Last week, for the first time in my life, I gave a homeless man a dollar and felt no suspicion or uncertainty. After breakfast, one of the regular attendees asked me for money so that he could catch a bus to Pantops in order to arrive at his doctor’s appointment on time. Without a second thought, the dollar was out of my wallet and into his hand. However, this response was much more profound as I reflected upon it.

Before I continue, I believe that I should explain one of the reasons that I chose the Haven as my site for this internship. For three years at UVA, my daily routine would take me past the Corner, through the labyrinth of off-grounds houses and to my own house. Similarly, for three years, I was confronted by numerous people asking for money underneath the train bridge on 14th and on the pathway outside of the CVS. And for three years, my conscience was continually bombarded by the convictions of my religious tradition grappling with my own rational self-interest. How could I in good conscience give money to someone I didn’t know, with no way of knowing how they would spend it? How could I negotiate a religious doctrine that advocates for a reckless defense and aid of the poor with its command to be as “wise as serpents?” Where does “blessed are the poor” meet the wisdom given by God who “gives generously to all without finding fault?” (James 1:5). Within the boundaries of developing a theology of hospitality, one of my goals for the summer was to shed light upon this quandary and apparent paradox.

In the past weeks, I have seen hope manifest itself in the midst of deeply rooted social problems, experienced the depths of loneliness and isolation, had my comfort bubble burst and noticed that God moves in the innocuous and mundane to lead to radical transformation. If only I had noticed all of that during my conversation at the Haven with the man in need of a bus pass.

Reflecting on the encounter after the fact, I found help from Nouwen and Loring in understanding my interactions with this man. Nouwen would have characterized the second movement of the spiritual life in me: the move from hostility to hospitality. In this interpretation, we as humans fail to empathize with those around us and are inherently suspicious. Driven by our loneliness and inability to respond to our inner questions in a satisfactory way, we no longer see the problems and struggles of others as similar to our own. Our deficiencies in our own lives bleed into our interactions with the strangers we meet. “In general we do not expect much from strangers” (Nouwen, 68) and when we do, it’s often expecting the worst from them. Loring can be seen as an alternative to this suspicion. His openness to those who are homeless centers around the idea that we cannot try to impose our own desires and expectations on strangers. We often fall into this trap of “heroism,” a term used by Ekblad, assuming that we know what is best for those on the margins. Loring’s solution is to simply ask that person, “How can I be helpful?” Similarly to Nouwen, Loring’s approach calls us to open ourselves to receiving the homeless person as a guest and fellow human rather than a suspicious criminal attempting to steal what is ours. Our transition from hostility to hospitality is thus fulfilled by denying heroism and merely being available to those around us.

However, none of this theological reflection does any good if it cannot be applied back to the original encounter with the man looking for a bus ticket. Can Nouwen, Loring and Ekblad truly be incorporated into the context of the Haven? As previously stated, this introspective look at the influences playing upon me in that moment helps to explain my actions. In that instant, the man was coming to me as someone in need of money for the bus, answering Loring’s question “How can I be helpful?” Similarly, meeting that need reflected hospitality devoid of suspicion and hostility.   However, the practical application of these two theologies only set the stage for the God who takes the mundane and makes it miraculous. After I responded with hospitality (Nouwen) and met a particular need (Loring), the man began to tell me about where he was going, why he needed the money, and how the doctors he was going to see had helped him in the past. The one dollar became the price for seeing into this man’s soul. As I listened to his passions, fears, hopes, and outlook on the world around him, we began to bond. I believe that God used that dollar to humanize this man beyond my own suspicions. God took the theological work of Loring and Nouwen, blended it with my personal experience and doctrinal truth, and the result was a genuine, intimate moment in a seemingly innocuous conversation.

Our response to folks who are homeless should go much deeper than if we feel bad putting a dollar in a pan-handler’s cup. Rather, it should look at the relationships that can be built with those asking for the dollar. For some, being “helpful” is putting a dollar in their cup even if we are absolutely certain that the dollar is spent on what we deem unacceptable. Wisdom should come in prudently analyzing situations in which new, affirming relationships can be created and maintained. In those moments, instead of letting our suspicions and self-interest run wild, what if we looked for God in the innocuous? In the place of scrutiny, we could cultivate a desire for empathy and support, affirming the humanity of those on the margins and working alongside them to break the chains of addiction, mental illness, hopelessness, and isolation. Instead of analyzing others to determine if they are destitute enough for our help, we could direct our wisdom toward affirming the humanity of someone else who may feel completely cast aside. How different would our interactions with homeless people look if we attempted to see God in the dollar bill and pursued the opportunities that he gives to build relationships and show others that they have worth?

