He’s My Partner 

When we’re young, labeling relationships is easy. This person is my friend, this person is my best friend, this person is my BEST best friend. When it’s a romantic relationship, it’s the same. You can be dating or going out. Someone is your boyfriend or girlfriend. When you’re young, finding a handy title for the people in your life isn’t that complicated.

But then  I became old and began a new romantic relationship. One day, I was on the phone, adding Rich to my car insurance. I finished updating the information that they already had on file about my vehicle, and then said that I needed to add another driver to the account.

“What’s his relationship to you?” the woman on the line asked.

And I froze.

When you’re nearing forty and you’re in a new romantic relationship, there aren’t any good terms for it. Calling him my boyfriend felt a little bit too infantile and flippant. Even though we knew that we would be married at the earliest possible time, calling him my fiancé felt too formal for the relationship that we were in right at that moment. I figured calling him my lover would probably be a little too much information for an insurance customer service rep, so I just blurted out, “He’s my partner!”

I had no idea how much that title would come to mean to me.

For much of my adult life, I had certain ideas about what marriage meant based on my first marriage, and most of them boiled down to each person having a role in the relationship. I didn’t believe that there were gender roles that only men or women were designed to have, but I did see marriage as a division of labor where each person had their job to do. It was never stated explicitly that anyone was completely bound to their job, but it was very rare that help was offered beyond the scope of our regular roles. There was always a sense of equality, but never one of togetherness.

11044523_10153016493296236_3952428309709335846_nIn this second round of marriage, both my husband and I are making a concerted effort to practice more togetherness. In some regards, this is easy. Rich works from home while I write and work around the house, and when we leave, we both work at the same music store giving private lessons. We attend church together, we eat meals together, we go to the gym together. It is rare that we have more than a few hours apart in a given week. Being physically together is something that happens most of every day.

But beyond that, we have built in the idea of partnership in our marriage. We have tried to eliminate the idea that there are his and her jobs at our house. There may be things that one of us does more often than the other, but we make it a point to make sure that no one feels like they are letting down the other, because we both do all of the chores at least occasionally.

I may prepare most of the meals because of the way our schedule works, but almost no weeks go by when Rich doesn’t order me to sit and relax while he cooks. Rich may be the one to do most of the trash removal, but if the garbage can is full and he’s busy, I take it out. When one of us wants to take a risk, we evaluate it together, and as often as we’re able, we encourage the other to leap.

Sometimes it can be trying, and old thought patterns can creep in. We will not trust that the other can handle our discomfort, so we stuff our feelings away rather than talking through our questions or sadness. Sometimes we’re just selfish and act out of our own self interests rather than striving to put the other first. But when that happens, we try to recognize the negative behaviors and work toward restoring the togetherness that is so important to us.

Some lists telling people how to have happy marriages will include items like, “Surprise your wife with a home cooked meal!” or “Treat your husband like he’s the king of the castle!” Those things can certainly be helpful when your life falls into a rut, when you are living parallel lives. But I’m finding more and more that the idea of having someone partner with you in all of your endeavors allows for greater creativity in the ways that you can exhibit generosity in your marriage. Togetherness can be manufactured, but it’s nice when it doesn’t have to be.

These days I have the nice, neat label of “husband” for Rich. But if you asked me, I’d still tell you that he’s my partner.

*   *   *   *   *

424033_10151308414006236_662319879_n“He’s My Partner” is by Alise Chaffins. Alise is a wife, a mother, an eater of soup, and a lover of Oxford commas. You can generally find her sitting behind a keyboard of some kind: playing or teaching the piano, writing at her laptop, or texting her friends a random movie quote. Alise lives in West Virginia and blogs at knittingsoul.com

 

 

Unstoppable

Camera pans out.charlie's angels

Music begins.

With long-legged strides, a group of beautiful woman strut with deliberate confidence, their hair pushed back by wind and the sheer intensity of their motion.

They have a common mission.

They are…unstoppable.


This image has nothing to do with my current reality. I am bit prone to the slow stroll and my intensity comes out in awkward spurts and fits rather than anything resembling grace. My confidence has been shot to pieces. I’m trying ride out this season of transition until I figure out where I am going. My hair is more likely to be tangled in my necklace than flowing gracefully in the breeze.

But once.

Once upon a time.

Once upon a time, I resonated with the image of fierce, determined women moving with certainty, surrounded by beauty.

