Poor People Aren't Lazy.

Given the likely smattering of people who will read this, I realize I am preaching to the choir.

But I found myself frustrated by certain opinions expressed on Facebook this evening that implied that, and I thought I might sleep better if I wrote down my thoughts instead of having an eloquent yet angry conversation in my head.  Here's the gist of that conversation in my head: people think poor people are lazy.  They could get a job, but they don't, because it's easier to just ask people (and the government) for free stuff.  I disagree with this premise.

 Now, I could go into detail about all the poor people I've met or heard of who work two jobs at minimum wage and it's not enough, or the people who have to find a new job every time tourist season ends, or the people who were semi-holding it together until a medical emergency sent them into a tailspin.  But for the sake of argument, I don't want to talk about those people.  For the sake of argument, let's assume we're talking about a stereotypical welfare recipient who could ostensibly work but instead asks people and the government for free stuff.  Even that stereotypical poor person is probably not lazy.

One of the most important things I learned in seminary, in a contextual education class that went along with an internship at a homeless shelter, is that it takes skills to be poor.  I never thought of that before!  I had always kind of assumed that it takes skills to be rich, and you were poor if you didn't have or use those skills.  And it does take skills to be rich.  It also takes skills to be poor, and they are very different skill sets.

Twice a month I have office hours in which I meet with people requesting financial aid.  Some of them certainly fall into this category of people who could ostensibly work but instead prefer to ask me and the government for free money.  To get that free money, this person has probably called every church, charity, and assistance program in the phone book.  They probably met with someone at United Way and were turned down and told to try the Methodists.  They probably had to find a ride, since if they have a car, it's been out of gas for a while.  They probably showed up at my church at 8 to make sure they get on the list for when I start seeing people at 10.  If I help them, it will probably be for a week of rent at the cheap motel they're currently staying at, or a quarter of the monthly rent for their apartment.  So from my church they will probably continue on this extended scavenger hunt that is their daily life, trying to piece together the next $200 donation toward whatever it is that they need.  Oh, and let's work a few job interviews in there too.  Not that they are actually planning to go to work (because, remember, for the sake of argument, that's not the kind of person I'm talking about) but just to meet the qualifications to keep receiving aid.

Being poor is hard work.  I would suck at being poor.  I don't have the skills for it.  Being poor, even the stereotypical kind of poor that gets branded "lazy," takes hoop-jumping, and networking, and perseverance, and no small amount of chutzpah.

Would those skills better serve society if they were channeled into an honest-to-goodness, wage-paying, W2-filing job?  Sure.  Are they the same skills needed in most low-level honest-to-goodness, wage-paying, W2-filing jobs?  Maybe some, not all.  There are many reasons why people don't get or don't keep jobs, and most of them have to do with the skills they've learned and how they've learned to apply them.  Mom never taught you how to be on time for a job?  Well, maybe she taught you how to go on a scavenger hunt to get this month's electric bill paid.

Do I know how to change any of this?  Heck no.  But even if you don't consider something "honest" work, that doesn't mean it's not hard work.  Whatever else you may call the poor life, don't call it lazy.

But There is No Unity!

In fourth grade social studies, we had to memorize the last part of Patrick Henry’s famous “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech.  The words come back to me sometimes in that weird way you remember things from a long time ago.  “Gentlemen may cry ‘Peace, peace’,” it began, “but there is no peace.”  It was years later that I realized he was quoting Jeremiah. 

I’ve been thinking about that line again since last week, when General Conference voted to change nothing about the church’s stance on homosexuality, not even to officially admit we disagree.  The arguments and politics behind such votes are complex.  But one rule of discourse is simple: no matter your stance, it would behoove you to claim a basic commitment to church unity.

Here’s how Adam Hamilton and Mike Slaughter put it, in their defeated “agree to disagree” amendment: “It is likely that this issue will continue to be a source of conflict within the church.  We have a choice: We can divide, or we can commit to disagree with compassion, grace, and love, while continuing to understand the concerns of the other.  Given these options, schism or respectful co-existence, we choose the latter.”

If I had been a General Conference delegate, I would have voted in favor of the amendment.  It would have been, at least, a small step in the right direction.

But I wouldn’t have been completely happy about it.  The way they put it, the choice seems so obvious: schism or respect?  Division or grace? 

And that makes me sound pretty bad when I say that I’m not sure “respectful co-existence” is my choice.  But what I mean is that I don’t find our current “co-existence” so respectful at all—certainly not to our LGBT brothers and sisters. 

