Staying Out of Trouble

Adjustment to life in the MVS house has been a little hectic. Weeks fly by like seconds. Thursday night happens before you take your first deep breath after the weekend. That is, if you get to take a breath on the weekend. Exciting projects have coupled with my desire for community involvement and the work realize personal dreams. The first month of this life happen without time to sit in the hammock and read, as I spent so much time doing in Honduras.

This last month has also been full of anti-racism and anti-sexism talk in the house and outside of it. Its all been well and good, except that the tight-packedness of it has left very little time for reflection and collection of thoughts. Anyway these thoughts have seeped into every interaction that I have. I feel like I suddenly have a window into (what I've been told) is the dark side of systemically oppressed people's thoughts. Its a little bit unnerving.

Working at the bike shop behind the house gives me a lot of opportunities to interact with local people. If I see a Caucasian kid taking charge and his significantly older sister or an African-American kid letting him take charge, I wonder how much of that is happening because of socialization. Much, apparently, despite the Caucasion kid's high mechanical aptitude. I must admit that the things I see do make sense under these new lenses.

Before the (Damascus Road) anti-racism training, I had spoken with an African-American male teenager outside of the bike shop. I asked what was up, to which he responded that he was just trying to stay out of trouble. Being taken back to the hundreds of times I had heard my dad say that in a joking way, I laughed and told him that that was what I was trying to do too. What struck me immediately was that for him, keeping out of trouble was a very real struggle. Every day I'm sure he struggles to keep out of trouble with gangs, drugs, and police. He, walking alone or with his friends, is immediately suspect. I don't know the statistics, but I do know that he, simply by being African-American, is much more likely to do time in prison or in the back of a cop car. And even though I disregard traffic law and have done stupider and more illegal things in the past, I was and am not as likely to get arrested for it.

But I see hope. A growing wave of racial and sexual discrimination awareness is bringing these things into more and more benefiting people's conscience thoughts. A smile and salutation still have the power to blast warmth and acceptance through people's reluctantly built walls of bitterness, anger and fear. And Maisha (housemate) and I were welcomed to the neighborhood last night by an Angel, a woman who lives down the street.

The Work Pew

I'm getting settled in here in Elkhart. I moved into the MVS Jubilee House almost two weeks ago and I've been working a lot doing projects with my dad, projects at Jubilee and getting the bike shop set up. Its been exhausting and I'm already drawing clearer lines between work and personal space so that I can preserve calm, peace, and energy throughout my time here. The MVS unit here is coming together a little more every day and I'm really enjoying the friendships that I'm making here. We fill our time with good laughs. :)

Last week as I was rearranging the attic over the bike shop, I found a small section of one-legged pew from Prairie Street MC that had been cut off several years ago to make space for wheelchairs. I carried it down into the bike shop, thinking it would be a great chair to put into Jubilee. When Simon Gingrich (Prairie Street MC's pushing-90 workhorse) gave a suspecting sideways look at it and said it was one of his challenges to cut a few years ago because the wood curves while it's thickness changes.

Later that week I found a suitable piece of wood, sawed it up and nailed it onto the legless side of the pew. Then I sawed it again so that the pew would sit straight. Smiling to myself, I took a good look at my work. This little disabled pew now had enough legs, it supported my weight. The torn cushion and cover were as comfortable as they had ever been, happy to be able to serve a purpose again.

Sitting on the pew, I was overcome by an urge to sing a hymn, to rejoice for all that God provides. My upbeat heart sung all day, now with a place to sit and examine old dysfunctional bikes, take them apart, wipe of decades of grime, patch their tubes, true the wheels, tighten the brakes, scrape off rust, and grease up their mechanical pieces. Yesterday five other people came to work at the bike shop doing all of the above. One old neighbor man, Uncle Ed, sat on the pew and made wheels, fenders, and handlebars shine brighter than any of us would have believed possible.

With this work, some lines have been blurred rather than better defined. One has been the line between work and worship. For me, it has become an act of worship to rehabilitate an old pew and a few old bikes as well as teach some bike repair. New familiarity with each other, the feeling of being useful, the dissipation of fear of the unknown, the swelling joy from riding a pretty bike, the empowered glint in the eye of a new bike mechanic who understands her machine, all of it gave me a glimpse of the Kingdom. Its a beautiful sight to watch from a seat in the crutched work pew.