SHOWING UP

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I just returned from eight days in Bayonnais with an 18-member college team, my first trip back in over six months.  Though leadership demands set a fast pace for the week, causing me to forgo several house visits and conversations, I had an incredible experience.  Fortunately, I was able to assure friends that I would be back in July for a few weeks.  Group reflections the final evening testified to God’s moving deep within many lives, and I was surprised by how far away I felt from my first visit to Bayonnais.  So much has happened since then. . . so much reconstruction of identity and perspectives characterizes the other side of that turning point, the other side of showing up in Bayonnais.

“TAKE TIME TO SHOW UP”
The phrase has been working on me for some time following a conversation with a dear friend.  Though we may obsess about agendas, about how and what we are going to serve, sometimes we are called to enter into the uncertainty of simply showing up.  What is the significance of showing up in Bayonnais?  Why not take the thousands of dollars our large group spent on last week’s experience and send the money rather than ourselves? . . . We could substantially support the food budget or easily start a high school graduate on his or her first year of college.  What justifies our showing up?

These are hard questions not to be taken lightly; I ask because I know others struggle with them.  Having lived in Bayonnais, I do have an opinion, and I’d appreciate your patience as I attempt to articulate a response.

Watch this video because it is highly informative, but take notice of the final exchange, for it speaks to our subject.  I lived in the mountains of Haiti for seven months, and I can still only scratch the surface of what it meant for a smiling white American to give two most valuable possessions, namely time and presence, to a people who often feel forgotten.

I remember the first time a mission team came down during my stay.  When they stood up to introduce themselves to the community, I hesitated as whispers and giggles tickled the crowd.  “Peter is Haitian,” one of my highest compliments, accompanied the acknowledgment that I didn’t need to go up that day.  Many teams would come and go, and while their time in Haiti was always transformative to say the least, they never saw the ripples following their departure, never saw the ways in which pieces of their lives had been sewn into the fabric of the community.  “How is Rob?” and “I had a dream about Katie last night. . .” didn’t reach their ears unless I remembered to forward them through the Internet.  Many visitors don’t understand that in the same way they carry faces of new friends back home in their hearts, their own faces remain imprinted upon Haitian hearts in Bayonnais.

MUTUAL EXPOSURE

What happens during a stay in Haiti?  I can not think of a single mission group that has not been humbled by the following observation:  “I came to help others, but I received so much more than I offered. . .”  In other words, “I came to serve, but I found myself served.”  Pay attention to these words, for they point to one of the most profound and unexpected truths about life.

Jesus did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited, but rather humbled himself as a servant, taking human form and becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross. . . Therefore God exalted his name, that upon hearing it every knee would bow, in heaven and on earth, and that all would proclaim him as Lord!  (Phil 2: 6-11)   Notice the “V” shape of God’s stepping down and subsequent exaltation.  Resurrection is built into God’s design. When we die to ourselves, even in small ways, there is life on the other side–even if it is sometimes punctuated by a Saturday of waiting.  Unfortunately, so often we lack the courage to take the risk, to put ourselves out there, to show up. . . and sometimes, when by grace our words attain the quality of deeds (Weisel) and we do, we may not even realize we have done so.

I wonder if this has something to do with what happens in Haiti. . . I wonder if the new life on the other side of the week eclipses the reality of how much stepping down may have actually occurred on that short flight.  When we signed up for the trip, we may not have appreciated the questions that awaited us on the ground, questions that would grow in quantity and quality, challenging our way of life and perhaps even shaping our very identities.  Awareness, it seems, is not a pre-requesite for the death-to-self that precedes resurrection, the simple decision to lovingly show up in another’s life–wherever it may be–pregnant with possibility.

We need to acknowledge that we are participating in each other’s lives, that our decisions, however small and seemingly insignificant, shape our shared world.  Again, so often we are unaware of the impressions we leave upon others.  If you wake up early in the morning and sit on the front porch of the Helen Hunter building, you’re likely to behold a painfully beautiful scene: women, brooms in hand and jovial in spirit, sweeping dirt. . . sweeping dirt. . . their floor is dirt and leaves impede its cleanliness. . . These women have taught me more about dignity than anyone else, yet they are oblivious to such teaching and its significance for me.  It would take me a while to discern what it meant for a young child to make eye contact with the Blan passing by in the truck.  That momentary attention spiced with a quick smile could move mountains in that little soul.  God works through us in small but significant ways.  Add them up and you have a miracle, for as Beuchner writes, “A miracle is when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A miracle is where one plus one equals a thousand.”

The miracle is one of mutual exposure.  Certain potential is primed within us, only able to be developed by the light of another person, by the light of God.  However, we must risk getting close enough to receive that light; this may mean getting dirty and probably means renouncing cherished stereotypes, for these only thrive at a distance.  In the light of Jesus’ example, a picture slowly appears. . . though the image may look different to each of us, we find ourselves united under the timeless question it poses:

Do we have the humility to receive the life of God and the courage to live it?

GOLDEN TICKET
We watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory during cinema night last week–yes, the creepy one with Johnny Depp.  One particular scene arrested me.  Charlie has found the last golden ticket, the park-pass of his dreams, yet he informs his impoverished family that he won’t be going to the Chocolate Factory.  A woman had offered him $500 earlier that afternoon, and Charlie knows his family needs the money. . . Silence lingers, much as it may have following the italicized question above in the second paragraph.  Then Grandpa George, who had cynically bet against Charlie’s hopes earlier in the film, imparts wisdom:

“There’s plenty of money out there. They print more every day. But this ticket, there’s only five of them in the whole world, and that’s all there’s ever going to be. Only a dummy would give this up for something as common as money. Are you a dummy?”

Forgive me for sounding like a self-help book, but there’s only one of you.  Consider the words of Marianne Williamson: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. . . You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Are you willing to at least consider that you are more valuable than you could ever hope or imagine, that you are worth the very life of God?  Are you willing to be childlike, fostering imagination such that you don’t place limits upon the Grace of God and how it may move through you?  For those still wearing economic blinders, are you willing to appraise the likelihood of the experience inspiring you to raise more resources than you would otherwise have sent in place of yourself?  For veterans who go more to be served and forgo trips because they don’t get much out of them anymore, are you willing to acknowledge that it may only be about you when it is not about you?  C.S. Lewis writes, “Your real, new self will not come as long as you are looking for it.”

Buechner confesses, “I fend off the world, I avoid getting involved with other people’s needs, so that I can get ahead in the world myself. But at this deeper level, much deeper than conscience, the truth of it is that I need the world. I need the very ones that I keep at a distance. I need to love and be loved by the very ones from whom I hide myself behind this face. I need them not so that I can ease my conscience but so that I can be myself.”

Go because you are willing to appreciate the value of a golden ticket.  Go because your wholeness and theirs depends upon it.  Go because He went before us and goes with us.  Just Go.

May we all have the courage to show up in people’s lives, wherever we find them, for there too will we find ourselves.

Amen.

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