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The girls love pizza night at Bible study. Gifted with a perfectly round ball of freshly made pizza dough set atop a crisp piece of parchment paper, each girl transforms into a master chef for the evening. Each step of the process allows them to make choices about the outcome of their raw materials that stretch their creative and culinary limits. Some girls choose to pound out their dough as thinly as possible, anticipating a thin, crispy crust, while others roll some cheese right into the dough with hopes of a gooey, decadent cheesy crust. They get to then choose how much sauce to smatter on their canvas, and how much cheese to sprinkle on top. The star of the show, of course, is the array of toppings: freshly cut tomatoes and bell peppers, backyard-grown basil, juicy black olives, crumbled sausage, classic pineapple and ham, and the crowd favorite, pepperoni. To many of the girls, the options laid out before them seemed overwhelming, and they chose not to stray too far from the safety of cheese and pepperoni, while others threw on everything but the kitchen sink (or in this case, the black olives–apparently not a topping of choice when you’re 12 and 13 years old). Then we retreated to the living room to hunker down for the long 10-minute wait.

I think we all act a little bit like this when faced with choices: either remain in the safety of what you know and love, or hastily pick whatever seems appealing at the moment, which appears to be working until you end up with a bite of banana pepper and pineapple in your mouth and you instantly regret every impulsive decision that led to this moment. When we make decisions, those as inconsequential as pizza toppings as well as the big ones that can change the whole course of our lives, we face a whole host of competing interests and influences. One of the factors that contributes to the way one individual person processes choices is the environment in which he or she grew up.

By pointing out the importance of context in personal development and decision-making, I realize I run the risk of proposing some sort of deterministic view of the world in which people are strictly bound by their environments. I tend to reject this line of thinking, as it boxes people into pre-determined life trajectories that fail to account for the possibility of personal agency, and most importantly, divine power, to break through barriers, perceived or real. I also don’t think it’s very helpful to completely ignore specific contextual limitations in favor of looking only at individual agency. What I see when I look at these young men and women, not just when they are choosing pizza toppings, but when they are grappling with decisions relating to school, work, family, and personal goals, is a mixture of finitude, fear, and freedom to which I can relate in some ways, and in some ways have no context for understanding.

Take, for instance, one of the recently graduated seniors in our ministry who has dreams of going to college but also has responsibility of her nephew and needs to find a job to help support her and her family. As she works through figuring out what her future holds, she faces both her natural finitude as a human, and the specific limits that her situation places on her. She faces the fear of what any wrong step could mean for her and her family and the fear that she might not be able to achieve her dreams.

If this were the end of the story, many people reading this wouldn’t be surprised, as it fits into the common narrative of “under-privileged” youth who are blocked from success because of their circumstances. Bigger Thomas, the protagonist in Native Son, fulfills this role in a more dramatic manner, showcasing the fatal effects of the toxic environment created in the racially and socioeconomically segregated ghettos of this country. Grow up in the inner city and you’re doomed to stay there, with the only means of escape being prison or death. Or so the narrative goes.

What I’ve seen as one of the foundational pieces of Rebirth’s heart is the desire to flip the script on that story. For the young woman I mentioned, the work of God through Rebirth has introduced another element into her decision-making process: freedom. In a spiritual and ontological sense, she, as a follower of Christ, has gained freedom from the power of sin and death and freedom to follow God wherever he may lead. In another sense, she has gained the freedom, through the support and resources available to her through her community and Rebirth, to pursue the kind of education she wants and to find a job that allows her dignity and financial stability. What my night as a pizza artist taught me was that when we use the Kingdom of God as our context, we are all working with the same raw materials, the same human finitude, and the same fears of the future. What I saw as we all stood around the same table making pizzas and encouraging each other to try the olive or to go for the extra sprinkle of cheese was the beauty and power of community to help push each one of us towards the freedom for which we were all created.