In my early 20s, friends and I joined together in a common mission to serve pregnant women who found themselves on the streets. With a bit of luck, a ton of grace, and the available elbow grease, we created a home that drew women into a safe place and a loving community. I call that season: “the Holy Spirit light show.” There were some really challenging aspects, of course, but, it just felt special. All around us, people were being zapped by grace and drawn into the project. Things fell into place; the right people showed up; donations arrived at the perfect time. We were movin’ and jivvin’ in the blessing groove, filled with gratitude and awe at what was happening around us.

It was incredible to be a part of and it taught me that anything is possible. Having known the bewildering presence of God in this season of creation, I was forever changed.

I remained in the work for 15 years, joining together with many mighty souls to create a place. A place of healing, a place of love, a place where motherhood was preserved.

I never felt the glamour and attraction of the long-legged women with hair blowing in the breeze. But I felt the unity of purpose, the strength of common work. I felt a part of something strong.

And now.

Now.

Now, I am no longer one of the “Maggie’s Place girls,” at least in the same way. I don’t have to think in terms of community. I’m on a solo mission, completing my graduate work and listening carefully to the echos of my heart.

And yet, we remain bound together. I am tied to those whom I shared my life with–in our common memories and experiences and more so, in that sense of love that made us a community.

Several of prayed alongside Angie last week as she mourned the death of her son.  I spent a wonderful evening discussing feminist theories with Dayna over a margarita and queso dip.   Christy’s good news–she is moving back to her beloved Arizona!–made my day and Chariti will join me next week to celebrate my graduation.  Jana called just to check in and see how I am doing; I have coffee with Lynda on my calendar; Miranda’s wedding invitation sits on my desk.  Emails and posts, little signs of the bonds that were build, of the connection that remains.

The love is alive, not merely a memory of the past, but a present reality on which to draw strength.


I am road weary and limping a bit.  I could use a haircut and there isn’t much of a breeze.

But, I’m walking, facing head-on.

And, if my footing falters, someone will be there.

And, that makes me strong.

Pull Yourself Together

It was well into summer when I started to lose my grasp on the splintering pieces. On my lunch break, I would drive to a large parking lot for a big box store and cry until I thought I might throw up, and I couldn’t breathe. Even then, I used a wet wipe to compose my features. “Get it together,” I said to my reflection in the visor mirror. Then I would drive back to work, heavy in the knowledge that things might never change.

I’d always prided myself on my ability to hold it together. “You can’t change your circumstances,” my mother would say, “but you can change your attitude.” My six year old self drank in those words, and didn’t realize that certain circumstances were not okay, no matter my attitude.

So I tried to change my attitude, using all of my tricks. I went to yoga at lunch and bought scented candles for my office. I read books instead of talking with my co-workers. But the days continued to roll over me, crushing my spirit a little more every day. My job was slowly killing me.

It started subtly. On the way to work I wondered what it might be like to drive off the ridge near my house. One small movement of the steering wheel, one gentle push over the edge. Or perhaps I could drive into the median. Nothing serious, just an accident. If I was in the hospital, I couldn’t go to work, right?

I’ll never forget where I was and how it felt. I was in my office, at my desk, the one right next to the window that looked over the parking lot. It was hot in the building, and my fan was on, pointed at my hands, hovering over the keyboard. An image entered my mind unexpectedly. I pictured myself walking into the kitchen and opening the drawer where we kept the knives, selecting one, and plunging it into my chest.

The room began to close in and I began to shake. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t focus. I’m not sure how I made it through the rest of that day and home. I’m even less sure how I made it to the home of my small group leader.

Pull Yourself Together by Cara Strickland | You Are Here All through the evening, as the other members of my group discussed the Bible in that small, cozy home to a single mother and three foster kids, I stayed silent. I was afraid to move or speak, because I knew that I could no longer keep it together. My next move would be the end, I would fall apart. I waited as long as I could.

After group was over and we continued to talk, I raised a timid voice. “Can I ask for prayer?” I said.

I sat on the large ottoman in the center of the room, legs crossed. I wasn’t sure how to begin. How do you fracture the image of togetherness? How do you admit that you want to die, and that you are terrified?

It wasn’t the sort of small group that talked about personal struggle. All the prayer requests around the circle were about other people, and physical health. I wasn’t sure if it was a safe place to fall apart, even as I shattered. But I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

There was silence for a time, after my flood of broken words. I waited for the clatter. Hugging my knees into my chest. But it didn’t come.

