehow I’d become even more obnoxious than before, which, in case you didn’t know, is a really astounding level of obnoxious.

My obnoxiousness was a cover for the aimlessness I felt inside. I was made to be a mother. I had believed that my entire life. And yet, it was nothing like I expected. This was not what I signed up for. Chasing perfection that didn’t exist left me utterly exhausted and empty.  It left me with a bottomless pit of doubt.  I had no idea who I was or who I was supposed to be. When I started telling the truth, I was amazed at the friendships formed over the chorus of “Me, too.” Being a part of a group of authentic women who were stumbling through motherhood just like I was became the softest landing place of my life. It became the most inspiring space in my life. Being in the trenches every day with y’all began to fill the bottomless pit of doubt one shovelful at a time. I discovered the joys of motherhood and even on the days that they were further between than the indignities, the transcendence of them was enough to sustain me. 

I found that most days I didn’t doubt my purpose as a mother though there was this nagging sense in my heart that perhaps it wasn’t the only thing I was called to do. I was able to stuff that feeling down until Fifi was about 2. It was around that time that the nagging feeling reached a fever pitch and the pit of doubt began to grow again. She was in preschool a few hours a week and I spent an inordinate amount of time aimlessly wandering the aisles of Target dreaming of a greater purpose. It was around this time that God was breaking through the static of my life. I was having a crisis of non-faith, I was having an identity crisis, and I was lost. Again.

 In a series of God orchestrated events, I once again found myself in places I never thought I would. I, a former evangelically raised Atheist, found myself in a Protestant social justice minded church. I, a middle class girl raised by elitist parents, found myself volunteering in a women’s homeless shelter on a downtown corner. These events mostly quieted the nagging voice that called me to a purpose greater than motherhood. I stuffed the voice into its box and promised that when my daughter was a bit older and didn’t need me as much, it could come out and tell me what to do. I believed that the voice that called me to motherhood and the voice that called me to social justice were opposing forces. They couldn’t possibly exist together.  I believed that to fight for justice meant being in the dark trenches every single day fighting the ghosts of evil with my soul bared wide open and I had no idea how to fit that in while Fifi was at preschool for 3 hours a day.

Until one day I heard God say that the hard work of rewriting histories and status quos looked a lot like motherhood. We all come with our own stories; our own pasts and sometimes they seem insurmountable. It wasn’t until I heard God telling me that my purposes didn’t have to be at odds that I realized that motherhood prepares us for extraordinary missions like worldwide poverty alleviation, ethical practices in food and clothing production and finding an end to human trafficking. We get up every day, promising to write joy, love and justice into the stories of our children. Every mother does this. It is what connects our hearts. Glennon Melton says that every person is a reflection of God’s heart and that God hasn’t stopped making people because He isn’t done telling us about Himself. I think God keeps making mothers because we get shit done. It took me almost four years to stop wandering around, lost in my own story, pondering ways to stay on top of the laundry and invent new recipes for chicken. It took me almost four years to realize that motherhood is not the antithesis to everything else I want to accomplish, but is instead preparing me for all of those things.

I’m going to close with the wisest words I’ve ever heard from Lisa Jo Baker:

“Here’s what I want you to hear. Especially you, if you’re wondering how life turned out like this, if you feel lost in your own story and looking for a way out.

 If you’re up to your eyeballs in kids and under the weather and desperate for the laundry to cut you some slack.

 If you’re gasping for breath and wrestling worries and bills and sweating the end of year report cards.

 If you can’t bear to come up with one more way to cook chicken.

 If you’re short on sleep and high on impatience.

 If you feel small or invisible or like you are slowly fading away.

 Can I just slip my shoes off, slide over in the chair beside you and tell you this: I believe God sees you. I believe God cheers you. I believe your work is holy ground and I am proud to stand here barefoot beside you.

Even on the days when no one knows what you did. Maybe most especially on those days. When there are no awards or headlines or standing ovations. I believe that the God who began this work in and through you will carry it, and you if necessary, across the finish line.”

Grace Upon Grace

I may have mentioned this a time or two but I love to be right. In addition to loving rightness, I also really love my feelings. The good feelings, the bad ones, the ugly ones. I am the proud owner of BIG feelings that I share with you whether you like them or not. It's okay if you don't. I like them enough for the both of us. I love my feelings so much that I allow them to dictate my entire life. This mostly works well for me because the good ones prompt empathy and the bad ones pass rather quickly. For me, at least. Sometimes the effects of things I said when I was all up in my big, bad feelings linger for longer than I actually felt them.

