Part Three: Love

Don't miss Part One of Part Three Makes not sense

More time passed, and I ended up hearing an answer from God about all the things spinning in my head in a place I least expected, a meeting at work. Along with everything aforementioned, I was also struggling with feeling alienated by un-relatable stories in sermons, and how my mom has probably struggled with this feeling even longer than I. This made the sense of being unknown and unheard worse tenfold. As egocentric as I had been, it should’ve been something readily up for discussion with God readily offered to Him in hope of change. For a while I have been thinking how no one knows Mom in my community, and I’ve always felt that no one really cares to try. This has been on my heart for many years, especially when I have been almost bullied into abandoning her for my “dreams” and “ministry” and “what God has for me” as far opportunities and a “future.” They, people who care not to know her, give a lot of vindications, ridiculous ones if you ask me, but a few people have reached out to her, so I took heart, and waited. I was waiting, for a day she would be able to connect as a Latina woman, ripped out of her country against her will, treated like an idiot almost daily for a language barrier (she is fluent in English by the way) for 25 years that we have been in this country and several years prior in another, add to that churches that have told her, her faith was nothing before getting there because her religion and culture was different, work places that told her, her diplomas and experience in her country are worth nothing, and many other bits of her story that only I seem to know, I waited for the day for her to connect to the community we had been a part of for four years now, the way I connected with many of the sermons and teachings on a week to week basis.

          A short while ago a Latina woman who I respect very much was given a chance to speak, and for the first time, my mom was fully engaged and connected in the teaching like I had never seen, and my heart was warmed. It brought to mind how I have been inundated with countless references and stories that I have no way of relating to, or understanding the way others in that room can. It was something that I always felt unnerved by, but it never really hit me until I was constantly explaining what “Twitter” or “Facebook” or “YouTube” are to Mom, and when I would be in a room of people laughing to a joke they were all in on because of the internet, and I was left out. Still, I felt” I am a rare case and Mom too,” so I thought, “it doesn’t matter, I’ll get over it.”

          That is until I talked to a friend (one of the few I’ve had in this year or so of isolation) about it, and then I saw how my very life is nothing like what these sermons speak of, on some level they are, because Jesus. On most levels though, everything is written, even sermons and teachings, for a specific audience, and I do not fit into the middle-class, post-grad, or college student, or full-time career audience that is my community. I cannot name one person who has not been to college, and the ones who don’t have a degree are seeking a degree, and have no worries as to finishing and moving on to where ever they wish in the world. Even those who I know as doing “full time ministry” have the privilege of making a choice of “leaving everything behind for Jesus” versus getting a “real job.” In that same conversation I remembered the people I have met who are in the same situation as I am, only a HS degree, or GED, unable to come and go as they wish, without the kindness of a good Samaritan or funds, time, and strength for the bus system. Then I thought of those who have less than I do, the poorest of the poor, who not only don’t have internet, or money for gas, or a smartphone, they don’t have a car, a home, and get even less food weekly, if any food at all.

I asked myself, how would they feel, how do they feel, to hear about things to which they cannot relate? Like I was mentioning before, all these thing had been on my heart, for a very long time, questions about love, and the unloved, the seen and the unseen, aware all the while that God loves constantly, and knows constantly on top of endless other things He does constantly these two aspects stand out to me right now, and suddenly it hit me. I was sitting at a meeting with the CEO of my company and eight other co-workers, the point was professional to break the stigma that the CEO is a stranger who just does whatever he wants and cares nothing about his workers. Whether this is true or not is not my place, but as I learned little things about him, through silly ice breakers, and comments he made I suddenly didn’t see a CEO of a company who only served to put food on the table, and a roof over my head (barely at times), I saw a man who is doing his job as much as he can, who has pressures (which he mentioned not intentionally or deliberately like his mind wondered for a second), who knows he is not making the cut because people are unhappy, and all this felt intuitive as if God placed His heart for this man on my shoulders for a second and suddenly there it was... Suddenly love was there, maybe weak, maybe quiet and very still but it was there. I suddenly had more patience, compassion, understanding, and grace for this man who before then I had probably murdered in my heart and prayed to find compassion and love for him because I know Jesus sent me, and everyone who loves Him, to love one another, like He loved us. I thought of how knowing Jesus gave me, us, a way to know God with a human face, making something tangible to the intangible, and it seemed so simple. It was easy to throw a judgment of the “rich and powerful white male CEO” who sees his employees as little ants who run at his every whim, who wants to play god in our little company world and just write him off, but that hurt my heart so deeply to even stray in that direction. However, after I could know him, my CEO, in the flesh, even a little and mostly the little was the tiny bit of struggle (which I would argue is the most human quality we have) he could no longer be a caricature of a human, he could no longer be an image on the screen of my computer or he image he probably want to portray of strength and security, he was a man, with flaws, and aching for what we all ache for, love, to be known, and loved as he is a flawed man.