“Let’s start with therapy,” one of the women said.

“I can call and get you a doctor’s appointment,” said another.

I’ll have lunch with you tomorrow,” said another voice. “I’ll come get you at work.”

“You can quit your job,” said the single mom with the three foster kids.

In the days and weeks that followed that night, I began therapy, went to the doctor, quit my job, and almost jumped out a window high above downtown Denver. Often, after I stopped working and began to heal, I would stare at the wall, trying to muster the energy to drink the tea after I’d made it.

But I returned often to that tiny house, and that warm living room, even to that large, cushy ottoman. I awoke my memories of that circle of people around me, reminding me that I wasn’t alone, even if I wasn’t together.

Talking on the Train

I had lunch with a stranger once in the crowded food court of Union Station in D.C. There were no empty tables and only a few empty seats. When I saw a woman sitting by herself at a table, I asked if I could join her. She readily agreed.

I was in between trains, a Chicago-to-D.C. leg behind me and the rest of the journey home to Philadelphia ahead. Asking to join a stranger at their table is not within my standard mode of operation. Perhaps it was the 17 hours I had just spent on the train that inspired my unusual behavior.

On long-haul trains, if you go to the dining car you sit with people. And if, like me, you enjoy passing the hours of train travel in the observation car watching the country roll by, then you sit with people there too. On a long-haul train, you chat and really listen to the answers because you have all of the time and none of the cell signal. This slow-paced, low-pressure atmosphere makes my people-loving introvert-self bloom.

Between the trip out to Chicago and the ride back East, I spent almost 40 hours there-and-back talking to strangers. I met a man in the midst of his journey home from Thailand. He told me about an ex-wife and a child in Peru—how his world travels introduced him to people, but pulled them away too. He bought me a drink and we talked for hours as the view of the countryside gave way to midnight blackness. Eventually he asked me, “Are you happy?” I told him I was, mostly. He nodded, leaned back in his chair, and stared off into the darkness outside. His eyes had said more: that being happy was something he didn’t quite understand.

One morning after a few bumpy hours of sleep as the train chugged through Ohio and into Pennsylvania, I went to breakfast and was seated at a table with a woman. She asked me about my life. I asked her about hers. We lingered over our coffee as she told me about working with Catholic Social Justice groups in her teens, trying to end capital punishment. The fact that people still fight for the same thing today gave her mixed emotions. I told her about my Christian Social Ethics coursework—what I was learning about inequality and how the church participates. I told her it was encouraging to meet her. She said the same of meeting me.

Amtrak observationSeven-hundred miles of steel track is enough space for strangers to share many years of memories. You can settle in with wine or coffee. You can relax into the seat. The scenery of fields and small towns is buffer enough for the natural pauses. There is no hurry; your stop is likely states away.

After joining fellow travelers for those many miles, to join a woman sitting at a table alone in a crowded food court seemed natural. As she told me about how she spends her days, the realization that she was homeless began to dawn on me. I took a second look at the food she had in front of her—one small order of fries. I told her I was finished eating and asked if she would like any of my leftovers. I think if I had thought about that a bit more, I would not have asked for fear of insulting her. She took my offer though and gladly ate what I did not. I eventually wished her a good day and a safe walk back to her night shelter, thanked her for allowing me to join her table, and went to board my train to Philadelphia.

This second-to-last last part of my journey was on a regional Amtrak train, which means smaller seats and less room to move about. My seat-mate told me about his job in the banking industry, seeming proud of his achievements as a district manager. Before long he had his laptop out, taking advantage of the Wi-Fi.

In Philadelphia, I switched from Amtrak to regional rail for the journey out to the suburbs, choosing a seat next to a woman who had on head-phones. The train car was silent but for the noise of the tracks and the intermittent stop announcements.

The transition was stark. Our day-to-day lives are not built for long chats and shared meals with strangers. Yet, people’s complicated lives exist even when we are just commuting home to the suburbs. Homeless people, lonely people, overlooked people. People who are on a journey to somewhere—people who fight for equality and people who wonder if it’s really possible to be happy—these people are always next to me.

It is of course easier to say that I want to engage than to actually engage. The meeting and eating and talking together requires intentionality on the part of all the participants. When I can remember that the people around me have stories of lives lived full of heartbreak and hope, then I am more willing to keep my eyes open for ways I can give. Even if what I have to give in the moment is only a listening ear or my not-yet-finished lunch.

