The Pontifications of Maurice Broaddus

Dark Faith: Devotions and ALL THINGS ME!!!

2010-04-19T11:35:00.013-04:00

As the promotional efforts for Dark Faith begin in earnest, Apex Book Company has been running a series of mini-interviews with some of the contributors called Dark Faith: DEVOTIONS. I’ve been loving the responses and want to collect the links to them here. And take a moment to appreciate how much my friends love and respect me…

DEVOTIONS

Alethea Kontis - “The God of Last Moments”

Mary Robinette Kowal – “Ring Road”

D.T. Friedman - “Paint Box, Puzzle Box”

Wrath James White - “He Who Would Not Bow”

Tom Piccirilli - "Scrawl"

Jennifer Pelland - "Ghosts of New York"

Nick Mamatas - “The Last Words of ~~Dutch Schultz~~ Jesus Christ”

Ekaterina Sedia - "You Dream"

Lucy A. Snyder - “Miz Ruthie Pays Her Respects”

Linda D. Addison - "The Story of Non-Belief"

Rain Graves - "Lilith"

Richard Dansky - "The Mad Eyes of the King Heron"

Lavie Tidhar - "To the Jerusalem Crater"

Geoffrey Girard - "First Communions"

Kelli Dunlap - "Good Enough"

Related Posts

Flames Rising - Dark Faith Preview (including my introduction to Dark Faith)

Kelli Owen - "Dark first, Faith second"

Jason Sizemore - "The Ups and Downs of an Anthology"

INTERVIEWS

On my end, I have the unprecedented (in my career thus far) problem (and hopefully this will be a recurring “problem”) of promoting two projects at a time. Thus, the latest bouts of interviews (though King Maker was mentioned in Publishers Weekly all on its own):

Examiner.com - Maurice Broaddus has 'Dark Faith'

Random Musings - Interview with Maurice Broaddus

Innsmouth Free Press - Interview: Maurice Broaddus

Omnivoracious - Jeff Vandermeer - King Maker Maurice Broaddus on the Anthology “Dark Faith”

The Occult Detective - Soul Searching with Maurice Broaddus

AAAAAAAND, reviews of Dark Faith are already rolling in:

REVIEWS
Shroud Magazine

Publisher’s Weekly

P.S.

Rounding out this “All Things Me” post, I’d like to point to two more items:

1) Zoe E. Whitten, hysterically funny writer and tweeter, was wrestling with my novella, Devil’s Marionette in this moving piece.

2) My story “Hootchie Cootchie Man” was listed as an Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow’s list of notable stories for the year.

Ascension by Kristin Fuller

2010-04-16T00:37:00.002-04:00

For this year's art gallery at Mo*Con, we have a few artists making their debut showings. One of them is photography Kristin Fuller. Here's a brief description of her powerful project, Ascension. It's a moving piece that spoke to me.

Ascension
A photo essay by Kristin Elizabeth Fuller

In my most recent project, "Ascension", I have been exploring the spirituality of the desert. Desert Spirituality is rooted in the idea that in the desert places of our lives; in the barrenness and brokenness of our souls and the empty places of our planet; there in solitude as we seek God, we will find what is most true and real in the world. As we empty and expose ourselves we will find God reshaping our identity and our perceptions. I am fascinated by the idea that as we retreat into a desert environment (whether literal desert or quiet sanctuaries found throughout our daily lives) we find ourselves stripped of our emotional baggage, quietly refocused and more attuned to our environments. How is it that as we step away and disengage from the world around us and enter into the solitude of the desert we then find ourselves more aware and cognizant of what is real when we return?

This project, "Ascension", began while on a 60 mile backpacking trip through the Pariah Canyon in northern Utah. About 2/3rds of the way along the trek, while approaching one of the highest and most picturesque parts of this journey, I photographed my subjects entering into the metaphorical (and literal) desert experience: observing, choosing to enter, struggling to find rest, battling to let go of illusions and find their true selves, entering into solitude, into worship, leaving a piece of themselves behind.

Alias, Rimbaldi, and Redemption

2010-04-13T03:25:00.000-04:00

“That’s the word he used. Prophecy. Does that sound good or bad?” –Sydney

So many great science fiction shows have an underlying mythology behind them. X-Files and their alien mythos. Fringe and “The Pattern”. Lost and their “what the hell is going on?” mythos. Alias had its own mythos, the Rimbaldi mythology, which often threatened to overwhelm the precarious balance of the themes of the show. Many of Sydney Bristow’s (Jennifer Garner) missions centered around the search for and recovery of artifacts created by Milo Rambaldi, a Renaissance-era combination of Leonardo da Vinci and Nostradamus. Rimbaldi was an artist, inventor, and Pope Alexander VI’s chief architect whose advanced designs got him labeled a heretic. The Rimbaldi scavenger hunt often felt reminiscent of the Da Vinci Code and like with Lost, early on in the show, one might have had the impression that the writers were making up the mythology as they went along.

“Do you believe in redemption?” –Sloan

To SD-6 supervisor Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin), Rimbaldi was a prophet and through his journey, he might find eternal life. Sloane was always a complex villain, which is what made him both so charismatic and interesting. As is the case with all well rounded villains, he believes himself to be the hero of his own story. In him we can learn a few things about the perils, cost, and necessities of being a disciple. He was a simple man of faith pursuing the object of his faith with his entire heart, sacrificing all in pursuit of the ultimate Truth.

It began with an epiphany, a moment of truth or an end of self moment of clarity. An encounter with Rimbaldi changed his life, giving it meaning and purpose. It was ancient text he and the other Rimbaldi followers were asked to put their faith in; an ancient text with a vitality for modern times. Through it they managed to divine patterns of hidden meaning in ordinary things. He immediately abandoned his old life, the life of a patriot serving his country, and turned away from people he loved. His friend, Sydney’s father, Jack (Victor Garber) even confronted him about it: “I used to feel sorry for you. Couldn’t you sense it? You’d been abandoned. Left for dead. Disgraced. I pitied you. That you needed Rimbaldi to fill a void in your life. It was like a religion for you.”

“I should never have heard that man’s name.” –Sloan (speaking of Rimbaldi)

Like many disciples, after a difficult path, full of sacrifices, Sloane comes to a place where he regrets becoming a disciple. Jesus once warned his disciples about counting the cost of being a disciple:

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple...In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:25-35)

The path of a disciple is marked with hard choices fraught with peril and errors in judgment. As Dietrich Bonhoffer argues, "cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ … costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light.""

Sometimes people come to a point where they feel betrayed by their faith. Many a time, Sloane was left wondering was it all worth his, his own brand of a dark night of the soul. Some folks simply walk away. I’m reminded of the passage in John 6 starting in verse 60, when many of the disciples deserted Jesus. “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” they grumbled. And after Jesus questioned some of them (“Does this offend you?”) many turned their back and no longer followed him. So he turned and asked the rest of his disciples “You do not want to leave me too, do you?” Sometimes we may feel like the remaining twelve disciples. “Lord, to whom shall we go?”

“I don’t know what your beliefs are. If you have a faith. If you expect that something follows this life. You might have none. But if there is a chance that there is something else, that we face the consequences of our actions in this lifetime … this is your last chance to do what’s right.” –Sydney

Jesus never claimed that his purpose was to come to have a personal relationship with us. He did, however, say that He came to build his church and called for the church to go forth and make disciples. I’m reminded of this quote from identifying a disciple:

Following Jesus as a lifestyle isn’t a matter of do’s and don’ts as much as an expression of a new identity in Jesus. This identity as God’s image bearers gets expressed toward specific audiences – toward God we are worshippers, toward other Christ followers we are community and towards the very world of people Jesus came to earth on mission to rescue – we join him on mission. While we all sign on to the same calling, God is big enough to creatively invite each of us to a personal pursuit of following Jesus.

Spiritual journeys are difficult. Some people persevere, realizing the importance of questioning and investigation. It’s frighteningly easy to go off of a path as Sloane so tragically found out. Perhaps the object you were following wasn’t meant to be followed, perhaps you made an idol out of something which was good. It can happen in degrees, a slight deviation, and then further down the road you are left lost. What should you do in the face of feeling betrayed? What do you do with your questions and doubts? How do you remedy that? What can you do to prevent veering from the path we’re called to? We’re not called to ignorance. Each of us has been gifted with a will and intellect of our own. The only true betrayal of faith is to abandon thinking about it and seeking to know God. The path may look different for each of us, but the journey must be persevered.

Alias and Compartmentalized Spirituality

2010-04-13T03:17:00.000-04:00

Before J.J. Abrams become a pop culture phenomenon (Lost, Cloverfield, Star Trek) he helmed the series Alias. The premise was simple: newly engaged, brilliant, beautiful college student, Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner), believes she works for a division of the CIA known as SD-6. Working alongside her estranged father, Jack Bristow (Victor Garber) and under her pseudo-father figure Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin), they foil the plots of evil intelligence agencies. Well, turns out that SD-6 is exactly the agency she thinks she’s fighting, after they kill her fiancée, so she goes to the real CIA. Her ''handler,'' Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan), sends her back into SD-6 as a mole where she will team up with their other inside agent, her father. Oh, and it turns out the mother, Irina Derevko (Lena Olin), she believed was dead the whole time was actually a KGB agent who betrayed her father and often seems set to either reunite and bond as a family or kill everyone. Then there’s her long lost sister, but that’s another story.

Simple enough of a premise.

So each week Garner essentially got to play new characters with new looks, a living doll for the writers to dress up and play with (which became a blue print of sort for shows like Dollhouse, though Eliza Dusku couldn’t quite pull off the same feat due to her thin acting and with the inherent flaws of the show). The thrilling, over-the-top missions, provided the adrenaline rush while at its heart, the show was about family tensions (taken to the extremes because there’s nothing like a family of superspies squabbling over Thanksgiving dinner).