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As my time at the Haven progresses, I find myself becoming accustomed to the daily tasks required to make the day shelter run. Especially in the kitchen, I often feel like there is a certain rhythm that characterizes the hours leading up to and during the preparation and serving of the meal. Akin to the motion of the waves, a circular pattern of preparation and clean-up has emerged that is only strengthened by the ebb and flow of the guests filtering through the breakfast line from 8:00-9:00 AM. This timing is a credit to those who run the kitchen and the countless volunteers who frequently give their time to learn the rhythm of the kitchen, making sure that breakfast runs smoothly. I too have felt swept up by this perpetual, almost musical tide of the Haven’s routine. I know that the coffee mugs must be placed, the fruit salad must be cut, eggs must be fried and served, and all the dishes must be washed and sanitized and that it will all start again tomorrow. This organization is what makes the Haven work. It makes sense in my head. It is, dare I say, comfortable?

The last thing that I would ever want is to detract from the routine. It is both logical and rational and allows the Haven to run efficiently both in terms of providing for immediate needs and balancing its budget. This organization is essential and any shelter could not succeed without this forethought and planning. This order is wonderful and fits seamlessly into my comfort zone and personality. At the same time, that’s the problem. I entered into this internship to step outside of my realm of comfortability because I believe that that is where God is found. If reading Loring, Nouwen, Day, and Ekblad have taught me anything, it is that working with the poor and oppressed is an adventure. It has intense moments of jubilation and theological breakthrough coupled with heartbreak and mourning, but it is only possible if we step out of what we deem is acceptable. We are entering into the lives of those on the margins with humility and respect, weakness and trembling, hoping to glimpse God’s Kingdom in the here and now. We open ourselves to be vulnerable and empathize with those that God created. But how can this be done when the novelty of our circumstances wears off? How can I interact with homeless folks when the routine I have created for myself creates two distinct social spaces; the work of the kitchen where I am secure and the true lives and stories of those being served? I, at times, perform my work, “serve” those who are in need, and then leave with nothing to think or write about. Within my security bubble behind the serving counter, no true theological reflection occurs. My bubble needed to be burst, and Lee helped that to happen.

Lee is one of the homeless men that frequently comes to the shelter for breakfast. He has done so for years and has also become accustomed to the receiving end of the Haven’s routine. The novelty for Lee wore off long ago. Last week, he showed me that the bubble of security that I unconsciously put up would and could not stand. After breakfast, Lee asked to come help me with the dishes. While this was a task that I usually performed alone as another fixed part of my routine, I was eager to have extra help, and we began to clean. Clunky and awkward to start, we soon developed our own rhythm. We were no longer two people on opposite sides of a counter living in different worlds, but rather two people working together. As previously explored by the likes of Peter Maupin, Clarence Jordan, Dorothy Day and countless others, the communal aspects of working for a common goal became evident quickly. Lee and me: talking, washing, and building community through work. It was a small moment, but profound. Maybe that is what hospitality fosters at the Haven. An opportunity for me to enter into a new situation, become lulled into a comfort zone and then humbled. A chance for God to crash into my bubble and dare me to step out to where Lee was–and where God was. Similarly, hospitality at the Haven gave Lee a place where he was treated with dignity and respect so much that he had the confidence to burst my comfort bubble with no fear of judgment. Meeting his immediate needs led to an outpouring of generosity and an opening for God to teach me incredible things through his actions. Perhaps God uses a theology of hospitality to dignify the margins, use the unprivileged to humble and teach the privileged, and to build community and friendship in the place of and across perceived social, racial and economic barriers. Bob Ekblad in his time having Bible studies in prisons said, “In my years visiting people here in the jail I have learned more from inmates than I ever learned in seminary” (Ekblad, 23) and I’m beginning to see where he’s coming from.

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Nestled into my large leather chair in a smoke-filled room, I let the strands of scripture spin around in my mind. The daily rhythm of my internship takes a slight shift this week and next as I join the interns at my church in a course on ministry to the poor taught by Rebirth’s very own Mo. A man of many talents and a work ethic like no other, Mo not only runs the ministry I get to be a part of this summer, he also owns his own cigar shop-slash-ministry outpost, aptly named Holy Smokes. In many ways, the shop is more filled with the presence of God than many churches I’ve been in in my life. As I sit with the four other students in a circle of large leather recliners usually occupied by middle-aged men smoking cigars, various people walk in and Mo tells them all to pull up a chair and join the study. Inviting people in to be a part of how he’s pursuing the mission of God in the world is what Mo does best.

