Gripped in Green

I do not love my neighbor.

In fact, my interactions with my neighbors looks a little more like this:

“For not only am I unable to lay down my life for his sake (according to the gospel), but I do not even sacrifice my happiness, well-being, and peace for the good of my neighbor. If I did love him as myself, as the gospel bids, his misfortune would distress me also, his happiness would bring delight to me too. But on the contrary, I listen to curious, unhappy stories about my neighbor and I am not distressed; I remain quite undisturbed, or what is worse still, I find a sort of pleasure in them…. His well-being, honor and happiness do not delight me as my own…What is more, they subtly arouse in me feelings of envy or contempt.” ThePilgrim Continues His Way

It’s a game that I’ve perfected: the comparison contest. More often than not, when I look at someone I compare myself to how they reflect on me. Am I prettier, smarter, more exciting? If I am, then my pride is bolstered and I continue on my merry way. If I don't measure up, jealousy, envy, and self-loathing take hold, gripped in green.

There’s something keeping me from connecting their well-being with my own. Their victories with my own.  I can only see darkly. I can only see me.

When I look at others, I see my own junk and problems and preconceptions reflected back. The focus is on myself. Not what they're really going through, not who they really are. Just who I've made them to be, someone to pity or someone to envy, when compared against myself. That's dehumanizing. That is not life-giving or loving. I've commodified them and myself. I've made coming out on top of this shallow ranking the ultimate goal. Not real connection. Not love.

We all know the feeling to some extent. We all know the strivings and grasping of our egos, our possessions, our time. The selfishness that keeps us from loving our neighbors. The reason we need to have discussions about what it means to be in solidarity with the poor. The reason, I believe, we even have poor in this world.

A while ago I read an essay analyzing the infamous-wedding-love passage in 1^st Corinthians. You know the verses I’m talking about, the clanging cymbals, love is patient, love is kind one that ends with faith, hope, love, and “I do.”

In these verses, there is a chunk of text that talks about the incompleteness of the love we experience now.

It says, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13: 11-12

I always thought this verse was about seeing God face to face. Or seeing ourselves as we truly are—a reflection of God’s grace and love and beauty.

But, as Madison Smartt Bell pointed out in his marvelous essay, A Love Supreme in the book Joyful Noise, this is a passage about loving others. Love doesn’t happen in a vacuum. These exhortations to serve in love, to prophecy in love, to teach in love are for the benefit of our neighbors. We are called to be patient and kind and slow to anger with EACH OTHER.

So why would this future face-to-face exclude our neighbors? What if it’s our neighbors, not just God or ourselves, who we will one day see so clearly?

"When a glass is perfectly transparent it does not reflect at all; it leaves one openly face-to-face with those on the other side." Madison Smartt Bell, Joyful Noise

Those on the other side are the people all around us. The people we do a pretty lousy job at loving and sacrificing our happiness, privacy, peace, time, money, or parking spaces for.

People say that humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less. I believe that is what Paul is describing in 1 Corinthians 13. A love and attention that does not reflect back to ourselves. One day we will see each other with God's eyes. We won't just see ourselves.

But right now, this hour, this minute, this life, I’m trapped in it. This dark self-prison. These comparisons.

It gets worse with body image for me, but that's not it. It's everything. Am I more athletic? Do I have a better sounding job? Did I make a better joke? And all of this is going in my head instead of LISTENING to whomever it is I'm talking to. It's sick. I am trapped in this prison of myself.

But I want FREEDOM from this self-obsession. One of my favorite quotes comes from Rumi, who says, "You become bewildered; then suddenly Love comes saying, 'I will deliver you this instant from yourself.'"

Love, deliver me from myself. I believe that is what you promise, Jesus. Living water. Forgiveness. A place where strivings cease.

That is true salvation. Freedom and forgiveness of sins, but also deliverance from ourselves.

Please open my eyes to others. Their hopes and dreams and pain that is completely unrelated to me. Break the scale. The measurement. The comparison. Be my true hope and portion.

