Fabrizio and Aline

I'm writing with sad news regarding the family of two of the youth with whom we work in the favela of Sao Joao. As many of you know, Ulisses and I are leading a soccer program with the intention of generating more opportunities for discipleship. Fabrizio (pictured on the far left side of the bottom row) and his sister Aline are two standouts in the program, as both are quite demonstrative and outspoken. They are also leadership types. Aline leads by force, while Fabrizio leads through personality. Their development of these attributes is largely the product of their family dynamic. Besides the two of them, there are seven other children in their home. In a family this large, you learn to play the hand that you're dealt in order to find your place. This lends itself to a more keen awareness of identity, which is obvious in the two of them.

Last Friday, we discovered that their mother had died due to complications in her health. Her death took the family completely by surprise, as there were no real warning signs of any problems. Needless to say, they are experiencing a range of emotions with her passing - sadness, numbness, anger, and fear. However, the situation is further complicated by the fact that their mother was the only caregiver, as the father has been out of the scene for years now. Under such circumstances, the kids are usually parceled out to various family members - a solution that wreaks havoc upon personal identity and the child's system of support. I would appreciate your prayer for their family at this difficult time. Please pray specifically that God would guide those in the family that are having to step up and make significant decisions that will shape the paths of at least nine kids.   

Normal?

About a week ago, I heard about the assassination of two men in the favela. The first of the two was a drug addict that had crossed the wrong people. The second was a pastor who had intervened on behalf the former, pleading for his creditors to show clemency. The pastor's request was denied, and when he refused to step down, he was silenced with a gunshot to the head. The other man's death was not so quick to come. His assassins tortured him for an undetermined amount of time before finishing him off. My reaction to this story - a combination of incredulity, shock and disgust.

One week prior, Ulisses and I were coaching soccer in a different favela. Waiting for the youth to arrive, I was sitting on the bleachers. To my left were a group of 4 little kids, the oldest of which could not have been more than 5 years old. As we sat, two dogs approached and decided to share an intimate moment in front of us. The kids descended the bleachers, grabbed some sticks, circled the dogs and began beating them. Still engaged in the act, the dogs growled and snapped back at their aggressors. I stepped in, but not before the kids got in a few more kicks to one dog's side. My reaction to this episode - complacency and apathy.

Of these two stories, the one that concerns me more is the latter. Why? Not because I'm banging the drum for animal rights, but rather because of my disparate reactions. The first story elicited what I would deem a proper emotional response of dismay and anger. However, witnessing the second episode didn't faze me in the least. In my time in the favelas, I've seen so many dogs beaten with sticks, birds pelted with rocks and cats attacked with firecrackers that it all just seems normal now. And it's normal that scares me most. Normal stifles grace not because change seems impossible but because affronts to the nature of God becomes imperceptible. Honestly, I cannot say that I still notice the piles of trash, the bootlegged electric lines, the harsh words of a mom to her child or the addicts that line the vacant allies characteristic of the favela. I know that these are symptoms and not the essence of the problem. But, I don't like being in the place where it no longer affects me, where it no longer compels me to plead for God to intervene. I ask for your prayers in this. I ask that God would give us, as a community, eyes to see as He sees.    

Elements of Community - Disciplines

While it was not intentional, it is appropriate that the element of discipline, or habitual activity, should follow the blog on the organic nature of community. I say this because, for most of us, structured consistency and vitality are antithetical concepts. Think about it. If I were to describe a friend's prayer life as habitual, would you think I was paying him a compliment or accusing him of legalism? Our problem is that we often confuse spontaneity with sincerity and structure with oppression. However, it is extremely naïve to think that communities just spring up out of the ground of good intentions. We must learn to embrace the paradox that the spontaneity of life is actually promoted and preserved through structure. 

