Wow, have not been here in a while. this will help whit the quest to write every day. That is my goal this lent season, i want to write something some were every day. not always here, not even always on line, i don't believe that every thought needs to be puked out to the world, but i want to write some where. So, some time i may write here again. i see it has been a long time, i have been writing other places,and i don't think any one is reading this,so it matters not, but i guess this can be kind of a example of good lenten practice. by writing every day i am getting back to places i have not been in a while. i am blowing the dust off of unused blogs, if dust can accumulate in cyberspace. so hello again clutch and dent, good to see you again. now it is time to go and make pancakes.

My job is to teach others how to make good decisions. When i make a bad decision, it can be very unnerving. One of the hardest things i have had to learn is not to put my feelings ahead of those i am working with. I have to decided weather or not i should bring something up, or, in this case, make a decision, it is hard to tell if i don't want to do something simply because it will make me uncomfortable or weather it is for their own good. so hard to tell the difference some times. I know i am only human, but i sure hate messing up. the stakes are so high when dealing with others lives. I feel like a cop or a firefighter, when i make a mistake, people may die. and the worst thing is that it will not be today or even tomorrow, but they may die.

I think i need my job description or job title changed. I am no longer a counselor, i have come to realize that i am a "edge-pusher-backer." every day i have people put in my lap who are quite literally, in every sense of the word, on the edge. They are living on that razor edge of life. they are at the end of everything and faced with one small step, not even a step, just a breath away from going off the edge into ..... I don't even know where, it is a place of nothing, of lost self and lost soul. I guess hell, but not bible school hell, a real hell here on earth. They find there way to me, poised with one foot in the air, and they look in my eyes with questions. they want to know where to put their step. And i grab and push. I try to hit with the power of a line backer but the grace of a priest. I strive for an inch, half an inch, anything just to get them back from the edge for one day. its my job, and i am growing into it, really well actually. but the thing about pushing people back from the edge is that you spend a lot of time there yourself. I spend a lot of time looking over the edge with people, looking into what they see ahead. I am O.K. with that, i think i am just now realizing really what i am doing. I don't know how long my balance will hold out, how long i can push, but i can for now. so i can think of nothing better to do then to push, and pray like mad i can balance on the edge, and keep pushing.

On Wednesdays, it is my turn to supervise dinner and chapel at the mission. Chapel and dinner are usually a fairly uneventful hour. At 5:00, a preacher, Sunday school class or other speaker begins a message. The audience is usually a mixture of people, some came from the tejon street bridge a few blocks away, some come on the down town shuttle from the shelter and some drive in on their last drops of gas. Supervision consists of making sure that those who have already begun drinking do not get to disruptive, not usually a problem. At 5:15 the door is locked, because if our regulars were allowed to come in at 5:30, when dinner is served, they would hang around until then and skip the message altogether.
Tonight, at about 5:20, I saw a small family round the corner and come up to the door. They pulled the handle, then read the sign that said door locked at 5:15, then they turned and began to leave. There were four of them, the mother and father, no more then 25 or 26, and two small children, probably 3 and 1 years old. I made it out of the door just as they were about to round the corner of the building. They did not turn around as I opened the door, so I called to them. I asked if they were looking for some food. They turned with a murmur and made their way inside.
I watched them eat from across the room. They only got three plates for the four of them. One for each of the children and one for the mom. The dad did not eat. They sat quietly and stayed until almost every one else had left. The children had dirty faces and messy hair, and the parents looked as tired as the children. They left as quietly as they came and I again watched them into the parking lot. They went to two cars and began going through the trunks. They pulled clothes out, it looked like for the two kids. Then they put the children in car seats in the back of one car and drove away, the opposite way of the shelter.
I don’t know where they were going, or where they were from. Hopefully they were headed to work some where, traveling to a job or family who could help them. Maybe they lost their house and were on the way to cheaper living elsewhere. I have no idea, all I know is that so many people in this country are living on the edge of a razor. They are balanced on the edge of an existence others of us can not even imagine. They stare pain in the face every single day and have to daily decided weather or not to surrender or push back one more time.
That kind of existence will make people do desperate things. It will make a young father not eat, it will drive him to places he never thought he would be just in order to feel like a human again.
Maybe me letting them in to dinner helped widen the razor just a bit tonight, helped them keep balance just one more day and keep them from falling off. I hope so. Parents who still put their children in car seats still have some push left in them.

Things i have learned about grace so far.

it is hard

every one believes in it, when convent, or when they want to.

to apply it across the board will require not only a paradigm shift, but a total world view shift, especially in mission recovery work.

the only way grace can avoid becoming enabling is by relationship, there for, the more grace some one requires, the more relationship we must have with them. if we get away with something, just for the sake of getting away with out punishment, it is for nothing. but if we get away with something, and see and realize just how much it costs some one else, or hurts someone else, then we may learn something. the one giving the grace must be ready to show just how hurt or disappointed or sad they are by the actions of the one getting the grace. i am not talking about guilt tripping, but really showing the consequences of actions. if we don't know the extent of pain we are causing others, how will we ever want to change. There for, those of us who will be administering grace on a professional level, will also have to be very transparent and forth coming with our feelings toward others, both good and bad. this is going to be a very emotionally exhausting process, but worth it.

it is hard.

So we have been in program meetings for the past two weeks on Fridays. Today we will continue this trend, so from 12:00 to 5:00 we will work out the kinks of our program, or work out our program. we have been evaluating everything, starting from our mission statement on down. we are trying to decided if our approach needs to be changed, if we are serving our rules instead of the other way around. Part of that discussion has lead us to the question of Grace. And more importantly, can you run a Grace based program and still have accountability and standards. I was listening to a lecture given by a Rescue Mission Consultant and he was in favor of a grace based program. He stated, and i agree, that God has very specific standards that he wants us to follow, there are very certain behaviors that he condones and rejects. So how do we, as a program, enforce or encourage such behaviors in an environment based on Grace? How do we use Grace to bring about life change, which is what our clients come to us for. They are coming to us, asking us to help them change their life, not make them feel better about living they way they are. Grace can not become enabling, but for so long, the Church has had that hard line approach, and it dose not seam to have done much good. Yes, there needs to be standards, but people have to carry those standards. So which do we deal with, the standards or the people. which takes higher precedence, and any one who says that you apply them both equally, they need to come and sit in my office for a few days and then they will see just how hard that really is. This Grace thing is going to be hard, it is going to be messy. oh well, if it was easy, any one could do it.

kind of a crazy week at work. we really have a lot going on now that it is Christmas and things really get chaotic. i am really ready to get past the holidays and start a normal schedule. i am witting three new classes that i will be teaching in the new year, all psychological stuff on core beliefs and cycles and anger manegment stuff. that is keeping me really bussy.

i wient to a memorial service last nihgt for all the homeless who have died over the past year. there were 22 in the springs alone, and 160 in denver. one of the homeless shelters/transitional houseing places in town has a memorial in their back yard and on the longest night of the year there is a service to remember all who have passed on. it was bitterly cold, but a good service non the less. there were about 75 people who where there. we all ate dinner togeather, the salvation army has a van that serves soup every night close by. then we walked to the memorial and had a short service. it was a good experience overall.

I ran this morning and passed the 100 mile mark for the year. i know that is not much for most serous runners, but seeing as how i am still very amature, i consider it an acomplishment. at the bottom of this blog is my litttle runner man, i changed him from running in shorts to runing in pants becasue it was 15 degrees when i ran this morning.