What Do You See?

Thursday night I hopped on my bike to ride the approximately six miles home from Lake City to Crown Hill, from northeast to northwest Seattle.  It was about 10 p.m. and the Pastoral Care Team meeting at Seattle Mennonite Church had ended in time for me to finish up Sunday's worship order, send out an announcement for the "communicator" and gather up my sermon materials for writing and editing the next day.  I've come to appreciate these night rides, when the traffic is light and the city is peaceful. 

I pulled out of the courtyard onto 125th, and while I was waiting at the light to turn left onto Lake City Way, I noticed three teenage boys standing around a middle-age woman off of the corner between the bus stop and the ATM.  I looked again and realized I had met the woman before, either at the drop-in or on the street.  I looked again and realized, as the three boys walked away, that a transaction had just happened. 

There's a man who I've come to know over the last few years of being around the church.  He's a big man, sometimes loud and intimidating, sometimes overbearing and in my bubble space, sometimes charismatic and generally friendly.  In our conversations, "Dan" will occasionally mention that he saw me the other day.  Then he'll add, "But you didn't see me."  He's right.  I didn't see him.  And because I didn't see him, I couldn't see him.  Occasionally he'll go on to say, "We're everywhere.  Do you see us?" 

So much depends on where we look and how we look. 

Outside the Greenwood library the other day there were two people, a man and a woman smoking.  I passed by them and smelled alcohol from about ten feet away.  My instinct, my gut reaction was to look away, to pretend like I didn't see, to go on with my business, and to forget they were there.  To walk past the lingering smell into fresh, pure air and to forget about their second hand clothes.  To cycle comfortably on into my own privilege, my small and heated apartment, my meaningful work.  To never be changed and formed, to never be disrupted.  

I'm six and a half weeks into my year as a Mennonite pastor.  Each week I see something new.  Of course there are the worship experiences, the meetings, the joyous time with our youth, the visioning and listening and accompanying tasks of the pastor.  But my true formation as a person of God is wrapped somehow into the transaction Thursday night off the corner of 125th and Lake City Way.  I'm not sure what that means yet, but the question persists: what do you see?