Cookies = Ticket to Heaven (with a Jehovah's Witness anyways...)

Last year, Laura and I gave cookies to out neighbors for Christmas. They weren't just any sort of cookie...they were hand made and home baked.

This year, the pressure was on. I literally had neighbors walking by and asking if we were making cookies again.

We were (and did) but, you might ask, "What's the big deal?"

The big deal is that when I talk about neighbors, I mean our whole street - somewhere around 46 households.
We baked around 6 cookies per house.
We are still cleaning.
The words, "Why did I ever do this in the first place," came out of my mouth frequently.

It's always an interesting time though. Some people are very thankful. One kid (he was probably a teenager? mid teens?) gave me a high five. I received a chorus of "Thank You's!" from one house. If you remember our earlier travails, what we received this year is a much more welcome sight than the trash and tickets of yesteryear.

But one person gave something that I would like to share with you: the story of Jesus as seen through the eyes of the Watchtower.

Not really (I mean, he did give me The Watchtower).
Namely, because I don't believe what Jehovah's witnesses believe regarding...well...pretty much almost anything.
But I'll share the story (of how he went about giving it to me).

I stopped by a man's home that we'll call Allen (because...his name is Allen...). No one answered the door at first, so I did what I do with most of my goody packages - hung it out of his mail slot and inadvertently allowed cold air to flow into people's homes. I was a house or two down when Allen poked out and said, "Hey! Thank you! Wait one minute, I have something for you!"

I didn't know what to expect.
Another neighbor gave us a pot of gold for Christmas (I'm not being snide or sarcastic - it's a box of Hershey choco's with that title) and referred to my wife as "27," (we live @ 1427). We've gotten Christmas cards from some neighbors. So, I waited not knowing exactly what was coming out of the door.

Allen came out with a big smile on his face and said, "This is especially for you." I looked down...and being disingenuous as I usually am in situations like this voiced a, "Thank you."

"Well, I hope to see you again real soon," Allen said.

Which is, altogether, kind of funny considering the fact that I live only a few houses down. He could presumably come over any time he wants with another copy of the Watchtower. These situations happen about quarterly with us (not necessarily with Allen) and Laura, I think, always prays that we'll be busy as I always enjoy a good debate in discussing why I believe Jesus doesn't believe the same thing that Jehovah's witnesses believe.

In any case, Merry Christmas Allen. Thank you for adding to my pile of recyclables and blogging experience.

City Sense...

You'd like to think that it's something you get when you live in the city - a transformation caused by some of the pollution around you that gives you an innate and super ability to live, work and play in a city.

But really, it's just an understanding you come to.

Sure, after living in an urban environment, you develop some "abilities." For example, you should learn to parallel park a car - when I use the word, should here I don't use it in a suggestive sense, but in the sense that it's something that will happen as you park your car over and again on a curb in any populated neighborhood.

You learn how to feed a meter. Regularly.

You learn that bicycling is a more environ-friendly mode of transit and that it's generally faster than driving.

You learn (and this is something that I've hit on before) that amidst the beauty of a thing created (like a cityscape) comes the reality of a world that exists in brokenness caused by sin.

It's a funny place where everything can be simultaneously right and wrong. It is right for you to be where you are because you know, in one way or another, that you're called to be here. It's wrong because there are others calling you to move away.

It is right because in the confluence of ideas, art, culture, science, education, government and technology there is understanding that image bearers are able to imitate and reflect the God they may or may not know and recognize. It is wrong because in the confluence of crime, destruction, racism, discrimination, murder, greed and indifference there is an understanding that image breakers are willing and desirous of rebelling against the same God.

There's not really any one thing that got me thinking about this on this time out writing. If you've stopped here before, you know that it's something that comes up from time to time when I write; meaning that I'm thinking about this a lot. A few good examples would suffice to describe the sense that my city (Philadelphia) exudes.

When you're walking the streets here, you can experience two (or more) entirely different "cities," in the course of a mile or two. It's not uncommon to walk down a street and see a home valued at $600k+ next door to one that's dilapidated, condemned or (even worse) the base of a drug dealer. Center City is what you'd be familiar with if you came to visit, however. Center City is where all the large buildings are. It's where all the fun stuff is - the kind of things you do when you visit a city. While there, you'd probably also visit the Art Museum area and Old City. You'd notice that the streets in Center City are relatively clean, that there are friendly people to help you when you're lost and that there's a healthy police presence.

