MrWorthington's Xanga

The Accident on Washington & 10th

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 19:50:01 GMT

I held a dying man's head today. The soil from his scalp is on my fingers as I write this note.

Life is very, very fragile. I don't think I realized that until after just 30 minutes ago. Today I slept in, woke up to my roommates in my warm house, carpooled to Evan's parents' house with all of them for breakfast, and upon return we all happened to stumble upon the site of a freshly dressed disaster. I don't know how it happened, but I just know that it happened. He was lying there, seemingly asleep like he was merely snoring. When in reality, his tongue was bunched up against the roof of his mouth, and he was gargling his blood. He was not conscious, and his eyes looked glossy. One of his front teeth looked loose, there was some grass hanging off of it. The front end of his motorcycle had been smashed into a million pieces. His helmet apparently flew off. Much of his layered clothing had been pulled off of his body, one of his gloves missing and his pants pulled mostly down with both shoes in two different places in a 10 yard radius around the accident. His Interstate Batteries jacket had come over his back and was pulled tightly over his face, pinching his nose shut. I think he must have slid. I don't know that for sure though. People were gathering around the accident. My roommates and I ran up, and someone called the EMTs. A lady kept saying, "Don't move him! Don't move him!" I was angry at her because I knew that wasn't the best thing for him and I wanted one of us to save him, I didn't care if it was me or the lady whose lawn this man was sprawled out on. Instead, we were all just there, some of us standing and facing the accident, some with our faces pushed away towards the sky, but ultimately with no immediate solution. I don't think any of us really knew just how bad it was. We were all scared, feeling strangely connected to the bleeding man who none of us recognized.

I told people that we had to get his head up. That lady kept yelling, "Don't move him! Don't move him!" but I could hear him choking on his blood and knew that his head being tilted back with his jacket pinching his nose was only obstructing the flow of oxygen into his body and making things worse. Then I said some things about trusting me and that this guy needed to have his head lifted so he could breathe. So I loosened the tension in his jacket and pulled it back over his face and bunched the jacket up under his head. We all laid our coats over him and people stuffed beanies and other soft things under his head to give him some support. We were all trying to open his airway. The lady who was telling us not to move him stopped yelling and started praying. After I lifted his head and tried loosening his jaw to try and get him to breathe in, I started panicking on the inside, hoping that the EMTs would just hurry up and do all of the things that I couldn't. I noticed that shortly after we lifted his head some blood poured out of his nose. The EMTs then pulled up and I rushed to tell them all of what we had done. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. I was angry and sad, and so were many of us standing around. People started closing in around the EMTs and most of us didn't even know each other. The EMTs began opening his airway, giving him a breathing mask while the ambulance pulled up. Somehow we all became really close.

The ambulance then showed up and placed several sticky pads around his chest with one big rectangular pad placed over his heart that was connected to a defibrillator. They induced shock treatment and I saw his body jolt. There was a guy that showed up, probably my age, who hadn't been there before. He had a very strong foreign accent and just kept saying, "He's gone. He's gone." I tried not to listen to what he was saying, but it was hard because everyone else was positioned somewhere away from the two of us. I almost started crying because I felt like all of us had failed. "You don't know that," I said. But he just kept saying "He's gone", and then he complained about the stupidity of people who ride motorcycles. I couldn't tell him, but I wanted to punch him because I didn't understand how he could be so insensitive while someone was injured like this. It's not until now, as I write this, that I understand that people deal with tragedies in different ways. They put the man on a stretcher and loaded him into an ambulance.

I asked the EMT, "Is he breathing?" And while loading things in his bag he said, "I don't know." "Well, do you think he'll make it?" I responded. The man continued typing up tubes and stuffing things back in their proper pouches and replied with his head down, "I'm not gonna guess."

Evan, Spenser, Jason, and myself then stood around very somberly. Spenser asked if he could pray, then a lady came over and stood with us while Spenser asked God to be in all of the places that none of us could be in right now: with the family, with the hands of the doctors, with the body of the man, all of those places we knew were deeply engaged in the pain surrounding this accident. The guy who I wanted to punch came over and kept saying, "He's gone. He's gone. How can people ride those things? It's so stupid. He's gone. He's gone." We tried to help gather the injured man's things, but the police told us to leave them on the ground. They were still questioning the man who hit him with his car. As I watched them talk, I remember thinking how much I would hate to be the driver of the vehicle who hit this man. I can't even imagine what it feels like to know that because you were rushing somewhere, you may have killed someone.

After that, all four of us walked to Evan's car. On the ride home, no one really talked. There were a few words, I think. Perhaps I just wasn't paying attention. All I could think about was how just a few feet, and a few seconds in front of us, someone was now flirting with eternity.Death was near to all of us today because we touched a man who was being hugged by his mortality. I don't think I'd ever felt so human. I don't know what else to say except that I hope the man makes it. I hope his family is okay too.

I don't know that I can do much today after seeing that. I think I may go and sleep.

**Update**: I found out from a friend who works at one of the news stations here in Abilene that the man on the motorcycle passed away earlier this evening (Saturday Jan 19th).

http://reporternews.com/news/2008/jan/19/motorcyclist-killed-in-abilene-crash/

Happy New Year!

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 02:04:11 GMT

Happy New Year Everyone! Hope you guys are having good times!

Benazir Bhutto, Presidential Politics, and the End of the World

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 05:04:39 GMT

***(Let me preface this note by saying I'm not an expert in politics, nor am I an expert in International relations, nor am I a seasoned theologian. But I do care about the world. Oh, and I'm also not predicting the end of the world or citing that the "End is Near." So don't freak out by the title.)