What Mo also does really well is tie together strands of truths from many different disciplines to form a coherent vision for how and why caring for the poor and hurting matters. In this course, we’ve covered a sociological understanding of the social construction of reality and how that affects any kind of cross cultural interaction; we’ve read Native Son and seen how literature can paint a vivid picture of black life and how the bullets of discrimination, racism, and hatred come flying at black Americans from every direction each and every day; we’ll talk through some of the history of racism by looking at Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail; and where my formal education has been most lacking, we’ve delved into what the Bible has to say about poverty, racism, and where the Church fits into a world bursting at the seams with those two evils.

The structure of this course, just eight three-hour sessions, means that this information is coming at us like less like the cool mist of a sprinkler and more like the blast of a fire hydrant. At this point, I think my mind is still trying to soak in the wisdom from day one, and we’ve already finished day four. In another context, this influx of information would overwhelm me, as the normal pace that UVA has trained me to keep of consuming and digesting course content and then synthesizing and interpreting it to produce something of my own would send me into overdrive. But for Mo, the goal is not perfect retention and hasty production. Just like smoking a cigar (which Mo does just about any time, anywhere), the process should be slow, meditative, and enjoyable. For us, that means asking us to engage in a careful five-step process as we encounter this information: first comes exhortation, which is Mo’s role as the instructor; next, we deliberate, or wrestle, with the difficult topics we’re dealing with; thirdly, we internalize, or let those pieces of wisdom that we, through deliberation with the Holy Spirit, have deemed as truths sink into our hearts and minds; next, we look to see where God wants to specifically activate us within his work in the world; and lastly, we mobilize other people to come alongside and co-labor together.

Throughout the week I found myself mostly in the first three stages, trying to wade through the floodwaters of history, sociology, literature, and theology in my brain, with a few secretive forays into the fourth and fifth stages as my proclivity to plan and to do made it hard to resist peeking into the possibilities of what’s next. My struggle to keep myself from always considering the future is even greater now as I move into my final year of college. In many ways, I have looked at this internship, and the content of this two-week course within it, as resources in my process of discerning what direction I should take in the many upcoming decisions. For the most part, my process has been focused on me: my thoughts, my interpretations, and my future. God didn’t let it stay that way for too long.

The horrifying incidents of this week—the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and the attack on police in Dallas—ripped my blinders off and reminded me that what I’m studying in this class, and what I’m doing in my internship, matters. And not just in a few months when I have to choose a thesis topic, and not just in the next year as I’m looking for jobs, but right here, right now. They should not just matter to me because they might pertain to my career path, but because they have to do with real human lives, those who have lost theirs and those that are irrevocably changed because of this week. If I thought I was overwhelmed at the beginning of the week with the high density of information in the class, I was utterly unprepared for how the knowledge of the shootings would hit me. No amount of steps would be able to get me to a place of understanding. No beautifully thought-out process could bring order to the chaos in my mind. As more tragic news kept rolling in like dark, billowing storm clouds, the only word that seemed adequate was maranatha, Aramaic for “Lord Jesus come.” I cannot fix the systematic injustice and the hate and the violence. I cannot stop the fear of “the other” from taking precedence in high-pressure situations and leading to tragic outcomes. I cannot change the fact that I am white and safe, and so many people are black and in danger. I cannot protect the young men and women I drive to and from Bible study every week from the physical and psychological dangers of their world. But I can, and I will, love deeply and pray constantly. I will say until my lungs give out: Maranatha, maranatha, maranatha. If it hasn’t already, I pray this cry will animate every encounter I have in the context of the internship this summer, and that it will work its way into every act of justice or mercy that I am ever able to be a part of. I pray for the passion of this cry to sustain me as I go to Bible studies, plan summer camps, and soak in the truth about God’s heart for the poor and oppressed from my comfy cigar shop chair.