I was reminded of this last week. Occupied with my studies, I had forgotten my habitual Tuesday visit to the grocery store. When dinner time rolled around that evening and I was staring into a fairly empty fridge, I felt the fallout of my omission. Dinner that night was eggs and rice. It looked as bland as it sounds. The next day I repeated the error and forgot to go to the grocery store, and, once again, we ate eggs and rice. Sadly, my absent-mindedness continued another couple days, and we continued living off of the same staple. At one point, I tried bathing the elements in barbecue sauce, but that accomplished little for in the end, it was still just eggs and rice. Those tasteless and fairly monochromatic meals etched in my mind the direct relationship between my preparedness and the potential for creativity.

Applying this principle to the house, we have found (through trial and error) that we grow best together when we submit to an agreed upon structure. This structure involves house meetings, prayer times, chores, community service and planned leisure. Outsiders may consider this type of approach too regimented. We discovered, however, that when we just wait for spontaneous and emotive expressions of community, we end up missing each other.  

 

Elements of Community - Organic

Community has vitality. It is born out of commitment. It breathes through mission. It is nurtured through disciplines. It grows through service. It rests through celebration. It is alive. More than that, it imparts life. It is this characteristic of livelihood that distinguishes a community from a mob. The best manner I know to illustrate this point is through a story I posted earlier on this blog. It goes like this.

It’s 7:30 on a Saturday evening a few years back, and I’m driving 12 kids home after a visit to the mall. We travel 10 minutes down a narrow dirt road, bordered by trees to the left and a drainage ditch to the right. We drop two kids off at their aunt’s house and are looking to head back. I try a three point turnaround, but only make it to point number two. The VW van is a lot longer than my VW Gol, and I’ve backed us into the drainage ditch. The front two tires are about two feet in the air. Some of the kids scream in panic; others in delight. We get the kids out safely, and the neighbors begin to congregate around the van. I don’t even try to explain. There are certain acts of stupidity where you lose your right to excuses. But instead of just standing around and taking cheap shots at the gringo, the locals get right to work. The men start pushing on the back of the van, while the women put rocks under the rear tires to generate traction. Two guys put on their knee-high rubber boots so that they can get down into the mirky water and push more effectively. They refused to let me do the same, concerned that I would get my clothes dirty. Meanwhile, more people are streaming in from the community to help, as some of the older women have got the story in circulation. Six strategies and thirty minutes later, the van surges from the ditch, amidst a shower of rocks, mud and applause. Embraces are exchanged, and I’m invited to visit more often - under different circumstances. The crowd still lingers in my rear view mirror as I consider what it is like to live among people who need each other.

This is what I'm referring to when I cite the organic element of community. Mission, strategies, service and celebration assume a certain livelihood that is, in turn, imparted to others. 

Elements of Community - Beautified View of the Poor

I have a friend who is poor. I'm probably not allowed to write that, but I think it's a fair representation of how most of you who are reading this blog would assess him financially. Now, he's not miserable, beggarly or destitute - just poor. When I first met him, he and his wife lived off about US $240 per month. His home has unpainted, cement walls that lack some windows. His living room is about the size of a walk-in closet, and the small rotating fan that they use at night in their Africa-hot bedroom is considered a luxury. He'll take a pair of shoes that I'm throwing out, wear them for a year, and then, when they are completely worn through, fashion some type of sandal out of them for fishing. I am blessed to call him my friend.

Given my relationship with this man, you think I would suffer some sweeping reform in my view of the poor. But, I find in myself the same tendency all too pervasive in our culture to classify the indigent in one of two categories - nuisance or charity project. The nuisances are blown off with an averted glance, while charity projects are offered spare change and pity. I live in the tension created by entitlement, societal greed and personal indifference pitted against Jesus' recognition of the blessedness of the poor. Where is the release valve?

The only answer I see is a beautified view of the poor. We have to move beyond our conditioned responses of either a cold shoulder or a hot meal. The poor must have a place with us. There must be room for relationship. For it is through relationship that we can communicate of the provision of God in their lives and they can remind us of our condition before God. In this way, we perceive that we are far more bound with them than we feel comfortable admitting. Then, suddenly, the they and the we in this conversation no longer makes sense. This is what we are striving for in the Sombra Road house.   

