Yesterday, for 12 hours straight, I sat through the Academy Award best picture nominees in a thing AMC Theaters does every year called the Best Picture Showcase. It's the second year I've done it and it gives me a chance to see (hopefully) amazing movies back-to-back.
Fourth movie in yesterday, I had the opportunity to see "Precious" for the first time. I had known about the book Push that it was based on, so I knew what to expect, but I wasn't prepared for how emotionally drained it left me. It's the story of a teenage girl named Precious in Harlem in the late 80s who is abused mentally, physically and sexually by both her mother and father throughout her life. It follows her at 16 the mother to two children (both fathered by her own father) and the people who come into her life: including a social worker and a reading teacher in a literacy program that's a part of the alternative school that Precious is attending.
I wish I could say that it ended up being a feel-good story, that everything worked out in the end. But that's not always how life works. There was a really moving scene toward the end where it becomes obvious that Precious doesn't understand love because she's never received it. It reminded me of Deidox's awesome first short film about Lindsay, a NYC school teacher. Deidox is an amazing company that produces short films that show God active in everyday people.
Deidox | Lindsay from Deidox on Vimeo.
I love in the film at around 2:15 when Lindsay is describing what kind of love she has for her kids in her class each year. May we all show that sort of love to the people around us. May we show it to precious kids & adults everywhere.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
When it rains, it pours...when it hails, it's just cold.
Remember how just last week I was saying that the weather always seems to be on our side. This week, we got introduced to some icy rain.
The little icy specks on the table were pelting us in the face before they landed so nicely on the table. Add to that the wind and the cold, and we just had to laugh. We almost thought the kids might not show up b/c it was so bitterly cold, but they all pulled through and we huddled at the breakfast table under our makeshift tent (thanks to one of my ingenious and tall (!!) partners that's there on Tuesdays) 
The little icy specks on the table were pelting us in the face before they landed so nicely on the table. Add to that the wind and the cold, and we just had to laugh. We almost thought the kids might not show up b/c it was so bitterly cold, but they all pulled through and we huddled at the breakfast table under our makeshift tent (thanks to one of my ingenious and tall (!!) partners that's there on Tuesdays) 
I swear this is not an advertisement for Minute Maid, but it does show some moms and kids bearing down in February for some good old-fashioned time together before the bus comes.
Remember my sticker hoarder/soccer extraordinaire from last week? He took yesterday to ask me, "Does this mean that you'll come here...even when it snows?"
"Yep, we'll be here even when it snows. As long as you're getting on the bus, you can count on us being here."
In his awesomely innocent and trusting 2nd grade voice, he replied, "I do."
And I wasn't cold anymore b/c my heart was melting. ;)
Oh, and don't forget, when the bus had come, we, of course, had to walk the moms and little siblings (too young to go to public school yet) back home. Have I mentioned I love Tuesdays?
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Winter Break for everyone
Yep, it's winter break this week, which means the kiddos and their families are hopefully tucked away safe in their houses and not out waiting for a bus. We miss them when we're not there and hope they miss us. I think, deep down, they do, but I may just be dreaming. ;)
One thing I will say is we have been so lucky in regard to extreme weather. One of our main concerns in not having an indoor space and instead using the park was, duh, what do we do if it rains/snows? Well, every single week we've been there, it has only rained once. And it stopped raining 5 minutes before the kids showed up! It was just generally wet, but we had a blast.
This Tuesday, while we were all on winter break and weren't out there for one week, it snowed. Hard. Funny how things work like that, huh?
Since, we weren't there, I'll share a pic from a few weeks ago:
This little guy is actually someone I think about a lot. He's shy until you get to know him and then you realize he's:
-a soccer dynamo
-a sticker hoarder
-a protector of his little brother (who he brought to meet us once).
...among other things. My prayer for him is always pretty much the same. That no matter what else is going on -- and I sometimes get the feeling it's a lot for a little guy -- he knows that there are three girls...women, whatever...that love him and care about him and just think about him when he's not around. Because we do. We really do.