“The truth takes time.” –Irina

The life of a double agents is a mercurial one. By necessity they have to lead secret lives and while at first or on the surface it may seem exciting, it takes its toll. Living with the desire to tell their friends and family, be honest and real with them, about who they are. Only allowed to tell the truth when convenient or absolutely necessary. And when the truth comes out in drips and drabs, their friends are left with a sense of betrayal, not knowing if a single thing said was true, and leaving them feeling like they were only dealing with a stranger.

It was an exhausting box for Sydney Bristow to live in. She had to constantly be on guard, to be one step ahead of her enemies, her friends, and her family as she led her double and sometimes triple (quadruple?) life. The series explored what it meant to be obligated to conceal who she was, to compartmentalize her life and live in the shadow and fear of secrets, even as she assumed multiple aliases to carry out her missions. Trained to constantly conceal part of who she was, blocking off parts of herself, she was the quintessential double-minded woman.

In the same way we can compartmentalize our spirituality as well as our lives. Our duplicitous lives lead to a sort of spiritual dissociation. This is the way of how (secret) sins work, how they infiltrate our lives and we manage to continue to function. They may start small or innocent enough, manageable enough that we can put it away, lock it up in a box in our heart. Boxes we can control and keep hidden. But those boxes stack up, become bricks in a wall eventually sealing us off from God’s rebuking and restorative voice. We rot behind that wall.

Our scalded souls become numb to our sin. We can read the Bible, hear sermons, and not truly want or feel convictions of our sin. We become trapped in a cycle: attachment, attraction, sin, guilt. Lather, rinse, repeat. So we instead choose to walk around with a band-aid, self-medicating ourselves enough to continue as we always had. Such that the bandages are so thick, they further block your relationship with God and hear His voice. Pretty soon a band-aid isn’t enough to keep us together and soon our wounds are wrapped in a bandage. Then we’re hobbling on crutches. But we keep treating the wound, even as all of those accumulating scars metastasize into a cancer.

It’s the cost of compartmentalization and dissociation until truth pierces the darkness and all of the rot can be brought to light and dealt with.

“There’s rarely an end to the story.” –Jack

Alias had a cinematic quality to it which essentially provided Abrams with on the job training for shooting the movie Mission: Impossible III. “As a (dysfunctional) family drama set in a hyperreal world,” as Abrams once described the show, Alias was almost hobbled by the Rimbaldi mythology (a thread of the show’s premise left for another review) which made the show wildly uneven as the writers didn’t seem to know which theme the show should revolve around. Thus the frequent tinkering designed to make it more accessible as the show constantly re-invented itself (nearly as often as Sydney did).

Still, for its flaws, the show offered constant thrills to gloss over it: from Sydney seduces intelligence out of a Russian aboard a plane, escaping just as he gets sucked into the engine; when Sydney has been captured and tortured and the torturer is revealed to be her mother; when Sydney realizes that her roommate has been murdered and replaced with her genetically altered arch enemy. Episodes ended with a bang, seasons ended with cliffhangers, and mysteries deepened and further entangled (often teetering under the threat of collapse). And when in doubt, Jennifer Garner was easy on the eyes and talented enough to make us buy into her house of implausible lies.

Mission: Accomplished.

Our Church Stinks

2010-04-12T00:48:00.000-04:00

So we’ve been consigned to the basement. It’s not as bad as it sounds. The Crossing meets in the basement of Redeemer Presbyterian (a church we were familiar with since it hosts many First Friday events as it shares space with the Harrison Center for the Arts) on Sunday nights. Each week, round tables, lit with candles, are set up around the periphery of rows of chairs. Nothing glamorous, no power points, barely a sound system, it’s small enough that it’s difficult to hide from one another. The pastor has a conversational style with plenty of interaction between him and the congregation.

I love the reaction folks have when we tell them that we’re going to The Crossing. It’s typically something along the lines of “oh, you’d fit in well there.” I can’t tell if it’s because I’m an artist or if it’s because it’s become known as the church for people with issues.

There’s almost an anti-growth program with its “we’re a screwed up place, you sure you want to be here?” vibe. I remember the Sunday evening gathering which sold me on the place. The couple next to us was high and/or drunk. If we couldn’t tell from the smell the alcohol was wafting off them, their attempt to keep beat to the music would have clued us in. Then during the meal afterward, me and a homeless gentlemen was discussing my unemployment:

“What do you do?”
“I’m a writer.”
“You can do that anytime.” At which point, he pulled out his cell phone and gave me numbers to call for job leads.

Oh yeah, did I mention that about a third of the congregation is homeless? For those not used to it, there’s a smell to homelessness. Unwashed bodies, unwashed clothes. One of those things that sounds good in theory. I know that Sally is being stretched as she told me early on that “I’ve always believed church should be a place where people should come as they are: high, drunk, homeless, dirty. I’m just not sure I’m ready to at that church. Or sitting next to them.”

Which is completely honest, though most folks wouldn’t admit to such sentiments. Let’s face it, we talk a pretty good game about social justice, reaching out to the poor, and dealing with homelessness, but we tend to think of that as one of those “over there” ministries. Something that’s done away from the comfort of our suburban castles. It’s also made me realize how much we’ve come to value smooth running services. There is an element of show or production to our church services that we’ve come to expect. A trains running on time veneer of professionalism done in the name of running on/respecting people’s time. And there’s nothing wrong with that, unless we’ve made an idol of that; our need for control superseding the role of the Holy Spirit in a service or the needs of the group. The meal time afterwards is always an adventure.

We tend to want to be with people who are like us, either by race or by class. People who are different will interrupt. People who are quirky aren’t as concerned about appearances. And people aren’t easy to know, assuming they let you get to know them. It’s difficult to embrace the awkwardness of relationships and encounters with people not like us, to allow them to stretch us out of our comfort zones.

We want to go in and fix, that’s our modern American way. But what does it mean to truly love others. What does it mean to be in relationship with them? We don’t give others a chance to let people in or let them in to love us. It’s risky to let people in on our struggles, our shame. We risked being misunderstood, rejected, or not liked. So it’s easier to cling to our addictions and self-protection. The work of building community is hard. It’s one thing to talk about it, another to live it out. To not only walk beside people, but be willing to go after them. To be willing to walk into another person’s pain, their hard reality, even entering into their suffering. That’s how community is forged.

Yes our church stinks. Stripped of the façade, it smells of brokenness and sweat. It’s the smell of community.

Between Brett and Brooks... (King Maker Reviews)

2010-04-09T04:52:00.002-04:00

Right now, King Maker is only available over in the U.K. and in Australia, but thanks to Jim Mcleod, I know what it looks like on the book shelves. And in the hands of rabid fans.

For those especially anxious to get their hands on a copy of King Maker, here's a place that offers free worldwide shipping. Here are some early reviews:

-Science Fiction and Fantasy (a review I'm particularly proud of though I swear I'm not going to live and die by the reviews)

-Fantasy Literature
-gillpolack
-Adam Christopher - Steampunk, Superheroes, and Science Fiction
-Civilian Reader
-Neth Space

Homicide: Life on the Streets – A Review

2010-04-08T04:23:00.001-04:00

Premiering on January 31st, 1993, right after the Super Bowl, Homicide: Life on the Streets was one of the best written, best acted, grittiest, smartest dramas to hit the television airwaves. It used cinema vérité techniques (handheld cameras, jump cuts), had convoluted continuing storylines, and paved the way for shows like The Shield and The Wire (the only shows truly in the conversation of “best cop show” ever).

“I believe in justice. I believe in life.” –Pembleton

The show was brought to the screen by Barry Levinson (Diner, The Natural), Tom Fontana (St. Elsewhere, Oz) and David Simon, who wrote the book the show was based on, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. They created a police procedural completely new to the television landscape. It focused on the bleak realism of the job. Repetitive, focusing on the interaction between the detectives—during the long, boring stretches of paperwork and stakeouts—and how they go about solving the cases; and how spiritually draining, but socially necessary, the work was. This was in the pre-C.S.I. era, without flashy visuals and before terms like DNA or trace evidence entered our popular lexicon. To recap, jittery camera work, ill cut scenes, character centered, non-flashy visuals, set in Baltimore and airing on Friday nights. Needless to say, the show never became a breakout hit.

“Some things transcend normal logic.” –Howard

As the series opens, we’re introduced to rookie detective Tim Baylis (Kyle Secor) as he joins the Balitmore homicide team, an ensemble including Richard Belzer (whose character, Det. John Munch, is now in the Guinness Book of World Records for having been on the most television shows, currently a regular on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit), Yaphet Kotto (Alien), Clark Johnson (The Wire), and Ned Beatty (Deliverance). In a lot of ways, Homicide is the story of Bayliss’ journey from wide-eyed rookie (haunted by his inability to close his first case, the murder of a young black girl named Adena Watson) to world weary (as he explores his dark side and his sexual nature) to spiritually numb.

“If you had a worldview, you would see that by solving this little conspiracy it might tell us something about the human condition.” –Corsetti

He is partnered with cocky (“I’m proud of my pride.”), brilliant Frank Pembleton played by Emmy-winner Andre Braugher (Thief, Frequency). This cast was also unusual in that it was predominantly black, a rarity on television. But while Bayliss is the connecting thread of the series, Frank Pembleton anchors the show through Andre Braugher’s gravitas. Through their partnership, like with the rest on the series, the series explores how the volatility of the partnerships, many like marriages, allow them to work through the horrors they face every day. Ultimately, that’s what the show is about the worldview it requires to navigate the (dark side) of the world.