*    *    *    *    *

fall“Talking on the Train” was written by Nicole Morgan. Nicole’s first long-distance train trip involved Thanksgiving dinner with a dining-car table full of strangers. She booked a sleeper-car once and loved it for all its nostalgic charm, but much prefers coach class where there’s plenty of time and room to meet her traveling neighbors. Nicole writes about bodies, theology, and community at jnicolemorgan.com  and tweets away @jnicolemorgan

 

 

Life Together: The Gift of Family

We often express brokenness in our lives to share in each other’s suffering. This vulnerability about the hard things in our lives seems to be an essential element of building community. However, I wonder sometimes if we know what kind of community we are hoping to build. Too few of us have experienced the sweet gift of an unconditionally loving community. Many of our homes seem to be hodge-podges of love and hatred, and the hope we may have of building our own homes seems to be more of a prayer or a stab in the dark than a definite, intentional progression.

I teach many students who have never seen a father and a mother love each other. They have so many broken relationships around them that they have no idea what a right relationship is, and I wonder: what do I have to give them? I have a lot of brokenness, but they see that every day. Do I have any true goodness in my brokenness to leave with them?

Any goodness, any hope, any true light I have to give I owe almost exclusively to my family.

Let me explain:

Continue reading

Alone in the Light; Together in Darkness

The lights suddenly flipped on. The bells started ringing. A young altar boy rushed to light the candles. Black robes began flying into the air and then were caught and flung again, straight up in the highest part of the vaulted ceiling of the church.

The moment had arrived.

It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

Dominican priests typically wear a white robe with a large cowl neck collar and long piece of vincent-mcnabbfabric down the front. All those things have fancy names, but I will spare you the lesson in monk fashion. For special occasions, like the days of Holy Week, Dominicans add a long black cape that covers over the white robe. It is a solemn gesture, a gesture of reverence for the solemn events that are being remembered. To my eyes, it is a shroud of darkness, of mystery. The cape always draws my attention, and something in me wishes I could wear a cape without being thought of as a Lord of the Rings fangirl gone wild.

Watching the black capes thrown into the air, I was standing tiptoe in the courtyard of the church, peering over the heads of hundreds of standing figures. I was in Poland as a solo personal pilgrimage to honor a saint that I hold dear and was spending the week prior to Easter making day trips and exploring Krakow.

I’ve always loved the Easter vigil, the very long liturgy of Saturday night that begins in darkness and ends in Easter joy. I didn’t understand the Polish but I understood that moment. The church was suddenly bathed in light; darkness was literally cast aside. My melancholic spirit knew: He is RISEN!


This year, I was again in the presence of the white-robed Dominicans for the days leading up to Easter. My friend had taken several courses at the Dominicans House of Studies and wished to attend the liturgies amongst the preachers and teachers whom she loved and respected.  I was up for anything and not-so-secretly hoped that cape throwing was a part of the American tradition. (It wasn’t. Only cape removal and tactful folding.)  Nonetheless, I encountered another tradition.

We attended Tenelargebrae, a candlelit chanting of the Psalms that led into the Holy Week liturgies.  A chapel full of robed religious singing Scripture in the ancient prayer of the Church put me into a reflective, quiet place.  Stillness came; silence set in.  As the chanting ending, all of the light was extinguished.

The entire church stood in pitch blackness and perfect silence.

Time passed.

My mind raced, “How long are we going to silently stand here? How are all these people going to get out of here safely?”

More time passed.  My mental soundtrack didn’t let up, “I wish I could read my program so I understood what was going on.”

And then, a moment.  A moment of standing in darkness with 200 other people. A moment of being in silent worship together; a moment of turning my attention toward Him.

Breaking into that moment, a wretched clanging of drums and cacophonous noises filled the darkened chapel.  On and on it continued, a noise that disturbed the peace of the space and the peace of the spirit.

Just as quickly as it began, the noise ended. The lights returned and the service ended.  I glanced down at my program, “All creation shudders at the death of the Lord.


In the first, I was alone and rejoiced to see the darkness cast aside.

In the second, I stood together in darkness and worshipped and trusted the chaos had meaning.

To both I answer, “Amen.

Called to be awkward together

If clichés are any indication of reality, Americans have exactly two options on Sunday mornings:

1. Stay in bed as long as you want, then put on yoga pants and a hoodie and relax for hours with your cat or dog in a sunny spot, sipping coffee while indulging in The New York Times from cover to cover.