 I read on the internet somewhere, sometime, a blogger say "I've never taken a high road in my entire life."

 I was convinced she was talking about me.
 I, too, have never taken a high road in my entire life.

I am convinced that there's nothing to be had on the high road but a bunch of swallowed words and feelings put in boxes with lids taped shut. The high road is full of political correctness and people who use their turn signals because they are considerate of the other drivers on the high road and they all go the speed limit or below because the high road is littered with all of those taped boxes that must be avoided at all costs.

I have always preferred the low road where the signs prominently display the F bomb, the billboards are full of birds (and not the kind that chirp beautiful melodies in the morning), no one uses their turn signals because frankly, my dear, we don't give a damn. We speed through life hurling our feelings and our swear words out the window when the other drivers get in our way. Everyone drives like they're on the Autobahn because nobody is the boss of us, especially not those mother effing speed limit signs that try to tell us to slow down and consider what will happen when the jackass up ahead slams on brakes and there's no way to avoid the inferno. We'd rather sit around the flames and hurl more big feelings at the hapless bystanders-probably the ones from the high road who carry tools and nonsense to extinguish the fire of our rage.

Someone said to me once that she likes to roast marshmallows over the fires of her burning bridges and I almost snorted Coke (the brown liquid kind; the white powder is not my thing) through my nose. There have been very few sentences ever spoken that I have identified with more than that one. 

Somehow, despite my propensity for bad words, bad attitudes and bad feelings, nearly all of my close friends drive the speed limit on the high road and they only ever get down in the trenches when it's time to rescue me, which they surely pay the price for. 

To an outsider it would seem that they give me too much grace and none of it I deserve. And how could I blame a person for thinking they know that with certainty? I love to say what I think first and then filter it or apologize later. Only after I've given my big feelings a voice do I also give rational thinking a chance to be heard. But the reality is that we all get more grace than we deserve everyday. And thank God, literally, that we get that cup filled every single morning and it is enough to sustain us each and every day because I don't know of anyone who is pouring it out to herself. 

photo credit

We'd all do good to give ourselves grace abundantly but the reality is that this life is hard, whether you drive on the high road or the low road. We're all just trying to work out our feelings, whether we package them neatly or we hurl them in a wad out the window. There is plenty of litter to avoid on this road and there are plenty of times the birds that sing beautiful melodies in the morning relieve themselves on your windshield. It is our greatest gift that even after a day spent swerving around all of the litter and trying to see past all of the bird shit on the glass, every single morning, the windshield is wiped clean and a cleaning crew has picked up the trash so we can do it all over again. The greatest gift of our lives is that this angelic cleaning crew expects no thanks for doing their messy job, though perhaps the most incredible thank yous look like a little midday windshield cleaning of a fellow human. 

Maybe the most perceptible nod to the original Giver of Grace is when we follow His example and give it to the people who look like they deserve it the least. Maybe then, in the gifting of abundant, undeserved grace, we say to Jesus "Your blood and humiliation wasn't all for naught because I recognize the price you paid and I recognize that it won't cost me nearly as much to regift it to someone else." Some of the smartest women I know have already figured out these truths and they live them well. I have much to learn.

On Motherhood

One of my favorite friends said today that a gift like mine is both a blessing and a curse. I don't know what gift she was talking about but I thought to myself "Hmph." For two reasons: first, because my friends see me through a lens that is clouded with so much grace and because somehow the cloudy focus allows them to see the contents of my heart so clearly that I am frequently astounded by how they just seem to get it without me tripping all over myself to explain it succinctly because I don't do succinct or clear or direct. Second, because I see my gift as having a heart that is constantly raw and that often feels like both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I care about the world at large and a curse because caring often leaves me in a crumpled mess on the floor swearing at God and indicting Him for doing a crappy job of healing the world. It is both a blessing and a curse that I have not been struck by lightning yet for my irreverence and lack of humility.