“Let me … box with God. Because in this line of work—be it mutilated priest or overdosed drug addict—faith only gets in the way and twists you up.” –Pembleton (Something Sacred pt I)

Police officers stare more intimately and more often into the face of evil. They deal with the worst of what society has to offer on a regular basis, observing and cleaning up after the evil that men do. It takes a psychological, emotional, and spiritual toll on them. Frank Pembleton most brazenly challenges and questions his worldview.

One of the great things the show did was examine the very humanity of the detectives. Just like the exploration of Tim Bayliss’ bi-sexuality was handled with subtlety and aplomb, so was the examination of Frank Pembleton’s spiritual life. Over the course of the series we see his faith challenged, extinguished, and slightly rekindled. As his wife Mary (played by Andre Braugher’s real life wife, Ami Brabson) observed: “When I first met you, you believed in things other than yourself … [like] God.” But after all that he had seen, as far as Frank was concerned, “God had become ‘the great light show’, too busy in the next county making hunchback babies.” Faith had become a lie, “blind faith is the crutch of fools.” But it bothered her that he lost his faith and belittled hers, and his crisis of faith impacted the cases he worked and their marriage. Cursed with not only an intellectual curiosity, but also a need to find out the truth, Frank continued to seek and challenge his world view and those of everyone around him. Because he needed something to help him navigate through the darkness.

Any choice of a worldview requires a leap of faith, to believe that your worldview is the “right” one. I believe quest/knowledge journeys begin with a leap of faith, that is, what we choose to put our trust in. For some, it is ourselves (the individual or humanity). For some, it is science (the determination of our senses). For some, it is the spiritual (under the assumption that there is more to this life than presented, both in terms of the spiritual and in terms of after this life). To quote from the blog of my friend, Rich Vincent:

“Christianity does not consist in a series of verifiable and interlocking hypotheses. Nor is it a philosophical system consisting in satisfactory, mutually consistent propositions… the way that truth is sought and engaged with is not through detachment but through a living relationship of faith and love with the object we seek”. The Christian seeks more than “objective truth,” facts, or information. “The goal is not to find information, or even to discern fact, but to bring ourselves, as living subjects, into engagement with reality, culminating ultimately in a participation in the ground of what is real”.

“You don’t leave any room for something good to happen. A moment of redemption. You don’t believe in anything.” –Bolander

Widely considered the most realistic cop drama ever aired (and Andre Braugher being perhaps television’s finest actor), Homicide: Life on the Street gives viewers a different view of detective work. During the course of its run it garnered two Emmy Awards, three Peabody Awards, three Television Critics Awards, two Writers Guild Awards, and was named to TV Guide's "The Greatest Episodes in TV History" and "TV's Greatest Characters" lists (as well as their list of “The best television shows nobody is watching”).

The show rarely followed the rhythms of an hour long drama and definitely showed no sentimentality. When it did go for an emotional moment, such as when Pembleton—who had refused to attend the funeral of his fellow detective who had committed suicide—gets in his dress blues to salute his fallen comrade, it resonates with power. As an example to how tight the writing was, one of the episodes which won an Emmy, "Three Men and Adena" , took place in a single interrogation room. Another award winning standout was the episode “The Subway,” wherein Vincent D’Onofrio is pushed in front of a subway. The story unfolds in real time as he is pinned under the wheels and once they lift the car from him, he will die. [One of my personal favorite episodes was “Black and Blue”, again featuring Pembleton in the box, eliciting a confession from a suspect he knows to be innocent.]

Put simply, this was one of the most influential, cutting edge, ahead of its time police procedurals in the history of dramatic television. The star-turning performance still mesmerize (and many of Hollywood’s finest show up in guest turns). Were it to air today, it would be found on cable, much like its creative inheritor, The Wire did.

Just when we thought we were out …

2010-04-05T01:22:00.000-04:00

aka, Looks like we found a church home(s)

The thought about diving into church at all, much less church shopping, hasn’t been something we looked forward to. There is a high amount of church burnout among me and my friends. A reluctance to invest again, be it being burned by previous experiences or just being disappointed. And this is with the full realization that there is no perfect church out there. I was reading on Scot McKnight’s blog about what he’d look for in a church home to see how well his list lined up with me and my wife’s lists. He said he’d consider at least the following items:

1. The significance of fellowship and community to the people already there.
2. Respect for the Great Tradition in the church, made manifest in how much attention to such elements in the church services.
3. Eucharist -- how often? I prefer this weekly.
4. Worship.
5. Teaching ministries: what's important to the teaching?
6. Missional presence.
7. Sermons.
8. Public reading of Scripture.
9. Growing church -- via evangelism and catechesis.
10. How many 20somethings and 30somethings are present?

I’d add an interesting addition to all of our lists: how are you greeted. We’ve had the oddest experience and it’s one that’s been repeated by our other friends as they’ve been church shopping. A lot of the communities we’ve visited haven’t been especially warm in greeting us even though in most situations (showing up as an interracial couple in our racially polarized church world), it was fairly obvious we were new. In fact, of the churches we’d visited, only three welcomed us. Which did help them make the short list.

I once wrote about my church life as dating. These days it feels like getting back into the dating scene after a divorce, so we haven’t been real excited about it. Friends have been inviting us to their churches (to extend the dating metaphor, it’s been sort of like double dating) and there have been some churches that I’d always wanted to visit (essentially blind dates). We actually still owe a few places a visit (Saturday evenings are tough to swing. Unless your social calendar revolves around your church group, it’s hard to carve out that time), but our children recently informed us that we had found our church.

Sally and I had our list narrowing down to two churches. On Sunday mornings at Common Ground, we can go and be invisible (Relatively anonymous. Turns out, Sally is well known by a lot of folks she knew from “back in the day”. I get to be “Sally’s husband” there), a place to just rest and continue healing. We have friends who go there, Sally and the pastor went to youth group together (ironically, it was the youth group she went to after she left the youth group where she and I met). Though I still struggled with finding a place to serve. We were walking with some friends through the building where the church we had checked out on Sunday evenings (The Crossing) meets, when the boys announced this was their church. On the list of churches we thought they might like, this was the least intuitive fit, after all, there was no kids program or kids their age and, not to put too fine a point on it, one third of the congregation is made up of homeless people. We asked them about why they liked it. Turned out they liked playing with the son of the co-pastor, the adults treat them like people, and they get to serve. They helped put the music equipment away and cleaned tables after the community meal. We don’t want to in anyway squelch their wanting to be helpful or serving others. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the place immediately. Instead of a “you won’t find anything better”/“we’re the best thing God’s got going” vibe which we often encountered (folks get really proud of their teachers), there is more of a “we’re a screwed up place. You sure you want to be here?” vibe.

This journey has been amazing and enlightening. Community is a tricky thing. You build community to have during times of stress. You can’t build community during times of upheaval (because there are times when you just can’t think straight and feel like you’re losing your mind), but community can be forged during them. You find out who can weather storms with you.

Friends that can know you at your worst and love you to new life are priceless treasures, a taste of God's love. We appreciate those friends who supported Sally during all of this and continue to pray for her and be a part of her life. And while we miss the friendships that were lost, we are also grateful for the new friendships made.

I’ve been blessed to walk with a band of brothers, true men of God, who held me and my faith together when I wanted to chuck it all. I’d especially like to thank Jim Falk, Larry Mitchell, and Brad Grammer who continue to push and challenge me, remind me that the church is more than one particular expression/community, and that God’s not through with me yet.

Ten Years Ago ...

2010-04-01T11:35:00.003-04:00

Sally and I got married.

Honestly, I'm as shocked as anyone that we made it. Yet through God's provision, and through a continuing testimony of love and forgiveness, here we are.

I know that we also wouldn't have made it without the love and support of our friends and family. And for that, we thank you.

[And it's also Maunday Thursday]

Acts of Bloggery

2010-03-31T01:15:00.001-04:00

Still thinking through what it means to use our gifts (in my case writing, for example) to be a blessing to others. Every so often I feel this overwhelming need to justify my blog. It’s probably guilt because I assume I should be doing more writerly things on here. So here’s another reset on my blog.

Now, don’t get me wrong, blogging is sooooooo 2003, especially in the age of FaceBook and Twitter. There’s a discipline to writing and it’s probably the only disciplined thing I do in my life. I’ve watched my blog morph over the years. Lots of random essays (a smarter writer would just sell them) and for a long time a series on singleness and dating (which a smarter writer might have packaged as a non-fiction book … and sold). It’s pretty much whatever I’m thinking about at the time:

-writing related stuff (which at the moment would boil down to my incessant need to procrastinate with projects when there is no looming deadline)
-race related stuff (which considering that I’m leading a discussion on this topic at a church in a couple days would explain why various issues are on my mind)
-random interviews and profiles (which gives me an excuse to talk to interesting people)
-pop culture stuff (I still write reviews for HollywoodJesus.com)
-church/religion (every time I get out, they keep pulling me back in)
-life stuff (since the Interwebz are forever, I figure if I write enough gibberish, my kids can get a sense of how I think after I’m gone)

Again, a smarter writer might have spun these out into dedicated blogs. Especially when said writer is astutely aware of the fact that he has two very different audiences: one largely comprised of followers of his spiritual musings; the other a fan of his fiction (with the two usually overlapping at Mo*Con)

But I’m lazy.

So I can get all angst-ridden about this being more writerly, even though I know that it is. I write about the stuff that interests me and undergirds the worlds I run in. Plus, if I’m thinking about it enough for it to end up in a blog, chances are it is a theme in whatever fiction I’m writing.

Suffering and the What, Why and Who Questions

2010-03-30T03:18:00.000-04:00

Guest Blog by Sally Broaddus*

So I’ve listened to 7 sermons in the past 3 days, (that is not listing the two I heard on Sunday either – so 9 sermons in the past 4 days, but 7 on a certain topic). It’s been a bit much to hear, but actually exactly what I needed to hear and talked about exactly where I am in my life. So it was a good thing, however so very not normal for me to do.

