Black Belts of the Heart

 

     “You gotta come see this! The warehouse just received 240 bags of clothing. Looks like a lot of school stuff!”

     So a few of us who spend our days in the Springs Rescue Mission admin building took a break to walk across the parking lot to the warehouse dock. Once there, we realized we’d have to carefully pick our path into the warehouse through a veritable mountain of full bags. The report was accurate: a lot of school clothing (and a lot more to go with it). Spot on timing for a school year that’s just starting.

     By the time we walked into the warehouse, its staff and volunteers had already begun to totally focus their efforts on processing the sizeable donation.  When other Mission personnel saw the scene, the reaction was pretty much the same: to stop dead in their tracks, say “Wow!” under their breath, and thank God.  

     But 240 bags? Which giant corporation had sent out the word to its employees that they needed to bring clothing suitable for students?

     It turns out the benefactors were the students, staff and families of Universal Kempo Karate Schools Association in our area. Their international school association challenges its member schools to give back to their communities at least once a year. It is a charge the Universal community takes to heart, as demonstrated in the Pikes Peak region by their annual drives to benefit their homeless and hungry right here.

     Years ago my son Ben and I were an active part of the local Universal family.  I know from firsthand experience that the local schools are filled with people who take at least as much care in teaching students the disciplines of sound character as teaching them the proper way to break bricks. Students are constantly reminded of the importance of respecting others, and to take care of those who might be at a disadvantage in life.

     It was refreshing the other day to see their very generous and practical demonstration of the delicate art of being neighbors. Kudos to our local Universal Kempo Karate Schools Association, from its founder Grand Master Martin T. Buell to its beginning students, for taking care to pursue black belts of the heart as they improve their martial arts finesse. 

Food, Fire and Flying Golf Balls

My personal record for length of a golf drive is 312 yards with a gentle breeze at my back under otherwise normal conditions. Once.

My new friend "Golf Pro Greg" Stafford can hit a drive that distance once every 15 seconds or so for an hour without really breaking a sweat. That’s why he’s got his eye on 300 such drives in one hour this Friday evening. That would be one 300+ yard drive every 12 seconds.

(Did I mention that I have one such drive in my spotty 41-year history of playing golf? Just wanted to make sure.)

Greg is dedicating his effort this Friday to raise awareness and funds for Springs Rescue Mission. We need that help now, as the fires in the area have diminished the flow of food and other resources into the Mission warehouse. But the bottom line is that our food shelves in the warehouse are pretty much bare between the needed diversion of resources to fire fighters and survivors just days ago and the regular traffic of neighbors in need of food boxes and hot meals at Samaritan’s Kitchen.

The funds raised at drives4lives.com will help restore the supply of food we need for regular distribution. Greg Stafford is deflecting a lot of the attention he could get as he attempts to regain his Guinness world record for most 300+ yard drives in one hour. If you could manage a $10 or $20 donation (maybe more) sometime in the next 72 hours on drives4lives.com, you could be a hero to our neighbors in need (700+ families each month) as you help us feed them.

Drives4lives.com. Just go there and give one of the suggested amounts, or just check the “other” box and give what you can.

That’s what I’m doing. I hope you can join me.

(Ok, so Greg hits a 300+ yard drive about every 12 seconds, and I hit one every 41 years whether I need to or not. Do the math…)

Drought Dodging

 Colorado’s Pikes Peak Region held its collective breath as the winter months reluctantly gave way to spring on the calendar. Overall, the area had again fallen way short on precipitation. Weather forecasters weren’t waiting for a hot summer stretch of weather to talk about drought. Drought was already a front-burner topic of conversation in February. It seemed that there had been no winter respite from it this year.

Then it snowed; late and not a lot, but enough to notice. And it snowed again, and again; rarely enough to overwhelm anyone with the thought that the drought was over, but enough to take courage that the moisture deficit wasn’t completely taking over. In recent weeks, it’s even rained. Sometimes it seems like the sky is spitting and nothing more. But a few times we’ve enjoyed those gentle hours-long soaking showers, and days where the ground may not have puddles forming but stayed wet all day.

No one’s saying the drought’s over, but there is hope.

Another kind of drought is a frequent visitor to rescue missions every year. It runs roughly from Easter to mid-September. It is during those months when the food on shelves in mission warehouses quickly becomes sparse and sometimes stays that way until the holiday season. Sometimes financial donations dry up, too, during these months.