I often turn my eyes to the heavens and thank God for this tribe of mine. Getting to do life and motherhood with women who I don't have to pretend with has been such a blessing to me. This is mostly because motherhood has not been what I thought it would be. Oh, yes, I was one of those starry eyed and glowing pregnant ladies who looked at motherhood with a cloudy lens of grace but my lens did not allow me to see so clearly. Before Fifi, I believed I had all the answers. I knew exactly what kind of parent I would be and most importantly, I would not be my own mother. I was precious. And surely infuriating to all of the people who were silently wishing for motherhood to smack me right across the face with all of its indignities like explosive poop, exhaustion and buckets upon buckets of spit up.

When I was plunged into motherhood and received the proverbial slap in the face with reality, I spent an inordinate amount of time questioning what I used to believe was my call to mothering. I held steadfast my entire life to the belief that my only calling in life was to be a mother. I thought that because my divine purpose was to have babies, that having babies and the subsequent raising of them would be easy. I believed I would never feel lost. I believed I would revel in the spit up and the midnight feedings and endless poop because it was all I had ever longed for. Bless my heart.

What I found instead was that this was not at all what I had signed up for. Constantly being needed and touched and never knowing what the right answer was piled up one on top of the other and they filled up this pit of doubt that I had about who I was supposed to be. I struggled with feeling like I would never get to do anything more than wipe butts and clean up puke all day. I was fighting a war with myself over mothering one person and wanting to be someone else entirely.

The quest for a deeper meaning while I was in the everyday trenches led me to a group of women that would become the safest landing place of my life. It led me to a homeless shelter on a downtown corner full of women who have dreams of being something more than single and penniless. It led me to church. It led me to a multitude of places that have combined to hollow out the pit of doubt I possessed, one shovelful at a time. As Fifi grew more independent and she started preschool and I had time to pee by myself, I started to feel at ease about the struggles and indignities of motherhood. I could laugh when she threw her breakfast in the floor and I could function on less than 6 hours of sleep a night. I went back to school myself. I believed that all of these things together amounted to a good enough life and they were just my reality and I was mostly content.

Until today.

The words "sometimes a gift like hers is a blessing and a curse" totally unhinged me.

I had spent the morning in a mall with an almost 4 year old Fifi. I walked behind her as she raced ahead in her frothy pink dress and hot pink tennis shoes, swinging her lovey, Lenny, behind her. I attempted to snap a photo of her multiple times so that I could look back later and remember her joy and my anxiety about being surrounded by clothes made in sweat shops by slaves and children. I thought over and over that if I could wish for anything it would be that all mamas could witness the freedom of unbridled childhood jubilance without the inequities of living in places crushed by disease and drought and patriarchy and war.

Later in the car, as I was still lost in my gift being a blessing and a curse and the injustice of me having a daughter who is healthy, who has had plenty to eat today, who can live and play without the fear of being sold to the highest bidder and who gets to steer the ship for her own life if she chooses, a revelation that has been almost four years in the making suddenly clobbered me.

I was called to motherhood because God, who knit me together in my mother's womb, knew my heart before I could even admit that He existed. He knew that the first cries of a baby propelled from my body and the sounds of her midnight suckling and the dreams I saw in her big, blue eyes would both rip my heart wide open and invisibly, irreversibly connect me with mothers all over the world who have seen and felt the same things with their own babies. God knit together a little girl in my own womb so that every time I looked at her I would feel compelled to fight, vote and pray for clean water, safe working conditions, standardized care for women all over the world, food for their babies' bellies, freedom from misogyny and patriarchal religious traditions. He knew that without the singular experience of loving someone more than I loved my own pride or dignity, I would never be compelled to dance outside of my comfort zone. He has known all these years that having my own precious daughter would ignite fires in me that nothing but justice and equality would extinguish.

More astonishing than the way He has used motherhood to fill me up with faith has been the fact that he waited almost four years for me to stop complaining about it long enough to see the bigger picture.

For three years and ten months, He has been patiently waiting for me to stop wallowing in my disappointment that my life didn't go as planned and wake up to see the bliss and beauty that is found when I give up my preconceived notions and look into the heart of God.

On Baltimore

Weeks like this one can be hard on us tender hearted folk. Watching the 24 hour news cycle with coverage of the earthquakes in Nepal, people sleeping outside because they're terrified of being buried alive under the rubble of collapsing buildings, the coverage of the Nepalese people digging out their neighbors with their bare hands, the coverage of a man who was grievously injured while in police custody and his subsequent death in Baltimore, the coverage of his family in mourning, the coverage of an entire community of disenfranchised people rising up and showing the world the symptoms of their anger and their pain...well, it can tend to hit us tender hearted folk right in the gut. It makes us catatonic in our grief for the entire world. It makes us want to do nothing more than sit all day with our big feelings and have someone else bring us a drink because it seems like the only thing to be done.