Last month I finally got plugged into a prayer group… now hold up, I personally don’t get all fired up about prayer groups and I don’t think they always help… there is so much fakeness and BS that you have to deal with and just saying “Trust God” and that “God never gives you more than you can handle” and “if you pray everything will be all better.” Nah I don’t buy it…. I need more.

But I took a chance and showed up to the prayer group. (by the way I found it by doing a Google search on random topics, the flyer popped up, ( http://www.yourchurch.com/mediafiles/river-of-hope-prayer-group.pdf) so I found it on my own, I wasn’t directed there by anyone, nor did I look under the church website) and I was glad I went…. Truthfully I was at my wits end and was just ready to not care about anything anymore…. Basically I was tired of life and all the crap I’ve had to deal with this past year.. so anyways, I stumbled across the flyer and wasn’t too excited about it but said I’d give it a shot.

The prayer group was very helpful….. I was actually around people that understood my pain and anger and knew how to help me, encourage me, pray for me, and pray with me.

One of the ladies there, tried to encourage me to attend their church and I declined saying even though I am currently looking for a good church for me and my family, I have my reasons of never going to be able to attend their church, and then I asked to make sure I was still going to be able to attend their once a month prayer meeting and they said it was fine. She then pointed me to a sermon series that happened last January – February (2009) and I said I’d think about checking it out…. Deep down I was thinking “Sure, this sermon series is going to do any good, like it’s going to answer any of my questions, and it’s going to right any wrongs that were done to me.”

So I listened to the first sermon on Monday…. and then kept going until I heard the 7th and last one in the series today.

They did answer a lot… I have been stuck on the “What” and “Why” questions, and trust me I have a whole ton of those questions.

Here are just a few of them:

Why did this take place in my life? What did I do to deserve all this? What did I do wrong? Why is it too much for others to handle? Why can’t some admit their fault and give me some closure? Why does it feel like I was pushed out and I lost my church? Why do I lose and they win? Why am I supposed to be the better person? Why do I have to feel all this pain? Why am I reminded daily about it? (little things bring back memories) Why did both me and my husband lose our jobs at the same time? Why is life so hard sometimes? Why do you keep piling more and more on my shoulders? How come you don’t hear me say enough already, I’ve had enough, it’s too much for me to handle?

The sermons I listened to told me, told me that “Why” and “What” questions in the midst of suffering are normal, (it is a common human experience, everyone has suffering of some sort, we live in a sinful and fallen world and people are not perfect) so questions are normal, but they are not satisfying. Even if I got a real answer. We have to learn to let go of the “What” and “Why” questions. The Real question is Who…. Who is in control of my life? Who can I trust? Who will in the end resolve everything and restore everything? (oh course the answer is God)

While going through suffering or trials we don’t need glib, petty, and harsh words. Friends tend to say the wrong things. Sometimes those that suffer need to be free to Lament, a lament is how people feel with deep and honest emotions, and it’s about being honest with what’s going on deep in your soul. (the Bible is filled with laments – just look at Psalms) Many people confuse the cry of pain with the cry of rebellion. (there are times that we will yell to God “Why are you doing this to me”) Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is listen to them, comfort them. Don’t think your friend will always be in their lament, they may get angry at God but they get through it. Don’t be a miserable comforter and a worthless physician to them.

Suffering is not fun, it’s not easy. God uses our suffering for our own good. So we can be more Christ like. Suffering is so our faith can be refined. Do we care about God? Everything happening in our life is there to help form us and make us more Christ-like. There is a story behind our story, we can’t always see the end, that there can be some good that comes from this. That all takes times to see, we will get to the end.

Even when our suffering is not a direct result of our sins, our suffering gives evidence that how sinful we are. It exposes our self-centeredness, our pride is exposed. It doesn’t take much before our sinful side comes out.

If we get cut off in traffic though we did nothing wrong (were driving the speed limit) we got cut off and what happens, and how do we react, we get angry, or for some even more happens. Our sinful side is exposed, how quickly it can come out. We were barely even wronged. Yet there it is.

To wrap this up , the question is not “Why is this happening to me?”, but rather “Can I trust the hand of God? Can I trust that I will be pulled through this?” We need to Submit, Rest, and Trust in God rather than Complain, Contend, and Exalt ourselves above God.

As hard as this is to do, I must pray “God I don’t know what you are doing in my life, but I choose to trust you, you have my best interests in mind.”

PS: Here are the sermons I listened to – All about Job:
http://www.yourchurch.com/sermon/the-reverence-and-relevance-of-job/
http://www.yourchurch.com/sermon/pain-filled-worship/
http://www.yourchurch.com/sermon/beware-of-shallow-answers/
http://www.yourchurch.com/sermon/the-confusions-of-god/
http://www.yourchurch.com/sermon/why-do-the-righteous-suffer/
http://www.yourchurch.com/sermon/the-eclipsing-answer/
http://www.yourchurch.com/sermon/sufferings-ultimate-ends/

*My wife has her own blog over on Xanga (dude, seriously, Xanga? That’s sooo 2003, high school girl). I have her permission to cross post her blog post over here (I resisted the urge to edit her use of ellipses which she knows drives me nuts).

Church Planting and Mission Drift

2010-03-29T00:02:00.000-04:00

I’ve had a front row seat watching a flurry of church plants plan, launch, and close. It may be my inner Pollyanna speaking,* a question that always struck me as curious that if several teams are going into the same area, and if we’re all about unity, why couldn’t they join in or join together?

I know, I know, the answer is manifold and cooperative church planting in the name of kingdom building is an ideal. There are fiscal realities (where they are getting their money from), those who are pastor as vocation (that’s their main income), and different visions/specific expression of the church they want to try. The cynic in me has to give a head nod to ego: THEY want to do it. Human nature wants to carve out their own empire and rare is the pastor that admits that they want to be a huge church or speak to large crowds or be on television or radio.

So we get more and more lone wolf communities.

And I get that. Planters have a particular vision, set of values, and a way of “doing/being church” which the vision person wants to try and his launch people/planters buy into. Churches start off with grand visions of who they want to be and what they want to do, called to a particular area for a reason. I think one of the big bugaboos of church planting is mission drift.

A friend once warned me that there was a “danger” when it came to getting a building to house your gathering. The danger was that once a community got a building it could become about the building. Having/owning/renting a building means utilities, rent, insurance, salaries, and repairs. It’s bad enough when administrators view their congregants as “giving units” or otherwise reduce their people to their utilitarian functions. And love is rarely cost effective.**

In a world more worried about production and attendance (“giving units”) and sermons and bottom lines, there’s little room for the eclectic, the square pegs for the round holes reserved for pew potatoes anxious to hear the latest bit of ear tickling, as we’re written off as trouble makers or drama bringers. Suddenly, pastors who didn’t care about numbers start to really care about numbers. The “great commission” becomes “a pretty good suggestion.” Crisis management becomes about how to not lose people. Grand notions of growing a church through winning new folks become reduced to sheep stealing. Because they have bills to pay, they play not to lose. Their communities retreat, become little more than social clubs who play at church.

I’m sure I’m way oversimplifying complex dynamics. And you know what? It’s not bad for a community to step back and reassess itself. After all, the mission was set out by Christ to go forth and make disciples. How each church body does it is up to them. There’s mission drift and there’s a change in focus or a re-prioritization. Not all change is bad and sometimes communities need to accept that’s what they are now and strike a new vision. Of course, I always like the idea of church plants joining together and both communities being blessed. Which is easier said than done.
*and as you know, when you think “Maurice Broaddus” you think “Pollyanna”

**Although, I’d be the first to admit that I tend to come at things as an “artist”, as in, I will blow up a budget. Which is why churches should have administrators who buy into their mission and DO care about numbers.

A Lenten Meditation - Peter Rollins' The Prodigal Father

2010-03-28T01:19:00.000-04:00

Peter Rollins book, The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales, has been supplemented with seven new parables for Lent. In Pete's own words, this collection of original parables, "represents my own attempt to explore and testify to the impossible Event housed in faith. In that sense they are deeply personal and relative to my own life." With permission, I share one of the parables.

The Prodigal Father

There was once a rich and kindly father who lived with his two sons in a lavish mansion. But late one evening, in the very dead of night, the father packed a few small items and left quietly.

The first son awoke the next day and, upon discovering his father’s disappearance, continued with his chores religiously. Days passed into months, and these months gradually dissolved
into years. Through toil and rationalization, this son successfully repressed the haunting fact that
the father had abandoned them. Instead of facing the pain, he allowed the reality of the situation to fester silently in the depth of his being.

The other son also refused to face up to the pain of his father’s midnight exodus. In confusion
and fear he withdrew his share of the father’s inheritance and ran away, losing himself in worldly distractions of all kinds. But he found that no matter where he traveled, he could not escape the sorrow in his heart, and no matter what activity he engaged in, the amnesia it offered was not enough to cloud the memory of his father’s disappearance. In addition to this, he soon found himself utterly destitute and poor. After only a few years he found himself without money or
friends, working on a pig farm, where he would have to share the scraps that he fed to the animals in order to supplement his diet.

After many months of this pitiful existence, he decided to face up to his father’s disappearance
and return home.

When he finally reached the great mansion, he found his brother still caring for the property,
still toiling on the land, and still suppressing the memory of their father’s exodus. The brother who had never left held resentment in his heart against the one who had squandered his inheritance only to return empty-handed. However, the other brother paid no heed to this animosity, for his gaze was set upon a deeper concern. Each day he would carefully ready a calf for slaughter and lay out his father’s favorite cloak in preparation for a great feast of celebration. Once he had done this he would then sit by the entrance of the mansion and passionately await the father’s return.

