Tyler runs. He runs a lot.
When he runs, I think of Spot.
See Tyler run.
Run, Tyler, run.
This is fun for Tyler.
(Well, maybe not always.)
See the hen. The hen is fun.
Here comes Tyler. Run, hen, run!
Jump, Tyler, jump.
Jump, jump. Run, run.
Oops!
We fall. We all fall down. We all fall now and then.
But we can get back up again.
And keep on running.
“Let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”
I’ve never been to Haiti. Since the earthquake, it’s been hard to get my mind around all the news. So when a Haitian pastor came to town for a visit, I was able to put a face on the whole situation. While it’s hard for us to focus on thousands of people caught in overwhelming tragedy, here is one Haitian who had lived through the quake and had helped others deal with life since that day. He came to bring a message of gratitude and hope from his country. 
Here’s a bit about his story — the story of one man, one church, one newly opened medical clinic in the midst of a country churning with struggle.
Pastor Eduoard’s church once ran a medical clinic. Funds dried up and the clinic closed, but Pastor Eduoard had a vision. He believed one day the clinic would reopen. He put his money where his faith was, paying rent on an empty building from 2005 on in spite of having no idea where funding for medical staff and supplies would come from. After the earthquake, a team from Journey Community Church in San Diego met Pastor Eduoard. He laid out his vision of a clinic. Journey partnered with the Haitian church. Funds came in from hundreds of people. Folks from Journey traveled to Haiti to prepare the building. On January 13, one year after the earthquake, the clinic opened.
Here’s an account from Josh Lawson, an American who was on hand to help that day:
The opening day of the clinic was upon us…..Watching people start to line up and being able to see Andy, Kristell, Pastor Eduoard, and Dr. Carlo praying and cutting the ribbon to open this clinic, which was just a vision for a long time, was amazing. The pillar of honor and humanity, John Jacques, was there with a few other policemen to protect us in case things got out of hand. They had machine guns and bullet proof vests….can you say AWESOME. (Read more of Josh’s blog post here.)
And it was AWESOME in San Diego when Pastor Eduoard prayed, through his interpreter, for the people of Journey: “May your grace pour out on them.”
We who have plenty to eat, medical care, sturdy houses, all we need to survive and thrive. We are just as much in need of God’s grace as anyone anywhere. How humbling to be prayed over by this faith-filled man.
Pastor Eduoard’s report on his church and his clinic and his country? “By prayer we will overcome and we will win the battle.”
Want to know more about Journey’s partnership with Pastor Eduoard’s church? Visit the Journey in Haiti blog. And check out this article in the March issue of PRISM Magazine.
Eight of us Ode’s arrived at Chicago’s famed Shedd Aquarium. We saw fish of all sizes and shapes . . .
and dolphins and penguins and starfish in shallow tubs so you can touch them — so much to enchant us all. We ran around here for hours. We lost parts of our party for a time now and then but eventually we all found each other. We never did find the polar bears advertised on the signage, but the search was fun anyway.
When I asked Maddie what was her favorite, she said without hesitating: “The stingrays.” Whoa, that would not be my answer. I’ve had a personal encounter with one of these. The scar on my ankle is testament. Running happily into the ocean, I stepped dead on one of Maddie’s favorite things. I had rudely disturbed the ray, and he gave a fierce wave of his sharp tail, zinging deep into my ankle. After the stunning jolt of pain, blood gushed. I sat on the beach and worried about the mess of all that blood pouring out on the pale sand. Soon intense cramps moved up my leg. Later there were x-rays, swelling, infections, and rounds of antibiotics. Six months afterward, a piece of stinger finally worked its way out, popping through the skin.
But why dampen Maddie’s enthusiasm? Actually, I wasn’t at all worried about Maddie because this is how she viewed the stingrays that day.
You see, her Daddy held onto her. He held her tight while she got a good look. No way would her Daddy drop her into that little bit of ocean with the stingery beings that can savage ankles.
Right there in Shedd Aquarium I saw a picture of how it is with God and his children. He holds us and he won’t let go and our souls are safe, safe in the middle of all of the beauty, the fun, the lostness, the times we follow paths that lead nowhere. “He will not let your foot slip — he who watches over you will not slumber.” (Ps 121:3). Nothing can tear us from his arms; nothing can separate us from his love.
My favorite, by the way, is the starfish — docile, slow-moving, and stinger-free.
What’s your favorite sea creature?
Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together by Ron Hall, Denver Moore, Lynn Vincent
Denver doesn’t read. He doesn’t write. He’s lived most of his adult life homeless. But Denver thinks about things. He analyzes how life works. He can cut to the heart of a matter with startling clarity of expression.
We know this because he’s told his story in the book, Same Kind of Different as Me. The book’s author, Lynn Vincent, interviewed both Denver and his wealthy friend Ron Hall and documented the intertwining of their lives. Ron meets Denver when Deborah, Ron’s wife, signs them up to serve Tuesday dinner at a homeless shelter. Ron tries to befriend Denver, who is suspicious that Ron is putting in time just to feel good about himself. “If you is fishin for a friend you just gon’ catch and release, then I ain’t got no desire to be your friend.” Denver thinks it over, though, and finally decides:
“I could be his friend in a different way than he could be my friend. I knowed he wanted to help the homeless, and I could take him places he couldn’t go by hisself. I didn’t know what I might find in his circle or even that I had any business bein there, but I knowed he could help me find out whatever was down that road. The way I looked at it, a fair exchange aint no robbery. He was gon’ protect me in the country club, and I was goin’ protect him in the hood. Even swap, straight down the line.”
