Sunday, June 26, 2011

[pride/proud]

If you are in NYC or Chicago, you know that PRIDE is currently taking over your city.

PRIDE: a festival to affirm the personhood and identity of people regardless of their gender and/or sexuality.

If you were with me today, you would have experienced pride in a different way.

Proud: feeling pleasure or satisfaction over something regarded as highly honorable.

Today, although I am not able to celebrate PRIDE with all of my friends in Chicago, I am certainly proud.
.

Typically pride is thought of as a negative emotion regarding ones self/accomplishments. However, it is on this day that I am proud of my kids. My boss and I had the privilege of taking 6 of our youth to the Armory Arts Center in Pasadena to the opening reception of an exhibit. But it wasn't just any exhibit. All Saint's Church in Pasadena partners with several organizations whose goal is to help current/former foster youth in various capacities. One way the Foster Care Project does that is by hosting an annual art show. Seven of our youth submitted their own artwork for the show, each piece going for roughly $50 dollars. All the proceeds will go to the artists, which the young people are pretty excited about :]

Potential buyers would walk up to a piece of art belonging to one of our youth and he or she would approach them, introduce themselves as the artist and engage in meaningful conversation about their piece(s). It was incredible... moving... and inspiring. During our two hours there, about 5 pieces sold and you could see the young people brimming with joy as they saw the red dot go up on the name placard signifying that their piece had sold.

The best part was that they didn't (have to) put on a facade. They were able to totally be themselves as they talked with these super white, super rich church folk who are so much the opposite of them. It was humbling to be in the presence of these young people for whom art galleries are not a part of their everyday life... particularly when their art is the subject matter. They handled themselves so incredibly well. As they shared laughter and conversation and high fives, the presence of the Beloved in that space was undeniable.

I have never been so humbled/honored/grateful to be an MFP employee than today. While I'm sad that I have to leave in a month, this experience will go with me... it will dwell in my heart... and it will be a constant reminder of the love I have for these kids and the mission of My Friend's Place.

While it is certainly different from and therefore incomparable to the PRIDE festival, this art show has affirmed the personhood of each of those young people, and for that I am grateful... although, that sort of feels insufficient... so as Rev. Emily Joye McGaughy says, "Where words fail, just kneeling and/or falling to the ground..."

And so I fall the the ground.....

Thanks be to God.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

[reduced, reused and recycled poverty]

Tomorrow is trash day here in Koreatown which means you can see people getting home from work and putting out their trash cans about 10 feet from the curb--which, when you're driving, seems to be in the middle of the street.

Thursday night/Friday morning doesn't just mean garbage day. For some it means pay day.

Unfortunately, that pay day requires work that most people in my circles would deem nearly unfathomable. Men and women from all over the neighborhood walk up and down the streets--irolo, ardmore, kingsley, mariposa, harvard-- and go through everyone's curbside cans to gather recyclables. Some wear gloves, others don't. Some push grocery carts, others carry garbage bags. Some use the money returned to them for gas to feed their car, others buy food to feed their children.

It's one of those harsh realities of life that you hate to see and when you do, pray that it never becomes your own reality.

and so I pray...
...not for myself but for all those who are struggling to make ends meet and must resort to digging through garbage cans... and other exploitative and provocative activities that I am too naive to realize and/or understand.








Tuesday, June 14, 2011

[grace... in lyrics]



Roll away your stone, I’ll roll away mine
Together we can see what we can find
Don’t leave me alone at this time,
For I am afraid of what I will discover inside
You told me that I would find a home,
Within the fragile substance of my soul
And I have filled this void with things unreal,
And all the while my character it steals
The darkness is a harsh term don’t you think?
And yet it dominates the things I seek
It seems as if all my bridges have been burned,
You say that’s exactly how this grace thing works
It’s not the long walk home that will change this heart,
But the welcome I receive at the restart

The darkness is a harsh term don’t you think?
And yet it dominates the things I seek
The darkness is a harsh term don’t you think?
And yet it dominates the things I seek
The darkness is a harsh term don’t you think?
And yet it dominates the things I seek
Stars hide your fires,
And these here are my desires
And I will give them up to you this time around
And so, I’ll be found with my steak stuck in this ground
Marking its territory of this newly impassioned soul
But you, you’ve come too far this time
You have neither reason nor rhyme
With which to take this soul that is so rightfully mine

Monday, June 13, 2011

[ears to hear]

In a past post I mentioned how I am always surprised when another new homeless kid walks through our doors.

Mentor/Pastor/Rev. John Vertigan suggested that if I could figure out why I'm surprised and why they keep coming that maybe it would enhance my current/future ministry.

