It's been a week, but I still remember how he looked and how he smelled as we walked by him on Broughton St. with barely a glance. It's hard to know what to do or say when encountering the homeless. The "easiest" thing to do is just to walk right by without making eye contact. And that's what we did. We were a group on our own mission, not expecting to see a dirty, isolated human in situ against a building. But seven days later, I still remember him. Not that he was the first homeless person I had ever seen, of course not. However, his empty eyes and the dark sadness surrounding him still haunt me. Once again, I am faced with the question of how I live my life when I see a person in such obvious need. I know the things people say--I don't give money because they might spend it on alcohol; I can't help every homeless person I see; What if he/she is a professional pan handler and I am being "taken"; There are soup kitchens in this city; People cause their own problems; etc. Nevertheless, the one question that keeps cycling in my brain is, and I don't mean to be trite with WWJD, but what would Jesus do? I can't quite see Jesus walking by that man whose image is branded in my memory without at least smiling and extending some version of human connection. I find myself wishing I could walk by him again for a do-over. The nagging query, though, is whether I would do anything different. I would like to think that I would, that I would stop and look him in the eye, smile at him, and ask him if he had eaten dinner. Why is that so scary? Maybe I am afraid that if I reach out to one person in those circumstances, I must reach out to everyone who I encounter in the same predicament. I don't know, but I do know that I want my responses to be be purified by the love of Jesus so that my first response is to connect, to acknowledge a common human existence, to see someone who is often invisible.

Sitting in the church service today, I found myself praying repeatedly against critical thoughts, confessing my sin and asking God to renew my mind and purify my heart. I was particularly struggling with putting people (especially one person) in categories, characterizing them with a lack of grace and forbearance. I sometimes struggle with seeing people as a mixture of good and bad. Jeanette Hays from Fairhaven, OH, used to say, "There is so much bad in the best of us and so much good in the worst of us...," but my primitive way of thinking is to see people as either bad or good. Several things about our parish have troubled me, and I had to consciously choose to think gracious thoughts. I was contemplating all of this as we approached the Eucharist and wondered at the effort it took to prepare myself for partaking. That is when the words of the liturgy struck me. "We do not presume to come to this your table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your abundant and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table. But you are the same Lord, who always delights in showing mercy. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen." There was my answer and my freedom. I don’t have to be sin-free in order to come to God and His table. Indeed, I can't cleanse myself from sin. I have to come in confession, repentance and thanksgiving, but I come trusting in the righteousness of Christ and His great mercy. I will not be perfectly without sin when I come into His presence and hold my hands out to receive His grace through His body and blood. While this does not take me off the hook with regards to a spirit of confession and repentance, it relieves me of the impossible task of self-purification and allows me to come to God with joy and anticipation of his grace and salvation for my soul.

Living most of my life in an evangelical/conservative Christian environment has influenced my life in many positive ways. However, there are some things that I have lost, some ways of knowing that I have missed, some misconceptions I have nurtured. One way in which I have been malformed is the way I tend to categorize people and experiences/activities.  Some are definitely "in," and some are "out." Or to put it another way, I see people according to their buy-in to the particular brand of believing that I have suckled. I measure people by their devotion to my criteria for interpreting God. My thinking is gradually changing in this regard, but it is deeply ingrained in my psyche. Barbara Brown Taylor, in her compelling, "An Altar in the World," writes of the practice of encountering others in chapter six. She reminds the reader that the second great commandment after, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength," is the command to "love your neighbor as yourself." Taylor begins the chapter discussing the Desert Fathers and their quest for community "to save them from the temptation of believing in their own self-sufficiency" (90). She further contends that "most of us need someone to help us forget ourselves, a little or a lot. The great wisdom traditions of the world all recognize that the main impediment to living a life of meaning is being self-absorbed" (91). Without community, the teachings of our religion lack flesh. But this loving my neighbor command is difficult to do. Indeed, it is a spiritual discipline. And while loving my neighbor who is like me can be a challenge, loving my neighbor who is different from me requires me to turn my back on self-absorption, what Taylor calls the "prison of yourself" (93).  She posits an intriguing question: "...who could be better equipped to pop the locks on our prisons than people in whom we see nothing of ourselves?" (94). Wow! This is profound, I think. It makes me remember Henry Nouwen who spent the last years of his life living with and ministering to individuals with developmental disabilities. This has always struck me as an incredible sacrifice considering his intellectual and academic background and experiences. It challenges my thinking. Combining thoughts of Nouwen's life choices along with Taylor's musings have brought some percolating thoughts to rise to the edges of my consciousness. Could my life circumstances actually be an altar in the world, one in which I have regular encounters with souls so different from me? an altar of self-sacrifice, of the lavish grace of God, of a dying to self? I think so. And I want to remember this during those times when fear grabs me by the throat as I wonder about the future of those same souls who are so dependent on me.

