Thinking

I've been staying up kind of late recently, thinking about a lot of things. This pastel is about a friend of mine and the things that hold him down. These things are primarily addiction and location. When I say addiction, I mean he's hooked on a little bit too much of everything. When I say location, I mean he was born here and he's too poor and ignorant to move away, or to ever desire to do so. Plus, this is home. The pastel isn't quite done yet, but it illustrates what I'm thinking about better than my words likely can.

My friends and my theology are the topics of my thoughts. I have an awful lot to say on the subject, but I think I'll keep the majority of it for some kind of essay or short book. The short of it is, well...

I used to think that the world is the way it's supposed to be for now, and heaven, or "The Kingdom Of God," (which really means the reign of God--like, his dominion and the working out of his will) would be like taking the earth and turning the whole thing inside out and upside down. And the inside out way would be the way "heaven" was supposed to be. I used to think that there was some kind of eye-for-an-eye justice going down on earth, and that things were, for the most part, quite ordered and proper. I thought bad things that happened were aberrations; small moth holes in a fabric that was otherwise intact. I thought those holes were "evil," or maybe "sin."

During that time, I was sometimes depressed and lonely, I certainly didn't treat people around me very nicely, I was a Young Republican, and I sincerely believed that Jesus was, too. I was in the middle class, and all of my friends were, too.

Jump ahead and I've had a couple of epiphanies. The first was that I wasn't the center of the universe. The second was that God is not cool with me treating people like shit. And the third was that, rather than treating people like shit, it would be way cooler with God to treat them well on purpose, especially people who no one else wanted to treat well.

Move ahead a couple more years, and I'm feeling great about working at a homeless shelter. This is some reaching down to the poor. Like, full time balls to the wall charity-is-my-job kind of reaching out. I was at a staff meeting and my boss suggests to everyone that there's something out there much better than charity. He suggests that we should give our social lives over to God, and that if we did so, God would probably give us poor and lonely people to hang out with. I was not OK with this suggestion and let God know it. I think I told him something like, "I need down time. I need my friends to be like me so I can blow off steam with them. If you want me to spend my free time with poor and crazy people, too, then you're going to have to make me feel differently about it."

God said something back like, "OK." And through events and people he's erased my previous notions of what it meant to be cool and have cool friends. It felt like the day you looked around and realized that neon pink,teal were not it any more, and that they had been replaced with flannel and Kurt Cobain t-shirts.

So my husband and I have been hanging out with people, like my friend with the mullet, who are broken and lonely, and cool as hell. The more I hang out with these guys, the more I realize that world is upside down now. Things aren't at all the way they should be. The whole thing is the mess. The fabric is bad--it's a heavy curtain and it's the moth holes that are good, and let us see through the curtain to God.

Being upside down friends with my broke neighbors opened my eyes to what was actually happening around me. People who aren't poor look at my poor friends like animals at a zoo, or like ET just waddled off the space ship. Almost all of my poor friends have cell phones. I used to think it was because their priorities were messed up, then I realized it was easier to get a cell phone than it was to get necessities like food stamps, or health care, or a steady place to live. Lots of my poor friends have cable. I used to think that was bad prioritizing, too. Then I realized that tensions run so high in relationships between people who are right on the edge that TV is a welcome distraction, but poor substitute for working things out.

Things are upside down. In the kingdom of God, you get what you need, not the shady substitute. With Jesus, you get healing, not the bandaid. You get the new family, not cable. You get food instead of distracting toys. I wish things were that way now. I think that's what it means to pray, "your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven..."

Maybe I'm rambling because rain makes me sad and I feel like I have to get things off my chest. Maybe it's because I watched the movie Sicko last night and was so bummed that I couldn't think straight. I don't know.