The sense of Philadelphia changes, however, if you go a mile north or a mile south of Center City. As you travel down Broad, away from the big buildings, it wouldn't be uncommon to see a neighboring car's window roll down and watch trash free float from there to the ground. Towards the fall, there are sometimes whirlwinds of trash as the weather gets a little more windy. The trash thing spans all colors of skin and economic status, apparently...

If you ride a train in, you might be awed by the striking beauty of the city (if coming in from the North or East, this view is to your left). Looking off to your right, it's easy to be sickened by the amount of garbage piled beside the train tracks - the amount of bad graffiti tagged on train tunnels and abandoned buildings.

The sense of a city, mine at least and I imagine most, is conflicted. The sense you develop in interacting with it is the same. It's easy to question trust in other people. You wonder when and how you should trust them. While in a town watch course, La learned that when you're walking the streets in any part of the city, you should always be aware of what's around you by turning your head every few seconds.

We've found too that there can be a cultural mistrust at large. It doesn't always seem like a good thing to some that younger people of a different color of skin or background would be moving to their neighborhood. Gentrification has detrimental ramifications and years of discrimination won't be left buried under the guise of hope and promise. In my mind and heart, I don't believe that anything apart from Christ can really work to heal this sense of deep sadness and betrayal that some (not all, trust me, not all) of our African American neighbors hold - it's complicated and ingrained in a few generations who have learned that you can't trust and that you'll never get anywhere for it.

City sense is not necessarily something you get, but something you become a part of. The sense of a city will exist with you in it, or with you away. It isn't a super power or ability, but it is something to interact with - something that can affect you and something you can affect.

I feel like I belong...

"You eat like one of us," she said with an enthusiastic and purposeful smile.

"I'm sorry?" because I didn't understand what she was getting at - plus, it was hard to hear over the box fan.

"You eat like a black person; we like to put hot sauce on everything!" Merl told me this, the smile never leaving her face.

She's the owner of a new breakfast / lunch corner restaurant appropriately named, "Merl's." If you can believe it, for lunch (at this point, a couple of weeks ago) I had fried salmon patties (covered in hot sauce), fried eggs, grits, and wheat toast.

The meal was pretty good. The service was outstanding. Merl's hospitality made me feel like I belong.

There's a lot to make me feel like I don't belong here (that is, in my neighborhood).

The color of my skin.
My family origins.
An accent that slips out every now and again.
Where I work.
Where I play.
My age.
The multiple tickets I've received.

Sometimes, there are stares. When we first moved here, someone saw my truck as an object of their hatred - I think I may have written about this earlier (the scratches). After the truck came the trash - not just normal Philly trash, but the kind that is intentionally left in front of our home in a bag. Following that, there have been at least two people (neighbors - I know where they live on our block) who have asked us for money.

But then, there are the smiles.

There's Mr. Henderson, our next door neighbor who tells us he's missed us when we travel and who tells us he's glad to see us again.
There's Bill and Juliet (members at Tenth Presbyterian) who always greet me with a smile, who always have something to say about what's going on with them or something to ask about what's going on with me.
There's Rahim - our little buddy Rahim - who waves at me from down the street and yells "Hi," to me. He remembers my name too.
There's also Rahim - the adult Muslim who lives down the street - who always has a honk , a wave, and a smile as he's driving past.
There's our neighborhood association - a group of people who want to see a difference in our neighborhood.
There's our church - a group of like minded believers who want to see Christ make a difference in our city.
Now, there's Merl's - a corner restaurant with an owner who tells me that I eat like a black person.

Hope through a valley named "Trouble..."

Lately...I've felt owned by the city.
I don't try to talk about that subject as much, you know?

Sometimes, people say, "It's so cool that you live where you do." While there's some truth to that, it's also so difficult to live where we do (at times). It's so hard to live where we do.

Sometimes, it feels like a lot of trouble.