I'm not sure if you all know this, but two days ago, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated in Rawalpindi after speaking at Political Rally for the Pakistan People's Party (PPP). I won't go much into it because you can just read about it here:

Pakistan | An Assassin Strikes | Economist.com

However, I did want to say this. I was very disheartened when I watched the news yesterday. I was watching CNN and they were talking with Rudy Giuliani as he was responding to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Apparently no one really knows who did it. Some suggest that the President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, and his followers were behind it. Others suggest it was the Taliban or Al Qaeda. People are arguing about who how she died exactly. There's video of a man who fired three shots directly at her and then proceeded to detonate the explosives that were to strapped to himself. Despite this, officials in Pakistan say that she wasn't killed by any shrapnel or bullets or anything from the explosives. I haven't quite figured out what they're suggesting she died of, but I've only figured what they're suggesting she didn't die of.

So who knows who did it? I don't, that's for sure.

Anyways, this is my problem. They were talking to Giuliani about this, and he just starts going on and on about how terrorism is alive in the world and how we need to put an end to this, and how this is what he's been talking about all along. "Terrorism is our #1 priority," he said. I know this may be hard for some of you to understand, but it made me very angry that he said that. For this reason: he really didn't seem all that sad that Benazir Bhutto was dead. What it felt like was that Giuliani was capitalizing off of Benazir Bhutto's death. And while I recognize these are just my feelings, at the same time I wouldn't put it past a politician to do such a thing.

And you know, I'm not just bashing on Rudy. I would suggest that all of us pay close attention in the coming months as to how many times Benazir Bhutto's death is referred to with terrorism. Already they're having specials on the news, "Is Pakistan the new face of Global terrorism and instability in the world?" This kills me. I wonder how much people really care about Pakistanis? I wonder how much they're interested in the fact that people lost their hope of a step towards a more free Pakistan when Benazir Bhutto was assassinated two days ago? In my opinion, I don't really feel like these people are that concerned with the plight of the Pakistan people who are truly hurting because of her death. Instead, I'm sure they've got their campaign strategy managers all coming up w th ways to fit Bhutto's death into furthering the credentials of their campaign. "Look at Bhutto," they'll say. "Isn't this reason enough that terrorism is alive in this world and that we need to attack this. People, this is what I've been trying to say all along and now, because we have not given enough attention to this, people around the world are suffering."

Listen for that. I'm sure in some way, form, or fashion, you'll hear this. And I say be weary of it. Too, be aware of politicians who mud sling. Mitt Romney is becoming notorious for this. It's terrible. if you were really the best candidate for position, why would you feel the need to mud sling about other candidates. If you were the best candidate available, wouldn't you be good enough that your integrity would stand out against those who are supposedly trying to decieve of other people? Romney has been slinging Mudd at McCain and Huckabee and it's disgusting.

"But Matt, don't you know that? That's how life is. You can't avoid that. People are selfish." I'm sure this is running through some people's minds right now.

I couldn't agree more. But I say that this is a tragedy. And we shouldn't just concede to this. Instead, we need to be speaking against this manipulation of an international tragedy. I don't know how to do that. Obviously none of us have an international platform to say these kinds of things. But I do remember something that Mother Theresa said about feeding the poor and I think it applies here, "If you can't feed one hundred poor people, then just feed one poor person." Essentially, don't concede to being void of action just because you can't make an impact on a global level. If you don't have a platform, then make a commitment to be aware of these things yourself.

The other thing is that we should mourn the loss of the Pakistanis ourselves. I know that we're in America and that most of those reading this may not have any Pakistani blood in you, but this is indeed becoming a smaller world. Independence and separation are no longer an option anymore. Nor is dependence. Instead, interdependence. The idea of global brotherhood and sisterhood, this is the idea I'm getting at. If we can't learn to mourn for our brothers and sisters who live in other countries, we will surely destroy ourselves eventually. Now, I'm not one who believes that when the end of the world happens that it God will come down from the clouds and start destroying things. Instead I believe that the end of the world will come when we become, as nations, so self-consumed with our own survival that we fail to learn what it means to be a global family. Our world is growing at a rapid rate. In Jesus' time, the world population was 230 million people. At the end of the first millennium it was 270 million people. In 1820, it was roughly 900 million people. in 1950, it grew to around 2.8 billion people. Today it's around 6.8, almost 7 billion people. Also today, there are 2.8 billion people who live on less than $2 a day. Essentially, the entire world population of 1950 lives on less than $2 a day. In the next 25-50 years, the world's population is expected to double. Can you imagine if in 25-50 years, that 6.8 billion people live in poverty? It's not unlikely to me if we continue to view ourselves as independent and not interdependent.

What we need to do, whether we're polticians or artists or economists or teachers or bus drives or the people at the corner store, is we need to look at our world as a body. Our physical bodies are made up of many parts that are not parasitic to one another, nor are they independent of one another, but they are interdependent. They work to make us walk, to make us run, to make us hug someone that we love. Without all of our parts working together, the body would not function. they could not separate themselves from one another.

Tying this all back up, when people get assassinated, we really need to spend some time mourning and in silence with our brothers and sisters. We need to ask ourselves how they are hurting. We don't need to speedily respond to the circumstance by citing our political agendas, suggesting that if people would just vote for us, that these kinds of things would not happen. We're human beings, we can't fix it all. Surely not alone. We need to learn what it means to be interdependent.

When I read the Bible, I feel that what God is not saying is, "You've gotta learn to get it right or I'm gonna come down there and destroy all of you with supernatural disasters." I don't see him as a cosmic policeman waiting to implement his wrath. He is not a cosmic sadist. Instead what I see him saying to people is, "You've gotta get it right, or you're going to destroy yourselves. And this is what it'll look like, (insert some prophetic image)."

I think we should pay attention to the suffering around the world. I think we need to learn to love those who are suffering around the world, and try to understand their pain. I do not think that pain and suffering is a commodity for America to capitalize on. If we don't learn to understand this, we will surely ruin not only our own country, but we will, without a doubt, ruin our world.

