Random Thoughts

It’s a Church, for God’s Sake

I’ve been really bored by the church we’re attending.

Doesn’t that sound arrogant and pretentious of me? Not to mention unChristian. Thing is, it’s a huge church, the median income is somewhere north of six figures, and let’s face it, I fit in about as well as a mixed breed hound in the middle of a cat show.

Still, I go with my family every week, sit in a seat near the front (it’s easier to pretend the auditorium sanctuary isn’t the size of a stadium when there are only two or three rows of seats ahead of you), I try to keep my mind from wandering during the singing, try not to be distracted/offended by the smoke machines and fancy stage lighting, and I obediently take notes on the outline provided within the full-color high-gloss bulletin.

The saving grace of this church (pun not intended) is its pastor. He’s a straight-up, authentic guy, transplanted from the midwest via the south, and I kind of feel sorry for the guy. He’s so not SoCal. Which, combined with the depth of his scriptural knowledge and his honest enthusiasm, makes him worth hearing every Sunday. Even if I have to put up with the massive video monitors on each end of the stage.

This Sunday was like every other Sunday (inanely theatrical worship bracketing a solid sermon), up until I left the building with my family. At the foot of the sidewalk leading from the building’s side entrance (as befits its size it has at least five entrances, but I digress) to the parking lot, I encountered a young woman holding a little girl by the hand. The woman had a handwritten note in her other hand, which she was trying to show to the people passing her.

And they were passing her. Most (including my husband) completely ignored her. Many (including him) were probably focused on where they were going next (grocery store? restaurant? beach?). Some however (including myself and Youngest Daughter) heard her soft voice saying “Can you help me?” Many chose to walk past without acknowledging her. I know this because I watched them. I watched their eyes skitter over her and then look studiously away. I watched them shake their heads “No” and increase their pace, the quicker to put her behind them.

Eventually my steps brought me face to face with her. I stopped, listened to her brief plea, and I told her the truth: I have no job, I have no money with me, I’m sorry.

And then I hurried to catch up to my family, who had reached our car. Youngest Daughter asked me what the woman wanted. I told her, and then I made a quick decision. I simply could not just get in the car and drive away. It felt flat out wrong. For God’s sake (no pun intended) this is a church. With a woman asking for help–no matter the reason, no matter the authenticity of her need–a few dozen feet from the front door. And NOBODY thus far is helping her.

I’m not a member of this church (for all that I’ve attended services for two years) and I can count the number of people I know amidst it’s 2000-some member congregation on one hand. Literally. But I knew that someone inside that building on a Sunday morning just after services ought to be able to help an apparently destitute woman.

So I told Youngest Daughter to clue in Mr Random Thoughts (who was already in the car and ready to head for Costco) that I was going back to get the woman some help.

The woman wouldn’t come inside the church with me. In very halting English she said “No, no, thank you,” and held out the paper clutched in her hand. It said that she’d lost her job, and needed help for herself and her two children. As I decided what to do next, a young couple with two small children walked by. The husband saw the paper she held out, and shook his head “No;” they kept on walking.

That did it. I headed back into the building, looking for someone who could help her. Within 30 seconds I ran across two of the handful of people I actually know, both of whom have unofficial leadership positions (i.e. they’re not paid for the vast amount of work they do and they don’t wear pretty nametags on Sunday but they know a lot of people and they are very well respected). I quickly told them about the young woman. They immediately directed me to one of the executive pastors who was standing a few feet away.

Feeling awkward but still determined, I introduced myself to the man, told him about the young woman and her daughter, and he said he and his wife would go see if they could help her. I asked if he wanted me to wait and go with him; he said no.

I hope he did what he’d said and that other people wanting to talk with him, or the need to be somewhere else didn’t interfere. I left the building, and the woman was still standing with her daughter at the end of the sidewalk. Someone else had paused to respond to her request, and as I walked past I overheard him say “Maybe you could get some help inside,” just before continuing on his way.

Seriously people. It’s a church, and you just came out of a worship service. Mere minutes ago you were talking to God (or at least pretending to do so).  Is there some sort of invisible device that scrapes off everything you’ve heard and seen as you go out through the doors?

To be very fair, this church has a food pantry. It serves meals to the homeless on-site once a week all winter long. It has sent teams to Haiti and elsewhere–doctors with badly needed medicine after the big Haiti quake, for example. The church itself has various outreaches in place. It’s the people attending who seemed not only clueless but utterly indifferent to the woman in need.

I felt like I was in the middle of an episode of What Would You Do, and I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t like what it said about the Mothership church (so freakin’ big, sitting there in the middle of a huge lawn like a landed spacecraft). In my opinion, there ought to have been a group of people immediately gathering around the woman and her daughter trying to figure out and solve her situation.

Yeah, right, I live in a fantasy world.

I miss my old church. A lot. I miss the people that made up that congregation and the small size that didn’t permit anonymous indifference.

Unthinkable

I don’t have the words…

This tragedy just continues to echo around us. The depth and breadth of suffering is unthinkable.

Elsewhere, the Anchoress has a powerful update on Haiti.

And here is an inside scoop from the aid efforts of the USNS Comfort (H/T Confederate Yankee).

Unlikely heroes

Sometimes heroism comes in unlikely packages.

ARLINGTON, Va. – Ray Vivier had been an adventurer, an ex-Marine who explored the country from South Carolina to Alaska, the father of five children.

The 61-year-old also was a man starting to get his life back together after living for years in a shanty beneath a Cleveland bridge. He had struggled with alcoholism, but by November he had a welding job, friends and a place to stay at a boarding house.

He rescued five people from that house when arsonists set it ablaze — but Vivier couldn’t save himself. He and three others died, and two people have been charged in their deaths. Vivier’s body, unclaimed and unidentified for weeks, seemed destined for an anonymous, modest burial.

A soup kitchen volunteer, though, remembered Vivier and heard about his heroism. Jody Fesco and her husband Ernie traveled back to Cleveland from their new home in Pennsylvania to make sure Vivier wasn’t forgotten. They identified his body, found his family and arranged a proper funeral.

On Friday, Vivier’s ashes were inurned at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

“You can see from what he did that he definitely had a good heart,” said Mercedes Cruz, Vivier’s ex-wife of 23 years, who attended the funeral with the couple’s children. “No matter what our difficulties were in our marriage, I’m very proud of what’s happened.”

For his grown children — who now are scattered around the country — Vivier had been gone for about 15 years. They know of his heroism now — but they don’t know much about the man he was trying to become. They remember their dad’s struggles with alcohol and other troubles.

“What I’m trying to get out of this is to have one good, concrete memory that I can have of him for what he did to save those people,” said his oldest daughter, Elisha Vivier. “I’m proud of the man that he was becoming.”

Vivier’s funeral procession                                                     AP Photo/Kevin Wolf

I’m far too quick to label people in my mind with some sort of limiting descriptor, such as “homeless.” That makes it far too easy to fail to see them as complex people, capable of anything, no matter what sort of life they’ve been living.

As C.S. Lewis said in The Weight of Glory,

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations–these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit–immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.