OR

2. Get up early and rush to church (with your coffee in a travel mug), to be surrounded by dozens of people who may or may not have anything in common with you beyond your choice of how to spend Sunday mornings.

For almost my entire adult life, I have willingly gone for that second option. If the first option can be characterized as Blissful Solitude, the one I choose is Awkward Togetherness—at least at the churches I seem to gravitate toward.

There’s no telling what might happen on any given Sunday morning at my church. Drinks are spilled (well, coffee or communion juice), squealing toddlers are chased, and people are generally loud at the wrong moments. It’s like a family reunion with all your crazy relatives. Every Sunday.

I am clearly a glutton for punishment, as I head back to church week after week. But I make that choice because I am also a glutton for unexpected friendships, undeserved grace, and unconventional beauty. These are things I can’t seem to find anywhere else in the world, so each Sunday I return to church for more.

In no other realm of my life could I spend a couple of hours with such a diverse collection of people: a leading advocate for disability rights and a leading scholar of Islam; ex-convicts and an ex-prison guard; an Obstetrics nurse and newborns; homeless people and psychologists; a once-big-time blues drummer with a grey beard down to his belt, his teenage drum student, and a toddler who idolizes them both.

Church is the place I go to be in community—not with the mainstream, middleclass, upstanding Christian crowd, but with the ones Jesus gravitated toward: the misfits, the broken, and all those who don’t always “fit.”

Many Sunday mornings, as any illusion of well-rehearsed order dissolves, I sit in church half-cringing, seeing all the chaos and mishaps through the eyes of some poor visitor who wandered in to see what we’re all about. Being in this place can be so uncomfortable and awkward, especially for those of us adept at feigning full command of ourselves and our surroundings.

But those feelings have a way of projecting back onto me, highlighting my own brokenness and discomfort in this world. Before long—during the very same worship service, even in the next breath!—my cringe transforms into a heart swell of openness and love-beyond-reason. I look around our coffee-stained sanctuary and see the stories we live together.

There is our friend who one day surprised us by returning from a visit home to India with a new bride at his side. Now they have a baby we ooh and ahh over at every opportunity.

Down the row from them is the former blues drummer. For years he spent Sunday mornings sitting behind the drum set with the worship band; now he’s recovering from cancer surgery and too weak to play a whole set. But that doesn’t stop him from pulling a tambourine out of his bag when the spirit moves him, and making music from his seat.

I watch a preschooler run up to her grandparents with smiles and hugs. As an infant, she was raised by her grandparents. Now she and her sister are the adopted children of a young couple in the church (and vessels of joy for everyone who knows them).

On the other side of the sanctuary is the woman who is always busy sewing or crocheting away on a blanket for someone’s baby, and there is the woman who regularly testifies to how Jesus has delivered her from debilitating anxiety. Behind me a hearing aid whines briefly as our “senior member,” at 90, makes an adjustment.

Then a song from the church’s “hippie days” begins, having made its way into a worship set. It is unfamiliar to me, but clearly not to everyone. A man gets off his chair and kneels right there on the carpet, while a few of the “old-timers” begin doing hand motions that seem part-sign language, part-jazz hands. A baby screeches, and we know exactly who it is, without turning our heads. A boy with autism rocks and rocks and rocks in a rocking chair in the back of the sanctuary. That is how he does church.

And I bow my head, overwhelmed by the terrifying-yet-glorious goodness of being awkward together in the presence of God.

 

 

Gentrification Conversation: Part Two

I didn’t notice any trouble until he called the police–I was too distracted by the sunlight. Our kitchen windows are six feet tall, and on sunny afternoons like this one, the yellow walls gleamed, the dirty dishes on the counter shone. Thump, thud.  It was still early spring, and the windows were closed, muffling the clanging, banging and thumping coming from across the street.

I looked out. Two men were loading our former neighbor’s belongings into a pickup truck. Her house had sat vacant for a year after she moved into a senior building, now her appliances were heading out the door. “I tried to talk to them,” my housemate said, “and they blew me off. The cops are on their way.”

“Oh,” I said, “oh, I see.” He walked out to the porch to see what would happen, and I sank down on the kitchen stool, staring at the floor. Calling the police was complicated. We couldn’t just sit by and watch while our neighbor’s house was emptied, but they would know who called–the white people, again–and what if the men were rude to the officers too? “No one get shot, no one get shot,” I prayed as I peeked out the window.