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, gripped in green; but one day we shall see face-to-face in His Kingdom, gripped with grace.

Learning to Walk

Going into a three-day weekend, there is one thing I crave: REST.

I don’t know about you, but I have trouble slowing down.  Trouble resting. Trouble releasing.

I don’t walk much. I run. I sprint. I lunge. I dance. I pound out sweat and calories and insecurities. I pound out thoughts.

When I stop to notice the packed in sand, the salt air burning my lungs, the sound of murmuring waves, moonlight on whitecaps, and the dark curtain of clouds, I don’t rejoice.

The panic sets in, scared that whatever I’ve been running from has overtaken me at last. Instead of breathing easier, I clench. I start writing my response in my head, tomorrow’s blog post, the week’s to-do list. My steps are anything but idle.

And yet breathe I must. Rest I must.  Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs.

It’s not that I don’t notice things. It’s that I can’t stop. Can’t stop the litany of commands and reminders and rebuttals.

I can’t slow my thoughts to a walking pace. Can’t catch a sustainable rhythm. Go go go ‘til burnout and defeat.

Oh God, teach me to walk. 

A Better Answer

This is a follow up to yesterday's blog post, Solidaridad, which I suggest reading first. 

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"I know there is poor and hideous suffering, and I've seen the hungry and the guns that go to war. I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives. Why would the world need more anger, more outrage? How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us? Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering. The converse does. The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world." from Ann Voskamp’s masterpiece, One Thousand Gifts

This, this is the better answer to my haunting question: What does it mean to live in solidarity with poor?


“Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn’t rescue the suffering.” 


How I wish someone had whispered this truth to me when I first opened my crowded closet; when I first swiped my ATM card for apricot face scrub and a new roll of floss at Target; when I first felt the summer sun warm up my parent’s patriotic front yard.

"It is joy that saves us..."

How I wish our study abroad discussions around solidarity had ventured beyond fair trade shopping and SUV bashing and into the fine art of learning to love our neighbors—poor or 1% or anywhere in between.


"Why would the world need more anger, more outrage?"

I mean, how are we supposed to love the poor if we don’t love ourselves? What kind of improved quality of life are we lobbying for if we can’t even recognize the God-like qualities in our suburban Christian friends?


I learned this lesson the hard way. Floundering and seething in an anger that quickly wore out its welcome.  In an anger that helped neither the poor nor the poor saps around me.

My first real step toward living in solidarity with the poor (on which I still have an immensely long way to go) was when I started to live in solidarity with myself. When I started to live in solidarity with my immediate neighbors. When I started to think that I was worth loving and that, maybe, the people in front of me—my Whole Foods Shopping, Invisible Children v-neck wearing peeps and my less well-versed in the rhetoric and fashion requirements of social justice friends and family alike—were worth loving too.

Solidarity began when I asked myself, like Ann Voskamp, Where can I bring life? Where can I choose hope?

How can I become the brave soul who focuses “on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small?” Where can I “discover joy even in the here and now?”

The surprising answer to the solidarity question is this: joy.

And in that joy comes a valuing of all human life and all of Creation, a heart that hopes, eyes that see the gifts, and lips that praise the Gifter.  This is the foundation of solidarity. This is the seed that blooms the hope to sustain a multitude of change agents bringing fullest Light to all the world.

Who wants to live the better answer?

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P.S. I am still stubbornly passionate (although no longer belligerent) about reducing my injustice footprint and learning to live and act in ways that serve, support, and empower the poor.  I would love to talk shop with anyone interested in living more justly, sustainably, and joyfully.

But how, you ask?

You can read more of my thoughts in my post on fighting both first world apathy and third world poverty or dive into 7 Practical Tips (and delicious writing) from Jen Hatmaker, author of  "7 : An Experimental Mutiny AgainstExcess."  Or check out Julie Clawson’s fabulous book, EverydayJustice. Or find out more about my favorite poverty alleviation non profit that I just so happen to work for: Plant With Purpose.