***(It's also a kind of ramble, but if I told you that in the beginning, there's a greater chance you wouldn't have given me the time of day.)

Meditations on Low Blood Sugar

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 03:36:52 GMT

For the seven millionth time, I'm drinking my glass of milk in a coffeeshop, staring down an aisle of ceiling lights, wishing to God that I could hold you in these arms, but you are absolutely too sweet for me. You'd give me the shakes, and then diabetes, and then... that's when you'd kill me. And I know it too. I know it all too well and still I've chosen to drink you. I tell myself that I've stayed away for quite some time now, and that having just a little bit of you really won't be that bad for me at all. But then I feel you, hollowing out my veins and then pinching them to feel like I just put my tongue on a battery. If I could, I would tell you my secret of how I've got nothing up my sleeves and that really, I'm just dying from being strung on a line that's hanging between what I've I believe the world needs, what I believe you need, and how much it hurts me inside when I bear down and try it. There are so many ways that I want to love you, but I just don't know how.

If only I could displace myself, and start over as a nobody who wears a five o clock shadow everyday at 4:00 o clock, sitting in this coffee shop holding my glass of milk. And that's when you'd walk in. You'd come in with your weekly subscription to the Economist, trying to save the world even with your cup of coffee. Then you'd sit down across from me and you'd open your magazine and your mocha colored curls would pour in front of your face as you simultaneously take a bite from your fair trade muffin. And that's when you'd catch me with my eyes away from the computer screen, looking around the place for my next few sentences. And that’s when you’d brush a smile my way, and that's where it would all start.

My next few sentences would be about you.

After Micah P. Hinson and Will Johnson

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 02:06:12 GMT

On very particular evenings, I get this wishing inside of me. I look down at the backs of my hands, and I begin dreaming that I can walk on the Sea. I get to thinking that if I weren't so tied down by what I'm usually doing, that I could step out onto an ocean and look far back upon the City I've left behind. And perhaps even, that I could step as deep into it as my fear would allow. Even still, just as much as I fear it, there is this part of me that wishes I could spend the night in the Sea. Oh, that I could sleep in the Earth's aquarium.

How San Francisco Can Make You Feel

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 08:48:44 GMT

    In San Francisco tonight, it is bustling outside and everyone has taken cover from the march of nature. Howls of the wind are crying through her street lights that have been exposed everywhere by a cold Pacific fog, and they are crying through the darkness in her alleys where grey clouds dance above the streets, as if they were ghosts let loose in the midnight. She looks forsaken tonight; abandoned and trying to remember a night that wasn’t so cold. With that sea smoke cast overhead, erasing the Bay Area skyline, she stands in a broken stillness-like an unfinished painting whose painter has long since cast her into a corner.

   If the weather was telling of how a person might feel, it would make much sense to me that I am feeling the way I do. This week has been particularly stressful because all week long I was reminded of two things that I have no hand over: death and change. A little while back, I found out that my mother was in the Hospital and I was heartbroken. It wasn’t anything different from reasons in the past, but it just about killed me that certain kinds of hurt just never goes away in the life of people you love. For my mother it was the pain of being abandoned, cast off as a nobody by the man that she loved. And here’s the problem with this: I have really strong tendency to be empathetic, and so when my mother tells me that her days have been nothing but dark, my heart just won’t stop beating and after so long it just starts to hurt inside of my chest. So I was hurting pretty bad this past week even though my mother was released from the hospital on Monday because I knew her healing would need something more than just some medicinal prescription that the doctors could’ve offered her.


WHEN MATTHEW HID UNDER THE TABLE.
    Next, I wanted to tell you about a boy named Matthew. No, not me- don’t worry, I’m not so vain that I would speak in third-person during a prayer update. Matthew is one of the kids I work with at Our Kids First. He’s a tiny nine-year old who has the body of a five-year old. He has no physical dysfunction or disease, but he’s just small. He and his little sister live with their “Auntie” (that’s what everyone calls their Aunt in California) and their cousin because both of their parents have abandoned them in some form or fashion.

    For years, his little sister wouldn’t talk to anyone in the program until last year at a their annual Health Fair/Carnival she said to one of the leaders a couple of hours into it, “I’m having so much fun!” They freaked out because she had actually spoken to one of them. I was under the impression that it was Matthew’s little sister who only had that disposition. The other day, however, one of the leaders noticed that Matthew was talking to me very liberally and she was in a state of shock and told me, “He talks to you… That’s good. He doesn’t really talk to anybody.” I guess that made me feel good, but it broke my heart even more. Because it hit me how lonely this kid is. Many of the times, he likes to play by himself during our recreational time with just a handball while the rest of the group indulges each other in a game of “Knock-Out”. Everyday, I was remembering, the kids would group up and socialize like crazy and there’s Matthew-just hanging out by himself waving his tiny little hands at the ball every time it bounces off of the wall. Lonely little Matthew, everyday by himself.

    There was an episode with Matthew a few weeks ago where one of the girls tried to take the ball from him during costume day. Matthew was dressed like Robin, the famous sidekick of Batman-something in hindsight that I think to be very telling of Matthew’s personality. There he was on costume day, playing with this large orange ball, throwing it against the wall when Andrea comes up to him and tries to get the ball for him. Little Matthew had been playing with the ball for a considerable amount of time and now, Andrea had wanted her turn with it. Matthew had just completely shut down when I tried talking with him about sharing. I went from being his best friend out of all of the leaders to him viewing me as this villain that he needed to hide from. He wouldn’t even look at me. He just sat there crying in his Robin outfit.