The other night - really, at this point, about a week ago - Laura and I were sitting and I told her the same thing. We're coming up on our first full year in Philly. During that time, I've literally lost count of how many times my truck has been vandalized or damaged. I've lost count of the number of hours I've spent on the road for work (whether for travel or just commuting). I've lost count of the number of fights Laura and I have gotten in (no doubt, the burden of our city weighs on this). I've lost count of the amount of trash we've picked up off the street (sometimes, even placed in front of our house intentionally).

I've lost count of the fights on the street.
The number of parking tickets we've gotten.
The number of times I've had to contact the gas company due to their immense ineptitude.

Last week - March 25 - things even took a turn for the worse. If you know me, you know how much of an advocate I am for taking public transit. Come to find out, I may be the only one who uses it out of an office of 400. Seems SEPTA (Southeast Pennsylvania Transit Authority) has found out to - which is why they cancelled the route to my office - I now have to walk over a highway that definitely has signs forbidding pedestrian traffic and then 15 minutes at a clip to my office building.

Oh, by the way, I found this out after I sat in the bus for an hour.
Oh, and don't forget, I overslept that morning and missed my Amtrak out to my office's area and had to take a later train.
I left my bike helmet on that same train.
Too, work was really hard that day.

There have been a number of things (personal and public) that have caused me to question whether hope is lately. I don't write this lightly - because without hope, there's not much of a reason to continue forward.

At the end of the day, when I finally made it home (helmetless, cold, angry, etc.) I overheard a conversation down the street.

girl (questioning) - "You're in the fourth grade, right?"
boy (proudly) - "Yeah, but I'm supposed to be in the sixth. You know, they held me back for a while."

The same boy came walking down the street. As I struggled to get my bike into the house, the same boy walked up to me and asked, "Hey, can I ride your bike?"

me (incredulous) - "Where do you want to ride it?"
boy - "Around the corner to my house."
me - "That's a little far."
boy - "How about down the street?"
me - "The bike might be a little big for you."
boy - "It'll be aight."
me (hesitantly) - "Um. ok."

See, this kind of crap doesn't happen. This is the kind of stuff of naivety that leads one to losing their bike and never seeing it again. But...I felt compelled to do it.

So, he rode slowly on the bike, but only after switching it to the lowest (slowest) gear. He rode down one block. Then two. I locked my door - I thought to myself, "I can catch up if I need to - the shoes are okay to run in."

At the end of the 2nd block he turned around and began the work of riding the bike back. As he approached, two older boys rounded the corner.

older boy - "Where'd you get that bike."
boy on my bike - "It's not mine."
older boy - "Then whose is it?"
boy on bike - "My friend's over there."

He was pointing at me.

I was reading through Hosea earlier that morning and thought a lot about the pursuit of the Church by Christ. I thought a lot about how that pursuit of me...as an individual part of a whole...looked.

See, I at the end of the day, I can look at my situation and feel like I've been owned. I can feel like there is no hope. But our feelings, by definition of a reality that has elements of ruin intermingled with the capacity of understanding, can stand erroneously and in contempt of what is.

More often than not, my problem is not that God is destroying me by my environment. More often than not, my problem is that I don't understand my circumstance to be subordinate to the hand of God - to His providence, grace, and mercies.

So when a fellow image bearer, who I've determined to be of ill repute in my own heart - to be of low standing, of little trustworthiness, and disparate motives - embraces me (whether literally or metaphorically), it strikes a cord. I've lent that same understanding to my environment too.

Instead of seeing the boy as an image bearer, I see him as a thief.
Instead of seeing the earth as a means of God's providence, I see it as a prison.

And so what is real is defined by me. I make myself a god. And for that, I deserve to believe that life is hopeless (as, in that context, it is).

Seriously though, thanks be to God - who can show me that through the Valley of Achor (trouble)...there's a door of hope.

Right now...I'm glad to be in this valley, because I know that this valley...this city...isn't the whole of reality. Right now...I know that it something be be engaged - something that I can grow to understand and love, or something that I can fear and hate.

Children.

Screaming. Children. Constantly.

Sometimes, there are children outside as late as one or two in the morning [yes, I've heard them because sometimes I'm up that late too] and more often than not I wonder where their parents are and why they're letting them out like that.

That's one of the funny things about our neighborhood though - children are out all the time. When I leave for work in the morning [sometimes before 6:30am], they're there. When I get home, they're there. When I go to sleep, they're there.