He waits there still, to this very day, yearning for the homecoming of the prodigal father with
longing and forgiveness in his heart.

Commentary by Peter Rollins

This story was originally written on a scrap of paper while I was attending a Quaker meeting. As I sat in silence that Sunday morning, it felt as if I were in the presence of people who were faithfully waiting for God to show up. Indeed, on that dark and cold Sunday morning it seemed as if those gathered were prepared to wait their entire lives for God if that was what it would take. As I thought about this, my mind wandered to the prodigal son story, in which God is portrayed as waiting for the return of His wayward offspring.

But being among this small band of believers, I began to wonder what form the story would
take if written from a human perspective, from the perspective of those who remain faithful to
God yet who feel that God is distant. The story thus became a personal reflection on the theme of
divine withdrawal.

Reflections on the idea of God’s withdrawal span the Christian tradition and have been
baptized with many names, such as the “dark night of the soul” or the “cloud of unknowing.”
That tradition was poignantly mined in much of the theology that emanated from those who
experienced the horror of the death camps during the Second World War.

Many theologians have pointed out that God, by God’s very nature, always transcends our grasp
and so will always be experienced as withdrawn from our understanding and experience. This view seeks to respect the wonder and majesty of the divine, and draw out how God’s presence is never full presence, not simply because of our limits, but because of God’s uncontainable nature.

Yet, there is another sense in which believers have reflected on the theme of God’s withdrawal,
one that has nothing to do with the nature of God as transcendent but rather with the sense that God has abandoned us. We see this theme poignantly expressed by Christ on the cross when he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The absence of God as testified to in this prayer is not the result of God’s being perceived as transcendent, but rather derives from the sense of God’s withdrawing from us in our hour of need.

It was this latter experience I had in mind as I wrote the above story. For I was intrigued by how remaining faithful to God in the midst of God’s seeming infidelity to us is actually a deep and unique aspect of the Judeo-Christian tradition, one that spans the entire biblical text, from Genesis to Revelation.

From the angry accusations of the psalmist to Christ’s anguished cry from the cross, such prayers are not condemned by the text but celebrated. In these broken prayers we find a singular depth of commitment, intimacy, and struggle. For these accusations of abandonment address God directly and thus affirm a resolute longing for God in the very expression of their loneliness.

The seven extra parables are available from now through Easter as a free download to anyone that purchases The Orthodox Heretic online at www.paracletepress.com.

Loving Your Enemies … Sorta

2010-03-26T00:40:00.000-04:00

“How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!” -Psalm 133:1

Blah, blah, blah. So I’ve been looking at the love your enemies passage trying to find loopholes (because, as you know, that’s what Jesus would do. He was ALL about the letter of the law and not the spirit of it). I’m bouncing back and forth between verses like “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27-28) and the expert in the law asking for loopholes, like “who is my neighbor?” (and getting the Good Samaritan parable for his troubles). So in fully “expert in the law” mode, I’ve rationalized that it’s easy for me to live in unity if I cut off relationships.*

This is a simple workaround that JUST skirts those pesky “carry his coat an extra mile” type sentiments that define what it means to go out of your way to love your enemy. I’m all about convenient theology. Look how easy this is: you only have to love your enemies if you’re around them, ergo, don’t spend time with them! Oh, I can “pray” for them (for the double win, I can proclaim that I’m praying for them and look twice as spiritual).

Unity is as simple as the relationship in front of you which means you have to be in their presence to love them and that’s its own commitment. I have little enough time for the people I love today.
True unity means to deny the values of our culture, our sense of independence, our sense of self-reliance. And there are plenty of valid reasons to not pursue unity: our own sense of rightness, our own woundedness (even hurt feelings from people not pursuing you), doctrinal differences, or even apathy. All perfectly valid reasons to cut off relationships (and even allow your heart to hardened).

To love our enemies is the most mature form of love and the hardest crucible to test and refine what it means to live out one’s Christianity. In short, it’s the crux of what it means to love. It means we have to die to ourselves, our wants, and our egos. Conjuring love up doesn’t work (the same way some folks like to conjure up “forgiveness”). Acting loving isn’t enough.
But I ain’t there yet.

Don’t get me wrong, for the bulk of us, we define enemy as someone who says mean things to us or unfriends us on Facebook, but nonetheless, let’s wallow in our convenient spirituality. It sure beats doing the hard work of continuing to pray for God to change our hearts. Anyway, I’ve got no lost love for people I don’t like or no longer wish to be around.

This message brought to you by the Broaddus Institute of Theological Convenience, where the inmates run the asylum.

*Think of it as a break up with all of the attendant feelings: All those years we spent together, all the good times and feelings, all wasted now, overshadowed by fighting and ill will. Was it something I did? Am I in the wrong here? And the thought, in hindsight, that maybe I should have left a long time ago.

The Thin Yellow Line

2010-03-24T00:38:00.000-04:00

So BFF Jon and my co-editor, Jerry Gordon, were over for dinner. My boys, ever eager students of male bonding conversations, were in rapt attention as we discussed the simple rules to going to the bathroom (we’re talking “away games”). Ultimately, this left them more confused than when I tried explaining race relations in this country. Plus, I’m not sure I knew all of the rules. Apparently there is as much ritual to this as a Japanese tea ceremony. Anyway, to wit…

The two most important rules:
1) No talking. There’s nothing you need to talk about in there. This is a sacrosanct moment, filled with doubt about your shortcomings and subtle homophobia.
2) Maintain the pee line. This means keep your eyes straight ahead, never dropping down. You know where your equipment is. Just reach down and handle it.

Keep those rules in mind at all times. However, there is a protocol one must maintain. Upon entering and facing the row of urinals, one must go to the furthest empty stall. When the next person comes in, they must go to the opposite end of the row. Should a third person come in, they should go to the middle. However, this is where things get a little tricky. That third person has to figure out if there IS a middle urinal. It’s important to leave space enough to leave the every other urinal space between men. Therefore, you know if a man has designed the bathroom, because there are an odd number of urinals.

The only acceptable time to go to a stall (other than to poo) is when there are no available urinals. Similarly, you’re not supposed to use the kid urinals unless there are no others available (but you still need to maintain proper spacing). Use your best judgment when it comes to these.

And now, troughs. This is a lowest common denominator pee event. It’s nothing less than a free for all/Lord of the Penises, er, Flies. Simply space yourself out as best as you can. If you know you will be facing a trough situation, remember, no open-toed shoes, flip flops (especially at the Indianapolis 500 track - if your choice is that trough, it’s better to stand outside and piss where everyone can see you).

There should be no handshakes or celebratory gestures of any kind while in the bathroom.

Do NOT cross streams. Under ANY circumstances.

There was some question about stalls and how to handling a no toilet paper situation. This is easily enough avoided if you simply check your stall first, but sometimes you just have to go and don’t think to do your due diligence. In the event of no toilet paper, you have a few options: 1) if the bathroom is not busy, you run to another stall or make a break for paper towels (pulling up your underwear is optional); 2) if you’re a man’s man or in a crowded bathroom, you sacrifice your underwear to wipe with and then go commando for the rest of your evening.

And as I told my sons after this informative and instructional seminar, “now today, you are a man. Or at least you will be once you’ve mastered the art of crop dusting a room.”

BFF Jon and Co-editor Jerry are available for school lectures and Boy Scout meetings if you need them.

The Fellowship of the Doers

2010-03-22T01:58:00.002-04:00

"Knowing the correct password—saying 'Master, Master,' for instance— isn't going to get you anywhere with me. What is required is serious obedience—doing what my Father wills. I can see it now—at the Final Judgment thousands strutting up to me and saying, 'Master, we preached the Message, we bashed the demons, our God-sponsored projects had everyone talking.' And do you know what I am going to say? 'You missed the boat. All you did was use me to make yourselves important. You don't impress me one bit. You're out of here.' –Matthew 7:21-23

This has always been one of those warning passages that always lurks in the back of my head. It’s a stop-check/measure on your spiritual walk and how you’re living it out. Most times, the only way my faith makes sense to me is when I’m doing. I like the image of being a soldier.* On the front lines serving, sometimes getting wounded (because as I was reminded, even self-inflicted wounds are wounds), treated, ready to go back out on another tour of duty.

Those times of treatment can make folks feel antsy. It’s the anxious time of “what next?” It’s hard to be in a place where we’re called to just listen and wait. To heal and be. Half the time wondering “how long?” and often missing the fact that the waiting itself may be the answer. To mix in another analogy, they can feel like they’ve been benched. Yet such seasons of rest are absolutely necessary. They are a redefining season, a time of transition, realigning, refocusing, and reprioritizing. To assess where you’ve been, what you’ve done, what hasn’t worked, and where you go from here.

That's not the only aspect the propels this need to DO, nor is it the only danger. On the one hand, we want to DO something for the kingdom. We see problems in the world around us and want to fix them. Be it an appeal to our inner white knight/super hero complex or simply a matter of our hearts breaking and we’re moved to action. Yet on the other hand, we don’t want to be so about DOING that we forget for whom and why we DO those things.

There is another inherent danger to the need to DO something. During times of reflection, we may realize we were DOING for the wrong reasons. Wanting to please. Wanting to fix. Wanting to be a blessing. Maybe we were doing it to impress another, be it the approval of a pastor or the respect of a friend. Win the praise of people. We want to DO something, we want to prove our love, we want to show our devotion. Clinging to a very American set of values, our identity wrapped up in what we do. I know that a quiet part of me believes that I’m not worth being loved if I can’t demonstrate my worth. But I have to ask myself, "Is that what pleases God?" Just like part of the anxiety stems from living in and with a fear of being rejected, by people AND by God. Our hearts cry out for our Father to be patient, not trusting in a time or need for rest, because we’re afraid He’s going to give up on us. We believe, but we haven’t overcome our unbelief.