    This past week, some kids were playing “Knock-Out” again and Matthew was off doing his usual routine of playing wall-ball by himself. Now, I’ve asked him several times if he would join me in a game, join a group of kids in a game, and I’ve even asked one of the kids, Freddie (whose kind of a stand out guy), to invite him to play and to intentionally include him, yet Matthew continues to stay by himself. During the game, one of the kids “knocked” one of the other kids basketballs on the court and it veered far off out of bounds and nailed Matthew right in the face, cracking his glasses right in half. He immediately dropped his handball as his face flooded into tears and embarrassment as he walked under the table like someone who was searching from cover as soon as a Thunderstorm broke it’s first volley of rain drops. The poor kid. I immediately ran over and picked up his glasses and followed him under the table, knowing his embarrassment of being smacked in the face in front of all of his peers. When I crawled under there, he had his buried in his arms again, except this time he was somewhat furious at me when I told him I wanted to help him out. “No!”, he yelled. I didn’t understand. What would make a kid do this when someone who is older than him is trying to help him out? He knew I wasn’t the one who did it to him, he knew a lot of the kids look up to me, he knew he liked me because he’s previously expressed this to me, so why would he reject my offer to help him? I’ve been nothing but good to him.

    I was talking with the director of the program who told me that Matthew and his sister are very hesitant to people they love because they have this extreme fear that the person they love will abandon them. I guess this broke my heart because I know I’m going to leave him soon. And he may or may not know that, I’m not for sure, but I know it and it hurts when I think about it.

THE DEATH OF AUNT RUBY JO AND THE BOOK OF AMOS
    Too, this week, we studied Amos. I can’t go into that beause it was very, very long and too much for me to process on paper right now. But one of the things we also studied was just how bad of shape the world is in right now environmentally. I know, I know, “Geez Matt, you went out to California and became one of those earth hippies.” Well, don’t box yourself in. In Leviticus 25, there’s a verse that command people to give the earth a year of rest from harvesting and farming because the earth needs to rest. I can’t imagine that we’ve done that in a very long time, nor do we plan to because there is a great demand everyday for food, especially considering how much Americans eat. Also, I’ve started Ron Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger and here are some horrible statistics.

    *2.8 Billion people in the world live on less than two dollars a day.
(Right around the 50s and 60s, the entire world population wasn’t too far from this.)
    *30,000 people die every day from hunger and preventable diseases.

I guess these really break my heart because I’m apart of this world and even though I’m not making it happen, I’m still here, participating in the community of humanity, and it still hurts.

    Lastly, yesterday I found out that Aunt Ruby Jo died in Alabama in a hospital. She was my Grandpa’s sister, but everyone neglected to tell him that she was in the hospital. She was the last of my Grandfather’s siblings. He also found out that one month ago his nephew died, and three months prior to that, his sister-in-law died. Needless to say it’s been pretty hard on my grandfather, especially considering that when his Father died several years back, he was unintentionally left out of the loop and didn’t find out his Father had been deathly ill until after his Father actually passed away. I can’t imagine what he’s feeling, but I know that all evening I was wanting to be with my Grandfather and I was wanting to hold him.

LOVE IS WATCHING SOMEONE DIE
    My friend Michele was telling me about an image of the waiting room, where God is the surgeon and those we love are the patients inside of the waiting room. She said sometimes all that we can do is wait-wait and pray and hurt because we have to trust in the skills and the hands of the surgeon who is going inside of these people and fixing things that we can hardly begin to understand. I felt that way with Matthew this past week when he wouldn’t let me help him, I feel that way with my Mom and the hurt she bears, I feel that way with my Grandfather who will not cry, and I feel that way with the World around me and all of the people who I hate to see hurt.
    The Great paradox of Christianity is that we would die to live, that we would lose ourselves to gain life and I must say that when I really think about this, it reminds me that there is a time of grieving in that process. There is a death, a life lost. People did not smile and rejoice and throw a great big party when Jesus died. Instead, there was this great sadness and confusion and cloud that covered the unity that people previously had when Jesus was with them.
    After Michele and I talked, I couldn’t stop thinking of that Death Cab for Cutie song “What Sarah Said”. This is what Ben Gibbens describes being in a waiting room like,

    And I looked around at all the eyes on the ground as the TV entertained itself
   Cause there’s no comfort in the waiting room
   Just nervous paces waiting for bad news
   Then the nurse comes around and everyone lifts their head
   But I’m thinking of what Sarah said,
   That “Love is watching someone die.”

    Love is watching someone die...

I think sometimes it’s like this with God and those we so desperately love. That whether it is a neighborhood that’s been broken by an infestation of crack cocaine, or some slum community in the far reaches of the world that my heart is tied around, or my best friend’s mother who is lying in the Intensive Care Unit ready to die any day now from the hemorrhaging in her brain, or my mother whose heart is filled with thousands of holes put there by a thief who robber her of 26 years of love, or by lonely little Matthew who plays wall ball with himself everyday… Sometimes all that I can do is sit in a waiting room, waiting for God to do his great work of resurrecting the dead inside all of us.

PRAYER REQUEST
    There is two weeks left in the project. Pray for all of it. Pray for the children to be blessed by us, for the church to be blessed by us, and for the community of students participating in the Bay Area Urban Project to be blessed by each other. Pray also for my Mother, my Grandfather, and the rest of my family suffering from the Death of Aunt Ruby Jo. Pray for our world with all of it’s poverty that our brothers and sisters suffer from and for our Earth, that we would be better stewards of the home God has given us. Pray for me, that Jesus would continue to shape me while I am in the Bay Area.

p.s. For those in Abilene, I'll be preaching at Highland Church of Christ on August 15th, the evening after I return to Abilene. So if any of my friends want to hear about my experiences in the Bay Area, I'll be there telling stories to the church on Wednesday evening.

Life in the Bay (California Pt. 2)

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 04:43:18 GMT

Hello Friends!

I am in San Francisco still, working in the Mission District at San Francisco Christian Center. It is a Pentecostal church that has been rooted in the Mission District at the same location for over 50 years. So naturally, they have a strong relationship and respect with the community around them. As well, they serve the community in a number of ways and I’ve personally been very impressed and blessed by the work they’ve done in the community. The Mission District is a neighborhood you can look up on Wikipedia. It has a rich history of working class Americans, though it is most notable for it’s large population of Hispanic immigrants to the United States.