I've figured it out:
1) Ignorance/Negligence
2) Fucked up Foster Care System

The majority of our clients have been kicked out of their house for one of the following reasons: they came out as being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or queer; they were abused by their parents/foster parents/guardians; they emancipated from the foster care system and had nowhere to go.

I don't know that I have a lot of power in the foster care system, but I have a lot of power when it comes to combating ignorance and negligence.

Bring out the compassion and the ears to hear, folks. I can't do this alone.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

[anne lamott and love]

From her 2003 Commencement address at UC Berkeley (as featured on inwardoutward.org)

From the wise old pinnacle of my 49 years, I want to tell you that what you're looking for is already inside you. You've heard this before, but the holy thing inside you really is that which causes you to seek it. You can't buy it, lease it, rent it, date it or apply for it.... So it can be confusing--most of your parents want you to do well, to be successful. They want you to be happy--or at least happy-ish. And they want you to be nicer to them; just a little nicer--is that so much to ask? They want you to love, and be loved, and to find peace, and to laugh and find meaningful work.

But the thing is that you don't know if you're going to live long enough to slow down, relax, and have fun, and discover the truth of your spiritual identity. You may not be destined to live a long life; you may not have 60 more years to discover and claim your own deepest truth.... I do know you are not what you look like, or how much you weigh, or how you did in school, and whether you get to start a job next Monday or not. Spirit isn't what you do, it's...well, I don't actually know.... But I know that you feel it best when you're not doing much--when you're in nature, when you're very quiet, or, paradoxically, listening to music.

I know you can feel it and hear it in the music you love, in the bass line, in the harmonies, in the silence between notes.... You can close your eyes and feel the divine spark, concentrated in you, like a little Dr. Seuss firefly. It flickers with aliveness and relief, like an American in a foreign country who suddenly hears someone speaking in English. In the Christian tradition, they say that the soul rejoices in hearing what it already knows....

We can see spirit made visible in people being kind to each other, especially when it's a really busy person, taking care of a needy annoying person. Or even if it's terribly important you, stopping to take care of pitiful, pathetic you. In fact, that's often when we see spirit most brightly.... You're here to love, and be loved, freely. If you find out next week that you are terminally ill--and we're all terminally ill on this bus--all that will matter is memories of beauty, that people loved you, and you loved them, and that you tried to help the poor and innocent.

So how do we feed and nourish our spirit and the spirit of others?

First, find a path, and a little light to see by. Every single spiritual tradition says the same three things: 1) Live in the now, as often as you can, a breath here, a moment there. 2) You reap exactly what you sow. 3) You must take care of the poor, or you are so doomed that we can't help you....

So I would recommend that you all just take a long deep breath, and stop. Just be where your butts are, and breathe. Take some time. You are graduating today. Refuse to cooperate with anyone who is trying to shame you into hopping right back up onto the rat exercise wheel. Rest, but pay attention....

In my 20's, I devised a school of relaxation that has unfortunately fallen out of favor in the ensuing years--it was called Prone Yoga. You just lie around as much as possible. You could read, listen to music, you could space out, or sleep. But you had to be lying down. Maintaining the prone.

You've graduated. You have nothing left to prove.... There are so many great things to do right now. Write. Sing. Rest. Eat cherries. Register voters. And--oh my God--I nearly forgot the most important thing: refuse to wear uncomfortable pants, even if they make you look really thin. Promise me you'll never wear pants that bind or tug or hurt, pants that have an opinion about how much you've just eaten. The pants may be lying! There is way too much lying and scolding going on politically right now without your pants getting in on the act, too.

So bless you. You've done an amazing thing. And you are loved; you are capable of lives of great joy and meaning. It's what you are made of. And it's what you're for. So take care of yourselves; take care of each other.




Tuesday, June 7, 2011

[kobe.]


A real post is long overdue, but I'll get there... in the meantime, we had some major happenings at work today. Below is the email I sent out to people about the event.
..................
Hi All,

This is quite possibly the biggest email I've ever sent out for a couple reasons: Firstly, I've never included so many people on the same email! Secondly, this is the biggest news to ever hit my organization... ever.

I've been holding it in confidence for the past two weeks, but can finally let it out: Kobe Bryant held a press conference at My Friend's Place today to announce that he has started a Homeless Youth Initiative with his wife called the Kobe and Vanessa Bryant Family Foundation (KVBFF). Below is the link to a Huffington Post article.

No matter your opinion on Kobe or the Lakers, this is a game changer. We were worried about the future of My Friend's Place, but this is MAJOR. It will potentially change our lives. We have not heard concrete plans yet, but it sounds promising!

(However, people are actually turning this into him not talking about the hiring of their new coach... which is lame, but it's the press. What can you expect.)


Click on this link for the HuffPost article.

I hope you all are doing well as summer approaches!!

Peace, Love, and Kobe.

Emily