I hope the Navy Seals don't go to Pittsburgh...

To put some historical perspective on recent events, I offer this graph to you all.



(Stolen from my friend Val, who in turn stole it from someone else. Try piracy indeed.)

Pretzel Day Thursday

Everyday, my route home from work brings me past both the local high school and middle school. Often times, when I have driven past the middle school, there is a sign out front that says simply, "Pretzel Day Thursday." There is nothing else on the sign.

I first assumed that it was some sort of seasonal fundraiser, and that the following Thursday would be a day when the school would be selling pretzels. However, Thursday passed just like any other day, and the sign disappeared.

Then a few weeks later, the sign was back. Since then, it appears and disappears seemingly at random. Sometimes it is present on Mondays or Tuesdays, sometimes it's there on Fridays. I have yet to find out what Pretzel Day is, and I'm not sure if I want to know.

Today, the Pretzel Day sign was outside of the high school.

In my ten months living in North Carolina, I have rather routinely been presented with large cultural caverns that my southeastern Iowa/southwestern PA upbringing had not prepared me for. Example: "Cotillion" or kids taking classes in being fancy, dancing, and dancing fancy.

Perhaps Pretzel Day is some mystical southern delight that I am not yet privy to.

Or perhaps it's code for predictions of the end of the world.

Or perhaps it's simply a day when they offer pretzels for lunch.

At this point, there is only thing that can be certain about Pretzel Day - it's Thursday.

The Gospel According to V

Adrien & I just returned from a week in Los Angeles. We were visiting our friend Kyle, who goes to Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, but lives in Hollywood.

Throughout the week, we encountered several "celebrities," a partial list of which follows:

• The Hotel Manager from Ghostbusters ("$5000?!? I had no idea it would be that much! I won't pay it!" - he was sitting on a bench drinking a smoothie.
  
• Neil Flynn, The Janitor from Scrubs. We saw him in an improv show, and he then proceeded to hang out in the bar/lobby area for an hour afterward.
• Tony Hale, Buster from Arrested Development. He was at the church that we went to, where Kyle works (Ecclesia - churchinhollywood.com)
• Tim Meadows, from Saturday Night Live
• Jane Kaczmarek, the mom from Malcolm in the Middle
• Larry David & Jeff Garlin, from Curb Your Enthusiasm. They were filming an episode at Zuma Beach, which we watched for about an hour.

Yet the most interesting person on the trip I met one afternoon that we spent on skid row in downtown LA.

Adrien's friend Sarah (who is the co-founder of Faceless International) was leading a trip of students on a mission trip to inner city LA, and we asked if we could join her for the afternoon.

When we showed up, they were working with an organization called The Dream Center to serve lunch to the homeless. There were already several helpers in the food line, so we joined a group to walk around the block and invite people to come to get some food. As we began walking, Kyle sat down on the sidewalk by a man next to a shopping cart filled with bags of cans. The man's name was James. Kyle started talking to him, asking him how he was doing, and James immediately put up the wall, challenging Kyle a bit, and playfully indicating that he's had lots of people come by and try to evangelize to him, that Kyle was nothing new. Adrien & I continued around the block with the rest of the group as Kyle remained back with James, chatting away, not talking about anything in particular, but taking James' playful jabs in stride.

After about 10 minutes, we had looped the block, and I went up to see how Kyle was doing, assuming he may need "saving" from the undoubtedly uncomfortable conversation that he was having with James. When I got up to them, though, they were having a real conversation. Not about God or Jesus - Kyle wasn't selling anything. They were talking about James' life, how he would like to get help from The Dream Center, but he doesn't want to leave his cart, certain that someone would steal his stuff. He talked about how he got $60 a day collecting cans and cooking grease, and how he has a problem with drinking. I sat down on the sidewalk with the Kyle and James, and a third man, who simply introduced himself as "V."

V was, like James, another ragged looking man, well worn, with a scruffy white beard and weathered old hands. He also had a shopping cart filled with bags, and he was drinking a slushy that James had bought him because "he had lost a bet."

V and I started talking about life. Nothing specific, just stuff. We talked about where V was from, and how he got out to Los Angeles. We talked about how Los Angeles was the most accommodating place to live on the streets because it doesn't get that cold, and the city is fairly amicable to it's homeless (unlike cities like Baltimore that was way too cold, or Atlanta that ships the homeless out of town with one-way bus tickets).

V had grown up in West Virginia, but made his way out to LA on freight trains. We never talked about how he had come to live on the street. Instead we talked about football - about how dumb Terrell Owens was, how great the Steelers were, and whether or not they would be able to pull off another championship season next year. We then talked about how terrible the Pittsburgh Pirates are.

At one point, V asked me what I did for a living, and I told him that I was a minister, working with youth. I was afraid that this would change the conversation, that he would sense some sort of ulterior motive in me, but he didn't. And I honestly didn't have one. I was simply sitting on the sidewalk talking with an interesting person.

After a while, a woman walked up to us who lived in the area, looking for her "vodka partner," and visibly a little drunk already. She must have seen Kyle and I talking to these two men, and assumed that we were on an evangelistic mission, trying to save souls to log in our soul saving tally books.

Neither of us at this point were talking about God in any way, we were simply talking, but the perception of two white guys sitting on the sidewalk talking to two men with carts probably usually means proselytizing is afoot.

She plopped down between us, visibly antagonistic, and stammered, "What the f__ are you doing here?"

"Talking," I said.

"But what the f__ for?"

"Just to talk."