Because we don't know what to do with our grief, we sit around and watch the world burn and we watch the fallout. We watch people we love, whose opinions we respect and value, condemn the rioting and the looting in Baltimore as if that's the only conversation to be had. We watch as it seems like our communities are content to roast marshmallows around the fires of our brethren as if their grief, their pain, their exclusion doesn't matter because Baltimore is aflame and they did it to themselves.

I long for a world that doesn't just discuss the symptoms of the deep rooted illness of systemic racism. I long for a world that seeks color blind justice. I long for a world that recognizes that justice does not look like our current system. I long for a world that recognizes that we are trapped within the cogs of a system that continues to churn out death, pain, grief, poverty, inequality and injustice for all. I long for a world that can think critically about how we go forth together and change the conversation. I long desperately for a world that seeks to eliminate the trapdoors, which inevitably open under the poor, the black, the immigrant and the uneducated. More than anything else, I long for a world that is no longer content with scapegoats and damage control. I long for my daughter to see a community that prays to have their hearts and their eyes opened before anyone else has to die. I long for my daughter to be apart of a community that recognizes that most police officers are serving their communities the best way they know how but they, too, are victims of an injustice system that does not educate and support them. That they, too, are victims of a system that perpetuates a culture of racism and violence and that sometimes they become entrenched in upholding its tenets without even realizing it. I wish for my daughter to belong to a community that is no longer us vs. them and one where public servants really are encouraged to serve their communities instead of imprisoning them.

My wish last summer after Ferguson was that we would stop talking in circles about who is at fault and we would stop telling our brothers and sisters that their perceptions can't possibly be reality because we don't experience the same reality. Today, almost 10 months later, my wish remains the same.

Party

We had a party last night because Daniel is turning 30 on Thursday. It was supposed to be a surprise party but I don't do surprises. By that I mean that I can't keep a big, exciting secret and I spilled the beans. Anyway, it wasn't a big party, a fancy party or a crafty party with decorations and games from Pinterest because y'all know I suck at scissors. It was low key with good barbecue, craft beer and amazing cupcakes. To fancy it up, I pulled out all my Mawmaw's glass dishes, which means there were a lot of dishes to wash this morning because we live in an old house with no dishwasher.

Perhaps I would have cursed all the dishes to be washed but as I stood at the sink with soapy hands and hot water, looking out the window at the fall afternoon, the big bare tree right outside stripped of its leaves and the woods looking a little thin as they prepare themselves for what is predicted to be a long, cold winter, I thought 'What a privilege it is to wash these dishes in this house.'

 This old house that I love so much. This old house that gave me chills the first time I walked into it and imagined our family living and breathing and loving within the old panelled walls. This old house whose floors are slanted from settling over time. This old house with its cracks and barely insulated floors that are freezing in the winter. The front door that doesn't fit that well in the door frame. The one that you have to wrestle just to lock.

What a privilege it is to have friends and family over for an unpretentious night of amazing food and friendship. What a privilege it is to watch husbands and wives enjoy each other and their children. To watch the children play and fight and cause mischief. What a privilege to watch them run around the yard, chasing the poor chickens, delighting in those birds who give us our breakfast.  What an absolute privilege it is to watch all of our friends eat and drink in our home, to have their children play with our toys and leave our house a mess. To watch new friendships and conversations rise up organically over food and drinks.

Yes, I thought all of that while I washed dishes.

I thought about how Jesus invited the twelve disciples to partake of one last meal before he died. How he turned water into wine for some already drunk party goers just because Mary asked him to. I thought about how we are invited to have parties, have meals and drinks with one another because breaking bread with new friends and old, even friends who will betray you like Judas did to Jesus, is a holy experience. I found this afternoon that washing dishes after a night where all of my friends and their families gathered is one of the holiest experiences of my life.

As the holidays approach we'll be bombarded by food, drinks, parties and gifts. Let us remember that perhaps the greatest gifts are the dishes that remain, the remnants of laughter and the conversations for in the midst of the party, Jesus is there turning something simple into something extraordinary.

I believe that God is the creator of the miraculous but I often find that the miraculous is disguised in the common.