          I spend most of my weeks, 40+ hours (if I include lunch and travel time) alone, in silence or the company of the sounds of my mp3 player and my phone (random texts I sneak to read and write). As I sit and explore my thoughts there are different things I come across at work that remind me of the people I love. A mention of anything related to Latin America will make me think of Mom, that same Latina leader I mentioned earlier and her fiery passion for our people, for example. If I see something about cats, I’ll think of my friend who I call Luna, or my horse calendar makes me think of my coffee date friend and her farm dream, and how she’s been struggling with feeling alone as well, even though she has resources I do not. Food makes me think of my friend who struggles to get rent and fed, and my other friend who sacrificed her money this week to help her, and me actually. When I think about the friends I wish I had at work I remember my friend who moved far from me, yet seems closer than anyone here in Tampa. When I think of a moving piece of music for an emotion which has no words I think of my friend who I met almost a year ago who I wish I had met years before and her vision for purity and her effervescent joy. When I see a name that can be confused for something wrong I’ll think of my co-worker and I’ll want to share.

          Then I think of how there are a lot of things I think over and over and I want to share, yet I feel like if I share them I am talking to a wall, and I send a little text to “Twitter,” and even that makes me think of my friend who volunteers at what the Underground calls the HUB and how she was the only person I confessed that feeling to until now I think. I sit for hours in a cubicle with no human interaction, nowhere to share joy, light or salt. Most everyone I see every day I am completely disconnected to besides physically they are like ghosts or robots. On the other hand everyone I know the most about I never see, and some of them, like most all the leaders I respect know nothing about me. They might know my name, maybe my face, but to have a conversation about anything seems awkward, like when you’re having a conversation with the person you’re stalking (or your stalker for you popular people) in a High school hallway. I feel like anything I would want to offer to them is out of place, out of context and therefore misunderstood, even with the most basic things like asking for advice, or asking how to get better connected or how to have a real community. I feel this leaves us with a weird dynamic, leaders feel over worked, misunderstood, and isolated, those who follow feel unseen, useless, unheard and equally isolated. I believe this should be something that is different in the Kingdom. It should be something we come and break apart when we walk into work places, stores and the city as a whole.

          We all want to be known, and yes we are known by God more intricately than can be described, yet I we also want to be known by the horizontal, the human faces next to us. As much as the large group community I am a part of, Underground, became a community of micro churches for this reason yet I know for a fact that there are those who fall through the cracks. I know I have, my mother has more so. I know friends who have and I know there are some who cannot even begin the conversation to fall through anything. In this community, as it is, I have no power, no influence, no connection, no voice because I am unknown, I am unseen. In the Kingdom however we all have power, influence, connection, and a voice because this is part of what, I believe, Jesus set out to do, to make God known through each of our stories, not to become one stale and redundant telling of His love and creation and grace, but through each individual case, each voice, each life a different facet is seen. I think this is why we were all called to love one another, but I think we cannot fully love without knowing each other. Because of Jesus we can now know God, and thus love Him more fully. Those who make me feel most loved are those who go out of their way to know me, and is this not how Jesus loved us? He went out of His way (not that anything is difficult for Him) to become nothing, fully God and fully man, a rainbow of beauty contained in human form to know what it is to be human, what it is to suffer, what is it to be born a baby who cannot contain its bowels, and to slowly and painfully learn to be an adult. He had to learn to walk, talk, communicate, eat, drink, sing… how to be a Jewish man in Palestine. He lived in poverty, learned to work alongside His human father, and befriended other humans who longed to see the face of God, to know Him and be known by Him. Many of us know about God through the stories about the work He did in the lives of many historical figures in the Bible, this is how we know His character, but what about the stories He has for us in the lives of those you serve, those you want to love? Why not get into the entrails of each of us and get the nutrients from each other’s fruit? He told us in Matthew that what we do for the “least of these” we do for Him, so we feel a call to serve and help others and love Him that way, but I tell you the truth, many of us in need, on the other side of the drawbridge, who are always asked to justify don’t feel like it’s justification if you spend time with us in general, and happen to know a need because you know our day-to-day struggles. Many of us in need physically are more in need to have a friend to talk with, to laugh, to cry just like you need these things. I see a common thread in society today, especially riding the bus with strangers who stare into machines instead of even look their neighbor in the eyes, or sitting in a break room, the one girl without a smartphone, alone, disconnected, is something more and more of us are facing, yet we do not talk to anyone even if it’s just air separating us. How much harder do you think it is to connect when it’s a whole city, or a glass ceiling, or simply no one asking who you are that causes the chasm you cannot cross, and especially those whose underbelly is exposed to the elements, whose soul might be dragging by on its last legs, or drowned in a chemical high of any sort, how much harder? How much more desperately needed, is a kind smile, and an ear to hear a story of who God has been to keep them sustained to that day to even know you? Then I say, what if they don’t even know it is God who painted their story? What if no one told them, what is they were told Satan made them? What if they just need to be known, empowered to speak, and then loving sacrifice comes ten times easier because it’s no longer duty? It is love incarnate, the body of Christ finally putting its head on its shoulders.