Throughout the week, I work with the kids at Our Kids First, a program that reminds me very much of Impact Church of Christ’s summer VBS and RKP program. So in some ways, having worked with Impact in the past, I feel very much at home. The people who run the program are very great. Sister Nancy Bell is the director and mother to many of these kids (though she’s pretty firm in her love for people), her husband Brother Bob (or “Coach”) serves as the Sheriff or Principal (seriously, Brother Bob strikes the fear of God into the kids if they act up and he doesn’t get angry, it’s just that the kids respect and look up to him so much that when they get in trouble Brother Bob just looks at them and they are heartbroken), and Sister Jackie is in charge of arranging all of the meals for the kids. Get this, every morning a Gourmet Chef (who was trained at Cordon Bleu in Paris-lookout Tyler Cosgrove) donates his time to prepare meals for the children and educate them on what it means to eat healthy. Unfortunately, most diets for children here look like Red Hot Cheetos and cans of Carbonated Colas. Their diets are not healthy at all.

Anyways, there are also adult leaders who work at Our Kids First to tutor them with their academic endeavours. Its pretty dang awesome to say the least. Although there is a lack of structure, it somehow works really well for this community. I know for some coming into this kind of structure, it has been difficult. As well, many of us had to take into account our ethnic backgrounds and the types of people we tend to be. Some of us are more task-oriented and others, like myself, tend to be more event-oriented. Speaking of ethnicity (you know I always do), this past weekend we attended a Race/Ethnicity conference that Intervarsity Sponsored here in the Bay Area. Some guest speakers came out and they gave their stories concerning finding their Ethnic Identity. I was in the Multiracial Group, which was a new addition this year to their conference. We were divided up (don’t think it was segregation) into Ethnic Groups to discuss, safely and without the pressure or fear of others misunderstanding us, our Ethnic struggles. Though our group was many different ethnicities compacted into single individuals, there was still so much that we all had in common. Needless to say, it was good to discuss multiracial issues as a group, and then to come together with the larger collective to discuss issues that affected all of us. There was also some spoken word poetry that allowed students to explore their ethnic identity

The following week consisted of a camping trip with Our Kids First out in Livermore, California at the Del Valle Camping Grounds. I got to know a lot of the people in the program better-the kids, leaders, program directors- and I even got to know some of the parents. On Tuesday night, I built a bonfire for several of the students and they liked it a lot (though in a beginning it was a little too good, and people couldn’t sit as close as they wanted because it was starting to make them sweat). I can’t even begin to tell you how awesome the people at the church are. At the camping trip, they barbequed and barbequed a lot. There’s a Hawaiian gentleman, Brother Allan, who cooks like a pro. He made Teriyaki BBQ and told me: “Matt, you’ve got to eat like a Hawaiian. We don’t eat until we’re full, we eat until we’re tired.” For me, that looked like 6 large pieces of chicken thighs and legs. I went to bed like 15 minutes afterward. They got rumour that I could cook, so several of them have been scheduling meals for our group in which I’ll cook BBQ or Fajitas for them. I’m trying my best to not let the rumours down.

Also this week, we went to the Tenderloin. It is the most densely populated area of San Francisco. I was given a map that highlighted the district, which is most notable for it's appearance in "The Pursuit of Happyness" starring Will Smith, where Smith's character takes his son to Glide Memorial, a homeless shelter on Ellis street inside of San Francisco's roughest district. On the back of the map I read about the history of the district and the history of it's name. Here is a description of the Tenderloin:

"The Tenderloin is a 35-block section of San Francisco where over 10,000 homeless men, women, and children live, making it 300 times more crowded than the rest of San Francisco. The name "tenderloin", comes from an earlier period in the history of this community when police officers were paid more to patrol these tougher streets, thus allowing them to buy better cuts of meat."

Needless to say, it’s a pretty difficult place. I cannot go into detail about it right now, because I’m lacking the time. However, in closing I’d like to share a few things with you.

1.) A part of the project I am writing for my independent study.

2.) Prayer Updates for Our Group

3.) Personal Prayer Updates for my Family.

Here is a part of the piece I am writing for my independent study which is tentatively titled “Broke in the Bay: The Plight of the Poor in California’s Coastal Metropolitan” (it’s unedited so give me a few breaks because I haven’t had time to read over it and correct little mistakes).

Here is Hard

My friend Liz Thrasher recently told me that the school districts in the Bay Area banned Red Hot Cheetos and Sodas from being sold at public schools because the abundant consumption of these products among children was sky rocketing through the roof and it was starting to rapidly increase the malnutrition of the school district's students. Apparently, every morning, children were waking up to a bag of Red Hot Cheetos and a can of soda for a breakfast, not the typical bacon, eggs, and cereal most might imagine. As you can imagine, this is extremely unhealthy. A lot of the liquor and grocery stores in the Bay Area, where kids often frequent with the snack money their parents give them, don't really have produce on display. Instead, in those produce displays where they would mist their vegtables or fruits, the water pumps are shut off and elaborate displays of chips and sodas are laid out, much like if they were produce. A boy living in West Oakland would probably have to look pretty hard to find some healthy options; that, or cough up some cash and take a city train to a healthier community across the internstate, like Piedmont, just to get a proper display of fresh fruits and vegtables.

Today while I was walking up to the computer lab to write this, I saw several of the children I work with at the church hanging out in the stairwell that leads to the computer lab. What were they eating? You guessed it-Red Hot Cheetos. And this was immediately after they had eaten several slices of San Franciscan Pizza for lunch. As I thought about this, I began thinking of this picture, Bay Area children eating Red Hot Cheetos and guzzling carbonated colas, as very similar to the American outlook on the rest of the world. And so I'm telling you all about what Liz told me to say this:

Here is hard.