This morning Laura and I went to grab a bagel for breakfast at South Street Philly Bagels and I noticed that there was a lot of what appeared to be grease on my truck. If you're at all familiar with our travails, you'll understand that a lot of our life lately revolves around "my truck." I made mention that I bet that kids were playing around it [which has been one of my hypotheses for quite some time]. In our sickened state [as both of us seem to have come down with a cold], we shrugged it off.

Tonight's not too different - except for the fact that we've been holed up in bed for the past 4 hours - both of us coughing, both of us sneezing, both of us miserable.

But not the children - they're laughing, screaming, running...

And hiding in my truck...

Since both of us have been laying down since about four [watching The Breakfast Club on Netflix's watch instantly and then a variety of videos on YouTube], I decided to check the mail - because yes, the mailman sometimes runs after four. I turned on the outside light, unlocked the door, and peered out. I looked at my truck [it's parked in front of our home] and two small eyes peered back at me.

Caught.

I laughed. I asked if he was hiding. He nodded and slowly climbed out of the truck. I unlocked our mailbox - nothing - and went back inside. Laura and I laughed when I told her about seeing this small boy hiding out in the back of my truck.

I opened the door, saw him hiding down the street, and made eye contact. I told him that it was fine for him to hide there.

Sometimes it annoys me when I hear the kids running around. Sometimes it makes me question the mindset that goes behind their parenting. But in the innocence of a game of hide and go seek, it makes me wish I could run around with them [and not sit here feeling like my head is going to explode].

It reminds me that at some point the laughter of children points to a joy and a peace that's not here yet. Not for us anyways.

For them, now, it's pretty much all fun and games.

You live in the house, not the neighborhood, right?

We've had two visitors today [so far]. The first was at 8:00 this morning - he was a representative from ADT who was coming to make our security system "live" rather than in test mode. He told me, "Yeah, I called in and said 'I need to go back out there to make sure everything is right.'"

Yes. Right.

I spent my entire lunch on the phone with ADT [transferred 7 times, every name written down, and a letter to be written] because I was told 3 weeks ago that they were going to set someone else up to come out. This, however, is a story for another time [as seems fit, the Lord is putting me through the grinder right now in having to deal with people who are blatantly trying to rip me off].

The second visitor was actually a double whammy. I wish I would have responded more smartly, but instead probably seemed as some naive fellow who was out of place. Two older African American witnesses of Jehovah were standing at my door [straight from Kingdom Hall, no doubt] to share with invite me to a Jehovah's Witnesses conference being held next month where I can come [where I will not go as I am a witness to the Truth that is the Christ] to find out how Christ can help me to:

• improve family life
• deal with life's difficult problems
• draw closer to God
• oppose the Devil
• gain everlasting life

They also came, apparently, to complement me on my smile.

"Do you live here?"
"Yeah, we moved in about a month and a half ago."
"Oh, so you live in the house and not the neighborhood, right?"
"Excuse me?" [I find myself asking this a good bit these days, especially when people ask me something as peculiar as this]
"You live in the house, but not the neighborhood, right?"

I looked around. My neighbors all seemed to be looking my way - their bright neon clothing highlighting the fact that their skin was darker than mine. There were children, people I had smiled at, people I've had minimal conversations with [though conversations nonetheless]. There was Mona, she knocked on our door a few weeks ago asking if we had gotten the Sunday's paper and if we were finished with it - she then asked if she could have it. Standing in the door, seeing these people around me, the thought came as to whether or not they thought the same thing - that we've moved to the house but not into the neighborhood.

It's a difficult place, no doubt. I've tried to get out of the habit of saying, "South Philly," to be honest by saying "Point Breeze," when asked what neighborhood I live in. Right now though, I don't know if there are too many good neighborhoods in Philly. I sometimes wonder what is going through the minds of the younger guys when they look at me with a stern face. I sometimes wonder what is going through the minds of the older residents when they shine bright and welcoming smiles at me when I get home from work.

I wonder how I can get to know these people, and whether or not they want to know me as much as I want to know them.

"Oh," I laughed, "I live in the neighborhood - not just the house. I like my neighbors, they've all been very friendly."
"Well, you have a nice smile. You keep on smiling."