Additionally, I tend to regard behaviors and activities in terms of things that please God (going to church, praying, helping people, etc.) and things that please me (hiking in the woods, walking on a beach, reading, kayaking, engaging in deep conversation with a friend, eating good food, etc.). The realization that these categories really do not (or should not) exist is beginning to seep into my soul in a more profound way. I have long believed in a corner of my brain that there is no difference between the sacred and the secular, but at some deep level, that professed belief collides with actual belief. But that is just a part of who I am. At my core being, I am someone different than who I was schooled to be. I recognize the Divine and experience the wonder of worship in unlikely places. And I pray for God's mercy even on those who have not professed the same version of the gospel that I profess. I firmly believe the creeds that mark my faith, but I increasingly realize that there are many things I don't know and ways of understanding truth that I have never considered. This includes recognizing the beauty and value of people who don't believe as I believe. Taylor quotes Miroslav Volf as saying that "it may not be too much to claim that the future of our world will depend on how we deal with identity and difference" (99). Taylor asserts that as citizens of a nation with an increasingly diverse religious landscape, we should pay attention to what Volf says. She further contends that "as children of the covenant and inheritors of the gospel, we might also understand that we have the resources to do so" (99). That gives me the shivers. Another altar in the world.

Can being lost be a spiritual exercise? I just finished reading the chapter entitled, "The Practice of Getting Lost," in Barbara Brown Taylor's, An Altar in the World. She talks about the human propensity of wanting the familiar path. Most people opt for what they know rather than venture into the unknown, whether it is the route to a favorite park or a night out at a restaurant. Choosing the unfamiliar is always a risk. Although some people are naturally adventurous, most seem to prefer the predictability of the familiar. However, there are times when we all find ourselves lost for one reason or another. Maybe we take a wrong turn on a highway or choose the wrong direction at the fork of a state park path. Usually, these periods of lostness are benign, the feeling of panic misplaced. I remember hiking many years ago in the woods of a county park with Carl and three small children, one of whom was an infant. We had begun our hike in the late afternoon, and having never been in this particular park before, we got confused about our direction and couldn't find our way out of the woods. I still remember the feeling of vulnerability being alone in a strange forest with daylight waning, particularly because we had a baby. I think Carl was nervous, too, but his mind immediately went into survival mode and turned to wilderness lore from Louis L'Amore westerns as he playfully scouted for places to camp. As we kept walking, we eventually heard the sound of traffic and followed it to a road which eventually led us back to our parked car. We were never in any real danger, but for a few moments, it felt like we might be. That memory is sealed in my brain because of the adrenaline the experience produced. Other times and kinds of lostness are much more serious and prolonged.

Taylor recalls the pattern of lostness in the Old Testament record of the wanderings of the people of Israel. She contends that in their most famous wilderness travel, the 40 years in the wilderness after the exodus from Egypt, "God strengthened that wilderness gene in them, the one that made them strong and resourceful even as it reminded them how perishable they were. By the time they arrived in the land of milk and honey, they knew how to say thank you and mean it"(74-75).  Furthermore, Taylor figures that the experience gave them the chutzpah to make it through other periods of lostness, like the cultural wilderness of the Babylonian exile (75). Indeed, there is a hint in the Biblical record that God wanted them to use their experiences of lostness to extend empathy to other wanderers when he commands them to "... love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (83). Taylor concludes that lostness "can become a spiritual practice once you are willing to approach it that way--once you let it bring you to your knees and show you what is real, including who you really are, who other people are, and how near God can be when you have lost your way... [and] the best way to grow empathy for those who are lost is to know what it means to be lost yourself" (82-83).

I have just gone through (maybe still going through) a period of profound lostness following our move to Savannah. It has been a lostness of identity and purpose and place. There has been no solid ground for my feet to stand on. Maybe this is an altar in the world for me, a place of weakness and vulnerability and emptiness where I can kneel before God in total dependence. Maybe it is also one more experience for me to savor because it will give me more points of connection to people who are facing their own lostness. I believe that is why my son, Jeremy, was able to extend grace and wisdom and strength to me. He also has experienced suffocating lostness and barren wilderness wandering. He felt my pain and was able to speak into it with knowledge and extend courage to me.

But back to my original question: Can lostness be a spiritual exercise? I believe so. It is uncomfortable. My soul seeks to avoid it. Sometimes it is terrifying. Nevertheless, it causes me to bore down deeper into life dependent on the Divine, and it opens up awareness, understanding, and connection with other human beings that can only occur when I have walked in the wilderness. And thankfully, even in the midst of lostness, God can live through me in a life-giving way, touching others with His grace and goodness. I have lived this and know it to be true, which is very heartening. Because, really, when are we ever not at least a little bit lost?