In Summer 2012 there was no loving and benevolent God.
I was worn out from an anxious 4-year sprint to "change the world" only to find I was at the end of my energy and hope rope. I became an angry, elitist, cynical and judgmental activist. With low-energy I found myself reading "Man's Search for Meaning" while working at the world's longest bar, the beer barrel saloon on Put-in-Bay Island. I witnessed kids (18-22 year olds) get the shakes after a day off I was searching for my own meaning in the dank and spiritual dark surroundings where lonely souls gathered.
I went to be a listening ear, to bring light into the darkness. With a tank fueled by self, I found my light was dim, flickering, submerged and shorting-out.
A voice echoing in the ether grabbed hold of me as I read the words of deep love, boundless compassion, and radical kinship. This book introduced me to a God and to Jesus that I had never heard of before. A God that aligned with the words:
"Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe of what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it"
and
“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a covenant between equals.
and
“Kindness is the only strength there is.”
and
“Kinship– not serving the other, but being one with the other. Jesus was not “a man for others”; he was one with them. There is a world of difference in that.”
These words, and the stories that surround them, were like living water drenched on a parched soul. Greg Boyle rooted himself in the most dangerous LA gang territory and has built a culture of kinship and forgiveness amongst rival gang members. He's buried over 300 people he connected with and Loved. This community has built the largest and most healing family of traumatized men and women, reconciling to God and each other. No wonder it's the most successful re-entry and gang intervention program in the world. This began to undo me. 3 minutes of one of his talks is below. Let it transform you.
And so as I venture deeper into "helping without hurting" and being a wounded-healer and a healing agent in hard places, do I need to pause and allow myself to be transformed by the heavenly design of kinship. We are kin. High on Love/God from a summit I would say to most people I encountered, "We are LITERALLY brothers and sisters, any lie that tarnishes this truth is a painful attack on and between souls." We belong to each other.
And as we are transformed by the truth that we all belong, the margins of society are erased. Who is "in" and "out" doesn't apply in the Kingdom. Love is equally distributed. And through believing in the belovedness of self do I recognize the belovedness in another and so desperately do I want them to believe it. I am swaddled, you are swaddled. We are both looked on upon with an eternal tender gaze. I want my brothers and sister in Kroger, on the sidewalk, across the fence, across the pond, over the tracks, in my field-of-vision, wherever I am, how deeply do I want to show them, reveal to them, the Love of and that is God. And yet, obviously, I'm afraid to be so vulnerable and gushy.
These musings are to remind me and teach my children of the reality of the world -we are all equal. We are apart and the subject of the Greatest Love Story. We are one body. We've got to work together to heal the Body. Or else, the body hurts itself.
Below, such a beautiful exposure of empathy. Be undone.
How this applies to Coalition of Care -
Another word for Coalition is Team. We all need a lift, a word of empowerment, support, kindness, love embodied. We need it daily. Coalition of Care is a Team that loves each other between those who have had harder stories and those who haven't. Not to so that we all have distance from God and that distance is painful and requires healing, in that way the distance the woman at the well and the "rich man" felt are both very real. Looking forward for the Team to continue to better know and love each other. To be able to recline with others we feel we have very little in common with.
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