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Throughout this week’s reading of Henri Nouwen’s Reaching Out, I was exposed to a markedly different style of writing than the memoir-like recounting of Ed Loring and the Open Door Community. Appearing much more pragmatic than Loring, Nouwen systematically spells out his “three movements of the spiritual life” illustrating the balance between “the poles of loneliness and solitude, hostility and hospitality, illusion and prayer” (Nouwen, 19). At the same time, Nouwen remains general enough to allow the reader to introduce their own circumstances, ideas and situations into the framework that he illustrates. Nouwen personifies his belief that “hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adopt the lifestyle of the host, but the gift of the chance for the guest to find his own” (Nouwen, 72). Similarly, true hospitality is one in which confrontation occurs as others see “our own life choices, attitudes, and viewpoints…that challenge strangers to become aware of their own position and to explore it critically” (Nouwen, 99). In essence, Reaching Out as a work is attempting to apply the same hospitality in its pages that Nouwen describes. He proposes the framework for how he understands and categorizes the stages of spiritual movement without restricting the reader. This work confronts the reader with a certain viewpoint on Christian spirituality and presses no further only creating space for the reader to think. It only hopes to instigate self-reflection and critical thought giving the reader a chance to formulate their own responses.

Using Nouwen’s definition and presentation of hospitality, it is only appropriate that I examine my current situation with a blending of his thoughts and my own. If that is the purpose of his writing, then this synthesis is the correct response after reading and reflecting upon his interpretation of the world around him. By applying these three movements with my experiences at the Haven and within my own heart and mind, a new and unique amalgamation could emerge.

First, the movement from isolation to solitude. In Reaching Out, “loneliness is one of the most universal sources of human suffering today” (Nouwen, 25). Stemming from this acute sense of loneliness is a desire to avoid it and distract ourselves from it. We attempt to rectify this deep loneliness by relationships with other people but soon find that “there is no one who cares and offers love without conditions, and no place where we can be vulnerable without being used” (Nouwen, 26). Searching for an end to this isolation, we attempt to quell our restless hearts in a number of ways. For me, I believe that my time at the Haven could threaten to devolve into something like this: trying to find purpose in helping homeless folks or busying myself to a point where I no longer think of “not belonging” (33) because I preoccupy myself. My need for community and unity becoming intertwined with my actions at this organization. Attempting to block out the nagging, “irking loneliness” (36) and quieting the thoughts in my head with “good deeds.”  Nouwen warns against such motivations claiming that “no friend or lover, no husband or wife, no community or commune will be able to put to rest our deepest cravings for unity and wholeness” (30). If wholeness cannot be found in my work at the Haven, then where is it located?

Second, the movement from hostility to hospitality. The world around us “seems to be increasingly full of fearful, aggressive people anxiously clinging to their property and inclined to look at their surrounding world with suspicion” (66). When loneliness and strife prevail, “our own need to still our inner cravings of loneliness makes us cling to others instead of creating space for them” (101). Spurred on by our excessive loneliness and inability to find solitude in open-ended questions, we suffocate others in an attempt to reduce our thoughts. Our relationships become nothing more than one-sided interactions in which we use one another, wringing out every last drop of comfort for our own gain. I also see potential for this in my time with the Haven: a time when my motivations for volunteering could be solely based on feeling better about myself. In the same way, working with the homeless pats my own ego and stops me from interacting in compassion, love and empathy. If hospitality cannot be achieved because of loneliness, then where is there hope?

Third, the movement from illusion to prayer. For Nouwen, this is the movement by which all the others fall into place. The truth is that “we need the willingness and courage to reach out beyond the limitations of our fragile and finite existence toward our loving God in whom all life is anchored” (113). It requires a faith and strength that can only be found in prayer which “is God’s breathing in us, by which we become part of the intimacy of God’s inner life, and by which we are born anew” (125). It is in this reality that we can know that God is “beyond our heart and mind” (126) while at the same time being as close to us as possible. In our striving for fulfillment, we use our preoccupations to stymie our lonely thoughts when the only true source of solitude is found in the mystery of an incomprehensibly big God. Divine intimacy and purpose is only grounded in shedding the “illusion that we know what life is all about, that we rule it and determine its values” (131). Control is placed in the hands of God, and it is only in this moment that my heart can be satisfied, isolation can be invaded by solitude, and hostility is trumped by compassion and hospitality. If my time at the Haven stems from this transition from illusion to prayer, then it will not be about boosting my ego or suppressing my longing, but rather an honest desire to create space for others.

