Yes, I think now,
There is no likeness. It just is exactly what it is—

The unrecoverable downward tilt after the names
Have been called, as one of us will call to the other
While the one leaving lifts for the last time, lifts and stares,
At what at what one wants to ask, but does not dare.
– Daniel Tobin

…it will be God who gives you meat for your meal in the evening and your fill of bread in the morning.
(Exodus 16:8, The Message)

“I think we might need more than just the two of us to unload everything,” the community missions pastor from a local church said with a wry grin. Minutes before, Adam (not his real name) had pulled up into our small parking lot at work and knocked on the door to announce the welcome arrival of a large food, clothing and toy donation. “Yeah,” he continued on to explain to me as I stood gaping, frosty-breathed in the January air, at the small mountain of shared generosity waiting to be placed on our shelves. “After we came to the food pantry last week and saw that ya’ll were basically limited to handing out cans of green beans, cereal and little else, I put the word out to all of our Sunday school classes — and in less than 4 days, this happened.” It’s true that our available supplies (provided solely by in-kind donations and the Houston Food Bank) have been fairly scarce in the recent past. It was with great joy, therefore, that Adam, myself and three other pairs of helping hands spent the next 45 minutes transferring bulging trash bags of clean clothing, recycled boxes overflowing with plastic toys and grocery sacks with dried, boxed and canned goods inside from the church vehicle to our building. Volunteers then spent the following two days sorting through the items and distributing them equally between Gano’s food pantry and the clothing closet at Fletcher.

Is it coincidence that the supplies were dropped off here less than three days after much of Houston was submerged in record-breaking flood waters, leaving many without power and others without any shelter at all? Personally, I don’t think so. Do we take it for granted that a small group of monthly volunteers would arrive on site, observe a felt need and — completely without external prompt — rally their own community to give a tangible outpouring of love and generosity on to the clients whose families we serve every week? Absolutely not. As the paper handles of heavy grocery bags cut grooves into my chilled hands during yesterday’s blustery unloading and sorting out experience, I found myself wondering: is this gratitude churning up within me akin to what Moses must have felt every morning when he stepped foot outside of his tent and knew, thanks to provision completely beyond his control, that his neighbors would not go hungry for another day?

This morning, I watched bilingual grandmothers, shy brothers, brave mothers with two children in tow and five more at home, and physically disabled adults wheel their way through our now plentifully stocked pantry shelves. I watched weary eyes light up, cheerful banter take place between those still waiting to walk through and young voices squeal in excitement as they reached for a brightly packaged box of Cheerios. For the first time in several months, I watched as families were able to leave our food pantry with a healthy array of meal options to provide for those at home: soup, rice, beans, canned vegetables, peanut butter, pasta, macaroni and cheese, microwave dinners, baking items, cereal, condiments, crackers and more.

Thank you, Adam and all those who gave, for being physical conduits of the fullness of God.

Have witnessed one house fire whose billowing clouds
left the ash-gray taste of loss in the mouths of eleven family members,
three of whom are still clad in crinkly Pampers

Have been embraced,
stared down, yelled at,
invited, welcomed, shared,
sworn at, hit on, cussed out,
fed, prayed over and listened to
in my neighborhood

Have helped, rejoicing with shivers and frosty breath,
to unload a mini-uHaul load’s worth of
canned and bagged goods, clothing and toy donations
into the stark bare spaces begging to be filled at work –
this is, I say to myself as the paper handles
cut thankful grooves into my cold fingers
during transfer from wheel to shelf,
exactly how the manna spirit of gratitude
must have churned within Moses’ belly

Have counted the stars between silhouetted pine branches
on a chilly north Georgia night,
sprinted between blustery crests of sea-foam
at the Oregon coast,
took cat naps amongst old crumbs,
discarded burger wrappers and suitcase heaps
in Denver, Seattle, Phoenix, Atlanta, Charlotte and
Houston’s blue-seated airport terminals

Have felt the weight of responsibility heavy
and the length of days seeming too short

Have been fed plate after plate of spicy
pollo con mole, arroz y tortillas under the watchful eye
of 6 cousins, one daughter-in-law, one mother and
one abuela before
we all broke into clumsy-footed, laughing-eyed
Cupid Shuffle on their cracked pavement outside

Have experienced an unlawful epidemic of
ants in our food cupboard,
an indefatigable lice outbreak
(until this week, the lice were winning 5-1),
a 48-hour power outage,
crazy flooding in one of Houston’s record-breaking storms,
the loss of a beloved neighbor when she was forced,
cancer-wracked,
to move from her long-time home down the street
to a senior citizen care center
somewhere else (we’ve yet to discover where exactly)
and 3 cases of upper respiratory/sinus infections in my home