No one got shot. The police arrived, they talked, the next door neighbor came out, and soon everyone was laughing amiably. As the cops drove away, embarrassment settled in, hard. “I hate this,” I thought, “Why are we always the ones to overreact? It’s the middle of the day, of course they weren’t doing anything wrong.” My housemate came back in and noticed my discomfort.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said, and disappeared into the basement, returning a moment later with two bottles of beer. Clink, clank, he marched out the door. Peeking out the window again, I watched him approach the men, somewhat in awe at his nerve. He was talking, they were talking, he handed them the beer, and he walked back to our house. “Whew,” he shut the door, “Turned out they were family of a neighbor, everything’s alright. Glad I apologized.”

“They took the beer,” I said, still a little surprised. “Yeah,” he shrugged, grinning, “Sometimes a beer can turn an enemy into a friend. They’re good guys, just a little surly at first.”

And that was that. Two beers–the solution for all your cross-cultural tensions.

*****

With a big word like gentrification, it’s tempting to just talk about it at a macro-level. Government, development, public policy–all of this matters. But there is also the everyday reality of living in close quarters with people who are not ‘like me,’ and trying to get along.

This can be exhausting, and, like deciding whether to call the cops, more complicated than I ever imagined. But I suspect that mixed-income communities (or any communities) succeed or fail, ultimately, at the micro-level. In other words, can the people who live next door to one another learn to be neighbors?

On our block are middle-class working families–healthcare workers, retired city bus drivers, preschool teachers–and families who subsist on minimum wage jobs, food stamps and medicaid. The black folks (about three-quarters of our block) have generally lived in our neighborhood their whole lives and have family scattered about the community; the white folks are relative newcomers and have family scattered about the country.

And there are times when living together can be stressful and bumpy. There are misunderstandings and mistakes; there are awkward moments. Soon after I moved in, a well-meaning man said to me, “Don’t you worry, dear, my mother and I are glad that you’re here. We’re not like everyone else.”

And I thought, “It’s a good thing that ‘everyone else’ is too polite to say!”

However, there are also moments when I think that living where I live, and learning to get along with people who are not ‘like me’, is perhaps one of the richest experiences of my life.

One of my favorite neighbors is a grandmother who is working toward her GED while raising her grandkids. We go to church together, and her youngest loves to chase our chickens around the backyard. One day I gave her a ride to the bus stop, and as we were chatting about kids, weather, and leaking chimneys, I suddenly realized how much I needed this woman to be my neighbor.

There is a lot of talk, a lot of research, about how mixed-income communities benefit the poor–there can be increased employment opportunities, for example, and their kids tend to have higher social mobility–but what struck me in that moment, and has stayed with me since, is the sense of how much the rich (or at least the relatively rich) benefit from living near the poor.

I give my neighbor a ride, but she gives me insight I could get no other way. I watch her sacrifice for her grandkids while taking one GED class at a time, I watch her struggle, and I watch her pray. I watch her maintain faith and a sense of humor in the midst of situations that might just do me in.

She (and others) also give me financial perspective. When asked why they moved to our neighborhood, one family said, “We didn’t want our kids to think that it was normal to have a Rolex.” Having neighbors who work full time and yet struggle to buy fresh vegetables tempers my materialism. It also reminds me to be grateful at the farmer’s market. It’s not a guilt trip; it’s a reality adjustment.

Finally, speaking of reality, there is just something about living with people who freely admit they don’t have it all together. My neighbors have kids in jail, various addictions, and teenage pregnancies. While we’re all messed up in one way or another, the poor tend to wear their wounds on the outside. When I see this, and then see these same people embraced in spite of their (sometimes still oozing) wounds, something inside of me is also set free.

All this doesn’t happen in one trip to the bus stop, but over a decade or so, it begins to sink in: I need my neighbor because in the moments when I am her chauffeur, she is my teacher. This is a small step, but isn’t this the way that neighborhoods are built?

One ride,

one conversation,

one adjustment of perspective,

one mistake and one apology,

two beers at a time.