I’m not saying division is necessarily the best answer.  But maybe it does deserve a real place in our conversation.  Maybe we do need to give up this idea we’ve held onto so tightly, that our task as a denomination is to preserve our sense of unity at all costs.

Yes, I know—it is Jesus’ prayer that his followers might be one (John  17:21).  That’s why I don’t say the above lightly.  Believe me, I love the United Methodist Church.  It has been, since my early childhood, the place that taught me about God, Jesus, discipleship, love, compassion, justice, forgiveness, and faith.  If we divided, I would grieve. 

And to further complicate things, I do actually believe that we can only truly be the body of Christ together.  All of us, from D.C. to Yamoussoukro, from incense-wielding Catholics to slain in the Spirit Pentecostals.  The United Methodist Church only represents part of this diversity of the body of Christ, but it does represent a lot of diversity, nationally and globally.  And that’s good.  I value that.  I value being in community with people who are different from me, and even with people with whom I disagree.  I know I have things to learn from them.  So yes—I value unity.

It’s just that when I look at the church, even now, unity isn’t what I see.

That’s why I’ve had this edited version of Patrick Henry and Jeremiah running through my head this week: “Gentlemen [and women] may cry ‘Unity, unity’,” I hear them say, “but there is no unity!”

The way I see it, there is no unity when loyal, lifetime United Methodists are already being told (directly or indirectly) that their families are unwelcome in church, because their families are “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

There is no unity when homosexual young adults are already being told they have to choose between answering a call to ministry and being in a fulfilling, committed relationship.

There is no unity when pastors are already required to draw a line between couples they can marry, and couples they can’t.

And most importantly, there is no unity when people have already left the church because they can’t support injustice and inhospitality, or when people have never bothered to enter a church because they associate Christianity with bigotry and homophobia.

There is no unity because, if “committing to disagree with compassion, grace, and love” means maintaining the status quo, we have already tacitly chosen schism.  No, it’s not the dramatic, knock-down-drag-out schism we fear.  It’s not the kind of schism where you have to sue each other for church property.  Instead, it’s a quiet, invisible schism between those who are fully welcome inside the walls of the church, and those who are not.

The choice Hamilton and Slaughter give us between schism and “respectful co-existence” may sound like a clear choice, but it is a false one.  We’re not choosing between schism and unity here.  We’re choosing between schism and schism.

So, then, the question becomes: schism along what lines?  Do we choose the schism that comes from standing up for justice, or the schism that comes from crying “Unity, unity!”?

After the vote last week, I heard and read several different responses from LGBT friends.  “I refuse to leave,” said one, “because I believe that love will win.”  I admire that, because it’s a response that refuses to be run off, that refuses to believe that the way things are is the way that have to be, that refuses to stop fighting for justice from the inside.

“I will always be Methodist,” said another, “but it’s finally time for me to look for a non-UMC church.”  I admire that too, because it’s a response that refuses to stay in a church that tells him God didn’t make him for the same kind of love as everyone else.

Stay and fight, or divide with grace?  I don’t know the answer, but I am interested in a real conversation.  There’s a part of me that thinks we’d be better off to go our separate ways, those of us who are in favor of full inclusion of LGBT people in the life of the church, and those who are not.  We don’t have to hate each other.  We don’t have to stop talking to each other.  We don’t have to stop praying for each other.  Maybe, idealistically, we could still handle the whole thing with “compassion, grace, and love,” still “understand the concerns of the other.”  But why not do it with separate polities, each group aligning its common life with the Gospel according to its best understanding?

But even if separate polities aren’t the best answer, let’s at least stop paying so much lip service to unity.  No matter how many times we say the word, the truth is that there is no unity.  Stay and fight or divide with grace, let’s tell it like it is: we’re guilty of schism either way.

Food Stamp Challenge, Day 19 (sort of)

I say "sort of" because I was in Atlanta for a week on a Wesley mission trip, and since I didn't have much control over where we ate* I decided to give myself an early Lenten reprieve. Know what's depressing? Eating delicious creamy dreamy grits and Blue Bell ice cream and knowing you're coming home to four more weeks of beans and rice.

*By "I didn't have much control over where we ate" I mean that our group went to all my favorite Atlanta restaurants, by my suggestion. Oh well.

