Once a week, I read books to kids in the neighborhood.

It feels like a terrible sappy cliche, but children's books teach me a lot. I have this one about the creation story, makes me cry every time. Today I read a book called The Listening Walk by Paul Showers. You can have a dude with an English accent read it to you here (how story time has changed since I was a kid).

On the first few pages, the young girl narrating the story tells us how she takes slow walks with her dad and elderly dog. She is silent on these walks. They are not for talking; they are for listening. And she listens to everything. The duration of the book is a description of the sounds she hears.

It dawned on me what a great neighborhood pastor this girl and her elderly dog are: walking and listening. Being silent. Being slow. Paying attention to all that we miss so easily. Her little pilgrimage reminded me of walking a labyrinth - but not secluded in some set aside spiritual space: in her neighborhood. So, I came home, having learned from my fictitious colleague in neighborhood presence, and mapped out a labyrinth walk for my neighborhood. 

I hope to invite some neighbors on a spiritual "Listening Walk" in our place with me soon and wanted to share because maybe we can all learn from this children's book?

Today I am hosting a feast day with copious beer and potatoes. 15 pounds of potatoes. 15 pounds people. I am doing this because I freaking love Saint Patrick. I am an uber nerd when it comes to Saint Patrick. (Ask any of my friends who I have told about how we can trust Patrick's supposed journal because of the nipple sucking incident with the sailors...seriously. That's a thing and I have written a paper about it.) I devour information about Saint Patrick.

But there is just one thing I refuse(d) to swallow.

When I spent two months in Ireland, I learned a lot about Saint Patrick. I'm a Saint Patrick nerd - but there was still more to learn in Ireland. And there was the one thing I didn't learn. 

You know how sometimes you don't learn something - not because someone isn't trying to teach you - but because you don't want to learn it. So, you rope off a part of your mind and refuse to let it in. I would go to lectures and tours and essentially plug my ears and say "La la la la la! I'm not listening. I can't hear you," every time someone would say: "There probably wasn't one Saint Patrick."

It's true. We celebrate and remember and attribute all these things to one guy when it was probably many guys...and of course all the women who - as we often do - worked tirelessly in the unrecorded shadows.

But I didn't like this story. I liked the story of one super-human hero. I like the movie-ready mythic tale: "In a world where slavery and oppression covered the land: one runaway slave returns to fight slavery, challenge oppression, risk his life for the poor and disempowered, and share the story of Jesus in a new way." But for the last part, Hugh Jackman could have played Patrick. Tag the Jesus thing on and I think we might be landing on Kirk Cameron. All the same...this is the story I liked.

No one makes a movie out of several people doing the small work right in front of them that makes a collective movement that changes everything. No one puts neighborhood activist figurines in Happy Meals. I held tightly to my one-guy theory of Saint Patrick.

And, I still do this.

I am facilitating liturgy and leading a workshop or two at Inhabit (a conference for people interested in loving their neighborhood in the way of Jesus) next month. I was just looking over the other presenters and what they do/have done. Instantly, I solidified old ministry-crushes on the ones I already knew and formed new ministry-crushes on the ones that are new to me. New Saint Patricks who have done the impossible.

But then I stop and reflect on every story of change I have watched - and not just read about. It's never one guy. For one thing, there are always  bunch of women involved, again working tirelessly in the unrecorded shadows. But more importantly - it's never one person. All the crushable stories of ministries that bring love, justice, transformation, and renewed hope into the world are the stories of many people - never of one person - putting one foot in front of the other on a slow march toward the goodness God intends for this world.

I used to want there to be only one Patrick. One Hugh Jackman figurine all the kids would want for Christmas with special Druid-repelling action. But that's neither the way anything ever happens - nor is it as miraculous as a co-op of small Patricks doing the Jesus-work they wake up to every morning.

But, I'm falling in love with the collection of stories too-small-to-tell. I'm falling in love with all the people who work along side each of the presenters at Inhabit - who I will probably not meet but who are the flesh and bones of the stories of transformation I will drool over when we gather together next month. I am falling in love with the story I once refused to hear: many people in Ireland formed a Patrick Collective to do good among their neighbors, challenge leadership that didn't look out for the least among them, share the Jesus story in a way they could understand, and changed Ireland and the world in the process.