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Photo by Wagner T. Cassimoro

Wherever I’m With You

My parents left Pittsburgh when I was a toddler, but family lore still recalls me pointing delightedly at its blue and white bus stop signs, imploring, “Stop, bus!” Several times a year we returned, crossing the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the Tubes to visit my Grandma, whose porch housed a galvanized dairy box, although the milkman had long since ceased service by then. On rainy Sundays, my brother and I chased pigeons outside Downtown’s gothic Presbyterian church. Inside we slid down inexplicably existent bowling lanes and sat for children’s sermons at the same poinsettia-laden altar where our parents married years before.

The Steel City coaxed me back for a longer stay the summer before my senior year of college. At the North Side’s Pittsburgh Project, I learned more about justice over three months in community than I had in all my years in the classroom or church. Daily navigating a mysterious tangle of neighborhoods, armed with plucky determination and a stack of MapQuest print outs, my teammates and I discovered how many Pittsburgh “roads” are merely stairwells and how true is the saying, “You can’t get there from here.” I savored my first cherry ice ball from Gus and Yia Yia’s historic cart and discovered the public radio gem that is WYEP.

pghMy official Pittsburgh homecoming occurred the following summer. One week before our wedding and freshly hired at a church mere blocks from the hospital where I was born, Jim and I arrived to scout any apartment within reach of our meager summer camp paychecks: decrepit student housing in Oakland, dingy curiosities in Polish Hill, and an alleged one-bedroom in Friendship consisting of a dark kitchenette and one tiny bathroom atop a stairwell. (The split landing was apparently where a mattress was to go.)

When we discovered a third floor walk-up in a brick Bloomfield row house, we knew our little family of two had come home to the East End at last. Boasting a sunny kitchen outfitted in fifties-era fixtures and compact appliances, Hobbit ceilings, and actual sleeping quarters, the apartment felt palatial at $325 a month. So what if it was accessible only by fire escape and lacked a bedroom door? The Shire was ours, and God bless the youth group parents who dropped off teenagers in the back alley for dinners and movie nights. Great is your reward and greater our memories: climbing out of Allegheny Cemetery that time we got locked in, ice skating and frisbee at Schenley, and cheering graduation at the Mellon Arena.

We owned one car, two bikes, and most everything we needed (excepting perhaps a washer-dryer or savings account). Jim still remembers bike messaging as his favorite job; I remember the way my breath caught when he said he’d been hit by a car and how nearly every dollar he earned seemed to end up at Kraynick’s Bike Shop. We slid down the icy fire escape taking out the trash, walked to Tram’s for pho, and biked downtown to see Wilco at the Point. I celebrated a series of birthdays along Forbes, marching against the Iraq war alongside aging hippies, anarchists, and once, a donkey.

In the Cultural District, we scored rush tickets to RENT, not far from Planned Parenthood where I got my annual exam. Neither Jim nor I dressed up for work, but when we scored free symphony tickets, you know we turned up in our finest at Heinz Hall. We once sat behind playwright August Wilson at a tiny Lawrenceville performance of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and the only other man I ever saw naked was an actor in a cordoned-off warehouse at the edge of the Strip. The audience shivered on metal bleachers in wool coats and gloves, our breath visible beneath the heat lamps, and he took a shower right there in front of us.

Cockroaches and an absentee slumlord eventually drove us further up Liberty Avenue to an apartment atop Mariani’s Pleasure Bar, where the crashing trash pick-up woke us each morning at three, and the bells at St. Joseph’s called the faithful to prayer. I couldn’t begin to add up how much money we spent on parking tickets or tiramisu from Groceria Italiano next door. From our sticky tar roof, we hosted confirmation classes and friends for hibachi-grilled chicken, and we watched fireworks, movie crews, and bocce tournaments: broke, happy, and in love with each other and our skyline.

It’s been ten years since our exodus for pastures only literally greener, but my heart still races at the sight of yellow bridges and Rick Sebak documentaries, and the memory of rush hour bike commutes along Craig Street. There’s no place like home and no home like between the Three Rivers.

*    *    *    *    *

avi feb 2015“Wherever I’m With You” was written by Suzannah Paul. Suzannah is a Pennsylvania-based religion writer on the topics of liberation theology and embodied faith. When not squeezed into a summer camp dining hall, Suzannah and her family set extra places at their farmhouse table, and she writes love letters to the broken, beautiful Church at The Smitten Word.

 

Gentrification Conversation: Part One

I didn’t expect to be married to one of the bad guys, but there it is.

My husband Kendall was recently asked to lead a workshop at a seminary conference. I came along to help him keep time. While we were waiting for everyone else to arrive, I read the program. We were Track #2.

