So I was thinking about making two posts on the same day, but I think I’ll just stick with 1 post, and will get around to making the other post in the next day or so. This might ramble a little. I apologize in advance.

Yesterday as I was walking out of church (I went to the early service at Reunion), I rounded the corner onto Mass Ave, and right at the corner of the bridge there was a white woman sitting in a chair with a sign that said “Laid Off.” I glanced at the sign, but didn’t read much more than this, and as an idea came into the back of my mind to ask her if she wanted to eat lunch at Wendy’s with me (which was right across the street), I pushed the idea aside and kept walking to the subway station so that I could pick up my car where I left it at Andrew station, go grocery shopping, and cook myself a meal at home.

As I pulled out of the parking lot of the Stop & Shop in the South Bay Shopping Center, there was a white guy begging in the middle of the street. As I sat there in my air-conditioned car with tons of groceries at my feet, I hesitated. Finally, what seemed like years later, I rolled down the window and yelled “Sir” and grabbed a box of granola bars I had just bought and offered them to him.

He declined, saying he didn’t have bottom teeth. I didn’t believe him, rolled up my window, and pulled out onto the street.

Instances like these are certainly not a rare phenomenon in Boston – especially in Dorchester. Yes, yesterday was the first time I actually rolled down my window to talk to one of these beggars, but being asked for money is not new. I have made it a habit of never giving any money to anyone who asks for it on the street. This is only good stewardship. Chances are good that the person – I will refrain from saying “beggar” from now on – that makes him/her sound like a nobody, which they’re not – as I was saying, chances are good that the person will use the money not for food or clothing or shelter, but for a drug or alcohol dependency.

If I give money on the street, I send a message to the receiver that says “I don’t care about you, because all I’m doing is giving you money just to make me feel good about myself. If I really cared about you, I’d sit and have lunch with you.” I also help to feed that good chance of a dependence on a bad habit.

So what to do? As any American will tell you, time is of the essence. We want to take the easy way out, pull out a couple of dollars, and be on our way. But this only furthers dependency. “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime” as the saying goes. Translate this into inner-city America: Give a man a few dollars, and he (probably) spends it all on drugs. Build a relationship with the man, and he (hopefully) builds a relationship with God and kicks that dependency in the butt.

See what I’m saying? Community Development is NOT easy. But as Bryan Myers points out in his book, “Walking With the Poor,” poverty is fundamentally a result of broken relationships. Relationships are not easy! But we must be willing to invest.

So this lingering guilty feeling that I had from passing the woman on the corner of the bridge on Mass Ave right before getting to the whatever-it’s-called Convent Center Subway Stop: What am I going to do about it?

When we build relationships with people, and empower them to lift THEMSELVES out of poverty, we are teaching that person to fish, using the God-given talents and abilities that they have been blessed with.

As for the title of my blog, how do we know that the problem we are presented with is the truth? We don’t know. And actually, we have a gut feeling that it’s not true (because most of the time, the problem that is presented to us is indeed absolutely false). Does this mean that we should just ignore the person? Not at all! I am writing as a “reading break” from Brennan Manning’s Abba’s Child. Just a few minutes ago, I read:

What makes the Kingdom come is heartfelt compassion: a way of tenderness that knows no frontiers, no lables, no compartmentalizing, and no sectarian divisions. Jesus, the human Face of God, invites us to deep reflection on the nature of true discipleship and the radical lifestyle of Abba’s child.

So I leave myself, and you, my readers, with this thought?
What does compassion to others look like? Are we really willing to invest, and *gasp* spend TIME with others on their journey of life? Oh, that I may live a life of true compassion: Helping, without Hurting. Building relationships, and not simply throwing out money handouts.

PS: Feel free to comment. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Ok, so maybe I am going to write a little bit about what I’m doing after all. This is going to be a long post. I am starting to write this on Monday night around midnight, and will resume it (and plan to publish it) on Tuesday night. I apologize in advance if this doesn’t flow very well. I started it Monday night, am finishing it up tonight (Tuesday), and have moved some things around and can’t seem to make it transition well. Oh well.

Being Still, and the Love of God
The Lord is teaching me a lot right now. I was sharing with two of my close friends up here that I have been encouraged in two areas. The first is that I have been encouraged and burdened recently with taking the time to slow down, to be still and know that God is God. The second is on the love of God. As I mentioned last week, I am reading through a book written by Brennen Manning called “Abba’s Child” and that the third chapter is entitled “The Beloved.”

God has a way of bombarding you with a message that he is trying to get across to you. I’m not quite sure why God wants so much right now to tell me that he loves me, but he does. And it’s a wonderful reminder. I think that this goes hand in hand with the importance of being still and sitting in God’s presence. I think I quoted this in my last blog entry, but I will quote it again: Manning writes in chapter 3 the following. “In solitude we tune out the nay-saying whispers of our worthlessness and sink down into the mystery of our true self.” Wow.

