To-day, we marvel at the wonder of the overcast day. Blankets of grey clouds fill the sky and through them rains down soft, beautiful, and perfect light. Thank you dear Sun for hiding your face and until Spring, let it remain anathema.
To-day, we also marvel at the wonder of the India Blend at Prince St Cafe, the barely 2 year old coffee shop on the the corner of Prince and King Streets, across from the Opera House and parallel to the Market House. While we've definitely had better coffee in the past (as long ago as 2004 that made its way from State College to Philadelphia while inducing sleepless nights and heart arrhythmias) it is the best the small (but strong) city has to offer. When India is on tap, you know you are Home.
Home is a funny thing (and by the way, I/we think I/we use the word funny all too glibly, but I/we will continue to do so until reprimanded by someone of higher authority). Just under two years ago, Pittsburgh was about to become our home and in the early part of this year, Richmond, Virginia was supposedly the very same. Pittsburgh tried to spit us out with its uncommonly warm March and subsequently snowy April (Who wants to watch a Pirates game in sub-30 temps? And to be honest, who wants to watch a Pirates game all?), but by Steelers' Season, the city had etched itself on our hearts and it's six-month winter (Halloween through Tax Day) was shortly seen as endearing rather than brutal; the drunk Uncle you can't help but hug, even as he cusses you out and spills beer and cigarette ash on you. Richmond posited a different set of problems - primarily a lack of consistent income and a rare and diffcult to treat neuralgia - home was a word it never wanted to attach to us; not to mention the coffee was far below mediocre.
And now, almost two years to the day (12.8.06) and after thousands of miles on the Eisenhower Interstate System we are Home, sitting gently, with jittery-coffee-hands, in the very same coffee shop where the decision to leave was made.
So we grew up in cultural-Christianity, where church was somewhere you went, not something you were. Where information preceded belief and ultimately behaviour. Where alcohol and tobacco were not used in gentle moderation not because the Bible said so, but because the church covenant deemed them immoralities that would damn you to The Pit. Where dresses were demanded of the women and missing mid-week service for a Little League game was the unpardonable sin. Where community was a thing based on likeness, not diversity united by Christ and everyone kept up their facade because, apparently, Sanctification, like Justification was once and done; cracks were not permitted here because we're no longer broken people. And that's why we don't listen to
Fear of eternal Hell cannot produce true saints, and we lived in that misguided preconception up until age twenty-six. Jesus was our get-out-of-Hell-free-card and we used him for what he could give us, rather than love him for who he was. This smacks of as much idolatry as the false gospels that have other names attached to them (ie: prosperity) for it forces us to love things rather than Christ and use him to get to our very own ends. Living in the blood-soaked atonement changes us and we will never be the same.
We had seven hundred dollars in our pocket and nothing more. Rent was due on 95 South 22nd Street in just four weeks and that was more than half of our available funds. Saving one dollar on Brillo Pads at Giant Eagle was something to be jazzed about; so was keeping the gas bill under eighty and electric under forty. Internet was free if the wind blew just right, especially at night. There was no Farmer's Market or coffee-shop of our liking but this was the price to pay to flip a city on its head we arrogantly and naively thought. We thought this was our purpose here, but time revealed that it was only Training for Utopia.
Humility was Session One and its Lecture is far from over.
"In Him, we live and move and have our being" says the great Apostle. The Body, to function properly, needs to function with the thickness of blood. Anemia will not do. Thick authenticity comes only with superior sacrifice. Our propensity to go wide but not deep shelters us from the penetrating cuts that will bind us to-gether more tightly; that will weave into us the spirit of Shalom and healing. When we go brother-to-brother and sister-to-sister emptying our souls to and for them in prayer, the blanket is woven with chains. When people matter more than possessions or power the Body scabs its wounds and another step toward Shalom has been taken.
Seven days short of two years later and we're only crawling.