It's not impossible, which could be described as living on a dollar a day, but it is extremely hard when the system of America is working against you, making life seemingly impossible. You would find impossible somewhere in the 2/3 world-countries consumed, most likely, by two extremes-poverty and greed. In fact, most Americans probably wouldn't even imagine that some people live anywhere near extreme poverty here in America. The problem we don't see this is the same reason those kids wouldn't think of eating fruits and vegetables- they're getting everything they want. All they want is cheetos, and so they start to forget that their bodies need more than spicy cheese puffs and caffiene fuel in aluminum cans. Americans hardly see the problem of poverty because our affluence is blinding us just like these cheetos. The materialism in America feeds us so much of what we want, even the middle classes, that we hardly remember the things we need. At San Francisco Christian Center, the church's Our Kids First program, makes a point to teach these kids about healthy meals by serving them extremely high quality meals during lunch, consisting of a healthy entree, fresh fruits, and crisp vegetables. If the materialistic American were to actually see the reality of poverty in America and process it, they would have to be given no choice but to trade in their diet of materialism-their red hot cheetos-and subsequent their appetites for fruits and vegetables, the crippling reality of poverty. In a very real sense, Americans are missing out on their brothers and sisters when they do not know what poverty is.

Again, here is Hard. It's not impossible, but it's extremely hard when the system is broken.

The reality for many Americans is not too far from the poverty of the 2/3 world, with Welfare only providing a person to live off of $21 a week. Larry James, CEO of Central Dallas Ministries, reminded people on his blog of the breakdown of Welfare- $21 a week, $3 a day, and $1 per meal. The other day, I was talking with my friend Richard Allen who is a sociology student at Chico State in California who told me that when welfare was initiated during the Great Depression, under President Roosevelt, that it's design was established to feed a family of three. On three dollars a day, with a wife and a child, you can guarantee that if you live in San Francisco, you'll be broke in the Bay. Minimum wage in America isn't that big of a help either. For the average American working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, the income rounds up to $10,700 a year for a family in America. Richard said the only thing wrong with that is that National Poverty is set at $10,100 only leaving the federal minimum wage-earning American just $600 out of Poverty. According to the US Census Bureau, the city of San Francisco has 12.2% of the population living in Poverty. According to Todd Mattigan, a worker with Sacred Heart Community Service in San Jose, the entire Bay Area of California has 26 billionaire's and over 26,000 Millionaires. Ever since the dot.com era erupted in the late 90s and early 2000s, the wealthy have gotten wealthier, but unfortunately the poor are still poor. And minimum wage is not helping people here either. In California, where I've seen minimum wage signs posted anywhere between $8.00/hr and $9.15/hr, you'd think that anyone who got a job could at least provide for themselves and make a living. Talk to Jerry Longoria, a member of the SEIU, a banking Union in San Francisco, who makes $10.75/hr. He lives at the Hotel Potter, one of many 1920s built Hotels that have since been renovated into affordable housing (primarily SRO, single room occupancies), in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. He's been living in an SRO for over 10 years now and in an interview from the Documentary "Waging a Living" aired on PBS in 2006, if Jerry misses one day of work, he won't be able to pay his bills and he'll be evicted out onto the streets, a place he use to be very familiar with.

But you wouldn't see that just looking out of your window, driving down the street. You'd really have to go out of your way to see it enough to process it. You’d have to put down those Cheetos and start trying the fruits and vegetables.

Alright, now how you can pray for our group:

Well, the children we work with are not always compliant with all of the students volunteering their time so please pray for the relationships between the students on the project with me, as well as the children. As well, pray for the neighborhood we live in. Many of the children live not too far from here, but there also a number of sexual predators that are a threat to the students’ ability to go outside and play. There are signs everywhere around our side of town that list the most notable sexual predators in the community, and one of them lives right across the street from us and another lives right around the block. This not only makes the children uncomfortable, but the girls who are on the project here with me in San Francisco. And too, they are not invisible to the community. At one of the parks we take the kids to called Alice Charmers Park (surprisingly, the only safe park since it is fenced in), there is a red mustang that always drives by and stares at the children. So again, the threat of a sexual predator in the community is no joke.

Too, pray for our relationships with the church as we are always wondering how we can bless them. The question arises for us, “How do we leave something that’s lasting?” In just three weeks, we’ll be done with the project and perhaps this will hurt some of the kids. So what can we do that will have a long term effect. This is something that sits on many of our minds.

Now, how you can pray for me:

Wednesday Night was difficult. I found out that my mother was in the Hospital while we were having a night to host all of our Sponsors in the Bay Area at Fruitvale Presbyterian in Oakland. I’d prefer not to go into details right now, but please pray for my mother. It is pretty difficult on my family right now and has been pretty difficult on me. I am wishing very much to be home right now with my family because of her condition.

Too, pray for the man I met outside when I was making the phone call. His name is Jacob or David, I’m not entirely sure because he introduced himself to me twice and gave me a different name each time. But he was a crack addict who had the shakes in a bad way and he was fluttering like crazy. It was as if he had bugs crawling all inside of his clothes. He also had a pit-bull with him and he asked me if I knew why he had it. I said, “Protection?” He affirmed my response and said some kid kicked him in the head with a steel-toe boot the other day. He seemed pretty humiliated and vengeful toward that kid. He was cursing a lot while telling me his story, and all in all it really broke my heart. The following afternoon when I went to the Tenderloin, I almost started crying. To most people, crying isn’t that significant, but it’s been years since I’ve really cried and the other day I almost broke down. However, the fear of being vulnerable in the Tenderloin and not being in the comfort of my own home was a big hindrance for me. So pray for me in that way, but pray also for Jacob or David or whoever he was-the man addicted to crack whose best friend was a pit-bull. I’ve learned from my own family that the worst thing about living in poverty is being destitute of relationships-the very thing God created us for. People in the inner city never go hungry if they don’t want to. I know that because several homeless people have told me that in the past few weeks. The worst part about it is not knowing anybody, and not being known. So pray for this man I met, and pray for the homeless in the world.