She was very confused, especially as I didn't seem to be looking to challenge her. She then started challenging me, trying to pick apart the Bible, the Trinity, and Paul. I responded simply by essentially just nodding and saying, "that's interesting," refuting bits that were a bit too aggressive in their attacks, but not taking the bait for an all out fight. It was clear that the woman didn't want to have any sort of real conversation about faith, but simply wanted to take me apart and catch me on my heels. I didn't give her the opportunity, and she calmed down, said she "loved the Bible" (?), and then went to find her vodka partner again.

There were two interesting things about this encounter. One was that I felt exactly what I imagine most people on the street feel when zealots come at them trying to slam them with the Gospel. I felt attacked and uncomfortable. The last thing I wanted to do was to listen to what this lady had to say. She was not willing to talk, only to preach, and that's rarely the type of encounter people want to be broadsided with.

The other interesting thing was that V stood up for me. By this point, we had been talking for nearly an hour, and V immediately tried to get the woman to leave us alone, saying, "This is a man of God, what are you talking to him like that for??" V and I had clearly bonded to the point that he wasn't going to let me take crap from this lady.

Again, up to that point, outside of letting V know that I was a minister, we hadn't talked about God at all. It hadn't come up, and that wasn't really my goal. We were just two guys talking.

At another point, a film crew came by, filming images of people on the street (though skipping over the four men having conversation) probably for some B-roll on the news about homelessness or for some documentary. It felt surprisingly intrusive, and the crew themselves stepped around us as though we were simply part of the scenery for their dystopian landscape. It was oddly dehumanizing, even for Kyle and I, clearly tourists in this scene. They easily walked past each individual, just as I had easily walked past James and V on the first trip around the block, thinking of them as simply "homeless people" rather than people that I could sit down and talk to for a few hours.

It was V who finally brought up God.

The woman had said that Paul was "clearly gay" (though she used some stronger language) while she was trying to get a rise out of me. A few minutes after she left, V asked me about homosexuality, about what I think that God thinks about the issue. Frankly, that was the last thing I was expecting him to ask me about, but I answered him, ultimately saying that there is nothing that can separate us from God's love, that there is nothing that anyone can do to void our salvation - other than to actively refuse it.

V asked me about the first sermon that I had ever preached.
It was in high school, and it was about The Empire Strikes Back, how we can't really follow Christ if we don't actually believe that he can use us to do incredible things.

The whole point came out of the scene where Luke is trying to raise his X-Wing Fighter from the Degobah swamp. He can't lift it, and yells at Yoda for asking him to do the impossible. Yoda then lifts the ship out with a raise of his hand and sets it on solid ground. Luke says, "I don't believe it!" to which Yoda replies, "that is why you fail." We then talked about how Peter had that such faith in Christ that he did ridiculous things, like walking on water. Eventually, we talked about suffering, about God's presence in the world, and the love that he has for each of us.

Our conversation lasted over two hours, and it was just that - a conversation. It wasn't a sermon, or a chance to "save some souls!" It was two guys, sitting down, talking about sports, life, and faith. I didn't give V a Bible or some sort of religious track (I didn't have any to give even if I had wanted to), but we had one of the best conversations about faith that I have had in a long while.

V could sense that God loved him, that God was at work in the world, but it seemed as if he wasn't sure if he had faith in himself enough to trust in that with his life. James was much the same way. Both men were tied to their possessions. They seemed to be the primary excuse that each of them had for not seeking help, to get them off the streets. LA has a great system of programs to help the homeless, but leaving their possessions involved the risk, the very real likelihood that it would involve losing everything that they owned.

Most all the programs offered beds and meals and help getting employment, but also required that participants remain sober and celibate in the process. The risk was that, if they lose everything that they had worked to salvage, all of which could fit into a grocery cart, and they didn't have the personal strength to remain accountable to the program, then they would be back on the streets, but this time without anything.

It was quite a revelation to see how much the human need for things, that we are tied to our stuff, was so apparent even in these two men who seem to have nothing. We most often point to the upper class - with all their extravagance - as the prime examples of materialism, of worshiping what they own. Yet here it was, on the streets of LA, two men who hadn't enough faith to risk what they had for the promise of something better.

It made me think of how much I am like V. All too often, I'm holding on to my possessions, my cart filled with garbage, letting it distract me from the promise set before me. I think most of us struggle with this. We want to be comfortable, but we don't want to risk losing our stuff, regardless of what that stuff is. We may believe the promise, that our life can be so much better if we are willing to let go of what is holding us back, but we still don't have the faith in ourselves to stay true to it if we were to actually follow it.

Sometimes we can convince ourselves that we are fine where we are, being motivated by what we have to lose rather than what we have to gain. We blind ourselves from seeing that we are capable of helping ourselves and of helping others because we are afraid of what we might loose.

In the end, when the time came for us to leave, I said thank you to V for a great conversation and asked if I could pray with him (the first really proactive thing that I did all afternoon), and he said yes.

I prayed for courage and discernment, and for an awareness of God's presence in our lives, even in the midst of overwhelming suffering and lack of faith. I prayed for myself as much as for V, and he prayed right along with me. I offered him the rest of my coffee (he had turned down some coffee earlier, but accepted this time), and we went on our way.

My conversation with V was one of the best that I can remember. It was a conversation with no agenda, but ended up exactly where it was meant to.

I don't know what will happen with V.

Hopefully he will one day find the courage to take that step of faith that gets him help.

All in all, though, V is no different than any of us. We're scared to take the first step, scared of what we might lose.

God has made us a promise not to harm us, but to prosper us, never to leave us, but to walk with us. Sometimes, though, our own doubts in ourselves, and the comfort of our carts full of stuff make it hard for us to take that step.