Still Here

I haven't had anything to say in awhile for a couple of reasons: First, I only write when I feel like it and lately, I haven't felt like it. Ha. I have two classes this semester that are heavy on paper writing and it totally saps my creativity. Second, I read an essay by Jen Hatmaker titled For When I've Been an Earthquake. I read it in Nish Weiseth's bookSpeak: How Your Story Can Change the World. That was a hard, hard book for someone like me to read.

 If you've known me for any length of time, you know I am well acquainted with indignation. It might very well be my favorite emotion. Speak was a hard book because Nish Weiseth talks a lot about her own story and her own times of indignation and how those feelings don't really give others the chance to tell their own very real and very valid stories. Sarah Bessey says that our opinions are forged in the fires of our experiences. My righteous indignation hasn't made room for other's opinions. That last thing was what God whispered to me. And when you hear the voice of God whispering gentle correction through the work of one of your favorite authors who is loud and opinionated herself, it's difficult to ignore. I've often said that God knows I don't get subtlety but this time I heard the subtle in the whispers of my heart and they said I've been an earthquake.

 In her essay, Jen (I call her by her first name because in my mind we're BFF's.)  says "I’m going through a softening, finding tenderness where there was once only indignation. I’m learning a lesson on peacemaking – and I haven’t liked it so don’t imagine I’m enjoying this season. But I see that we can accomplish so much more with respectful conversation than burning everything to the ground. The collateral damage bears consideration; I will answer for it. I do not get a free pass on offensiveness simply because I fancy myself a spokesman for the marginalized."  And I sobbed.

So that's why I haven't had much to say lately. I've even found during this period that the things that used to get me worked up, no longer do. I can enter into disagreements without the feeling of my blood pressure rising or my heart racing and I can also let it go when the time has come for that. If someone doesn't agree with me, that's okay. I don't always have to be right.

Recently, there has been a headline in the news that does make my blood pressure rise; I can feel the outrage creeping in. So I am going to try really hard to exercise my self-control on this topic.

.:deep breaths:.

Fort Lauderdale, FL has become the 33rd city in this great United States of America to outlaw the public feeding of homeless persons. 

This is going to be harder than I thought. Perhaps maintaining composure is overrated?

Arnold Abbott is a 90 year old man who has been fined and could receive jail time for feeding homeless residents of Fort Lauderdale. Apparently, the parks and public places of Florida have just been overrun with people who don't have anywhere else to go. And the local government has decided that making it illegal to show compassion is the answer. Are you fucking kidding me?  They are PEOPLE, not fucking PIGEONS. You can't say "Don't feed these people and they'll go somewhere else." They don't have anywhere else to go. I mean, this is just an assumption but I'd be willing to bet if these people had somewhere nicer than a park bench to sleep, they'd be there. Who wants to sleep on a park bench? Answer: NOBODY!

Take notice, Church. While we've allowed ourselves to become divided over politics and the legality of same sex marriage, there has been a very real threat to the tenets of our faith by government officials. Y'all can argue all day long that birth control or two men who love each other and want to get married are against your religion but I am here to tell you that those tired verses that actually talk about rape and male perdastry are a scapegoat. If we spend the rest of our days allowing the Enemy to dictate the things that divide us, we will surely see the Kingdom fall.

Credit: Etsy

We are missing the forest for the trees by continuing to argue over things that will never truly be revealed to us until the day we get to ask Jesus, himself, what it all meant. Jesus taught parables and the people who wrote the Bible lived in a different time and place than we do now. But one thing that is crystal clear about the Christian faith is that we are responsible for the least of us.

There are over 250 verses in the Bible that command us to care for the poor. Ezekiel 16:49 says "This was the guilt of your sister, Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food and prosperous ease but did not aid the poor and needy." Lookinatchoo, Fort Lauderdale, FL. 

Our faith is under attack and it is not by conservatives or liberals or gays or abortionists or those who want to smoke a little weed legally. Let us say to the Enemy: We will not continue to allow this petty infighting and division. We will not become distracted with these small matters that do not matter for the man who gave us our faith, who came here to be the light in a dark world, who died so that we wouldn't have to, told us that the greatest commandment was to love God and love each other. He told us that the poor would inherit the Kingdom and that we have a duty to make sure they are not forgotten. We have done a terrible job of this so far but we are determined to do justice to the story of Jesus by standing up against this oppression of our kindness and our compassion.

Amen.