Redefining Orthodoxy

I’ve decided to take my blog in a new direction for the next few weeks. I’m going to be doing a series called “Redefining Orthodoxy.” In this series I will examine traditional, orthodox Christian beliefs, and explain how my understanding–though perhaps atypical–fits within orthodox Christianity.  I’ve started by creating a Statement of Faith, a living document that essentially outlines my perspective on life.

For those who have know me or have been following my blog for the past few years, you know that I’ve undergone a process of spiritual deconstruction. I grew up in a theologically conservative Christian tradition. Beginning three or four years ago, I began deconstructing my faith with the support and help of many loved ones. Piece by piece, I pulled apart the faith that I learned growing up, until all that was left was a pile of spiritual detritus. But chaos is not humanity’s preferential state. I began trying to make sense of the pieces that remained. After much studying, thinking and discussing, I began to form my own ideas and opinions about the nature of God and the human experience. The result looked nothing like the concepts that I had learned as a kid. From the conservative Christian perspective of my youth, I am most likely an atheist or Buddhist and most certainly a heretic.

Yet, I still deeply appreciate and value the stories of the Bible. I still find many of the truths found within it to be beautiful and inspiring. I love the metaphors of the incarnation, communion, crucifixion and resurrection. I never could let go of these ideas, even though I struggled to understand how they apply to my beliefs. I never could disregard the religious tradition that I grew up in. I still identified myself as a Christian.

So this project, Redefining Orthodoxy, will be a personal endeavor to reclaim my faith practice. I will attempt to explain how my atypical beliefs still fit within orthodox Christian beliefs like the incarnation, communion, crucifixion and resurrection.

As I reinterpret fundamental Christian beliefs and illuminate a new perspective on an ancient faith, I have two hopes for my readers. For anyone undergoing a similar process of deconstruction, I hope to encourage you to look for and cherish the beautiful, redeemable aspects in their own faith practice. For those who profess popularly accepted orthodox beliefs, I hope that this new perspective will challenge you to ask critical questions about your beliefs.

In the process, I invite dialogue. If you feel I am being inconsistent, please respectfully bring the inconsistency to my attention. If there are specific issues which you would like me to address, please let me know. The topics which I discuss often evoke strong emotional responses; please be respectful. Remember that the purpose of communication is to understand one another, not prove oneself right.

The Olympics and Homelessness. Why I’m glad Chicago lost the 2016 Olympic bid.

Today the Olympic committee rejected Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympic games. Chicago was one of the four finalists. The city has been pumping out propaganda about how hosting the Olympics would be a good thing. It would mean more jobs and more money. In an economy such as this, who would argue with that? The message we keep hearing: “The Olympics would be good for us.”

Unfortunately, history seems to suggest that not everyone will get to reap the benefits. History shows that for our sisters and brothers who are homeless, the Olympics are bad for us.

During the Olympic games in Atlanta, a number of organizations implemented a program called “Homeward Bound.” The name recalls warm, fuzzy feelings and nostalgic memories of a movie about the adventures of two loyal dogs and a cat trying to return to their loving owners. Homeward Bound was actually a mass deportation. Homeless individuals were rounded up like Jews and deported. Those who weren’t deported were thrown in jail. The police mass-produced warrants with the following description: “African American, male, homeless.” The blatant classist and racist motives are undeniable. All that was missing as a gas chamber.

Apparently, people learned their lesson when Salt Lake City won the right to host. There was no documented case of deportation, although allegations were raised. The city actually secured temporary housing for about 80% of the homeless population during the games. Nevertheless, as soon as the games were over, everyone was kicked back out on the streets.

Not surprisingly, the homeless in Beijing fared far worse. Official Chinese numbers state that only 6,000 were displaced by the games. Everyone else’s estimates put that number at anywhere between 1 and 1.5 million. I’ve heard from multiple independent eye-witnesses that Beijing literally built a wall around the Olympic city to keep everyone out.

Salt Lake City seemed to display the most civility and compassion towards its homeless. However, estimates put Chicago’s homeless population at over 70,000 (compared to 2,000 in Salt Lake City). The sheer magnitude of that number would have made it a much more serious issue. Of course, with the miles and miles of sprawling urban ghettos, it might be easier to turn Chicago’s homeless into internally displaced persons (IDPs). Who’s going to do anything about an extra couple thousand homeless people in the hood? Although you also have consider the tens of thousands who will lose their homes to Olympic gentrification, as did over 30,000 in Atlanta.