But we were gone for exactly a week, which meant I had three days on one side of the trip and four days on the other to make a whole budget week. And I did a little better this time than last. Not only did I have a few things left over that made room for some more varied purchases, but I also had a coupon for $2 off a $20 purchase at Martin's. I actually forgot the coupon the first time I planned to go shopping, which is my usual modus operandi with coupons. Normally I'd say whatever, it's two dollars. But this time I went home to get it. (If gas factored into the budget, that might be a different story.) The thing is, it might have only been $2, but that meant another item or two I could buy. It actually made a big difference.

I spent about $22 for those three days before the mission trip, which means I still have $8 to work with between now and Wednesday, and that makes me feel rich.

This time, I was able to get chili and garlic powder. I can't tell you how much better it makes everything to have garlic back in my life. And the chili powder will go a long way on those beans and rice, I'm sure. I got some veggies and some more beans and made vegetarian chili. I also bought yogurt (non-Greek, and in the big container, instead of in the little ones) and grapefruit juice (on sale.)

I'm starting to feel like as meager as everything seemed during week one, this is going to get easier as I gradually build up my pantry. (That, or everything will run out at once...) I'm already not as hungry and not as worried about rationing.

Of course, I've been aided by a couple meals in the meantime. Two Wednesdays ago was the free office lunch I won from Moe's, from which I took some leftovers, too. That Thursday I met Jenny and Jessie for dinner at Panera. (A $5 meal of soup means I owe the Lenten offering $10--that plus $3 for the coffee I got at Wawa this morning after deciding I wasn't preaching on 3 hours of sleep without a caffeinated beverage.) Just like the $2 coupon, it's amazing what a difference one meal out/free can make in stretching the rest of your groceries and providing a little variety. I've decided free food isn't cheating. Instead I'm thinking of it as grace.

I've been more aware of food and food stamp issues recently, too. I ran past 7-11 yesterday and noticed the sign outside advertising that they accepted SNAP (the official program name for food stamps.) I was a little disgusted by that. I guess I had thought from the outset that food stamps would be more like WIC, where you have designated items you can buy that will presumably actually supplement your health. I remembered that Sarah had said once when she was going to Wawa a woman gave her her food stamp card and asked Sarah to buy her Funyons and a Coke. Sarah hadn't realized you could buy Funyons with food stamps, and neither had I. I mentioned that to Jon later and he said it made sense, because of course it's in the interest of whatever big company mass produces Funyons to make sure the government lets people buy them with food stamps. But if I did my shopping at 7-11 for $30 a week, I'm pretty sure I'd be broke by day 4, and possibly also develop scurvy. Then again, I wonder if in some food-desert areas where the majority of the population probably receives food stamps, 7-11 is one of the only convenient places to shop.

I'm planning on spending my remaining $8 for the week this afternoon. I'm going to get more bread and peanut butter and bananas and if I have anything left over maybe look ahead to what I want for next week. I'm pretty excited about it.

Food Stamp Challenge, Day 7

Well, I've been Food Stamp Challenged for a week now. I lived on $30 worth of groceries for the past seven days, and I only cheated a little bit. The first way I cheated was by going to the Cub Scouts' Blue and Gold Banquet at church on Friday and eating there--but hey, I don't schedule these things. The second way was that Sarah came over on Sunday and we made dinner and I opened a jar of the good spaghetti sauce. By "good" I mean the $2 store brand kind already in the cupboard, or in other words, anything but pasta sauce in a can. The most important lesson I learned this week: pasta sauce in a can may cost 75 cents, but it also tastes like crap. I'd like to think I would have suffered through it on my own, but I wasn't going to start subjecting my guests to it.

Some other thoughts, reflections, and lessons in no particular order:

1. I enjoy oatmeal for breakfast. I might keep that up. One serving, unlike with any cereal I've encountered, fills the whole bowl. And it's natural, and has fiber, and all that.

2. I got used to not having coffee surprisingly quickly. I miss it, but more as a morning comfort, rather than as a headache and general fogginess alleviater. That's good, because I doubt it's fitting in the budget anytime soon. If I could buy it at all, I couldn't buy fair trade--and I stand by my coffee ethics!

3. I have been extremely hungry every day between lunch and dinner. This is one reason I ordinarily spend so much money eating lunch out: I have almost never managed to be full on a lunch I pack for myself. At the beginning of the week lunch was a peanut butter sandwich, applesauce, carrot sticks, and a banana. Then I ran out of bananas. Either way it wasn't enough.