Rescue missions do different things to cope with the season of drought.  This year, we are blessed with a variety of friends who are using their talents and community roles to stem the impact of the drought. Our local baseball team, the Colorado Springs SkySox, is using the stadium front gate as a collection point for food and more at every home game.  The Broadmoor is coordinating a benefit golf tournament to be held in a few weeks. A friend of the Mission is using his car wash business as a catalyst for a benefit event not long from now. And a local golf pro, Greg Stafford, is using a world record attempt for most 300-yard drives in an hour to raise funds for the Mission this summer (check out www.drives4lives.com sometime soon for details). That’s just the beginning of friends who are stepping up to help Springs Rescue Mission dodge the drought this year.

No one’s saying the drought’s over, but there is hope.

A Sudden and Miraculous Grace

(AP Photo/The Colorado Springs Gazette, Susannah Kay; http://www.dailylocal.com/article/20120625/NEWS04/120629708/rememberingpa.us/%27.$a.%27)

Eucatastrophe

Sometimes even when a word is unfamiliar if it sums up a big, far-reaching idea it’s worth using.

“Eucatastrophe” (pronounced YEW-kuh-tas-stroh-fee) is such a word. JRR Tolkien, the author of Lord of the Rings, coined the word to describe what happens in a story when the good that comes out of a great disaster overshadows the disaster itself. In Tolkien’s words, it is “the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with joy that brings tears.” 

And what is it like for the characters in, and hearers of, such a disaster? Tolkien himself says the eucatastrophe develops into “a sudden and miraculous grace.” Eucatastrophe never denies the reality of sorrow and failure because it would then deny us the joy of deliverance. It never accepts final defeat but instead gives “joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief,” as a story’s characters -- perhaps with you among them -- come through trials that might easily have shattered them, but in the end didn’t.  

Last weekend one of my lifelong best friends (who, many years ago, actually introduced me to both Tolkien and “eucatastrophe”) and I joined family and friends for dinner and dessert in the shadow of the Pikes Peak range. Just a few days before the Waldo Canyon fire had been, by any reckoning, a great disaster.  But not long after, a sudden and miraculous grace -- the combined efforts of firefighters, a break in conditions, the prayers of strangers, the generosity of friends, the hand of God -- gave our community a sudden happy turn in the story which pierced us with joy that brings tears.

Today we stand at 98% containment. The fire might well be completely extinguished four or five days before the date originally projected.  (Who knew?)

The Waldo Canyon wildfire trespassing into Pikes Peak Region communities delivered a giant wallop in our collective gut two weeks ago. We sucked in the air around us, befouled as it was with ash and smoke, coughed and straightened up ready for the next round. 

You see, this is a remarkable community in crisis. The phone lines and emails buzzed between agencies, government and non-government alike, in everyone’s joint effort to help. Media dedicated themselves to keeping the community informed, period. Press briefings found a mayor standing shoulder to shoulder with a sheriff next to a fire chief adjacent to a Forest Service official, among others, all in a united front. No finger-pointing there; just colleagues working their way through a disaster.

In the early Christian church, there was a document called the Didache that carried this sage advice when practical challenges disrupted the daily flow of activity: “Do the best you can.” By doing the best we can, we help transform catastrophe into eucatastrophe.

We see that kind of transformation daily at the Mission. I have never yet seen it come without a price, or without the dedication of more people than expected, but I have seen it. It is the kind of transformation we need in continued support of the nearly 350 families whose homes were destroyed by the fire, and hundreds more whose belongings are damaged beyond use. It is the kind of transformation we need to encourage in the hundreds of single-parent families, underemployed families, and others who were homeless before the fire and continue to be so today.

It is the eucatastrophe of ongoing results when tragedies invoke neighbors to help neighbors.  So many people here are good at it already. Others have taken the opportunity in the last two weeks to put it into greater practice.

And I have this feeling that few of us will rest until the tears we see in those around us, too, are pierced with joy.

Jeffy's Choice?

Sometimes I can’t help but think back on my now-grown children playing with friends, years ago, in the backyard. I think of Power Rangers and princesses, of karate kicks and sand cookies. I remember the sure-voiced pronouncements of what they’d be when they grew up:

“I want to be a singer.”

“I want to be a mommy.”

“I want to be a teacher.”

“I want to be a ninja.”

The list went on, of course, in the middle of daring swings from the climbing rope on the fort that housed the slide on the south side of the swing set: “I want to be…” almost anything. The sky was the limit.

It’s kind of strange, but not once in all those years of parental eavesdropping did I hear a child say, “When I grow up, I want to be homeless.”

Imagine that. All those dreams about growing up, and being homeless was never in the mix. Surprised? Probably not.