Olympic gentrification would have affected me personally. Our apartment is two blocks south of the proposed site for the Olympic village. Our entire community would have been destroyed as property values would rise and the barely affordable housing in our neighborhood would become utterly unaffordable. Those who own their homes would have lost them. Those who rent their homes wouldn’t be able to pay. Forced migration would ensue. Any remaining traces of the community that exists now would wither and die. Our community would have become an urban, hipster paradise at the expense of the families and individuals who live here now. The desert would be reinvigorated into a booming white metropolis of the empire. But the desert wouldn’t actually be gone… only removed, forcibly relocated in a disguised death march.

So while it certainly would have been fun to host the Olympic games, I for one am glad that we lost the bid. A community should not operate according to a philosophy in which ends justify means. What is good for an privileged sector of society at the expense of a marginalized sector ultimately hurts the community as a whole. Good for all, or none at all. We should never ignore the hurt and hardship that we inflict on others in order to benefit ourselves.

Shots fired

We witnessed our first shooting in the neighborhood today. Sara and I were down at the corner getting Italian ices. Suddenly I am aware of sirens. It’s a fairly commonplace sound around here, but this was different. There were a lot of sirens. We turn around to see police cars swarming on our block like hungry mosquitoes on a bag of blood. Two teenage kids come sprinting out from between two houses. One takes off up our street, the other crosses and heads between a couple houses to the next block. Within a minute or two, there were two or three dozen cop cars buzzing up and down the streets with sentinels at each intersection. Three have boxed in an green sedan, recently abandoned in favor of fleeing on foot.

We walked back down the block, eating our Italian ices. We stopped to ask Stacey, who was standing on her front porch with a furrowed brow, what had happened. She said she’d heard about six shots from a block or two west and immediately went inside. Policemen and squad cars continued combing the streets. She cautioned us to get back inside, and we heeded her warning.

As we were opening our front gate, a policeman walked past. He stared at us a moment, then asked incredulously, “You live there?” We told him we did, and he replied, “You’re brave souls.”

Sara and I went inside, pulled up the chairs to our front-row seats in the sun room, and tried to make sense of it all. We marveled at the speed at which an innumerable number of cop cars suddenly descended upon our neighborhood. We were also both troubled by our interaction with the officer.

He clearly singled us out because we were white. We’re brave souls for living here, he said. Why? What about the other hundreds of people in our neighborhood? Why are they not brave souls, too? Is it because they aren’t brave or because they don’t have souls?

I’ve heard people call what we are doing a number of things: really cool, crazy, dumb, admirable, reckless. We’re now adding “brave” to that list. We are not brave simply because we live in this neighborhood. The officer didn’t congratulate everyone he passed on being brave. He congratulated us because we were white. A black person living in a lower income neighborhood in Chicago is normal. A white person living there is brave.

I guess more than anything else, my heart grieves over the incident. It only seems to reinforce what I have heard said, that racism didn’t die with the end of Civil Rights movement. It only changed form.

It is for reasons such as this that I am here.

Summer summation

Well, it’s been a big summer. I start my job next week, so let’s recap.

• Wife and sister’s graduation
• Quit my job
• Got married
• Honeymoon
• Moved
• Looked for a job
• Worked a few freelance gigs
• Got a job
• Moved again
• Sister got married
• Wife started her job

Needless to say, it’s been busy. I’m looking forward to settling into a routine. And looking forward to Dave moving in at the end of the week.

AmeriCorp, AmeriCorp, God shed your grace on me

Last week I officially accepted a year-long position through AmeriCorp’s VISTA program. I’ll be working with a program called Grandparents Raising Grandchildren here in Chicago. I’ll be interviewing five educational, self-help groups of grandparents. Then using my interviews and resources from the Institute on Aging, a team member and I will be creating a curriculum on how to raise grandchildren. Once the curriculum is completed, we will be using it to start 10-12 new educational self-help groups across the city.

Many “grandfamilies” exist because the parents are unable to care for their children due to problems with substance abuse, psychological illness or incarceration. According to my supervisor, families in this category are frequently low-income families… meaning I’ll be working a good deal on the South Side!

If all goes well (as my supervisor is optimistic it will), this curriculum will be adopted by the national agency which is funding my position and implemented nation-wide. This, obviously, would be a fantastic career opportunity.

So I’m excited about the possibility. Wifey and I will still be scraping together to get by, but at least I have a job now, and she’s got a solid internship that will eventually turn into one. So life is going decently well. I can’t wait to get started.