Have wondered what happened to things like
long phone conversations with old friends,
staying abreast of email exchanges, mailing packages,
capturing everyday life moments in photographic form,
writing simply for the joy of it, sleeping in,
staying up late, reading fiction, reading at all –
and have found immeasurable delight in
the surprise of new love settling in,
the joy of several engagements,
the Secret Santa gift of Wendell Berry’s writings from a housemate,
the waving fronds of cattails next to graffiti and trash cans at my daily bus stop,
the glad presence of babies yet on their way,
the warmth of conversation in Spanish and English over shared meals,
the twice-a-year experienced reunion with family,
the colors of my quilt at sunrise,
the transformational reality of God incarnate made more real every waking moment

I welcome you, new year; I welcome you, season of
beholding (to hold in view, to see, to discern);
I welcome you and You alike

again, again we come and go,
changed, changing. hands
join, unjoin in love and fear,
grief and joy. the circles turn,
each giving into each, into all.
– wendell berry

Visiting beloved neighbors
(January 2012)

I was reflecting over the weekend about Advent and the interruption of a world’s day to day turnings. About Emmanuel, God not just for us but with us, and about this idea of expectancy — hope on the cusp of realization.

Then I sat in the middle of my 93-year old neighbor’s poorly lit kitchen floor, watching Mother Henry’s arthritic hands shake and smooth, over and over in restless patterns, the crumpled and unwashed fabric of her midnight-blue housedress. A giant knob shone purple and black on her forehead in stark contrast to the wispy spirals of her cotton-white hair, the twists and braids springing every which way. Sounds of rain on the street outside mixed with the fuzzy sounds of a radio upstairs and yet, while some small part of my mind noted these details, every nerve in my body was completely attuned to the story being recounted.

The night before, Mother Henry shared with a heightened edge of emotion behind her typical age-induced rasp, several men forced their crack-dazed and violent way into the apartment.  It is no secret to anyone that the longtime figure of nurturing motherhood and charismatic faith  in our community always leaves her door open without a key or a bolt to secure it shut. In a matter of moments, the men — acquaintances of her dope-dealing grandson — had torn out every single door knob in the small place, thrown furniture across rooms and turned personal belongings upside down in their desperate ransacking. “They forced me down on the kitchen floor,” my elderly neighbor recalled in all too vivid terms, “pinning my arms behind me like this (related with accompanying motion) and repeating over and over, Where’s the money? Where’s the money?” She paused and then, for the first time in the past 20 minutes of relaying the evening’s horror, tears began gathering in the corners of her eyes. I barely noticed as my own cheeks became wet in tandem with her wrinkled ones.

“I wasn’t afraid for me, no, I knew if the Lord said my time was up, the only harm they could do was to my body. I knew that those evil men could nothing to my soul — but my babies, oh, my babies!” Mother Henry gestured to her two great-granddaughters, both under the age of 4, who were nestled against me and my housemate. From their wide eyes, silent mouths and restless fingers, it was clear they were reliving the fear and drama along with their inimitable caretaker. “Stefani woke up in the middle of them dragging me by my hair across the kitchen floor,” Mother Henry continued, “and, oh, she started to screaming. Maw-maw? Maw-maw! What’s goin’ on? What’s wrong? Don’t hurt my maw-maw! Those men, they let me go long enough to pick her up and throw her little body into the room next over. You don’t make one more sound, they threatened her, or else we gonna kill you maw-maw ‘fore we kill you. Quiet that hollering, now, you hear? And she did just that. She didn’t say another word until help arrived. And me, I said, I just said, You can do what you want to me but don’t do nothing to my babies.”

I cradled Stefani on my shoulder, pressing her against my own erratic heartbeat as if I could transfer this immeasurable love and sorrow welling up inside as a tangible offering of assurance to the tiny, wide-eyed toddler. “I bet you were real scared, huh, sweetie?” Stefani nodded in silent agreement and then began whispering her account of the night into my ear while Mother Henry went on to talk about the missing grandson who finally showed up and fought the intruders off before taking the neighborhood’s matriarch to Ben Taub. The sense of unreality I was feeling was only heightened by the 3-year old’s complex vocabulary and easy communication skills. Still in hushed tones, she told me about the height of the men, the whimpering sounds their pet chihuahua made, the sound of the door as it was being broken in and even about the “a’bulance” that came to pick her Maw-Maw up and take her to the “hos’tal.”

What do you say in the face of such unexpected courage in both the very young and the very old? Where do you look for that sense of hope and redemption in the midst of such tangible wrongdoing? I tell you the truth when I say I did not know how to respond. I was struck dumb with emotion: outrage, shock, grief, relief, thanksgiving… all of these and more.

“Stefani,” I finally whispered back once the stream of her words flying into my ear started to slow down before stopping altogether, “Those men were evil and what they did to you and Maw-Maw was wrong — but you were so brave and I’m so proud of you. You know that, right?” She nodded. I swallowed. She swallowed. And then we sat in hand-fast silence on the kitchen floor.

Forgive us, Father, for we know (not) what we do.