Just last week Ellen left her home, and in so doing removed herself from her longstanding role as a convenient punching bag for her boyfriend. She’s taking shelter with friends of a friend with church connections while her visible bruises heal and she gets a resume together. Ellen will need a significant boost in personal income to become self-sufficient. The training she needs to get that boost will take time and resources she doesn’t appear to have at present. It will take a lot of support from a growing network of helpers to see Ellen through this season of homelessness.

Ellen is quite uncomfortable in her role as a newly homeless woman. Like many homeless neighbors, she never intended to become homeless. She didn’t choose to be here. But she is anyway.

Of the hundreds of homeless people I’ve had the privilege of meeting over the years I can only think of a couple for whom homelessness was a welcome choice. It certainly is not the preference of Jeff, a middle-aged man who lost his factory job and then his apartment during a time of deep depression. He lives in his van in a friend’s driveway right now, but can’t drive it anywhere until he gets his license back when his DUI suspension is over. He’s working hard as a day laborer when he can get the work, but he can’t always make the transportation connections he needs. There’s no question his choice to drink, and then to drink at the wrong time, fed the conditions that led to his homelessness. But do you really think Jeff hoped to end up where he is today?

Do you think, when he was a child, someone asked, “Jeffy, what do you want to be when you grow up?” and he answered, “When I grow up, I want to be homeless” and as a result pursued the goal to be homeless until he so recently achieved it? Homelessness wasn’t even a conscious option in Jeffy’s dreams, in all likelihood. Homelessness isn’t a desired option for the adult Jeff, either.

If you take time to talk things over with a few homeless people (share a cup of coffee sometime), you’ll probably find that they don’t make many excuses for themselves. In fact, you might discover that they have keen insight on the conditions (some admittedly self-imposed) that made them homeless.

You’ll also find that, almost without exception, they’d rather be safe in a home they could call their own than in a van or on the streets.

Just like us, in so many ways.

Silver Bells, Anyone?

City sidewalks, busy sidewalks….[i]

“Can you get out of my way?”

Josh moves at a slower pace because his calorie intake today isn’t sufficient to support his walking at a brisk shopper’s pace the Wednesday before Christmas. He’s not staggering right now. He’s just not moving fast enough for the downtown sidewalk traffic. The sub-freezing air is being driven by a constant breeze. Not much to that wind, but it still reduces the temperature’s impact by another seven degrees into single digits.

Dressed in holiday style…

“Mom, he stinks!”

This is Josh’s first Christmas as a homeless person. He was kicked out of his home, probably rightly so, when he lost control of his temper and took his first swing ever at his mother. (Good thing he was so drunk that he missed.)

Josh is still learning the ropes. He needs to find someplace that will maybe give him a change of clothes and the stuff he needs for a sponge bath. He needs a warmer coat. He also needs to eat, soon.

In the air, there’s a feeling of Christmas…

Josh stops for a moment to survey the setting around him. He sees a guy he might be able to talk to, who is manning a Salvation Army bucket. Josh walks over, letting shoppers pass by him, trying to stay downwind of as many people as possible. Josh doesn’t even open his mouth and the guy looks at his watch, looks at Josh, and speaks.

“Dude, you can still make it to the Mission for dinner. Straight down Tejon, right at Las Vegas Street. Twenty-minute walk, and you’ve still got half an hour to be there.”

Josh makes it a few minutes ahead of time. Samaritan’s Kitchen is warm, and they let people in before the meal starts. He finds an empty chair between two guys who sort of look like he does. The food is hot and seems to warm up the conversation around the table. Josh discovers that there are options for homeless people in Colorado Springs. Most of the recovery programs sound way too restrictive for him, at least as he hears about them from those around the table.

Josh also knows he can’t stay homeless forever. At least he hopes he won’t. His mom asked him to come home for the family Christmas meal, but also made it clear he wasn’t welcome to stay. He’s learned from his new friends that the Mission has a community meal two days before Christmas. Maybe if he plays it right, he can eat well for a few days running.

But then, he’ll have some hard decisions to make before the really cold weather hits. Detox? A recovery program? Ride out the winter and hope for an early spring? Sober up and beg to come home until a job comes along?

Soon it will be Christmas Day…

Josh stabs at his dessert and shakes his head. How did Christmas end up like this, anyway?

He’s too much of a rookie to know it, but almost everyone else in the room is sharing the same thought.

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[i] Excerpts from Silver Bells, italicized in this article, are property of their authors, Jay Livingston and Ray Evans (© 1950, 1977), and used here for educational purposes. Work originally published by Paramount Music Corp.