4. But dinner's been OK, too. Beans and rice taste OK with just a little salt and pepper. It's annoying to have to soak and cook dry beans for so long before I can eat them, but it's not so bad if I plan ahead, and they're tons cheaper than canned. Another thing I might keep up. And on pasta days I missed the cheese on top, but once we opened up that jar of real sauce it was just like normal.

5. It is possible to eat healthy on a food stamp budget--in fact, this is healthiest I've eaten in a long time. I've had to pay attention to serving sizes and variety in a way I never do. I've eaten an egg each day as a cheap, protein-filled snack, and I looked up nutritional info to make sure I wasn't getting too much cholesterol that way. Then I checked the rest of my groceries--that was the only source of cholesterol in my diet. It is true that my meals have been carb-centered (but all whole grain) and I had to ration my fruit and vegetables more than I would have liked. Oh, and the one thing I probably didn't get enough of: calcium. I had some milk each day, but I am used to getting a significant portion of my dietary calcium from cheese in all forms and expensive Greek yogurt, neither of which I could afford.

6. I have a few things left over: some oatmeal, and beans and rice, and frozen peppers. Hopefully this means I can go shopping tomorrow and increase my stock. I'm especially excited for some yogurt and more fresh veggies.

7. Being social is awkward (I mean, more than usual) on a food stamp budget. I went to a movie with Kim on Saturday but couldn't buy anything to eat before or after--where do you talk to someone when you can't buy food? And Sarah almost didn't know what to do with me when I said did she want to hang out but I couldn't do anything food related--though we did end up having a lovely day walking around Waller Mill Park. Still, I'm glad for that reason that this is the end of my "strict" week--that now I can go out to eat with friends, and just donate double the amount I spend to our Lenten Offering at church.

8. My pants fit better. This makes me not want to start going out to eat again at all.

Saturday I'm going to Atlanta on Wesley's spring break mission trip, so I'm not sure I'll be able to control much of my diet there. Still, I'm looking forward to learning more in the next few days and weeks--how much I can save with coupons, how much I can save just by shopping at Walmart, what difference it makes to spread $60 over two weeks instead of $30 over one. We'll see

Food Stamp Challenge, Day T-1

Tomorrow begins this year's Lenten discipline: I'm taking on the Food Stamp Challenge.

From now till Easter, I'm attempting to live on the average amount given to food stamp recipients in Virginia in 2011. It works out to just over $30 a week for one person. I hope doing this will help me to understand a little better how some of my neighbors in this community live. Lots of the people I see for financial assistance are on food stamps. In fact, one article I found said that about 1500 people in Williamsburg receive food stamps--a number that is growing.

I wasn't sure how I felt about not being able to go out to eat with friends for all of Lent, though, so I'm doing things this way: for Week 1, starting tomorrow, I'm going to be strict about it. After that, I'll give myself a little leeway. I'll still keep careful track of what I spend on food, but if I go over the $30 (or eat out) I'll donate twice the difference to my church's Lenten offering.

I've been spending the last week using up food that's already around so I can't fall back on raiding the fridge. Yesterday I took stock of what I still had that I didn't want to use up or get rid of: half a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs. I subtracted $4 from the $30 to account for those.

Then today I went shopping during my break between bells and staff meeting. It was a different experience than usual to be sure. I'm used to looking at prices and buying the cheaper versions of things, but I'm not used to having to add everything up as I go. I'm not used to having to weigh whether it's worth more to spend 30 extra cents on something with no high-fructose corn syrup, or to rationing my vegetables.

I left Martin's with rice, two kinds of beans, a box of pasta and a can of sauce, peanut butter, oatmeal, bananas, applesauce, a big can of mandarin oranges, a bag of whole carrots, a potato, a bag of frozen broccoli and a bag of frozen peppers. Oh, and some salt and pepper.

It came to $23.68. I left satisfied that I still had a little over $2 to ration throughout the week--maybe to supplement the banana supply. Except that when I pulled back into the church parking lot I realized I hadn't bought any bread to go with my peanut butter. No problem, I thought--I'll stop at Walmart on my way back from the hospital this afternoon. I don't usually shop at Walmart, but desperate times, after all, call for desperate measures.

I found the bakery section of Walmart before I found the cheap bread hidden away in the back. As I wandered around looking at loaves that cost $4 each, I started to feel genuinely worried. I don't often buy bread--had I misjudged the price? My lunch plans for the whole week revolved around peanut butter sandwiches, and now I literally might not be able to afford the bread at all.