This message came at me from a different angle too. I recently began reading through a devotional written by Paul Kooistra, entitled “Supper’s Ready.” I didn’t really know what to expect, but I did want to gain some consistency in my life. Come to find out that the whole thing – every single day – is on God’s love. One thing that stuck out to me in Day 2 is the last sentence that he writes: “Understanding God’s love becomes the key to understanding all of reality.”

As I was thinking about God’s love for us, I envisioned an atmosphere of love so thick that a knife could cut through it. This is what the maker of the universe is: He not only has love. God IS love.

With these thoughts in the back of my head, I had the day off today (Monday), because I worked on Friday (Happy late 4th of July, by the way). So I rode my bike a few miles away to “The Arboretum” – which is 300 acres of forest, grass, gardens, and walking trails – smack dab in the middle of Boston. The place is gorgeous, but more importantly, it is peaceful. There I was able to relax and do some reading, and ride my bike really fast down some hills. Honestly it was great to do something different and go exploring.

Inner-City Community Development
I work for TechMission. However, I have been able to get plugged into another community development initiative that has nothing to do with TechMission.

I have been thinking recently about ways to get involved more in my neighborhood. Quincy Street Missional Church is a very small, informal church that is just down the road from where I live in a broader neighborhood area in Boston known as Dorchester. As a whole, Dorchester is known as an area of lower-income residents and high crime. However, I am completely safe here – and I love it here.

Quincy Street Missional Church meets on Saturdays, and is an outreach for the immediate neighborhood in which I life. My housemate Ben, and another good friend, Nathan, and I are very involved in Quincy Street. Ben and I just moved to the neighborhood. However, Nathan has been living here for over a year now and helps to direct a mentoring program for the kids in the neighborhood. Living just 1 block away from the church, Nathan has joined with other young adults from outside of the community, and they have made a commitment to form relationships in the community by living in and being a part of it.

On Monday night I joined up with Ben, Nathan, and our good friend Andy (who has also made this commitment of time investment and relationship building), and we took some of the kids from the Quincy Street Missional Church area (more on this in a second) to a burger place called Five Guys. This was also a good time of doing something different. Half way through the evening, it hit me that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. There I was, a graduate from college, and I started wondering to myself when the last time was that I had spent time with kids (other than a couple of random times), and was wondering how in the world to act, talk, discipline, etc… I think it scared me a little bit because I realized that I have spent so little time in the past with younger kids, and that this is something that I think would be beneficial to me.

The Christian Science Monitor actually wrote an article about this community recently and how people like Nathan and Andy have been already working with the people in the neighborhood. The house Nathan and his roommates live in is literally just down the street from my house, and Ben and I have decided to join this community by investing in it, and building relationships with the people who go to the church, and by hanging out with the kids in the neighborhood.

The church actually meets on Saturdays at noon. After the service, we all hang around and share lunch together that members in the community have cooked. The food is always delicious. But what is so cool about this church is that the community members are investing in the church, and it is so informal that anyone is welcome to attend, and some community members are working at the church all week long.

In addition to the church function on Saturdays, the building is actually called “Ma Sis’s Place” and is used as a small, informal thrift store so people can buy things at low prices throughout the week. Ma Sis is an elderly lady who has, as far as I know, always lived in the neighborhood. She owns the building and has a heart for her community.

Nathan, Ben and I sat around beer on Monday night after taking the kids to Five Guys and had a very good conversation about this stuff. It is very cool for me to be involved in this community and to watch what is happening because of my educational background in Community Development. I have a lot of “head knowledge” in this stuff, but I have very little experience. I mentioned in several of my posts last summer that one thing I struggled with a lot was pride in what I was doing – pride in what I know and in what I was doing. But yet, I know NOTHING. A familiar Proverbs comes to mind – knowledge puffs up. May I never forget my place. Oh Lord, break me and humble me.

Despite all of this, it is VERY cool for me to watch the relationships that have been formed. In our conversation last night, I mentioned to Nathan that I am very concerned about seeing community development interventions (from the outside) move forward only with the blessing of the community, and only with community members’ participation. Outsiders must have deep, deep humility as well. Bryant Myers writes about this possibility if we are not careful: “The non-poor understand themselves as superior, necessary, and anointed to rule. They succumb to the temptation to play god in the lives of the poor, using religious systems, mass media, the law, government policies, and people occupying positions of power.”

What’s so cool about this is that I can see Quincy Street Missional Church doing their with humility and with the community’s blessing and with the community’s participation. I can see the outsiders working within the existing church structure for positive change. And, yet another thing that’s so cool about these observations, is that I am getting to see my education come to fruition in Inner-City America. While I studied Community Development with an emphasis in international, developing world contexts, the principles that I learned can still be applied here.

I really look forward to learning more and getting more involved with Quincy Street.

Grace & Peace,
David