That’s all for now. Peace and Blessing to all of you and thank you for your support!

"The Bay Area and Back Down..."

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 19:46:45 GMT

Well I'm in "The City" now. That's what they call San Francisco. I'm working in the BayArea, but my placement site is in San Francisco.

The church we're working at reminds me of Impact Church of Christ in Houston, TX. The weather does not. In fact, the weather here makes me feel like I'm in England, which is quite nice. There is fog in this city all day long and the temperatures here (get this) are typically in the 60s and low 70s.The only difference between here and working at Impact Church of Christ is that I actually live on Church Property (in one of the homes they own in the neighborhood) and we've all committed to living on $20 a week. 15 for Food, and 5 for laundry. That's $20 for five days (not seven), and when you break that down... it's one dollar a meal. That's actually the amount of money that welfare breaks down to. So I guess in a lot of ways, you could say we've committed to living on Welfare. $1 a meal... I think that should probably go up. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I think that. Anyways, more to write later.

Everyday I take notes in a little notebook about the city, statistics I hear, etc... and I'm actually compiling all of this information for a guided study I'm doing. It's probably going to be several pages, probably somewhere between 50-100 pages I would imagine and the final edited copy won't be available to read until mid semester (though my prof will get a more bland, direct version of it), but if you want a copy, please let me know and I'll make note of it and mail you a copy.

If you want to come visit me out here, let me know... July 15th is visitors day. It'll be in Oakland, I believe. Although I could be wrong. I'll get you more details next week.

Also, if you want to send me mail:

Matt Worthington
66 Oliver St.
San Francisco, CA 94112

So yeah. I'm gonna go now. I'll post more later. My Internet time is limited.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 04:58:30 GMT

    It is quiet here in my room. I feel as though they are filming me, and in the background Wilco's "On and On and On" is playing in the background. If you've never heard that song, you should. It's pretty fantastic.

    In five and a half hours, I'll probably be waking up and gathering my things. Taking a shower, brushing my teeth, and probably shaving right before I am picked up by Mark Lewis and then off to the Abilene Regional Airport, on my way to Dallas and then finally off to Oakland, California to live in the Bay Area for six weeks among the Urban Poor in South City-San Francisco. To be honest, I don't much about the place or the program. And I'm fine with that, it's kind of a new thing. I mean I know a few details, but not many since I got switched into the program about a month and half before today. Brent and Clarke are in India now, and I'm going to miss sharing this experience with them, but I trust God is going to work well in the world through all three of us. I'm hoping these trips will give us a little bit more direction in the area of "what to do with your life". Speaking of which, Dustin, make sure not to lose the plan for my life that I left at your house. Put it in a drawer or something.

    I'm beginning to think that when I grow up, I'll be a Christian. I'll probably live among the down-trodden and beat up. I feel like that sometimes when I'm laying in bed and thinking, or lying on my roof as the clouds stroll over me and a west-texas wind pulls over my chest. Man, that just kills me. I grew up poor for a good portion of my life. It went like this: I use to be in this middle class family, a lot of stuff was covered up in my family, it started to uncover, Dad left and took money, and then I was poor for the rest of that time until I worked my first internship. That was the first time I actually had a substantial amount of money to where I wasn't having to borrow from other people. But I lived without money and worked to pay my family's bills along with my brother Greg for like 5-6 years. Living with the poor would be really hard because it would remind of times that I was young and afraid, very unsure where God was leading me. For most of the time, I didn't know who God was or what he would do with my life, I just sat laid in my mother's room and I was very afraid. But her room was the only place I could hide from a lot of that junk. So yeah, talk about irony. You grow up being poor, thinking that God would take you out of these circumstances. Then you go to college, thinking you'll be this guy who... Well, I don't know... "gets over" being poor. But then God keeps bringing you back there, even if you're not the one who's poor. But he just keeps bringing you back to the people you know and the people who know you. For me, that's the poor. And not just financially, but in a lot of ways. That's why I like Jesus so much.

Five hours now...

    Speaking of Jesus, here's a quote from Dr. Beck that reminds me of how I feel about Christianity sometimes,

    "Maybe there is a God. Maybe there isn't. Round and round it goes in my
head. But every time I think of Jesus eating with sinners...I say,
screw it, I'm living my life like that guy."

    I can't even imagine what it was like to be Jesus. All I know is that guy must've hurt a lot, and I think that's why he identified with the poor a lot, because most of the time people who are poor cannot help but to be reminded of life's trouble. It's like that feeling the psalmist gets in Psalm 88 when he writes, "the darkness is my closest friend."

    I miss my family around this time. I don't get to see them much, but I miss them. My mom is such a good person. And my brothers are some of the best people a guy could have. I can't believe they've done what they've done for me. I only hope I can do the same for them, ya know? And Giselle, she's the best little girl ever. She's so sweet. Last weekend, she wanted to watch a video of me because she missed me, so when they put it on she started hugging the TV. And Tiana, I don't see her much, but I hope I will one day. I have an artset and a journal that I bought for her from Paris. And I'll never open it or give it to anyone except for her. I just haven't got a chance to see her in years, so I've never given it to her. She's an extremely talented little girl, with art skills like you wouldn't believe. She's just had a bad draw of cards, and so life is trying to push her off track. I hope it's not too bad. And if it is, then I hope one day I can give her the artset I bought her from Paris, and that she'll be reminded of the little artist that she was when she was a young girl, and just how talented she really is. My Tiana. My Family. They're so good.