In the Parish Collective (one of many tribes of people conspiring in small ways toward God's dreams for our neighborhoods) - as in the Patrick Collective - we're not writing the epic story of one or a few people who did miraculous things in the nick of time for a struggling Church (though, wouldn't it be fun for Paul Sparks to play Paul Sparks). We're collecting the stories of countless people who are waking up every morning and asking what Jesus is up to in their neighborhood, how they can join, and doing the small but beautiful things that will never earn them an action figure or a feast day with copious beer and potatoes.

PS, you should go to Inhabit and join in the story sharing and conspiring...

I think it's the phrase I find myself saying most these days: "I do not think that word means what you think it means."
I seriously have several blogs written up but not posted entitled "I do not think that word means what you think it means." In part it is because I am a child of the 80's and love the Princess Bride. But, in larger part, it's because I find myself confused by the juxtaposition of words and actions.

Churches with rainbow signs reading "All are welcome here" ...and a no trespassing sign right next to it. I do not think welcome means what you think it means.

The word Evangelical which is derived from words meaning person of the good news, applied to the man with a sign listing the various people who are all going to Hell with teeny tiny words at the bottom that say "Unless you repent and receive Jesus." (What does it even mean to receive Jesus?) I do not think good news means what you think it means.

There's this new term "Convictional Christians." (I wonder how Christ feels about all the modifiers we attach to our words for indicating not that we follow Christ but that we're not like those other people who don't follow Christ right.) But this one group believes that they are living on their convictions vs the people who are open and affirming. People who have lost jobs, funding (like Christ Church in Portland), family, friends, and so much more because they are living out a conviction that following Jesus means welcoming everyone. I do not think convictional means what you think it means.



But the one that got me today was a tweet from Christianity Today. They tweeted that Evangelicals (people of good news) are "divided over whether immigrants are drain on resources or an opportunity to share Jesus."


Now, I'm rarely snarky on social media. But that doesn't mean there aren't hundreds of snarky tweets that never actually get tweeted. Like ranting in the mirror, if you were my mirror or my computer screen, you'd know how snarky, hurt, wounded, and sarcastic I can be before I take a breath, step back, and ask what good this tweet will bring into the world.

Anyway, my snarky tweet that never got tweeted was "Really? I wonder if Jesus was inwardly divided over whether fishermen were a drain on his resources or an opportunity to share himself." As I looked at those words, knowing I'd close the window  - and no one including me would see their sarcastic unproductiveness again - in only a moment, it hit me: I do not think that word means what they think it means.

I had this momentary clear image of Jesus breaking bread and sharing wine and saying: "This is me. Please, take and eat it - even you there at the end of the table, the one who will betray me and bring my fruitful ministry to a screeching painful halt. Eat. Let me share myself."

I had this image of the Jesus who went to a dead friend to revive him even though he knew it was the beginning of his end.

I had this image of the Jesus who invited sinners, fishermen, and tax collectors to come and live with him.

I had this image of the Jesus who stayed up all night praying for his sleeping disciples, expending all of his energy composing a virtual sonnet for their future.

I had this image of Jesus telling his disciples that it's their job to feed the thousands of hungry people camped out to hear him speak.

I had this image of Jesus welcoming children when others are pushing them away.

I had all these pictures of Jesus rushing in my head and I looked at the words "opportunity to share himself." And it came to me that those words - share Jesus - do not mean what we have slowly adapted them to mean. To share Jesus is to pour out your resources into another. In the work of sharing Jesus, we cannot be divided over whether a person is a drain on our resources or an opportunity to share Jesus, because living after Jesus and offering his holistic good news is - in its very nature -  a glorious drain on resources. To share Jesus is to intentionally drain your resources in wait for the great feast when everyone - immigrant or not (though we should remember most of us here in the US are illegal immigrants), housed or unhoused, LGBTQIA or "Convictional Christian" - and so on until everyone is invited and welcomed in - will all sit down at a table to have our resources eternally replenished. 

Like a child clutching her favorite doll: we cannot share while hoarding. We can only share by opening our arms and being drained of a resource.

I do not think those words mean what they think they mean.

And I hope today my neighbors who were not born in America and my neighbors who live outside and my neighbors who are suffering with addiction and my neighbors who are not able or interested in tithing are a drain on my resources. Because today I hope I follow the Jesus who sat down with various sinners, traitors, and poor people and said: "Here. This is my last physical resource. This is my body and blood. Please, take it. Eat. Be nourished. Let me share myself with you." 

Today I hope my resources are drained because I accept an opportunity to truly share Jesus.