The thing we know but don’t always believe (or believe but don’t always know) is that we’re already accepted by Christ. Our failings, falling short, or addictions don’t make us displeasing to Him. That’s not how love works. Those things do keep us from intimacy with Him and get in the way of our striving for deeper knowing of Him. My friend Seraphim** tipped me to a book by Henri Nouwen called Inner Voice of Love and this passage:

Know That You are Welcome

"Not being welcome is your greatest fear. It connects with your birth fear, your fear of not being welcome in this life, and your death fear, your fear of not being welcome in the life after this. It is the deep-seated fear that it would have been better if you had not lived.

Here you are facing the core of the spiritual battle. Are you going to give into the forces of darkness that say you are not welcome in this life, or can you trust the voice of the One who came not to condemn you but to set you free from fear? You have to choose for life. At every moment you have to decide to trust the voice that says, "I love you. I knit you together in your mother's womb" (Psalm 139:13).

Everything Jesus is saying to you can be summarized in the words "Know that you are welcome." Jesus offers you his own most intimate life with the Father. He wants you to know all he knows and to do all he does. He wants his home to be yours. Yes, he wants to prepare a place for you in His Father's House."

If we DO, it should be from the overflow of what Christ has done for you. If we DO, it should be us working out what it means to join in God’s mission to reconcile the world back to Him. If we DO, it should be from the wellspring of love. There’s no searching for redemption in our acts of service. There is only thinking of others as more important that yourself and serving them.

Then again, my current prayer is “Lord, this stuff is hard. Could you try testing me with wealth?”

*qualified because sometimes the “in the army of the Lord” business goes too far. I have no intentions of invading Islam or going all Jack Bauer on a wiccan.

** if I have a friend named Wrath why WOULDN'T I have a friend named Seraphim?

House - “Broken” (Part II)

2010-03-18T02:08:00.001-04:00

(continued from Part I of An End of Self Confession aka “Physician Heal Thyself”)

“I’m out of plans.” –House

Only after a terrible tragedy, House begins to realize how much deeper his emotional problems lie than a Vicodin addiction. This marked his final stage of fully bottoming out. To finally reach a place where he is tired of fighting, worn out by the struggle to do better, losing hope that you’ll ever find wholeness or the light. Feeling broken, beyond repair, as if something is fundamentally wrong with you and you don’t know if you’ll ever be fixed. Afraid to be around others for fear of saddling them with all of your baggage; or worse, letting your disgust and anger with yourself pour out over them. You’re not where you wish to be, realizing the clash between what you believe and say you are about versus how you are living. Your life and circumstances not playing out the way you had imagined. Hitting bottom means we would rather die that continue to live the way we’ve been living. Reaches the end of his self, sense of independence and need to control when he admits that “I need help.”

“I want to get better. Whatever the hell that means. I’m sick of being miserable.” –House

Only from this place could he face his demons, or put another way, sometimes you have to lose everything to find the “ground of your being.” For one thing, he had walled himself off from everyone one around him. The thing about walls is that you can’t live behind walls and love as you should. Feel loved like we should. People can’t experience you loving them from inside your walls. You can’t living behind them grow closer to God. But you have to come to that conclusion on your own and decide that you want to risk living life in a broken and fallen world that could hurt you. You have to risk experiencing the pain that comes with that world. And that’s a scary proposition. You have to risk knowing and being known. And the more you experience someone who knows you, especially in your sinfulness, it exposes the lie. And that’s a scary proposition.

There is also the core belief that we can’t live without the self-medication. Life shifts. Gaining and losing people, places, and things leaving feelings of resentment, anger, self-protection, and abandonment in its wake, losses remind us that all isn’t as it should be. They remind us that life is painful. How do we experience and react to that pain? Sometimes we numb ourselves, medicate, act out sexually. Old wounds, be they lies we’ve come to believe about ourselves or quietly trying to please a distant father (because his opinion of you has shaped who you are and how you are) need to be confronted. Expecting something from certain relationships that never materialized, disillusioned with losses. Each loss presents a choice: passage to anger, blame, depression, resentment or passage to a greater life and freedom. Growing in love.

“You need to get better.” –Dr. Nolan

The thing is, brokenness can be redeemed. Real love risks and offers redemption and when loved well, we’re taught about God. In all of our brokenness and (self-) deception, in all of our brokenness and desperation, we can come before the Lord and be fully accepted. Fellow writer, Carole McDonnell, said this about laying things at the cross of Christ: “I've learned to not ask God to make me what I would've been if life hadn't gone as badly as it has. In Christ, we are restored from whatever pain we had...but the restoration is not to bring us back to the great might-have-been self. True restoration carries the pain and brokenness still, but also Christ's light. For those in dark to know that we understand some of their pain, and that God-with-us.”

There is a power to putting our feelings to words through prayer, sharing our stories of woundedness, and finding healing as we push one another forward. Moving forward is the key. As Dr. Nolan reminds him, “You’re not God, House. You’re just another screwed up human being.” Apology and confession allows him to acknowledge his failure, move on, and maybe begin feel better about himself.

So he sets out on the path of figuring out how to get from the place where he is to where he wants to be. It’s like starting life all over again: learning how to trust people, how to open up to people; trying to make connections rather than deflecting. Because as House raps (yeah, you read that correctly) “if you don’t make connections, then your whole life is a mess.” Because he can’t do it alone. Eventually he will need the support of others to walk alongside him along the path (not the false piety that comes from an inability to let go of past griefs and hurts).

And even as he goes through the process of shedding the lies he’d wrapped himself in and other people’s expectations of him; at the same time, he (re-)discovers who he is and what he was meant to be: a healer. The thing about wounded healers, is that they understand the pain so intimately. They know what to ask and they know when the “pain meds” aren’t working. They are living reminders to not let the past define you, but to always be working toward who you were meant to be. And that there is hope of becoming whole.

“We’re proud of him, we wish him well, and we hope to never see him again.”--Dr. Nolan

In short, “Broken”, which feels a lot like House M.D.: the movie, may be the best episode in the show’s five-plus season run. And that’s quite a bar that it’s clearing.

House - “Broken” (Part I)

2010-03-18T02:07:00.001-04:00

An End of Self Confession aka “Physician Heal Thyself”

From its debut, House M.D. has been a great show. It’s medical mystery plays as in as formulaic a way as any episode of Law & Order or C.S.I. and on that level of procedural, it’s been fine. But it has always been the character of Dr. Gregory House himself, played by Hugh Laurie (Black Adder) who makes the show remarkable. He’s been a fascinating character study, a blend of arrogance, brilliance, charm, wit, and selfishness; a man in pain, who heals others pain.

The two hour opener of season six makes for an interesting departure episode for the show. Other than a brief appearance by Robert Sean Leonard as Wilson, Laurie is the only regular cast member to appear. There isn’t a medical mystery, per se, to solve. There’s just two hours of watching one of television’s most fascinating characters at his most vulnerable and finally facing up to his brokenness.

It's easy to play armchair psychologist as his wounds keep piling up. He has long term unresolved issues with his father. He’s in constant pain due to his leg and has been self-medicating (drugs, porn, and prostitutes) for years. He’s lost the love of his life and hasn’t figured out how to open himself up enough to love. Broken mind, broken heart, broken body, broken spirit, broken sense of self … sometimes you have to realize the level and depth of your brokenness before you can begin to heal.

At the close of season five, we see House bottoming out. It had been coming for years: the Vicodin abuse, risking jail, his license, a downward spiral of self-destructive behavior. By the time he checks into the Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital, he was suffering delusions (including a sexual encounter with his boss, Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein)). As the season opens, House is going through drug withdrawal. Once the meds have cleared his system, and the accompanying hallucinations gone, House is ready to check out. However, despite his voluntary commitment, it isn’t as easy for him to leave as he thought.

As the episode is directed by longtime "House" producer Katie Jacobs, she brings in the star of her previous medical drama Gideon's Crossing, the great Andre Braugher (Homicide: Life on the Streets), as Dr. Darryl Nolan, the head shrink at Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital. House needs Nolan's support to get his medical license reinstated and Nolan wants House to get truly well. The two begin a spectacular game of cat and mouse--that much greater with two powerhouse actors going up against one another--with House plotting con after manipulation while Nolan lets him know that he can’t con a con man.

“You need to stop fighting the system. You need to let me do my job.” –Dr. Nolan

“Broken” is a journey towards redemption: the first step in a very long and non-linear path. It’s a risky gambit because part of the appeal of House has been all of the things that make him so dysfunctional, his woundedness is part of what makes him tick: his emotional unavailability, his inability to love and the denial of his own problems, all of which his colleagues put up with or gave him a pass on because he did such good work.

A lot of folks don’t know what to do with folks who are truly hurting. They are quick to label them crazy or drama queens, accuse them of self-aggrandizing behavior. To be fair, condition not always easily recognized, hidden behind walls, and people who are hurting aren’t always the most cooperative of “patients.” Often scared or indifferent and stubborn, or whatever else their posture of woundedness, they are unable to give voice or words to their state of despair or hopelessness. Burdened with the weight of guilt and shame, and self-contempt, they might pull away from people, not wanting to let others see our wounds believing them to be too ugly.

“They didn’t break me. I am broken.” –House

House needed to bottom out in order to get to a place of true, restorative healing. However, this came in stages (and throughout the series his friends often wondered “is this is? Have you finally hit rock bottom?”). When he first arrived at the Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital and even after he had kicked the drugs, he hadn’t reached his bottoming out point. He was still an open wound spewing wherever he went. An uncooperative patient more content to scheme and get out on his terms in his way, constantly alienating people with his arrogant behavior and pushing them away before they could abandon him (not trusting them to be there because that’s what his father and life had taught him).