One thing I will say is we have been so lucky in regard to extreme weather. One of our main concerns in not having an indoor space and instead using the park was, duh, what do we do if it rains/snows? Well, every single week we've been there, it has only rained once. And it stopped raining 5 minutes before the kids showed up! It was just generally wet, but we had a blast.
This Tuesday, while we were all on winter break and weren't out there for one week, it snowed. Hard. Funny how things work like that, huh?
Since, we weren't there, I'll share a pic from a few weeks ago:
This little guy is actually someone I think about a lot. He's shy until you get to know him and then you realize he's:
-a soccer dynamo
-a sticker hoarder
-a protector of his little brother (who he brought to meet us once).
...among other things. My prayer for him is always pretty much the same. That no matter what else is going on -- and I sometimes get the feeling it's a lot for a little guy -- he knows that there are three girls...women, whatever...that love him and care about him and just think about him when he's not around. Because we do. We really do.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Church Done Differently
If you've been around for the past...oh, decade +...you've heard this. I've heard this. I've probably said this. It means a lot of things to a lot of people. Or maybe it just means a lot of things to me. I dunno. I do get the sense that it's a little overplayed because a lot of times when I hear it, I think, Nah, that's church done just the same.
What I do know is that last week, I watched the live stream of a conference called Verge and just happened to listen to a dude named Hugh Halter talk about Adullum Communities in Denver and I thought, Whoa, that really is church done differently. And, you know what, I think I liked it. I think it made sense. I'm still unpacking some of it, but I do know it made me sit up and take notice---especially as it related to this idea of being in the community and not apart from it.
On their website, under About Us, it says:
Adullam is a congregational network of incarnational communities that are apprenticing kingdom people.
I don't know exactly what that means, but I think I might be willing to try to find out...
On their website, under About Us, it says:
Adullam is a congregational network of incarnational communities that are apprenticing kingdom people.
I don't know exactly what that means, but I think I might be willing to try to find out...
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
It's the little things, you know
Well, 34 weeks into our Tuesdays at the park and it happened. Did I tell you that it's not just me that goes every Tuesday morning? Three of us go every Tuesday together. It's not just about our time at the park; it's the camaraderie of getting everything together those mornings before we go. Packing our SUV, singing, laughing, talking about our friends we're about to see. When I say it's good times, it's some of the very best. We're partners. Our setup at the parks is....ummmm....organic and free-flowing. Ha, we bring a table and chairs (our breakfast table) and load it with whatever we can think of that kids might like. Here's our set-up from this morning:
Notice the timely football napkins from Sunday's big game (we use what we have around our homes-ha). In the larger basket is egg & cheese sandwiches and mini muffins. We usually have some snack foods for them to pack in their backpacks, too. Schools have a designated snack time now, so kids need to bring snacks in addition to a lunch, unless they're buying a hot lunch or enrolled in a lunch program. And the carafe holds hot chocolate, in addition to having juice and water, too. I swear I won't always give you this much background. It's just to give you an idea of what's happening. ;)
The majority of the neighborhood is Spanish-speaking. My Spanish is growing by leaps & bounds since the summer, but it's still....how do you say....bad. The kids teach me words every week. Today's words were 'muchacho' and 'muchacha' Our friends always laugh a lot as I stumble my way through pronunciations. I sometimes go by the adage of what I don't know in actuality, I can make up for in volume. Amusement abounds.
Anyway, 34 weeks in and it happened. One of the little girls....one of the sweet, ridiculously cute little girls hugged one of our friends good-bye. This is HUGE! She has been coming and eating breakfast with us since September. She always comes with her older brother and older sister and mom or dad. They seemed to regard us suspiciously for the first few months, I'm sure thinking any Tuesday now they're just not going to show up, but we've persevered and they've grown accustomed to our faces and our personalities and, dare I say, our friendships.
