Last Days

It's been one of those weeks of extra noticing: the last time I pedal up this insanely steep and long hill, which I had to walk up the first month I was here; the last time I will hop on a bus an hope I get off in the right place; the last time I get up at 5:30 a.m. for community ministry. There are many things I could write about, but I for now I will just share bookends that in some significant way represent my time here.

I flew to Seattle on May 8, a Thursday. Amy Epp, the associate pastor, picked me up and brought me to church for the afternoon and some quick introductions. Shortly after I arrived, Weldon showed me around the SMC campus, and in my first minutes of being here, we ran into Phil and Josie. They are a couple who is homeless, and Josie was having a bad day. She sometimes has seizures and has to be in a wheel chair. She was hunched over, and they smelled of alcohol. She took Weldon's hand and said, "Pastor, can you pray for me?" We held hands and Weldon prayed for as he puts it, "Josie's strength and healing and for ... recognizing [her] own life as created in God's image and receiving each day as a gift from God." We then continued our tour.

It wasn't awkward, necessarily, but for me the encounter was certainly new and different. I felt like that hide-and-go-seek phrase: ready or not, here it comes! So much for easing my way into urban ministry. At the same time as the social discomfort bubbled up so did another familiar feeling: this matters; what I do here matters for the church; and what I do here will matter to me and who I am from this day forth. I will not leave here unchanged.

My last day of work officially (unless you count Sundays) is today, August 1. After I was relatively okay with the most recent draft of my sermon for Sunday, I walked over to Bartell Drugs to get a thank you card for Rob and Lee (my summer hosts). I found the perfect card, and as I was walking out, there were Phil and Josie. Phil was "drunk and stoned" in his words, but we exchanged hellos before he laid down to rest. Josie walked up and I shared the card with her. She agreed; it is the perfect card for Rob and Lee. And much to my surprise, she asked if she could sign it too. Caught a bit off guard I consented, and so she wrote a message from the both of them on my thank you card.

What an unusual request, and what a special moment for me as I pushed aside my instinct to say, "No actually the card is just from me because I'm leaving Seattle." Instead, I took the moment to claim this unorthodox aspect of our relationship with one another. Perhaps to an outsider it might seem stupid or embarrassing or at least an unwelcome social intrusion. But who determines what is socially acceptable anyway? Why not celebrate what is socially unacceptable here, knowing that we can flourish just as much (if not more) outside those silly, boundaried, "normal" paradigms anyway. I think this is what Josie (below) taught me today and has been teaching me all along.