What I Want... (A New Year's Prayer)

I want to believe that I don't just create God in my own image, cutting and pasting the texts of Scripture to suit my own fancy. (But I suspect that I, and almost all other Biblical scholars, do).

I want to be set free from slavery to gluttony, lust, laziness, pride, anger, despair and greed.

I want to wake up in the morning and be filled with gratitude rather than feel like I have a hangover from the previous day.

I want to be part of a church where I can be who I am and not put on a face and not act like everything is alright.

I want to want God.

I want to share my life with the poor, to resist the urge to escape from poverty, and to embrace a life of simple solidarity with the broken as the will of God. And I want to find peace and joy in doing so.

I want to stop medicating myself with all the wrong things.

I want to long to read the Bible more than I long to read the newspaper or long to watch television or long to surf the web or long to sit and watch paint dry.

I want to stop feeling like somehow the Bible demands that I look down upon, judge, or oppose the civil rights of homosexuals.

I want to learn how to pray.

I want to lose weight.

I want my family to know how much I love them and hate how I treat them when I'm in a bad mood.

I want 2009 to be a better year than 2008.

Amen.

Trip to a War Zone

So today my friend David showed back up after an absence of several weeks. I had seen him in jail sometime in early November, but he'd been nowhere to be found since his release on the 6th despite his repeated promises to come to church every Sunday.

But today he came banging on my door and telling me that he had relapsed. He wasn't too repentant about it though because, in his words, "you'da relapsed too, pastor, if you'd seen what I seen last night." So I asked him about it and I managed to piece together his story:

After a quiet evening at his aunt's house where David is living until he can get a place of his own, his 24-year old nephew showed up at the house needing a place to stay for the night. It being below freezing, they let him inside where a hodgepodge of family members were staying -- an old matriarch, a young single mother and her 7 month old son, David who was recently released from prison, and now this 24-year old kid up to no good.

Around 2:00 am they all awoke with a start as several men jumped out of a van, ran onto their front porch and started riddling the house with gunfire. The men were apparently carrying assault rifles and unloaded on the sleepy house, shooting out windows and sending bullets flying in all directions through walls before piling back into the van and peeling out to go who knows where. Turns out the nephew who was visiting had been looking for a place to hide from some men who were out to get him. He'd apparently sold them some bad drugs or something. When the grandmother of them all called the police, David's nephew grabbed his coat and took off.

A bullet had missed the young mother's head by a few feet as she slept next to her beautiful baby boy. David took off to "get a drink." No one slept the rest of the night.

So this morning, David comes and asks me if I want an education. He offers to take me to his place and show me the "real inner city." So I went. The whole way he kept saying, "If I see those bastards again I'll blow their heads off. I gotta protect that little baby. I'm gonna stay up all night with my rifle at my side. You ain't gonna believe your eyes, pastor. These bastards coulda killed that little baby." When he asked me if I would defend my own home with a rifle after such an incident, I thought for a second and nodded my head.

The home was a total dump. A fat, elderly black women greeted me at the door in her bathrobe. "Days of Our Lives" played in the background and the air hung heavy with the stench of tobacco and alcohol as I got a tour of the various bullet holes in the walls. The young woman had made a home for herself and her baby by throwing an old, filthy mattress on the floor. No sheets. Just a couple crumpled blankets used for a pillow, a 1980's style telephone, a radio, and random piles of mail mixed with McDonald's wrappers. She sat up when I came in, but never got up and I smiled and played with her beautiful baby boy as everyone around talked about how close they came to getting shot.

I got my education today. I never learned this in seminary. I visited a war zone. I learned about how the police don't care about neighborhoods like David's. I learned about the demonic oppression that hangs in the air over a home stricken by poverty. I learned about systemic racism by going to this black home in a black neighborhood. I learned what an assault rifle bullet hole looks like when it goes through glass, drywall, and cement. I (only slightly) learned about what it must be like to be a baby that grows up with a bottle that hasn't been washed in two weeks. I learned why David went out for a drink.

David swore that even I would go grab a beer after seeing what he wanted to show me. Well, I didn't do that. But I did stop by a Starbucks, order a coffee, and sit down over the newspaper. Same difference.

Broken Down

Kids screaming in the night,
alcohol, drugs, prostitution, theft, abuse, rape, poverty,
fear at all times
fear of bad men eyeing my daughters
fear of addicts who would beat my wife for money,
fear of darkness, darkness, darkness overwhelming.

Depression, dark clouds unending
icy cold mornings
long hours of work
church people who hate each other
phone calls, phone calls, phone calls
meetings, sermons, visits, peacemaking, silent pain
emptiness inside. Godlessness.

My kids screaming in the night,
sleeplessness, diapers, laundry, dishes, urine on the floor,
bills due, income scarce
hard work, no reward, tension with Courtney,
longing day after day for escape.

Empty motions,
aching for somewhere I know not where,
aching for someone I know not who,
suffering, suffering silently with Christ
... or sometimes without him.

Gregory Ryan Coates is Broken Down tonight.