you say you want a revolution

it's been more frustration...wondering why i'm here. wondering if i'm making a difference. what am i doing to help hunger, poverty, war, injustice? i'm living with a group of people, investing my life into theirs, finding real times for prayer, living peaceably, simply, finding ways out of "the empire" and into the kingdom. is it revolutionary?

i'm currently reading the beloved community by charles marsh (well, i'm reading a lot of books these days. also - making room: recovering hospitality as a christian tradition by christine pohl, city of joy by dominique lapierre, and slouching towards kalamazoo by peter de vries). i finished reading the second chapter last week on clarence jordan and his work toward reconcilation. it was a movement that differed from king in its method. jordan didn't worry about effectiveness; he didn't set out to be in the face of the officials and politicians who were making laws; he simply lived rightly. he refused to live a life of segregation and didn't need the law to change in order to live differently. he wasn't necessarily revolutionary, but he was subversive and his actions made revolutionary statements years before the boycotts and protests.

life is slow here. decisions and actions take time, and no one seems to be in a hurry. we are on God's time, they tell me, and he has eternity. it is not our job to change the world. we give our lives to obedience - to live on Kingdom principles - even if it means we fail, because the Kingdom goes on past our own lives.

so i confess (i feel odd doing so on this blog) that am i struggling. i think that if i had not seriously and deliberately studied the life of Christ i would want to be a revolutionary. i'd find a way to be in the face of those making the laws, i'd yell and demand the rights they are denying. i'd fight and kill for those who can not and dare anyone to stop me from giving them the justice and dignity they deserve.

but i can't.

i would feel it to be so far from the life i long to live and feel called to live- one that reflects the life of Christ. one who was subjected to the powers and laws of his time and simply lived rightly. and i wish i was doing more, but i'm learning to be patient. i am learning that the Lord is not slow as i understand slowness, but he is patient. and i think he is teaching me that Kingdom values can not be learned overnight. i'm so attached to this world that i have even believed its methods of success, effectiveness, and efficiency to be the best way. i can't explain how difficult it is to feel those beliefs being ripped away from me. to find that ways that i have acted in the past have been such a truncated understanding of how am i to live out my faith.

and so it is with one relationship at a time that i move.

i had the day off today. my friend told me about a lady who has been evicted from her apt. she had no one to help her move and a house full of trash, dirty dishes, and broken furniture. i spent some time helping her find some peace in the overwhelmed feelings of stress, helplessness, and hopelessness that paralyzed her from doing anything. for the first ten minutes, all she did was walk in circles telling my friend and i that there was no point in our being there, that nothing could be done, there was too much junk. calmly we reassured her that it would get done and we began taking loads of things to the dumpster, taping up boxes, and packing up the things she wanted.

i visited a friend i have made who is confined to a bed at a nursing home. sometimes she looks at the ceiling and gets so scared that it is caving in on her that the fear is evident in her whole body, and i see her struggling to make her hand grasp the railing on her bed so that she can feel safe. sometimes she feels that she is falling out of her bed and that scares her, too. she used to be a stripper, she tells me, after she left home at sixteen, and there are autographed photos from men that adored her above her bed, "to boom-boom, the greatest star to ever hit chicago," they say. but in her early thirties she was severly beaten by a boyfriend. she spent some time in a wheelchair, but after a fall was told that she had to stay in bed for her own safety. now her only time out of bed is for a couple of hours in the morning on a geri chair. today was her birthday, and when i saw her i asked if anyone had sang the song to her. she told me that the nurse had told her happy birthday in the morning. i sang loudly, proudly and held the hand of a sixty-six year old woman, too young to be in a nursing home. i sat with her for an hour and we talked about life, about our fears, about the things we loved...

so is this revolutionary? i shared my struggles with david, the director of the apprenticeship program and told him about my beautiful day - about how much joy i felt being with these women. he told me that i spent the day with two women who were probably considered "losers" by others in society, but who are greatly valued and loved in the Kingdom.

i find myself grateful for the opportunities to live simply in order to work less and to live with eleven others in order to spend less. it gives me time to seek out people who i long to love and be with. i don't really think that it is revolutionary, but it's the right thing to do and it satisfies my soul, heart, being in such a way that makes me wonder if i could ever truly express it.