I am sitting in a downtown Portland Starbucks that lives right across from our hotel. I have been waiting for this moment for a few days now...It is just the computer, my suffocating soul, and my voracious eyes...thank you God for breathing space...I couldn't stomach one more second of claustrophobic togetherness...I guess this is the first time I have "run away from home" since we departed, and it feels so good.
I have been spending the last five or so years learning "how to live in community." I am such a "good student" that once I learn a new tidbit, I spend a significant amount of time showing off my "new trick" until I change schools and learn a new one. I have been in school, training for the Christian bubble since 2001, the bubble that I hated so much that I ran away from and found myself, a decade later, resentfully returning to as the prodigal product, back to share the testimony that I so desperately desired as a sheltered child confined to the dirt and weed-polluted playground of West Texas. Now that I am back and "redeemed", I find myself taking the journey that really tempted my heart, nibbling the authentic wild side, jumping in a car, not having to answer to anybody except God and my traveling companions, running away to God knows where (truly), and having the freedom to stop, pull over, and dig my toes in the unknown beach and be the five year old I always dreamed of being...
Originally, the schedule did not have us here on a Sunday, but plans started changing as plans always do, and we extended our CA stay a little longer to land in Portland specifically so we could attend a church we all read about in a book. It was what I needed...great music that I knew and could sing as Renee said "from my gut", a familiar, casual feeling of being in "a church for everyone", and a message about being childlike in our approach to the Kingdom of God. The adult-in-charge invited the kids on stage to model for all of the "stuck" adults in the audience what it literally means to be childlike. He handed out $21 worth of cherries and had the kids take one and eat it. One of them mentioned that his was sour. The adult then asked one of those big theological, dissertation-worthy questions like, "What is the Kingdom of God," and after the explanation of what Jesus said about the necessity of a seed going into the ground and dying so that it can grow and produce fruit, he then asked the children to define the seed, asking what the hard part of the seed was in people's lives that needed to be broken away and die so that someone could grow. They had great answers like Satan, sin, killing, hate, evil, war, disobeying, saying bad words, stealing. Then he said that when the outside of the seed dies, the inside of the seed beings to grow roots, flowers, and then produces fruit. He asked them what the fruit might be. Again, answered without any hesitation as children are genius at doing, love, faith, joy, happiness. Then the adult-in-charge noticed that the list was somewhere in their eyeshot. After the "right" answers were removed, the following responses came: hope, peace, flowers, courage "so you can't be afraid of stuff." The adult said that Jesus said that unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it will never reproduce itself. He then connected the dots by explaining that Jesus had to die on a cross, be buried in the ground, so that He could come up out of the ground and be what He was supposed to be, and so that He could reproduce Himself and grow up inside of us. Wow, what an illustration. A whole cantaloupe was shown, and the kids were challenged with the thought of how hard it would be to stuff a whole fruit into a tiny seed. The adult likened it to a miracle; one of the children said, "it's like a magic trick God can do." The kids said a lot of other brilliant things, as kids are known to do, but the most beautiful thing was to watch them get a chance to do what they do best: create. They had creation stations set up on stage, and as the congregation sang (one of the praise team members looked to be all of eight), the children made master-pieces out of clay, paper, paint, brushes, and other crafty materials, while some of the other children served communion. What a holy experience, being led into worship by a child.
As I gaze out of the Starbucks fishbowl, I witness a homeless man put down his bag of recycled plastic bottles and throw away an abandoned McDonald's cup left on the bench that he now resides on...a man just a few feet away from me, separated by glass and my choice to spend pennies on a soymilk latte and air-conditioned blogging and his choice to invest his change in tobacco that he uses to hand roll cigarettes and shares with the man that just plopped down behind him.
This morning the adult-in-charge challenged us to look outside of our comfily-confined definitions and look around us, outside of us, to find the true meaning of the Kingdom of God. I went to church, hoping to catch a glimpse of that author of the book that brought us to Portland, but instead caught an enthusiastic hug and an invitation to an overnight stay and homemade spaghetti dinner in Indianapolis, a new friendship birthed out of another divine appointment.
I watch the man on the bench sift through his bag of treasures, get up, adjust the back of his baggy jeans, and with a jacket slung over his shoulders, walk away...a conversation I regret not having, or maybe we did, leaving me lonely...
Adult graduates of a school nearby pass along the sidewalk in full regalia, reminding me of my current enrollment in the summer school of travel and my gratitude for a day of rest.
Thanks for listening to my innermost thoughts and ramblings...I appreciate being able to share all of this with you...