This is where House had found himself. Narcissism and anti-social behavior were just a few of his self-destructive behaviors, often screwing up relationships as if that was the goal. That’s the thing about addicts and addictive behavior: they scheme, lie, and take others down. They take advantage of their friends, seemingly valuing failures more than his successes, not quite being able to get out of their own (self-destructive) way, and never quite being honest to those around them. And in House’s case, he trusts in his intellect and ability to read people over making actual connections with them; using his intellect as a defense as he pulls away from people.

So House keeps trying to do things his way, finding a measure of healing in dealing with his own pain by helping others ... as he schemes. He develops a close relationship with his new roommate, Alvie (Lin-Manuel Miranda) and a frequent visitor, Lydia (Franka Potente). Alvie helps him uncover incriminating information about Dr. Nolan for a blackmail scheme and convinces Lydia to loan him her car to sneak out a delusional patient, Freedom Master, in an attempt to undermine Dr. Nolan’s course of treatment.

Easy to wallow in lostness, trying to fix rather than move on; or become caught up in machinations and manipulations, creating scenarios of crisis so that one can swoop in and play the hero. It’s still about trying to maintain a sense of control, to manage something in order to create the illusion that things are still okay.

to be continued ...

Ghost Writer – All I Need is a Flaming Bike

2010-03-17T13:45:00.002-04:00

[<--Ghost Rider ... Ghost Writer? Get the pun?!?]

I’m a vain person.

I’m either slowing coming to grips with this reality or am re-discovering the depths of this truth anew. Now, to be straight, part of “living the writer’s life” is an act of ego and vanity. Ego to believe that something we’ve written ought (DEMANDS!) to be read by others and vain enough to want to see our name on our work. How many of us day dream about walking into a library or a book store and seeing our name on the shelves?

This moment of revelation has been brought to you by elance.com. You see, I’ve been on the site grabbing up the occasional bit of freelance work. I’m about to submit a bid on another ghostwriting job. And once again, my mind is calculating how much time and effort I am going to spend, how many (good) words I am going to use … for someone else’s name to go on it. Then Sally reminds me that bills are due and I prepare the proposal.

Continued on the Apex Blog.

Oh No She Di’int - Kelli Strikes Back ... Again (Mo*Con Updates)

2010-03-15T00:22:00.006-04:00

Guest Blog by Kelli Owen

Maurice asked me to write a little something regarding Mo*Con. Or as it’s being called this year, Kelli*Con. So let’s start there. Why “Kelli*Con”? Well, let me tell you a story…

There are a variety of conventions for writers to choose from. There are the publishing cons, the writer cons, the genre cons and then there’s Mo*Con. It’s got panels, books for sale, writers and publishers to talk to and the icing on the cake—Maurice makes everyone steaks at 1am. Unlike other cons, it’s not all at a hotel. The panels and main meals are served at the official location, but then everyone goes to the Broaddus household and this convention becomes a backyard barbeque from hell. The atmosphere is relaxed but business it discussed. In many ways, it reminds me of a smaller version of Necon.

And near the end of Mo*Con two years ago, Maurice said that the next one (2009) would be the last one.

“The hell it will! You have to have one more, so I can be guest of honor—my book will be out!”

Let me tell you now children, never tease your friends when they’re wielding their mighty scepters of power…

“Okay, we’ll have Kelli*Con and then that will be the last one.”

Of course, I figured he was just humoring me. He wasn’t. And over the next year he would bring it up and ask silly questions like “do you want to be in charge of the panels? Not be in charge in the sense of scheduling or staffing, but topic…”

A. Con-Goers. Dream.

“Hell yes!”

I’ve been to many cons over the years. Many. And I’ve always had a complaint or two regarding panels, not because I know everything (I really don’t) but because I have opinions and people know it. And they know if they ask me, I’ll tell them. (No, don’t ask me if those jeans make your ass look fat unless you really want the truth.) How would I change panels? Well, my chief complaint has always been that we seem to do the same topic over and over and over and over and, oh yeah, OVER and only change which con or who’s speaking. Time for something new!

Now of course, I have to keep with the themes of Mo*Con: Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n Roll. No wait, I meant Spirituality, Art, Race & Gender. Or, if I’m allowed to tweak them just enough: Gawd, Sex and Blogging. The panel titles and basis are as follows for Kelli*Con, er Mo*Con V, er the last Mo*Con ever…

“Oh no you di’int” – aka, Why Maurice shouldn’t be allowed to blog, er I mean, blogging dos and don’ts.

“We don’t need no steekin’ gawd” – Spirituality and writing about religion from an atheists point of view

“Elbow, knee, penis” – because if you can’t call it what it is, you have no business writing about it!

Of course, the other reason he agreed to this crazy notion of me taking of his convention is because my first novel was coming out right before the con. Note I used the word “was.” The novel, “In the Shadow of Darkness,” has changed publishers—don’t worry, it’s a good thing—and will still be coming out, just not until December of 2010. Meanwhile, I do have stories in Dark Faith, Dark Futures and an online guilty pleasure at Choate Road as the March spotlight scribe.
So why should you go to Mo*Con? Steak at 1am, we’re talking about penises IN A CHURCH, it will be the last time Sally ever lets Maurice gather this many people in her house and call it “working,” (she ain’t lying! -MGB) and I’m sorry, but have you seen the guest list? Brian Keene, Wrath James White, Alethea Kontis, Gary Braunbeck & Lucy Snyder, Alex McVey, Jason Sizemore, Chesya Burke… and people NOT listed on the official page: Bob Ford, Michael Knost, Kyle Johnson, Doug Warrick (Kim Paffenroth, D. Harlan Wilson and many more –MGB) … oh just show up, or you’ll be lost when it’s discussed down the road.

Because this one WILL be discussed…

…For years to come!

Kelli Owen
~The Artist Formerly Known as Kelli Dunlap

There will be a silent auction of rare books and art. Books for sale, starting with THE LAUNCH OF DARK FAITH. Artists and authors on site to collect autographs. Steve Gilberts will be leading a special interactive art seminar for kids. There’s a thread on my message board home for those looking for roommates, you can post your queries here (register on Brian Keene’s board). Remember, THE CUTOFF DATE FOR THE ADVANCE RATE OF $50 IS APRIL 1ST!!!

Most importantly, you do NOT want to upset these ladies. You better show up!

A Couple New Story Sales

2010-03-12T01:58:00.003-05:00

Because I can't just find a genre and stick to it (aka, why I'll probably never sell a short story collection), here are my latest story sales. First up, I have a story in an anthology of weird western stories entitled “Dead West:13 Tales of Murder and Mayhem” (cover art by Bob Freeman) from Bandersnatch Books due out around Halloween 2010:

Jerrod Balzer - A Show of Rage

Steve Vernon - Border Crossing

Hunter Lambright - Things Worse Than Ghosts

Daniel I. Russell - Rainchild and the Trickster

Rick Hautala - Screaming Head

Steve Rasnic Tem - Sleeping Ute

Lisa Morton - St. Thomas of El Paso

Harry Shannon - The Reckoning

Martel Sardina - The Turtle's Only Friend

Michael Knost - Thinning the Herd

Maurice Broaddus - Trails End

Steven Shrewsbury - Boston Corbet:: Castro Gunfighter

Matthew Pizzolato - Windigo

By the way, that marks my third weird western. The first was in Dark Dreams II. The second was sold to Inhuman Magazine (hmm, a sale I don't think I'd announced yet, but, there you go) and now this one. They are somewhat connected, in that they have recurring characters.

The second story is for an anthology of dystopic SF for Dark Quest books called Dark Futures (art by Alexey Andreye). It comes out in the second quarter of 2010 but is available here for pre-order:

“Black Hole Sun” by Alethea Kontis & Kelli Dunlap
“For Restful Death I Cry” by Geoffrey Girard
“Tasting Green Grass” by Elaine Blose
“Endangered” by Robby Sparks
“Nostalgia” by Gene O’Neill
“Beautiful Girl” by Angeline Hawkes
“Father’s Flesh, Mother’s Blood” by Aliette De Bodard
“Terra Tango 3″ by James Reilly
“Love Kills” by Gill Ainsworth
“Memories of Hope City” by Maggie Jamison
“Do You Want That in Blonde, Brunette, or Auburn” by Glenn Lewis Gillette
“Marketing Proposal” by Sarah M. Harvey
“The Monastery of the Seven Hands” by Natania Barron
“A Futile Gesture Toward Truth” by Paul Jessup
“Hydraulic” by Ekaterina Sedia
“Alien Spaces” by Deb Taber
“A Stone Cast into Stillness” by Maurice Broaddus
“Personal Jesus” by Jennifer Pelland
“Meat World” by Michele Lee

I like to keep diverse company.

Open Letter to Wal-Mart

2010-03-10T16:50:00.004-05:00

Dear Wal-Mart,

It has come to my attention that you are in need of some damage control after a recent unfortunate incident regarding your line of black Barbie dolls. To wit:

Black Barbie Sold for Less Than White Barbie at Walmart Store

March 9, 2010 — Walmart is raising eyebrows after cutting the price of a black Barbie doll to nearly half of that of the doll's white counterpart at one store and possibly others. A photo first posted to the humor Web site FunnyJunk.com and later to the Latino Web site Guanabee.com shows packages of Mattel's Ballerina Barbie and Ballerina Theresa dolls hanging side by side at an unidentified store. The Theresa dolls, which feature brown skin and dark hair, are marked as being on sale at $3.00. The Barbies to the right of the Theresa dolls, meanwhile, retain their original price of $5.93. The dolls look identical aside from their color.