I did eventually find the cheap bread, and bought a loaf for $2. (I could have gone cheaper if I'd gone for the high-fructose corn syrup variety.) That left just about 50 cents for the week, and I'm taking that to justify the use of some existing brown sugar in my pantry on my morning oatmeal.

So there you have it--I'm out. I have all the food I get to eat for the week. I'm pretty sure it will be enough, but I'm also pretty sure it's going to get old. And that it's going to require a few lifestyle adjustments. For example, I bought the kind of beans you have to soak. I'm pretty sure I haven't soaked beans since I lived in Lesotho. And the carrots, which I'll cut up into sticks tonight--another thing I haven't made the effort to do in a while. And the lack of cheese on the menu is going to be a definite challenge. Maybe at the end of this week I'll have some food left over and be able to invest in some cheese or yogurt for next.

So we'll see how it goes. Right now I'm looking forward to starting on this. It's going to require some heightened intentionality, but after all, that's the point. In the end, I know I'm lucky: this is something I get to choose to do, rather than something I have to. Hopefully it will help me be mindful of those who don't have that choice.

Christmas Eve: thoughts from the colonial side

This morning my plan was to finish tomorrow's sermon at Aromas and then take a walk down Duke of Gloucester Street. This, as it turned out, was also the plan of everyone else in Williamsburg and their dog. It was crowded, and that annoyed me a little. I had wanted to be alone with my thoughts to ponder lofty and holy things like Incarnation and the True Meaning of Christmas.

Luckily (inspired by this article I shared recently on Facebook), it didn't take me long to realize how silly it was to want to be alone to ponder the incarnation. So instead, I noticed the people around me, and that became my prayer. I noticed the woman walking her two sweater-clad, antlered greyhounds; the toddler jumping on a wooden stage saying, "Jump! Jump! Jump!"; the Russian tourists figuring out where they were; the boy pretending to shoot passersby with his fake rifle; the fifers, and the drummers; the young woman hugging Santa in Merchant's Square; the group of maybe eight Occupy Williamsburg protesters huddled around a Christmas tree with a sign at the top that proclaimed, "A better world is possible."

This is the life God enters. All of it.

Colonial Williamsburg has always been a place where the past meshes with the present so that it's sometimes hard to tell the difference. Kids with light-up shoes wait in line to stick their heads in the stocks; a man in 18th century garb is in line ahead of you at Wawa. And today that seemed especially true as I remembered that the God who entered this world in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago walks with us still--us, in all our latte-drinking, dog-walking, tourist-shooting, Santa-hugging, corporate-personhood-protesting glory...or lack thereof.

What I saw was ordinary people caught in ordinary moments, just like me. And that's the life the incarnate God makes holy. That's the un-lofty life God infuses with eternity.

Hope on a treadmill

It's been a rough couple of days. Without going into detail (professional boundaries, and all that sort of thing) it's been the kind of weekend that requires the support of good friends (thanks, guys), and Ben & Jerry's. Luckily, I've had both.

But while the Ben & Jerry's is necessary, it's also a very short term solution to life's problems. It's easy to sit there with your face firmly planted in a pint of Half Baked, consequences be damned, I don't care if I'm downing 1500 calories in one sitting or whether I'll feel sick later.

So the ice cream was only part of my approach. I also went running. That's not a new thing, of course, but that's kind of the point. In the midst of being sad, and physically and emotionally tired, I managed to stick to the marathon training schedule I started in July. This is a low week, schedule-wise, so it was only 3 miles. But still, I found some hope in that half hour on the treadmill.

(OK, it was a little more than half an hour. And it might have been the only time I've ever found hope on a treadmill. There was Great Dismal Swamp smoke outside, you see...)

Running, for me, felt a little bit like Jeremiah buying his field at Anathoth (Jer 32:1-15). The land was under siege, and property values had plummeted. It just wasn't a place you bought land anymore. But Jeremiah did. Buying that field was a way of showing he had faith in what the future would bring: that, as God told him, "houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land."

Things may be a little rough now, but I'm trying to have faith in what the future will bring. And running is a way of doing that. Even a 3 mile run is an investment. It says that in November, no matter what else, I'm going to run a race and I'm going to be proud of myself for it. Fields will be bought again in this land. There's good stuff to come. Let's get started now.