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As a college student who spends eight months of the year roughly 700 miles away from home, I treasure summer mainly for the opportunity it allows me to spend an extended period of time in my beloved home of Jacksonville, Florida. For me, home is a place of comfort, rest, and security. Home contains sweet memories of the past and an assurance of security and stability in the future. Home is my anchor in the world. Besides my three years at UVA, I have lived all of my (almost) 21 years in Jacksonville, and 18 of those in the same house. To say that I have strong ties to this place is an understatement. So when the opportunity to spend another summer at home, this time working with an urban youth ministry, arose, I excitedly signed on to work with a group of inner-city kids I hadn’t even met yet, not really knowing what to expect but hopefully anticipating the adventures ahead. The internship through Project on Lived Theology checked all the boxes of an appealing summer gig: hanging out with kids, learning about urban ministry first hand, reading cool stuff with an awesome professor, and spending the summer at home with my family.

As excited as I was (and still am) to be home, I suspected the emotional, familial, and material comfort and safety provided by my home would create some tensions throughout the summer. The most obvious manifestations of the inevitable dissonance were geographic and material. The riverfront, all white, gated neighborhood in which I grew up and which I still call home is one of the many vestiges of the segregation that created and still undergirds most cities in the South to this day. Jacksonville is no exception. A city with a painful racial past, Jacksonville has yet to come to terms with what it looks like to reconcile long-standing racial, economic, and social differences. The people who benefit most from these differences, and thus those who stand to lose the most if things change, are the well-to-do white residents of Jacksonville who I have always called my neighbors, classmates, and friends, not to mention myself. This aspect of being home has not changed, but what has is my perspective on it. Instead of not having to think twice about the normalcy of my context, I now cannot drive through the gates to my yacht club home without the nagging pinprick reminders of the profound inequality represented by every aspect of where I come from.

The assurance of my physical comfort and safety acts as a buffer not only from the material inconveniences of the world, but the emotional and psychological ones as well. This safety has also become a source of discomfort throughout the past few weeks. As I finished up a particularly disheartening reading one evening, I really needed to clear my head. And so I did what I often do when I need to relieve stress: I went for a run. The sun had already set, so it was fairly dark, but I gave no thought to the time because my neighborhood poses no threat to my safety. It wasn’t until about halfway into my jog that I experienced the discomfort of the irony: even if I tried to jump the intellectual, emotional, and material hurdles necessary to identify myself with the poor and marginalized in this society, it is still all too easy for me to escape. That night, my escape was being able to go on a run without fear for my safety. My escape was being able to think about the parts of my life other than the internship in urban ministry that, realistically, only takes up a small portion of my daily existence at this point. My escape was, and will continue to be, my identity as an educated, white female. I do not want to hide behind fancy rhetoric about my white privilege that makes me sound more self-aware than I really am, but I do think identifying the ways that my identity provides me power and advantage is important. Acknowledging the implications of my place in society is a key step in the process of engaging in ministry with people whose experiences have been marred by the very structures that afford me these advantages.

So how do I acknowledge my safety and security, my privilege and power, in a way that respects the differences in experience between the kids I’m working with and myself, while not erecting an unnecessary barrier? That I still don’t know. I do not know how to react when the girls I’m driving home insist that we go to my house for a sleepover, knowing that they may not have ever been to my side of town before and unsure of what they will think of me when they see where I come from. I do not know how to handle the uncomfortable dissonance of doing my readings in my comfy bed or on my shaded porch, able to put down the horrifyingly unjust world that Pecola from The Bluest Eye inhabits and go for a walk by the river, or eat dinner with my family, or go for a swim.

I still love being home, and wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, but I’m realizing that the comfort I’ve always been able to wrap myself in is the cause of the most discomfort I will experience this summer. At this point, I think that the best way I know how to move forward is to move into the discomfort, not away from it. When differences arise, I know I need to investigate those with humility and grace, asking more questions rather than trying to provide answers. I want to listen to stories and soak in their meaning, like dry Florida grass soaking up the afternoon rain. I want to build relationships based not on outward similarities, but on the “common longing for supportive connections with others [that] reflects a spiritual aspect of our humanity” (Traci C. West, Disruptive Christian Ethics, 62). I’m here to listen, to learn, and to love past the discomfort and the self-consciousness. Tension means stretching, stretching means growing, and growing means living, the way we were designed to live.