Wal-Mart, I feel your pain. There’s just no pleasing some folks. We always got to be angry about something. First we’re all “destruction of the black self image” and then when you give us scraps from the table, er, remember there’s dollars to be made, er, not only give us the black Barbie (and, way to go Mattel, saving money by not actually Africanizing her features!) but discount said Barbie to get her into as many hands as possible, folks go an turn on you.

"The implication of the lowering of the price is that's devaluing the black doll," said Thelma Dye, the executive director of the Northside Center for Child Development, a Harlem, N.Y. organization founded by pioneering psychologists and segregation researchers Kenneth B. Clark and Marnie Phipps Clark.

One word for Thelma, Wal-Mart: uppity.

We here at the Broaddus Institute of Creative Spin are currently devising the best ways for you to spin this. Free of charge, we offer you these options:

-Call it your 3/5 Constitutional compromise sale
-clear shelf space by auctioning off the black dolls a dozen at a time (applicable to damaged/defective dolls only)
-Two words for you: “discount darkies!”
-Say it with me “Negro clearance sale”

Be strong Wal-Mart. This is one good spin move away from being a non-story.

Your consigliere during troubled times,

Maurice

I Suck at Titles

2010-03-10T00:58:00.000-05:00

I admit it, I do. I suck at naming things.*

For example, when it came to naming children, I was allowed to come up with boy names, with Sally getting a veto option, and she would get to name the girls, with me having a veto option. When it came to naming my firstborn, I went with what I knew. I named him Maurice Gerald Broaddus the Second (whom we’d call “Reese” as not to confuse the two of us). It worked for a couple of reasons: I got to retroactively declare myself “Maurice the Great” and I got to declare my son the beginning of my dynasty. When son number two came along, my original plan was to name him Maurice Gerald Broaddus the Third. My reasoning, follow me on this, was that in case something happened to Reese, I’d still have someone to carry on the dynasty. And we could call him “Tre”. Solid, solid reasoning on my behalf … vetoed by the wife.**

It’s rare that I start with a good title. “Pimp My Airship” might have been the last time I was perfectly happy with a title and even then I had the title before I had the story. In the end, I don’t know if the tone of the story matched the title, but I kept it anyway.

Most times I have working titles, a place holder while I come up with something that will work. To pull back the curtain on my creative process, I have a story which sold (which I’ll announce later) that had the working title “Virtual Babies.” Shock of all shocks, it’s about virtual babies. Eventually the title became “A Stone Cast into Stillness”, but my editor has been beating me to death with my working title. Just a subtle reminder that I don’t crap gold. *** Which means it’s probably a good idea that I never let my Angry Robot editors know that my original working title for King Maker wasn’t “The Knights of Breton Court” but “Black Camelot” (hey! I was watching “Black Caesar” at the time. DON’T YOU JUDGE ME!!!).

This originally was meant to be a random tweet. But I couldn’t figure out a way to reduce my rant to 140 characters. That’s why God created blogs.

*This is an entirely different conversation than the one about Pen Names. Though it ends the same: me making the mistake of sharing said name with a “friend” and that friend then beating me to death with it.

**Instead, we end up naming him Malcolm Xavier, after one of my heroes, Malcolm X. Sally wanted the “X” to stand for something, and I could live with the allusion to Professor X of the X-Men. This was also before my Malcolm X came out blonde and blue-eyed.

***In fact, our running IM discussion while I was writing this blog went like this:

Me: I'm two paragraphs into my latest blog and haven't had a WHIFF of a point yet.
HatedEditorWhichShallRemainNameless: sounds like your short story first drafts. ZING!!!

Cause he’s got jokes.

A Day of Day Street With Outreach Inc Part II

2010-03-09T01:49:00.001-05:00

Continuing my thoughts from yesterday, it’s amazing how little I know about my own city of 30+ years. It’s like the city has an entire side to it that we don’t realize is there. A learned invisibility as we’ve trained ourselves to not to see the homeless. We don’t want to stare out of “politeness”. We try to not make direct eye contact for fear of being hit up for change. We roll up our windows or lock our car doors when they get too near to our cars. It was on another day of day street with Outreach, Inc where this lesson was truly driven home.

We were in another area, almost literally in the shadow of downtown Indianapolis, investigating the rumor of a new squat. We had stopped to talk to a homeless gentleman who was living under a bridge. While talking to him, he told us of a place where kids were known to congregate. So we went off to investigate. Now, to be straight, this day was miserable. Not only was it cold, but it raining, a constant drizzle which soaked us.

We crossed over the bridge and down a path through the trees which blocked the view from the main street. Gray slate rocks covered the railroad tracks we soon crossed over. Their slick surface nearly twisting our ankles as we slipped across them. A thick grove of overgrown branches formed a wall on the other side of the tracks, but careful examination revealed a slight pathway.

Someone had been here. Towels and pairs of short were half buried in the mud as if a makeshift welcome mat into the home. An action figure of the X-Men villain, Pyro, hung from a tree. Two steps into the underbrush and I was covered in brambles and burrs. The thick copse of trees opened up into a clearing. A burgundy car seat sat next to a vinyl green chair as if they had been arranged in someone’s living room.

Collected bags of trash, though some of which had been scattered by animals, walled off one end of the site. A discarded set of book shelves held a flashlight with a hand crank and several candles. A milk crate was on either end of the encampment, covered with toilet seats. One had a grocery bag lining, the other was supported by two by fours over a hole. It’s difficult to convey the mix of emotions in seeing the scene. The sense of squalor, though in some ways, you admire the ingenuity.

We hoped this was a party squat, with the amount of Cobra, Magnum 40, and Miller Lite bottles we found. But we made a note to come back and check on the site a few more times to see how active it was.

Damp and itchy from burrs we went off to the next location. We had been hearing tales of a tent city down by the river, with conflicting reports of it being a ministry or self-run by homeless men, but some clients had stayed there so we decided to investigate. Our initial foray was at night during a night street, but wiser heads prevailed in not traipsing into the woods late at night [read: “Johnny, hopefully I’m not the only black friend you have. But let me tell you right now, no amount of words is going to get me into these strange and unfamiliar woods late at night. I’ve seen how this movie ends.”].

By day, we found the site easily. At the time, only one gentleman was present, but the other tents were clearly in active use with everyone else gone for the day. Turns out the tent city was part of a quasi-ministry, one which still left us with many questions. But that’s a discussion for another day.
But there you have it. A typical couple of days of what happens while on day street. In the end, it’s about finding and meeting the teens where they are and building relationships as their needs are met. It is hard and emotionally taxing work which is one reason I admire these folks so much.

And keep them in my prayers.

A Day of Day Street With Outreach Inc Part I

2010-03-08T03:52:00.000-05:00

Today I found myself under a bridge in near downtown Indianapolis*, my lungs burned with the cold. Winter hadn’t quite set in, but a severe cold snap was letting us know it was around the corner and we needed to make preparations. A lot of people have asked what goes on when people talk about Day Street. I will try to paint a picture of a typical day.

Outreach, Inc, as I’ve written about before, works with homeless and at risk youth and was the inspiration behind my series, The Knights of Breton Court. One of the things they do is called day street, where they go out and look for potential clients, check in on current clients, and basically serves as research for night street (because it’s always better to be familiar with the lay of the land when stomping through them at night).

The day began with Johnny Teater hunched over his keyboard, a paen to multi-tasking: doing some of the endless copious paperwork that comes with the job while arguing on the phone with his gym about his workout appointment. Kristin Fuller comes bouncing in, far, far too perky for any morning. We** grab a handful of peanut butter chocolate chip granola bars and in an especially Holy Spirit led move, we began at Calvin Fletchers coffee shop to get our caffeine on where we plan that day’s activities.

We begin with a check in on one of the current clients. The cold cut through my clothes and I was layered like that little boy in the Bob Gregory weather commercials from back in the day. But even wearing a hat, scarf, and gloves, I am frozen to my core. And I wasn’t sleeping outside, exposed to the elements.

We parked at a local tourist area and then crossed the main street in order to go under the bridge. Once again, we encounter Johnny’s arch-nemesis:
Thing is, there are several folks who stay in this area. Some live within the bridge structure itself and others live further down the embankment. I take pictures of some of the graffiti because this too provides information.
For example, we can see when gang tags start popping up and what gangs might be operating in the area. Gangs are an additional complication on the streets, a threat to any who are squatting in their territory. Also, when we stumble upon a squat, we have to differentiate between a squat where people are staying and a “party squat”, where folks congregate to have a good time.

Further down the embankment, we come across the dwelling of the clients. It is a makeshift tent, layered with plastic and blankets. We check on them, make sure they know about their various appointments, and see what assistance they need. Thing is, helping the homeless isn’t just a matter of bringing them food and blankets. In order to transition them off the streets, relationships and trust have to be built. If for no other reason than to assess what their specific needs are and what stumbling blocks they have due to their situation.

Our next stop is the Indianapolis Public Library. As always, and I mean always, we start fussing about who was supposed to bring change for the parking meters. The library is a well known spot where homeless people hang out (thus I can talk directly about it). Besides being a safe place from the cold, many homeless spend time there reading or killing time on the computers. The staff is wonderful, not only treating everyone fairly, but also being an invaluable resource.

Continued tomorrow

*I have to be vague: when I had a column for Intake Weekly, I used to write specifically about where the homeless congregated. In my naivete thinking maybe if folks knew where folks were in need, they would do something about it. The city ended up clearing out those squats (because sweeping out the “problem” is JUST like actually dealing with them).

**I’m like the bard of Outreach Inc. I run behind them and sing of their great deeds. Currently I’m working on “The Ballad of Brave Sir Teater”.