Elements of Community - Contribution of All

When my nephew was still a toddler, he would watch my brothers play video games and inevitably ask to join in. They would give him an unplugged controller and explain to him his objective. He would spend the next five to ten minutes, depending upon his attention span, mashing buttons indiscriminately, convinced that we was playing some crucial part in this game. At some point, he would ask, "Which guy am I?"

"You're the blue one," one of my brothers would respond.

Puzzled, he would retort, "Well, why isn't he going where I'm telling him to go?"

That's mean, right? Making a kid think he has just helped win the Stanley Cup when all he has really done is put a little more wear on an already broken controller. Sadly, this parallels the way many of our communities function. Sure, we tell ourselves that everyone has to play their part in order for us to get where we need to go, but that is not the way we choose our roles and design our systems. The harsh reality is that most communities have heroes and victims - the people that fix and the people that need fixing. There is this subtle, yet impenetrable, wall that partitions those serving from those being served. Those that serve stay busy cleaning up the messes of the others, and their gifts are exalted as indispensable for the life of the community. Those that are served are coddled, get accustomed to the attention and buy into the lie that they really don't have anything to contribute after all. But, the system continues because egos on both sides are appeased. Heroes celebrate their altruistic martyrdom and functionality; victims enjoy the entitlement and the center of attention status. But, it could be different. (See Romans 12:6-7)

I wish I could say that we in the Sombra Road House have it all figured out. Sadly, we display the same tendency to fall into typecast roles of fixers and the fixed. I think I came to Brasil with this notion that I was in a position where I had everything to give. The guys come from spots where they were more convinced of their needs than their gifts. This makes for a deadly combo. I would say we are starting to make some adjustments in this area. This entails three postures. First, we have to help the guys recognize their gifts. Second, we have to situate the weight of the community on these gifts. Third, we have to allow our egos to recede to the point where we can abdicate control and allow for mistakes. The cool thing that I've discovered in ceasing to play the hero is that my wife and I are far more blessed by these guys' presence in our lives than we had imagined and far more dependent on their gifts than we had thought. Additionally, as the guys explore their strengths in service, our community becomes more three dimensional as it breaks from the restraining mold that I impose upon it. We have a long way to go, but acknowleding that doesn't depress me. I look at examples like L'Arche (which I would encourage you to explore as an example of community) and am hopeful of what lies before us. It's time to plug in the controllers.  

Elements of Community - Sense of Sharing

This post attempts to take one step beyond the former post, moving from an emphasis on Us to Our. In community, we ought to feel like there are elements of life that are not merely mine but ours. As a former mathlete, the Venn Diagram comes to mind (see above). The Venn Diagram captures this element of community in which we don't merely come side by side, but we actually overlap. The circles do not bleed into each other and lose their circularity. Instead, they bond over a common space. The common space in communities should be the following: obedience and interaction with God, future hopes, responsibility for others, pains, victories, space and possessions. These shared experiences will be the byproducts of our shared mission and will bear witness to the legitimacy of our ties to one another. To the degree that we attempt to partition these areas off from those to whom we are committed, we will experience a death of sorts. (See II Cor 9:1-15, Acts 4:32)

I feel like I learn a lot from Brazilians about sharing possessions, responsibility and space. When I drove the VW Van into the sewer drainage ditch, all the locals adopted the task of getting the van out as if it were their problem. If a guy in the house buys a package of cookies, these cookies inevitably make their way around the table. During our prayer group in the morro this morning, three chairs were placed side by side to make a bench for five kids to sit on. Recently, Claudinho complained to Carol and I about not giving him a heads up before visitors arrive. According to him, any visitor to the house becomes our visitor. I liked the way he expressed this. Carol and the guys in our house are great examples for me in these arenas.

However, I am always humbled when I read about the church in Acts. Those guys sold stuff so that others could live. They shared joys when experiencing growth and hope when being persecuted. I think they shared their brokenness and humanity far more than we do here. We in the house still buy into the lie that we can only share what's working; the broken stuff gets stuffed or fenced off. While we have made some strides over this last year, we still need to learn how to share more of who we are rather than merely what we have. The cliche alarm is sounding, but I'm have going to have to conclude with that statement.