i work for a summer camp/mission crew called Passport and i love it. it is a place to put your hand to the plow. it started over 20 years ago when 2 seminary students saw a need for a more missional camp. and they did something about it. they only hosted the camp for a week, but it took off and grew into a non-profit that employees me for 2 months of the year. and its something that I'm audibly proud of.
at the core of Passport is the willingness to engage the world as it is. not to fix to the world. but to love it. to be gentle when gentleness is required. and to be rough when some grit is needed. I'm a millennial in seminary (just like everyone else) and as much as i love it some days, sometimes i get tired of the voices. there are a lot of issues in the world. thats not lost on anybody. but with social media and the distance between any given computer screen, there are so many opinions. i love to read the articles with the best of them. I'm a thinker & it grinds my gears to get my hands on more information..
but its exhausting.
we collect information, repost what we think is worthy, and then we pat ourselves on the back for "raising awareness" on another issue. that we don't touch with our bare hands. we stroke our keyboards with our finger tips and fulfill our duties as a well-informed citizens. but thats not enough.
i love Passport because it carves out a space for you to cut your hands on the edges of humanity. you develop callouses. you do the work that is asked, and you hope for the best. it could be painting houses, or feeding homeless folks, or packing up boxes and pallets of books to send to Africa. the people who plan the mission sites try to dress the most relevant wounds. they know that students coming through Passport are not paid professionals. they're high school students. but any group that comes through has some time and a few sets of hands. so we set the plows on the hard weathered ground, and we work through the dirt, tilling up whatever happens to be in the field that day.
if we're going to cultivate a garden that can sustain itself after we leave, then we need to tend to what is there. in digging grooves, the plows breaks through more than just the literal world. maybe breaking up the soil is letting the kingdom of God break into earth, as it is in heaven. maybe its releasing whats underneath. if i learned anything this summer, its that Jesus is in the dirt as much as he is in the details.
this summer, over a 7 week period of time, we hosted a couple hundred students and their adult chaperones inside literal church walls. we asked them to clean up after themselves, and to serve each other while they were here. the whole thing is called M2 and it has changed my life. the entire session is run by 4 people, and by some grace laden act of God, it works. we ask students (and each other) to interact with the uncomfortable. we challenge them to view their experiences differently. to be molded by the story instead of thrashing around with bullheaded assumptions. we get our hands so dirty, and we usually have to forfeit the shower afterwards, because there just never seems to be enough time. we show up to worship with things moving around inside us, with dirt in every imaginable crease, lacquered on by sweat that has settled into our skin more than once over the course of the day. its messy in every sense of the word. but it is so good.
it is owning the role of the worker in the harvesting metaphor. we asked students to engage the bigger picture and to question the role that their hands have in the world. will they bind or wound? what do you do with homelessness? why is the kid in camp being such a punk? what if he can't help it? what if his angry consuming fits of rage are for attention, because he isn't getting it at home? what about the guy who shows up plastered to the soup kitchen? what about the billion other countries in the world that don't have books? or teachers? or medicine? what about those things?
i'm tired of reading opinions about what needs to change. letters to congress that we say we'll write, petitions that we should sign, but forget about until the next article comes across our Facebook feed. articles with skewed statistics that NOBODY ever checks. i'm tired of opinions and soft handed theology. I'm tired of opinions with no callouses.
as much as i want to hear your story and what you think about things, i'd rather you tell me about how you did something about it. i'd rather you get up at the end of the week for our m2 declarations and talk about how it made you so uncomfortable that the woman who you sat with at dinner stood in juxtaposition to the iPhone you had in your pocket. that your phone costs more than what she makes in a year. id rather hear about the time when you tried to read with a kid at literacy camp, but he was a runner, so he took off as soon as you sat down. id rather you tell me how boring it was to pack boxes, but then you realized that your hands were the last ones to touch those books before the boxes were opened in kenya. id rather you tell me that you don't know how to fix the big picture, but you were willing to try with the more local one.
thats what i believe. thats why i work for Passport. because regardless of your denomination, regardless of your church's theology, regardless of your background, you still have hands. and you still have time. it doesn't take very long to see needs in your own community if you're looking for them. or really, if you're just willing to look for them. we're all human. we're all coming from somewhere, going somewhere else, mostly on our way, give or take. and we can do stuff.
i don't know what the answer is to poverty and homelessness. i don't even know who my senator is, and as much as it makes me a poor US citizen, i don't care. id rather not waste my time arguing politics that i don't understand. that i can't control. the rules of the land are totally important, and for someone else, that is a worthy and enjoyable endeavor. it is not for me. but i see the guy on the corner asking for money. i don't carry cash, but i can carve out an hour and take him to dinner. i can walk home from the coffee shop and give my long sleeved shirt to the woman who is in front of me. even though she is lying. even though she is absolutely strung out. i can leave space for uncomfortable conversations when my team feels like they can't win this week. i can reconcile a moment when i spoke sharply to a friend. i can do those things.
