audacious hospitality… on the road to compassion

My article today is to be about our annual pledge drive, this year an appeal for every family of the church to offer a “promise of participation” for the coming year. But it isn’t. Or maybe it is.

I find myself needing to share conversations I had this week with a woman who agreed to babysit for a two year old last Friday and found herself with temporary (2 year) custody for he and all six of his siblings. She is a woman my age with grown children; she is now parenting seven children ages 2-13. Inconceivable. (This is a time for the Princess Bride style inflection.)

My only frame of reference is that at the same time this woman was saying “yes” to the seven young faces in front of her, I was saying “yes” to the little wet fur ball that was to become cat #3 in our home. As our little fur ball disrupts our family routine, spreading both delight and chaos quite liberally, I wonder how this woman manages with the chaos of seven new routines. There is no comparison.

And yet there is a window. As we cuddle with the little fur ball, I remember how children’s dirty hands feel so wonderful wrapped around our necks. Of course the elephant in the room is the expense. As we rescued the fur ball from the road and took him straight to the vet, the first question was, “will you be responsible for his bill?” Given that we had the privilege to say “yes”, the question for us was one of hospitality. But what of the very real situations when “yes” isn’t even an option?

The woman on the phone will get help from state services, food stamps are a given. But at last night’s Mission:1 Town Hall Meeting, I was reminded that food stamps for a family of four are just $621 per month… $1.41 per person per meal. When’s the last time you fed your family on that kind of budget for more than a day or two? Our state and federal services continue to decline as real prices for food, clothing and gasoline continue to escalate.

So we turn to charity for help. This woman is a church member and will get help from her church and sister churches like ours. She was calling me specifically, though, because all of the Christmas lists around town are already closed. In fact the 100 Neediest Cases closed in July! And most of the others closed mid-October. The local merchants’ preemptive decorations have nothing on the social service industry which close the Christmas counter even before the Great Pumpkin comes. Undoubtedly this calendar is based on the yeoman’s job of coordinating givers and receivers, but people who live on the edge without safety nets cannot adequately predict their Christmas needs six months in advance.

The economic conundrum of sudden massive scale parenting aside, what amazes me is the emotional energy of such an undertaking. I can only reiterate: inconceivable. The only reason one could possible say “yes” is that “no” was not an option. Such was the case for the woman on the other end of the phone call.

I want to rail against the system. I want to demand justice for the seven children who need their mother more than she needs the “correctional system”. I want to demand a social safety net that can appropriately compensate the neighbor thrust into instant parenthood. I want insist on a flexibility in our charitable structures that recognizes that people have Christmas wishes even after Thanksgiving. I want…

But the woman on the other end of the phone? She wants clothing in sizes 14 down to size 4t. Socks and underwear would be very helpful too, please.

As I hold the little fur ball that has snuck into our hearts, I realize that the big campaigns for politics and programs are important, but so too the still small voice on the other side of the phone. Can we help? Yes, we can.

My article today is to be about our “promises of participation” and I’m struck that such a drive has both nothing and everything to do with the helping a woman with seven children. Although we do benevolence and advocate for justice, our church is neither a social service agency nor a lobbying organization. Ours is a different niche. Progressive faith communities are to compassion what batting cages are to baseball. Having identified compassion as our core value, a value we learn in the teachings of Jesus and others, we come together to practice. Together at the intersection of our values and our actions, we ponder the audacity of one woman’s hospitality. This week we practiced with a conversation made possible by a phone number shared on a brochure at last summer’s Pride St. Louis and the infrastructure of church and staff … both made possible by your generosity.

On Sunday, then, bring your Promises of Participation with you to church to enable this important work. Bring too some clothes for children and a prayer for all of these.