The men do slowly get acquainted as each tries to understand the world of the other. Eventually the disparate men are bound by something they have in common after all: both men love Deborah, one as her husband and one as her friend. When illness strikes, neither can save her. Both grieve.
And how’s the friendship going today?
“All in all, we’s purty tight. Lotta times, we’ll sit out on the back porch . . . lookin at the moon shinin on the river and talkin about life. . . I used to spend a lotta time worryin that I was different from other people, even from other homeless folks. Then, after I met Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron, I worried that I was so different from them that we wadn’t ever gon’ have no kind a’ future. But I found out everybody’s different – the same kind of different as me. We’re all just regular folks walkin down the road God done set in front of us.”
I find the value in this story to be in the glimpse into the life of a dirt-poor child, abused because he’s black, passed from one relative to another. He learns to survive; he learns to depend only on himself. Told in his own words, his story is one of early tragedy, rejection, violence, isolation. When Denver breaks his lifestyle of shutting himself off from others, he finds the redemption that God and love can bring. Countless Denvers have lived and died with their stories untold. In this book, the voice of this homeless man comes through loud and clear.
How about you? Have you gotten to know a homeless person? Have you been homeless yourself?
One of my earliest memories is of a car trip from Los Angeles north to the faraway coastal retreat of Carpinteria to visit friends. At least, to my young self it seemed a long, long journey. Part way there, I discovered that my beloved stuffed dog Lady was still at home. How could I travel hours and hours without my Lady? I could not.
I’m sure I cried. What I remember is that my dad turned the car back to LA and we went home, retrieved Lady, and turned north once again. I’m sure I clutched Lady the entire trip. I remember holding her tightly later that day as we walked through fragrant lemon groves in Carpinteria. I apparently clutched Lady the same way not only during that trip but over many months and years. Because this is what Lady looks like today.
Lady has no neck.
And no soft fur. And she’s lost some stuffing. But she certainly has had lots of love. She is “real,” in the way that the Velveteen Rabbit became real.
From “The Velveteen Rabbit” by Margery Williams
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
*********
I’ve kept Lady, partly because she’s so old she’s an antique, and antiques fascinate me. And partly because you can’t look at her without seeing how much and how ardently I loved her till she was truly shabby.
Since that childhood trip to Carpinteria, I have loved many people (as well as Lady). Fortunately, they all still have necks. But I hope I’ve moved some of them closer to being real. I hope they know how much I love them, even if I don’t clutch them so tightly and take them along on every car ride. Because life is about love. ”Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. And over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” I started learning that eons ago, and I’m still learning, always learning. And I’m going to keep Lady around to remind me that love isn’t always clean and pretty and sometimes it hurts and your insides get rearranged. And that’s all part of being real.
What’s your earliest childhood memory? What does that memory say about who you are today?
The Swiss Alps top my list for sheer beauty and grandeur. Amazing. Breathtaking. One of my memories of my time there always makes me laugh because it shows how amazingly, breathtakingly dumb I was that day. I had read and heard about one particular mountain named Mannlichen and got the great idea to hike up it. Great exercise, no? Something like hiking up the “mountain” near my home, about a half-hour jaunt. The day Meg and I arrived at the base of Mannlichen, the mountain was entirely engulfed by clouds. Visibility was just a few feet in front of us. We stood at the base, determined to ignore the light rain, and tried to read the German signs. We didn’t know any German, but I shrugged and figured we could do it. So we set off having no idea what was up in the clouds.
We hiked. We got wet. We got wetter. We hiked some more. We got soaked. After about a half hour I figured we must be nearing the summit. (Did I mention what a dumb plan this was?) We were getting tired and tired of being wet when we rounded a bend and happened onto a construction crew of several men. They looked at us with surprise. “Mannlichen?” I pointed up, not knowing anything but the name of this hill. They pointed to our wet tennies. They looked incredulous. Then they laughed. And laughed. Their words were lost on us, but obviously there was something wrong (and amusing).
Figuring the problem was that we lacked true hiking shoes, we decided to turn around. We descended, found a cozy little café in town and sat by the fire and consumed the yummiest hot tomato soup.
Filled and warmed and somewhat drier, we emerged from the café to find that the cloud had lifted and — there was Mannlichen! Massive Mannlichen. Very tall Mannlichen.
We finally found a few people who spoke some English and learned that the way to go up Mannlichen in a storm is to take the TRAM. Ah! Who knew? And we happily loaded into the tram and whooshed up to the top.
See the tiny village with the yummy tomato soup, far, far below?
And even further below . . .
Sometimes I’ve started off on some figurative trails with about as much sense as I displayed in the alps. Signs were posted but I couldn’t or didn’t read them. People were around who could have counseled but I didn’t ask.
Are you facing a mountain? Or just a small hill? Maybe it’s time to gather advice, listen, consider the next steps. And if you decide to hike up, get the proper shoes. “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” (Proverbs 15:22)