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In my first week at the Haven on Market Street in downtown Charlottesville while we prepared breakfast, one of the volunteers asked the kitchen supervisor if she should cut up the small tomatoes for the daily pan of cooked vegetables served at breakfast. The response was a resounding “Yes! Always cut the tomatoes.” It was a seemingly innocuous exchange between volunteer and manager, but the explanation was more profound. “I don’t know! A cut tomato shows a little bit more preparation and care than tossing them into the pan uncut.” The significance of such a statement was lost on me until I began to read through Ed Loring’s encounters with the homeless recounted in I Hear Hope Banging at My Back Door.

Throughout the Open Door Community, a Christian residential community in downtown Atlanta, hope radiates in all the dark and unseen corners of homelessness. Ed Loring, the community’s director, can be disgusted by “The Hell of Homelessness” (Loring, 20) which is devoid of comfort, a necessity that “can make us liars and cheats” (15) leading to inequality and oppression. In the same breath, Loring hangs on to hope that “the journey towards justice is the journey to life, to salvation and healing” (8). For Loring and the Open Door, this dichotomy is engrained in their eschatology. In their battle to end homelessness, there is a balance between the temporary pain, heartbreak, and struggle that sometimes characterize their present battle for the end of homelessness and the unflinching and perpetual hope found within the striving for future justice. They are “betting their [lives] on the victory of the cross, on the ultimate justice on Earth” (Loring 72). This hope cannot be shaken by present misfortune and loss brought about by ever-expanding injustice in Atlanta and beyond. It is also unhindered by the blunt realization Loring has that he will not experience the eradication of homelessness in his lifetime. “I can see it; I’ll never touch it” (72). In Atlanta, the Open Door Community has come to the conclusion that they will work their entire lives in order to see change in the deeply entrenched injustice found within their city’s institutions, but will never actually get to see it come to fruition in its totality. The Open Door Community sits in the hell of homelessness refusing to exhibit “a stunted moral growth as becomes those who flee social problems rather than resolve them” (46). They choose to promote “a suffering sacrificial love in accepting the consequences of life with, among, and on behalf of the oppressed and prisoner” (69-70). Encouraged by their encounters with people in Atlanta who are homeless, and spurred on by acts of kindness and love, the Open Door Community faces injustice head-on knowing that they will ultimately be victorious. This may not come during their lifetimes because they are trying to uproot injustice that has been entrenched in Atlanta for generations. Rather, they choose to listen to the hope banging at their back door even when the rest of the block suggests that despair and discouragement should be the appropriate response.

Which brings us back to the aforementioned encounter in the kitchen of the Haven. While there are notable differences between the two organizations–Atlanta and Charlottesville are two different places with different histories–this hope for the future is a distinct commonality. At its core, the Haven is supposed to be what the name suggests; a haven. Like the Open Door, the Haven is “a place of hope where people are given a respite from the daily challenges they face and access to assistance to help overcome them” (Haven Volunteer Manual, 7). In both situations, the desire to eradicate homelessness is the ultimate goal. However, what if these goals are never fully realized in Charlottesville during our lifetimes? Will we become discouraged if we do not see the Promised Land? That is why the tomatoes should be cut. It is a tangible manifestation of the hidden hope to which every volunteer and staffer at the Haven clings. A deep, transcendent hope that care and hospitality, kindness and sacrificial love will not return void. A hope found in the “simple moments and endeavors that redeem life and fill our cups to the brim of love and hope” (Loring, 20). Because we desire to see Charlottesville’s homeless population cared for and to have their immediate needs met, we cut the tomatoes. Because we hold on to an unflinching and undeterred hope that one day homelessness will be eradicated and every person in Charlottesville will have a home, we cut the tomatoes. Ed Loring hears hope when the homeless bang on the back door of the Open Door Community seeking respite; I see hope in the cutting of the tomatoes in the kitchen of the Haven.