we have to dig into this world with our bare hands. we can't use gloves for everything. even if they're just computer screens. sometimes we don't get the tools that could actually change things. we don't always have the right resources. but when jesus commissioned his disciples, he told them to take absolutely nothing. a few sentences later, they fed five thousand people. i'm okay with that. I'm okay with dressing wounds with only a few of the right bandages. i still think its better to try, and to not make it, then to just talk about it and walk away. to post our opinion on social media.
the atlanta portion of our M2 summer dealt with homelessness, and faulty systems that keep poverty in full swing. we partnered with Park Ave Baptist Church and jumped into the incredible ministries that they sustain all year round. they are folks committed to doing the work, and honoring whatever lies before them. at the end of each week, we host a community meal where we invite our students, people from the church, kids from literacy camp, and men from the soup kitchen. we feed whoever shows up and our students rotate through serving food. every week it is magic. students sit down with folks from every walk of life and they engage what might be foreign to them. it is a beautiful messy life changing grace.
today was the last day and id be lying if i said i wasn't sad about it. after we waved goodbye to our final group, we hugged & prayed one last time before our staff split up. i stayed at the church while my staff left for their respective means of transportation, hanging out for a few more days in this city. i took the MARTA to the aquarium and nestled into my spot in front of the whale shark tank to reflect on this crazy beautiful summer. on my walk back, i passed a homeless man who asked for money. i don't carry cash so i told him that and apologized. he said its alright, and thanked me anyways. i walked another 30 yards and prayed for him. i thought about all the things we ask our students to do, and couldn't keep walking. i turned back around and asked his name. Otee Johnson, he told me proudly. i asked him if he'd join me for dinner. he initially said no, but if i could maybe buy him dinner from the restaurant.. i asked again if he would join me, and i meant it. so he did. he was so gracious and kind and he told me his story. grew up in foster care. studied music and even knows how to play the violin. signed up for the army and happened to draw the short straw along the way. been homeless in atlanta for 30 years, and is okay with it. he told me his homelessness doesn't take away his humanity. he told me about how he prays, and how he had 129 asthma attacks, but he's still alive. he told me about his friends who have already passed. his long time girl friend died last year. she got really sick and ended up on life support and the family only waited 2 days to pull the plug. he grieved, but he knows that its what the family needed to do. he told me about making the newspaper because he used to push a woman around in a wheel chair every day. he had nasty sores on his hands, but he had hands that could help, and this woman didn't have anyone. nelson mandela came to atlanta, and the woman in the wheel chair wanted to see. so otee pushed her past the barricades, past the police officers, and she got to lay her eyes on the one and only nelson mandela. he made the newspaper for that day and his face glowed while he told me. (you can see part of the article here) i bought him a makers mark burger and a coke. i ate my bratwurst next to him and listened to everything he said. it was one of the most profound things I've experienced all summer. i know it wasn't "safe". but thats the real world.
i could hear some opinions.
"if he's homeless, he deserves to be there"
"he's probably a drug addict; you can't trust his stories"
"taking him out to lunch doesn't fix the issue. you're not helping anything"
but even in that, i still see your soft hands. i still you see you shying away from the things that you can do too. i didn't fix anything for otee. i don't know that we ever fix anything for anyone. and thats not the point. the point is there are people in this world. there are problems in this world that don't have easy fixes. there are a lot of them. you could be overwhelmed, and no one would blame you. i don't blame you for being overwhelmed. but i do question your manicured hands. id love to see your fingernails with a little dirt beneath them. you can't fix it. i know that. but you can make an extra sandwich for lunch, and take it to someone. you can sit down with somebody you don't know. the Coca Cola commercials are cheesy, but they have an element of truth in them. you can buy an extra coke if you can afford a five dollar coffee every morning. you can put your hands in the dirt in your local plots. you can do these things. they matter, even if you never get to see the fruit.
working with Passport has changed my life. it is the thing that i was looking for in a faith community, but didn't really see. a place to put your hands and do work, even if you don't always enjoy it. even if its hard. its the real stuff. it started because someone saw a need, looked at their resources, and said, 'lets try and do something about this, even if it doesn't work.' and it grew. some efforts will fail, and weeds will over take the garden. but some things will grow.
may we at least be willing to do something about the things we talk about. and if we are not willing, may we fill the world with silence instead of our soft handed opinions.
meet Otee Johnson, my new Atlanta friend. here is to hoping that our paths cross again one day.
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