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.

O.K. so i just finished reading the irresistible revolution by shane claiborne. I am going to be attending a confrience early next year where he will be speaking, and i wanted to see what he was all about. I had heard of him before, just in passing in the circles that i wonder in, and knew a little about him and his life.

The book was good, but i was still not able to get behind it fulley. I really really aprechate some of the things he has to say, i bellieve he has meany vallid points and he really challanged me on a number of different leavels. i think what he is doing takes courage and a passion that is raerly seen in this day and age. I would consider myself a admireier, but not a groupie jsut yet. (and i have a fealing that Mr. claiborne would be just fine with this)

the problem i have is this. and maby this is a commentary on american culture more then mr. claiborne's book. I just regret the fact that any time a visionary or passionate leader has a message to say, they have to go overboard in order to get a point across. Mr. claiborne seams very intent to preach agenst the eviles of the capiltist system and wall streat. brovao, i definatly hear what he has to say. on the otherhand, he was able to attend college on a scholership, wich means that some one made some money, actually a whole lot of money, enough not only to send their own children to college, but enought to say to a particluar college" send some one who i dont even know as well" And there was also some time in princten semenary, i am sure that was not a cheep venture eather. I would guesse taht at some point, some one made a tone of money, probally using the capitisit system for all it is worth, and did some really cool things with that money. To be fair, Mr claiborne gives more creadit to the rich in his book then i first expected, he does tell his readers that there is a place for those who make money in the kingdom and he calls those who do work and make lots of money to do so in a christ like maner, and to have there work and money changed by the power of Jesus, once again, bravo. But i got the over all fealing from reading the book that Mr. Claiborne felt that the rich had a place in the kingdom of heaven, just as the virus has a place in medicine. they are nessecary to help discover the cure, but in the end are much more part of the problem then part of hte cure. Mr. claiborne is makes a great point of telling his readers that they should not let charity become a insulation to thier guilt and they should be personally involved in the help they give, but then he proceeded to give us all the informaion and web addressses of his personal favorite ministryies, so we can become more involved.

I wish we lived in a socity where we could jsut call it like it is. we as a christian community, need the people who just sit around and write cheacks. we neeed those people who are enourmaoulsy ricch so they can baile the radicals out of jail. ( dont get me started on Mr. claiborns civel disobedience, a unjust law is no law: i know meany a pot head that will argue that if alchahol is leagle, it is unjust to call pot illeagle; where is the line drawn and who makes the call what is unjust and what is not) any who, we live in a socity where we need both, we need the pasifist and the solidure, we need the guy who will live on the street and minister to the homeless, and we need the guy who's parents work there butts off so he can go to college and then grad school so he can help the homless and addicted find real change for theier life.(we even need the bill gates to make billions of dollers and then give it away evey year, he has really done some amazing things) in the end, it comes down to one thing for me, to whom much has been given, much will be required. in one way or the other, those who have been blessed will be called into very strict account about what they did with what they have been given. it is up to each of us to searh our heats with evey purchase and evey decision to see if we are living they way god would want us to live.

I am tired and had a long day at work, so i dont feal like spell checking this one, feal free to write with any questions.

fa la la la la, la la la la

Health

it is a funny thing to feel your age for once in your life. i am not talking about suddenly feeling old because your back went out or forgetting when your apointment is. I am talking about that feeling that comes over you when you Finlay feel like you are the same age, physically and mentally. Perhaps it is better to say it like this. Often in life, we get stalled in our development, we get put on hold in one or more area of our life. something happens to make us jump off the track and we can not get on again or get going until we heal/resolve/deal with the penny on the tracks that made us stop. so we go through life with parts of our selves restrained or put on hold well the rest of us goes trucking along. this can cause some problems, but it more often just makes us really believe that we are younger then we are. if you ask some one, how old do you feel you are, you will probably get a different answer then what their divers license says. But some times, through events mostly out side of our selves, some time those derailed trains get back on the track and start to catch up. they work double time until they are up to speed with the rest of us. I guess what i am talking about is health, in every sense of the word. feeling healthy. it is a strange feeling, trust me.

well, today it begins. I am starting my new carrier at the springs rescue mission. I am excited to get going. I did not know when i had to come in to work, so i got up and ready to go at 6:25 this morning. then i got the last minute email that said i did not have to be in until 9:00. oh well, maybe i can make this a habit, get some things done in the morning. I am going to be working in what is called the new life program. it is a year long residential program for guys coming off the streets who want to get thier llives back togeather. I will be doing some counseling, teaching, social work and other such things. it is really what i havebeen looking for. I never saw my self as a privet practice counselor, i like to do to meany other things. I enjoy teaching, i like to work with the system and use resources to help people. so i am really looking foward to this work. I will try to keep up this blog to let you all know how the change is going and what i am learning. I am sure it will be a lot.