Track #2: Neighborhoods and Development. Goal: To assist churches and communities in analyzing and responding to physical, cultural, and socio-political changes within neighborhoods as a result of urban development policies and approaches.

This was a mouthful, but I knew what it meant. My husband works for a local Community Development Corporation (CDC) that has succeeded, over the past decade or two, to bring significant changes to the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Changes like a dramatic reduction in the crime rate; changes like an upturn in the housing market. Changes like opening (at that time) the only Whole Foods in Western Pennsylvania.

Changes like white people walking the streets with yoga mats tucked under their arms.

3936450656_1d6e343e2a_oAnd the word, the g-word, began to buzz in conversation, public and private. By the time of the conference, I was used to concerned friends asking questions like, “But what will happen to all of the residents who were already there?” or “What if rents rise and push people out?”

Kendall had answers to these questions: His organization had secured a large number of affordable units a decade earlier. More than a third of the housing in the neighborhood is subsidized long-term. The improved market could create generational wealth for current residents. The increased tax revenue benefited public schools. Turn-of-the-century houses were expensive to renovate, and without investment, they would rot and be torn down.

And finally, if our friends weren’t convinced (they usually weren’t), he would remind them that his organization had merely enacted the results of two extensive community plans, done in 1999 and 2010. These plans called for the creation of a mixed-income community, and that is what East Liberty was becoming.

“But isn’t it just being gentrified?” was the shorthand response, or, as one brave participant in the seminary workshop finally voiced, “Aren’t you just trying to get rid of all the black people?”

I checked the time; Kendall was just halfway done.

*****

This month’s theme at You Are Here is “Together in Place,” and as I have reflected on the gentrification conversations that go along with being married to my husband, I realize that a “Mixed Income Community”, however attractive in theory, is messy and frightening in practice.

Consider the alternative. Isn’t there something in us, as human beings, that is drawn to living near people who look like us, act like us, and make just about as much money as we do? Why else would we create gated communities? Why else, sixty years ago, did people flee to the suburbs? And why else, as the wealthy (in Pittsburgh, read ‘white people’) return to the cities in this decade, would there be a sense of invasion and take-over?

Take-over. This was the phrase my friend used as we sat together in the car after Kendall’s presentation. “I know that he’s got a convincing argument,” he conceded, staring out the window, “but there’s just this sense that people have, this sense that their world is being taken over, and there’s nothing they can do to stop it. It feels like a take-over, and that’s scary.”

For awhile, we sat in silence. Neither of us had any answers. There were good reasons to build a mixed-income community; there were compelling arguments for the change. The cost of doing nothing, of stagnation, of the status-quo, of ghettos and gated communities, was also high.

But living together is hard, and there’s this open question: how long will we able to keep it up? Rich, Poor, Middle-income, Black, White, Asian, Latino–all the census categories and a thousand variations–will we learn to live as neighbors? Will we attend each other’s birthday parties, bar mitzvahs and funerals? Will our children grow up together? Can our worship spaces go from being the most segregated places in America to become communities of reconciliation?

Can we live together? Or, is it inevitable that one group will take-over, one group will flee or be pushed out, and that a mixed-income community is just a stop on the way to gentrification?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. But the friend in the car was the pastor of my church, our mixed-race and mixed-income church of a hundred-or-so people who love one another, and we were determined to continue the conversation.

*****

Early this morning I was walking up the hill to my house, and I saw someone approaching, coming down the hill. The sun had not yet risen–I am on my guard in the dark–but as the figure came into focus, I relaxed. It was a middle-aged woman, vaguely familiar, dressed in hospital scrubs with an umbrella tucked under her arm. “Good morning” I chirped, perhaps a little too cheerfully, my voice loud in all that quiet morning space.

And… nothing. For a long moment, she just stared. I took in her worn brown face, cigarette in hand; she glanced at my pink cheeks and the orange yoga mat tucked under my arm.

“Good morning” she finally acknowledged, her sharp tone cutting into the air between us, her meaning clearly the opposite of her words. And just like that we passed one another, quickly, and the silence re-settled into the city streets.

What will fill this silence? This remains to be seen.

*****

Later this month, I will fill some of the silence with another post, Gentrification Conversation: Part Two. In the meantime, those of you with opinions, questions or your own experiences… please comment. I’d like to hear what you have to say.

Yoga Mat photo by Grace Commons