Called Through Change & Tears

This story contains a reflection on call as a part of a homework assignment to describe my call to ministry.

I experienced a call to ministry today. It happened today, September 9, 2010, between noon and 12:30 when I made a 54-year old man cry.

It happened before then, actually, when this same man waved at me as I was leaving the food ministry at Shelby Presbyterian Church. He waved and I stopped to ask if he wanted a ride somewhere. He got in the car and told me he wanted to go to "some store."

We joked a little bit about how I called him the wrong name when I saw him that morning. It was the first time I had seen him since summer break. I called him Robbie and he didn't correct me. As he was finishing his lunch, I went over to him and apologized for calling him Robbie as I had randomly realized his name isn't Robbie.

He gave me directions to a certain store and he reminisced about the textile industry that once made Shelby an industrial city. He told me he loved working in the mill and wishes he could work again, maybe washing dishes. He said even those jobs are hard to find when you're in your 50s. He didn't say so, but I imagine it is even harder when you're 50 and homeless.

He asked me for some change at some point during this trip. I handed him my cup-holder ashtray and told him he could take whatever he wanted. Over the sounds of the shifting change and my car engine, he told me not to give him that option.

The conversation quickly changed and I thought about another man who asked me for change earlier that day. I had just pumped 12.52 gallons of fuel into my car. At $2.559 per gallon, my tank of gas cost me $32.04. When I got back in my car, it wouldn't start. My car has a security system on the fritz. As a result, sometimes my car thinks I'm stealing it and shuts off the gas flow to the engine for about ten minutes. During this ten minutes, a man walked by and caught my eye. He was going to see his grandfather, an amputee I had been watching who was sitting by a trash can in front of the store. The man who walked by asked me for change and I planned to give him all the change in my cup-holder ashtray. However, the container was full and I thought it would be burdensome to give the change to this man, not to mention the man's trouble in carrying it. I took about half of it and dumped it into his cupped hands.

While thinking about this man from earlier, I continued conversing with my friend. We neared the gas station and as the car slowed to a stop, he again asked if I could give him some change. He handed me the change and I proceeded to dump it into his cupped hands.

He began to cry as the coins began to fall out of his hands, onto his lap, and then onto the passenger seat. Twenty cents, to be exact. He told me he only wanted enough for a beer. Through his tears he then said, "You know I'm going to buy a beer with this?"

"I know," I replied.

Then he repeated a phrase he had said two or three times since he first embraced me that morning: "I love you, Trevar. I mean it."

Behind my sunglasses, my eyes reached that pre-tear state where they appear glossy, but the tears never fell. I moved a switch and my left-turn signal began to flash. I pulled away from the store and drove down the street to the grocery store, spending $21.92 on low-fat, organic, and natural foods. I saved 20¢ as an Ingles Advantage Card member. I paid with my debit card and received $20 back, bringing the cash value inside my wallet to $22: two ten-spots, and two one dollar bills. I wanted the cash to buy apples from a local farm stand.

The monetary contrasts of the day stood out to me. The numbers stuck in my head. I spent over $50 on food and gas and took $20 out of my bank account to spend on more food. In between my spending, I spent time with those who didn't have enough money to buy food. I probably didn't even give him $2. Estimating on the high side, I might have given away $5 in coins. My friend left 20¢ on my seat and I "saved" 20¢ at the grocery store.

In retrospect, it is the numbers, circumstances, and God that called me to ministry today, just like other days. I was called to give myself away--to be like Christ. Today I fulfilled that calling by giving away change and a little more than change. Tomorrow I hope I give more. One day, I hope to give away everything. On that day, I might be miraculously multiplied like the body of Christ and the loaves and fishes. But even if my God chooses not to multiply what I am giving away, I will give nonetheless and find the giving worth it. It is my calling.

Making Truth Beauty and Beauty Truth: Thoughts Away From the Shelter

In the. city, you see a lot of diversity. In Seattle, I saw people in business suits; in chic jeans and fancy shirts; in tight, tight clothes; people in lots clothes, people wearing barely enough to keep warm; lots of tattoos, lots of piercings, and lots of dyed hair--the "acceptable" kinds and the stick-it-to-the-man, counter-cultural sort. I bought sushi from an Asian woman named Penny who spoke perfect English with an American accent and a vegetarian-style hot dog from an older Russian lady who expected me to know the soundtrack to a "classic S&M" movie.

Cities house diversity.

This (un)sheltered human kept noticing an underside to even this diversity, greatly influenced by the thought of my friends in the shelter. Amidst all this diveristy exists a sameness (indeed, all diversity yields some sameness somewhere, however minute or near-meaningless). The sameness I noticed was privilege. No matter the race, the gender, the style, or the language, the people I described earlier had some level of privilege.

They bought their clothes. They had a home. They chose their hygiene products, even if they had to keep their belts a little tight. And Ifit right in amongst this diversity and privilege.

The city also houses the other side of this privileged diversity: the very poor and the homeless. They drew my gaze, but not because they were the other to my level of privilege, the hungry to my full, the cold to my warm. No, they demanded my gaze because of their beauty.

Sometimes their beauty contrasted starkly with the city's beauty. An intriguing statue of Christopher Columbus stood over the jacket of the homeless man sleeping behind it, beauties of two different kinds, beauties that, perhaps, don't belong together.

I watched a bag lady pushing her cart slowly around town, aimlessly wondering for lack of anything to do, anywhere to go. The lines on her face made her look old, although she may have weathered more years than she's lived.

An old man in the Seattle Center sounded like he was coughing up his lungs as he sat next to his hiking backpack. He sat in the empty chairs of the mostly closed food court. I wonder when he was kicked out, forced into the cold rain.

I passed by a man on the street corner with a sign stating his predicament: a homeless man in need. I was on my way to find the vegetarian hot dogs. I stopped in front of a place that sold cookies for three dollars each. Looking at the cookies, I could only think of that man on the corner. I didn't buy any cookies.

All three of them were beautiful in their own ways. All humans are beautiful, all humans carry the image of God. I think society could benefit from looking away from their own beauty, turning from navel-gazing to gazing upon the beauty of the Other, of all others. When our gaze turns from ourselves, we can appreciate the other's beauty and complement it with our beauty, the beauty of our creative powers to take the beauty of others out of oppression.

And we can take them out of oppression if we can break the bonds of guilt and fear.

Shake off guilt. Replace it with acceptance of what is and a desire to change it. To make truth beauty and beauty truth.