We look forward to seeing them, great them warmly, talk about their weeks, share things about ours....the things you do when you have breakfast with friends. And then, as the bus was coming up the road, the kindergartner opened her arms wide, almost as if she didn't even realize she was doing it, and dove into my friend, my partner, for a hug. A hug. 34 weeks later and she gave her a hug and it made everything fall into place and make it alllllllll worth it.
Ahhhh, it's the little things, you know. :)
Notice the timely football napkins from Sunday's big game (we use what we have around our homes-ha). In the larger basket is egg & cheese sandwiches and mini muffins. We usually have some snack foods for them to pack in their backpacks, too. Schools have a designated snack time now, so kids need to bring snacks in addition to a lunch, unless they're buying a hot lunch or enrolled in a lunch program. And the carafe holds hot chocolate, in addition to having juice and water, too. I swear I won't always give you this much background. It's just to give you an idea of what's happening. ;)
The majority of the neighborhood is Spanish-speaking. My Spanish is growing by leaps & bounds since the summer, but it's still....how do you say....bad. The kids teach me words every week. Today's words were 'muchacho' and 'muchacha' Our friends always laugh a lot as I stumble my way through pronunciations. I sometimes go by the adage of what I don't know in actuality, I can make up for in volume. Amusement abounds.
Anyway, 34 weeks in and it happened. One of the little girls....one of the sweet, ridiculously cute little girls hugged one of our friends good-bye. This is HUGE! She has been coming and eating breakfast with us since September. She always comes with her older brother and older sister and mom or dad. They seemed to regard us suspiciously for the first few months, I'm sure thinking any Tuesday now they're just not going to show up, but we've persevered and they've grown accustomed to our faces and our personalities and, dare I say, our friendships.
We look forward to seeing them, great them warmly, talk about their weeks, share things about ours....the things you do when you have breakfast with friends. And then, as the bus was coming up the road, the kindergartner opened her arms wide, almost as if she didn't even realize she was doing it, and dove into my friend, my partner, for a hug. A hug. 34 weeks later and she gave her a hug and it made everything fall into place and make it alllllllll worth it.
Ahhhh, it's the little things, you know. :)
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Promise Packs
When bad things happen, you want to do something. I want to do something. Sometimes, I just don't know what to do. That's why I'm thankful for the brave and tender-hearted people at World Vision. They know this and understand this about people.
After the catastrophic earthquake hit Haiti, monetary resources were and are needed. World Vision needs this money in order to provide life-saving supplies and skills through their trained people to the people there. They also know that people, in addition to providing much needed money, might want a hands-on way to help people. That's where Promise Packs come in.
Promise Packs are backpacks filled with basic hygiene supplies and school supplies that are distributed to children who might not have a chance to have access to things like these without an organization like World Vision. And you, partnering with WV to assemble and provide them.
They're inviting churches and organizations right now to assemble Promise Packs for Haitian children. Because in situations like this, children are devastatingly affected and this is no exception. These are just one way that we can work together to keep children healthy.
Look into the website and see if you might be interested: Promise Packs
I want to do one of the Promise Pack events. In my mind, I'm imaging setting it up in the middle of our town on our "town green" and inviting people all across the community to come together and put together backpacks for kids they may never meet, but are now inextricably linked to through projects like this. Now, that I've dreamt it, let's try and make it happen, right? Right.
After the catastrophic earthquake hit Haiti, monetary resources were and are needed. World Vision needs this money in order to provide life-saving supplies and skills through their trained people to the people there. They also know that people, in addition to providing much needed money, might want a hands-on way to help people. That's where Promise Packs come in.
Promise Packs are backpacks filled with basic hygiene supplies and school supplies that are distributed to children who might not have a chance to have access to things like these without an organization like World Vision. And you, partnering with WV to assemble and provide them.
They're inviting churches and organizations right now to assemble Promise Packs for Haitian children. Because in situations like this, children are devastatingly affected and this is no exception. These are just one way that we can work together to keep children healthy.
Look into the website and see if you might be interested: Promise Packs
I want to do one of the Promise Pack events. In my mind, I'm imaging setting it up in the middle of our town on our "town green" and inviting people all across the community to come together and put together backpacks for kids they may never meet, but are now inextricably linked to through projects like this. Now, that I've dreamt it, let's try and make it happen, right? Right.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Write what you know.
