Sunburned with Stuart

                With our trip to Germany in just 18 days (Team 1 leaves this week!), I’ve been doing my best to take time to prepare. This has been hard.  Primarily because we have very little idea of what we will be doing when we get there.  So I can practice my Guten Tag and my Salaam’alaaykum, and work on fundraising, but otherwise for this very Spirit-led trip, the best I can do to prepare is spend time in the Spirit.  This feels… unproductive? Unnatural? Uncomfortable?  It certainly is hard.

                Someone prayed over me this week that our team would become sensitive to the Spirit’s guidance starting now, so that following the Lord’s direction in Germany would come naturally out of how we have been listening to that guidance even before leaving.

                Meanwhile, I’m preparing for a class called Transforming the City.  (More like Transforming the Lauren)  One of our books is Soul and the City: Finding God in the Noise and Frenzy of Life by Marcy Heidish.  I’ve lived in the noise of Los Angeles County for the last 2 years, and only recently have I begun to feel that this is “normal.” The noise, the crowds, the smells, the never-ending buildings grate against my rural soul. The spiritual discipline of finding God in the midst of this is refreshing; in particular Heidish’s encouragement to see God in the people around me.  She says, “How often we miss an encounter with God if we do not look for the Holy One in the people we walk among in a crowd.”

                Yesterday I prayed I would be more attentive. To the Spirit. To my neighbors.  Then I left the house to go to the library for some focused reading.

                Not ten yards away from my apartment I see a man shuffling towards me on the sidewalk.  I feel the need to smile and say hello, but before I get close enough he starts talking to me.  It took me a few moments to understand that he was lost, and that he was looking for 65 N Madison for a doctor’s appointment.   I do my best to give him directions.  We fumble through miscommunication, and I offer to draw him a map which I do. He tells me to write N/S E/W on the streets.  I ask him when his doctor’s appointment is because I don’t want him to be late.  “Oh! Not until November.”

                We laugh and I linger.  He begins telling me the headache of MediCal/Medicare and how he is being forced to change his PCP.  This is a new doctor’s office, and he wants to be sure he knows how to get there when it is time for the appointment. This leads to a longer story of his medical history, and I listen.  He laughs, and I laugh, his smile is genuine, peaceful and kind. I groan with him at the injustices society has done to him, seeing pain in his eyes behind his smile. 

                Time passes, my homework calls, but I am also aware of this very Holy moment.  So I linger, but offer to help walk him to his car.  He leans on my shoulder, and I do my best to support his weight.  We make it to the middle of the far lane, just 15 feet from his car.  At this point I have learned he is Stuart, in his 80s, and he is telling me his story of how he served in the British military. First recruited in his homeland Jamaica, then trained in England, back to Jamaica, working on vehicles, promoted to Sergeant, honorably discharged, moved to New York, married, moved to California…

                We are an odd pair, me and Stuart.  Standing in the middle of the street, him in his sweat pants, tank top and ball cap, leaning on me with my backpack full.  In the sun.  It’s been 85 and humid lately.  Cars drive carefully around us, he hardly notices.  Fuller peers walk by with eyebrows raised, smiling.  Other neighbors look concerned, and I meet their gaze with a calm smile. I feel the sun tightening my skin, sweat dripping down my chest, backpack glued to my back, my peanut-butter sandwich starting to smell. 

                It has been an hour and I start to pray to be released.  It is hard to tear myself away from this dear man who is aching to have his story heard and eagerly soaking up my listening ear.  Yet I am keenly aware that he has 85 years of stories to tell, and no appointments until November.  I urge him to his car, and interrupt his stories with a goodbye.  As I’m walking away, I turn around to make sure he gets into his car, praying that he’ll find his way. Praying that someone else will stop to hear his stories too.

                An hour with Stuart, and the Spirit, in the sun. 

                My hours are measured carefully these days.  $15/hr. 25 pages/hr. 250 words/hr.  That hour with Stuart was precious time I didn’t have to give.  My life is too busy for loving my neighbors. This is the subtle undercurrent and truth of my own harried pace, in the midst of so many people zooming around me, we hardly truly see each other. My life is too busy to soak in the Spirit.

                 After I left Stuart I spent three luxurious air conditioned hours being convicted by phrases like: 

Do you not understand that the ideology of scarcity has been broken, overwhelmed by the divine gift of abundance?”- Walter Brueggemann.  

And “God can get tiny, if we’re not careful.”-Gregory Boyle. 

                Somehow, time in the Spirit is multiplied.  And certainly, the Holy fruit of that one hour with Stuart, both in my life and I hope in his, and maybe yours too, is anything but wasted. 

                I hope I keep praying dangerous prayers.  I hope I learn to trust more in the abundance of grace, mercy, time, money, energy, and JOY that the Lord has to give me.  I hope I become more attuned to the Lord around me, and Holy moments such as this one. 

                And next time I do, I hope I wear sunscreen.