For updates about the PLT Summer Internship, click here. We also post updates online using #PLTinterns. To get these updates please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at @LivedTheology. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

I love how God changes our plans. I had a plan for my first blog post; I actually had quite a bit of it written. I planned to give a nice introduction to my summer, using a couple of anecdotes and bits of wisdom gleaned from the first few meetings I had with my site mentor Mo. I planned to crack open the window into who I was and what my summer might look like. If this plan had transpired, my first reflection would have been a pretty good representation of my world as I tend to prefer it: organized, coherent, neat, thoughtful, not straying too far outside my comfort zone. As I would find out while sitting in a circle on a living room floor with a group of inner city middle school girls I had met an hour earlier, God had other plans.

As tends to happen in life, God didn’t crack the window open so I could peek in and go around to walk through the door at my leisure. He blew that window wide open and pushed me through it, into a place where violence, rape, and sexual assault do not exist as words on a page and thoughts in my head but as an actual heart and mind and body, an actual human, sitting across from me. I had no idea that I was walking into what, as I was later informed, was the hardest night of bible study they’d ever had. No longer could I stay in my comfortable world of thoughts and ideas. The reality of the tragedy, injustice, and pain that these girls face everyday came crashing down on me that evening.

Instead of sitting in a pristine classroom at my prestigious university discussing race theory, liberation theology, and educational performance gaps with other students who think and act pretty much exactly like me, I was hit with the reality of what all the models and statistics and philosophies try in vain to communicate. I had to face the reality that “all our phrasing – race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy – serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth,” as Ta-Nehisi Coates, a prominent journalist and public voice on race in America, puts it (10). As I have spent the last few semesters discussing in my theology of liberation classes, I saw clearly the power of the embodied encounter with the injustice and pain I have intellectually wrested with over the past years. Like the bones and teeth of black men and women broken by the violence of racism, the window through which I had always peered into “urban life” and “the race issue” was smashed to pieces as I listened to the very visceral experience of one of the sweet, beautiful, joyful girls sitting in that very same circle with me. But as I sat in pain and tears with them, a strange and beautiful thing happened: I saw the sadness and heaviness dissipate and turn into the beginnings of triumph and joy. I saw the power of declaring light into the void of darkness. I saw John 16:33 (“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world”) take on more meaning than it ever has. I saw, very distinctly, the strange glory of the paradoxical Gospel of Christ.

When I left the house that night my mind swirled with quite the assortment of emotions and questions. How could a night that started so heavy end with singing Adele at the top of our lungs as I dropped the girls off at the housing project where they live? What in the world are any of us supposed to do with the reality of the violence that lands upon the bodies of the most vulnerable in our midst? This question turned my thoughts to my reading for the week, Coates’ memoir, which he framed as a letter to his fifteen-year-old son. Coates fills the pages of his memoir with this and many other questions. Although there are many distances between us, I relate to Coates in this propensity to question. My life of order and neatness doesn’t have room for the mess that confusion and not-knowing drag in, so I ask questions and try to make sense of the world. What I have been in the process of learning over the course of the past few years, however, is that even in the absence of direct answers, “the questions matter as much, perhaps more than, the answers” (116).

So, like Coates, I am setting out on my own road laid with more questions than answers, illuminated only one brick at a time as I sometimes tiptoe, at other times sprint, and occasionally trip my way down it. Like Coates, I cannot claim to have any answers, nor do I really think answers are the point. However, very much unlike him, I believe in so much more than the struggle that he says defines all life not lived within the “Dream.” Perhaps this is a naïve perspective, developed through my privileged existence within this Dream that has only ever had the smallest of holes poked through its cozy thickness. But maybe, just maybe, I am right. Perhaps there is hope, a hope that can be found, in my experience, on every page of the Scriptures. I have not often found that these pages hold all the answers, but I have never found anything in this life that holds more hope. This has been true in my easy, privileged, comfortable life, just as it is, miraculously, true in the lives of the girls who I will have the honor of coming alongside this summer, girls whose lives are inconceivably and tragically harder than mine has ever been. Although it might not make sense to Coates, I believe the only hope strong enough to turn those tears of pain and anger and sadness that I witnessed and shared the other night into glimmers of hope washing away, one drop at a time, the dirt and grime of the evil committed, is the hope of the Gospel. As one of the leaders said that night, echoing the cry of a man transformed by Jesus’s healing, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).

For updates about the PLT Summer Internship, click here. We also post updates online using #PLTinterns. To get these updates please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at @LivedTheology. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.