That's the key to blogging, right? Write about what you know. Or what you're good at. Or what you're passionate about. I don't know. Maybe that's just the line, but it's worth a shot, you know.
So, I think as an experiment, I'm going to write about what I know as it relates to social justice, neighboring and being in the community. And it all comes down to one little city park. I need to give you a little background before I go on. But, trust me, you need it.
Here's the park:
A sweet enough little park, right? Well, two years ago in 2008, a pastor at Northeast Community Church and his wife were driving by this city park and were alarmed at how run down it seemed. (Don't let this picture deceive you. Smoke and mirrors and a well-timed and well-angled shot can make anything look better than it seems.) At the time there was graffiti and garbage all over the place. Kids were on the playground playing around it all.
On October 10th, with permission from the city departments, NECC hosted a portion of its annual 10.10 Day there. Partnering with a landscaping company, the park was, I guess you would say "spruced up." We also hosted a neighborhood kids' fun day there for a few hours in the afternoon. Basically, we rented a bounce house, got balloons, food, stickers and face painters and let them all work their magic. 80+ kids showed up and bounced and laughed and bounced some more and well, this is all to say that after that afternoon, nothing was the same for me.
I remember driving home with the husband that night and asking him why that neighborhood, filled with working families barely scraping by, if they were scraping by at all, could stand in such contrast to the insane amount of wealth that existed just miles away. And more than that, how no one seemed to notice. It was almost like an invisible little neighborhood. But from 10.10.08, it wasn't invisible to me anymore.
I wish I could say that from 10.11.08, I did something about the invisible neighborhood. I wish I could say that I made it a priority to go back and see the kids who just the day before had asked, "When are you coming back? Please come back." But I didn't. I did what I sometimes do best and let busyness overtake me and tried to push the now visible invisibles out of my head.
I couldn't though. Several months later, I was watching an interview on the founder of Comic: Relief and it just clicked. I didn't know what I was going to do beyond just going down and neighboring with people, meeting them, starting relationships, growing relationship, just being with people, but somehow it didn't matter. That seemed to be enough.
I talked to a friend and asked her to go down to the park with me and, thankfully enough, she didn't think I was crazy and she did. We went for several weeks just walking around, meeting people, talking, picking up the garbage in the park faithfully, but just being there. And it felt good.
We decided that since it was summertime and a lot of the kids in the neighborhood couldn't afford a camp experience, we would offer weekly directed art activities to any kid who wanted it. We did mural painting, pottery, mask creation, journal designing, anything we dreamt up. And, the kids came. They came every single Tuesday when we said we would be there. And then they came back the next week. And then the parents came. And before you knew it, we were there with new friends. New neighbors. Honest-to-goodness friends when just a few months before the neighborhood had been invisible to me just like it was to everyone else, it seemed.
Then, when school started, we adjusted things a little bit. We decided since the elementary-school aged kids wouldn't be able to come in the middle of the day, we would go when they were there. Namely, before they got on the bus.
This bus:
And we would bring food and drinks and whatever else we could and we would have breakfast with them (a lot of them not having the opportunity to have breakfast at home) before they got on the bus. But mainly, we would be spending time with our friends. And for one hour on Tuesday, they would know that someone was looking forward to seeing them. That it mattered to us when they weren't there. And you know what? That it mattered to them when we weren't there. Because that's what being friends is all about, right?
And since we didn't have an inside space (who needs one!), we would do it right there at that little park. The same little park that on 10.10.08 made me realize that a friend is just someone you haven't taken time to talk to yet.
So, my idea for this, in addition to blogging about what's happening with other organizations, what's in store for our very own 10.10 Project and our 10.10 Community Day, I'm going to blog about what I know. And what I know every Tuesday morning is that I don't want to be anywhere else but having breakfast at one little--no longer invisible -- city park.
So, a year in the life of a city park. As seen through our eyes every Tuesday morning (but I won't blog it until Tuesday afternoon or maybe even Wednesday). They're stories that are worth telling. I hope you'll listen.
So, I think as an experiment, I'm going to write about what I know as it relates to social justice, neighboring and being in the community. And it all comes down to one little city park. I need to give you a little background before I go on. But, trust me, you need it.
Here's the park:
A sweet enough little park, right? Well, two years ago in 2008, a pastor at Northeast Community Church and his wife were driving by this city park and were alarmed at how run down it seemed. (Don't let this picture deceive you. Smoke and mirrors and a well-timed and well-angled shot can make anything look better than it seems.) At the time there was graffiti and garbage all over the place. Kids were on the playground playing around it all.
On October 10th, with permission from the city departments, NECC hosted a portion of its annual 10.10 Day there. Partnering with a landscaping company, the park was, I guess you would say "spruced up." We also hosted a neighborhood kids' fun day there for a few hours in the afternoon. Basically, we rented a bounce house, got balloons, food, stickers and face painters and let them all work their magic. 80+ kids showed up and bounced and laughed and bounced some more and well, this is all to say that after that afternoon, nothing was the same for me.
I remember driving home with the husband that night and asking him why that neighborhood, filled with working families barely scraping by, if they were scraping by at all, could stand in such contrast to the insane amount of wealth that existed just miles away. And more than that, how no one seemed to notice. It was almost like an invisible little neighborhood. But from 10.10.08, it wasn't invisible to me anymore.
I wish I could say that from 10.11.08, I did something about the invisible neighborhood. I wish I could say that I made it a priority to go back and see the kids who just the day before had asked, "When are you coming back? Please come back." But I didn't. I did what I sometimes do best and let busyness overtake me and tried to push the now visible invisibles out of my head.
I couldn't though. Several months later, I was watching an interview on the founder of Comic: Relief and it just clicked. I didn't know what I was going to do beyond just going down and neighboring with people, meeting them, starting relationships, growing relationship, just being with people, but somehow it didn't matter. That seemed to be enough.
I talked to a friend and asked her to go down to the park with me and, thankfully enough, she didn't think I was crazy and she did. We went for several weeks just walking around, meeting people, talking, picking up the garbage in the park faithfully, but just being there. And it felt good.
We decided that since it was summertime and a lot of the kids in the neighborhood couldn't afford a camp experience, we would offer weekly directed art activities to any kid who wanted it. We did mural painting, pottery, mask creation, journal designing, anything we dreamt up. And, the kids came. They came every single Tuesday when we said we would be there. And then they came back the next week. And then the parents came. And before you knew it, we were there with new friends. New neighbors. Honest-to-goodness friends when just a few months before the neighborhood had been invisible to me just like it was to everyone else, it seemed.
Then, when school started, we adjusted things a little bit. We decided since the elementary-school aged kids wouldn't be able to come in the middle of the day, we would go when they were there. Namely, before they got on the bus.
This bus:
And we would bring food and drinks and whatever else we could and we would have breakfast with them (a lot of them not having the opportunity to have breakfast at home) before they got on the bus. But mainly, we would be spending time with our friends. And for one hour on Tuesday, they would know that someone was looking forward to seeing them. That it mattered to us when they weren't there. And you know what? That it mattered to them when we weren't there. Because that's what being friends is all about, right?
And since we didn't have an inside space (who needs one!), we would do it right there at that little park. The same little park that on 10.10.08 made me realize that a friend is just someone you haven't taken time to talk to yet.
So, my idea for this, in addition to blogging about what's happening with other organizations, what's in store for our very own 10.10 Project and our 10.10 Community Day, I'm going to blog about what I know. And what I know every Tuesday morning is that I don't want to be anywhere else but having breakfast at one little--no longer invisible -- city park.
So, a year in the life of a city park. As seen through our eyes every Tuesday morning (but I won't blog it until Tuesday afternoon or maybe even Wednesday). They're stories that are worth telling. I hope you'll listen.
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