    So this is what I do before I go to live somewhere for a considerable amount of time, I start to get the feeling like I'm dying. And then I reminisce on the good life God has given me. I guess this is a good thing, because in reality I'm probably not anywhere near to dying, but the whole reflection thing always reminds me of the good people in my life. Brian Holland, I ate with him tonight. Great guy. Brent Hines and Clarke Goodman, they're in India. My grandparents, they're in El Paso. My cousins, who have it hard but they're making it. Daniel Townsend, Luke Baty, Katie Ramirez, Matt Hoffman, Derran Halbert. Sarah Newton, Jessica Chisholm, David Chisholm, Shelby Coates, and all the other Hip Hop Types. Daniel Paul, Angie, Deanna. Kenny, Byron, Nic Acosta, Lance, Katie Merck, Lara Morgan, Brother Bear, Kristin Wood, Kelly Dennis. Then there's the solid High School peoples I keep in touch with: Marina Corona, Sam McDonald, Casey Friday, Charli Dominguez. Dang... I could keep going too. There's a million people who have meant a great deal to me. I haven't even gone over people who have been like mentors to me, or the different professors who have been a huge influence. And only God can account for the people on the street, whom I never meet, but sometimes they do something or stare at me in a certain way that only they could, and I feel God moving inside of my eyes.

    Life hurts, but man it hurts so good. Well, I'm off to be with the poor. See you soon.

Crying Poetically

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 06:25:37 GMT

    I was sitting in Chili's the other night and I almost started crying.

    It would've been quite a spectacle because for the past few years, it's been nearly impossible for me to express myself in tears. In fact, sometimes I envy the prophets or people like David because no matter how terrible their lives may get, many times there are accounts of them crying to God. You get the picture that after being seduced by the lust of seeing a woman naked, having her in his bed, impregnating her, trying to cover up his mistakes by inviting her husband home, and finally murdering him, that the "man after God's own heart" is shivering like a diabetic whose blood sugar is too low for his own good. He is in a hot room on his knees as they grind against a sand-soiled stone pinching a cloth of ash that is barely covering his naked body. There he is, sweating profusely from how chill his bones have become for the deeds that he has done. His brow is sore from tension and his hair has started to thicken into little clumps like tubes of baby asparagus as if he hasn't cleaned it in days. His spine is progressively distorting and discs are beginning to slip from his repeated bouts of fetal shaped prayers. He is terribly miserable, yet he is crying.

    In Poetics, Aristotle argues that the ability to express one's self is by far the most valuable trait a person can have. He says that truth is found in the human experience, in the here and now, and that if we deny ourselves the experience, we are denying truth. And it is precisely that reason, he says, that tragedies are better than comedies. Because the potential to cry, to express yourself in tears, is the greatest with tragedies.

    I almost had that at Chili's the other night after I had eaten some cajun chicken pasta, sitting across our elevated booth from Dustin and Brent. Don't get me wrong, though, crying is not the only way to express yourself, but it's the way I've desired to for a very long time. Let me tell you why I wanted to cry...

    When I was younger, long after my father had left our crumbling home on Autumn Shade for the better parts of the Alamo City and then later on to the Salt Flats and Elk Hunting trips in northwestern Utah, I was extremely poor. I remember that my family couldn't even afford the value meals for 6 people while ordering at McDonald's or even Taco Bell. To save money, we would buy packs of kool-aid or get the 3-Litre H-E-B brand Cola that cost 99cents, and then we would only order food items off the 99 cent menu. For 6 people, we would prolly end up spending somewhere around $15 for an entire meal to feed the family. It was unhealthy, it was not always the best tasting, but it's what we had and I've never been ungrateful for that. I've always been grateful. That hit me the other day too (a couple of days after I almost cried at Chili's in fact), when Anthony Williams asked me why I was always smiling. He said he wondered if it was real. He said, "You got something your grateful? You always look grateful."

    Now regardless of whether I actually look grateful, I sure do feel grateful a lot. At Chili's I felt grateful, because after eating there more times than I can remember, it finally hit me that my family used to eat an entire meal for 6, all for the price of one meal at Chili's. I remember not even dreaming or considering to eat at Chili's. One of my friends families came to San Antonio once, and her parents took us to the Hard Rock Cafe' and I felt like I was eating at places my family would never actually be able to get a table at, much less order an appetizer or a coke. In fact, I almost felt guilty afterwards.

    Regardless of all those things that were running in my mind: memories of what it was like being younger and poor, the thought of growing up, the guilt from eating at Chili's so much (even though I've never eaten alone)... I just couldn't cry. I told Brent that I might have, and you could tell that he kind of got weirded out. But it ended up with just another set of dry eyelashes, unwashed by my tears for yet another year.

    And not only was I hurting for that reason, but I was also hurting after watching Training Day with Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke. I was reminded tonight of how wounded the world we live in happens to be. It's just a movie to some, but I've actually been in homes like that and watching it made me remember how heavy some of those places can weigh on your mind. And I think about homes I've been to like that, that are completely outside of my own experience. Here is a piece I wrote about a little girl named "Imagine Unique" who lived in a place quite like what I saw in the movie:

    Tonight, I went to a place I hadn’t visited in nearly 2 years and it struck a deep nerve inside of me. As I struggled to make the best of space in the Colonial Hills apartment complex, I came across several children from various family backgrounds, but in particular I met an 8 month old African-American little girl named “Imagine Unique”. As beautiful as she and her name was, I couldn’t get over the fact that the pajamas she wore were simple and a bit rough, not as comforting and soft as the name that graced her birth certificate. She’s quite expressionless. An unbeatable poker face if you ask me. While I held her tonight and made an excited “wow” face at her with my mouth and eyes, she leaned forward with a look as honest and expressionless as 8 months allowed her and she kissed me softly, right on my cheek. I responded immediately with a warmer embrace than I had given prior to her infantile peck on my cheek. As I reminisced on my own previous tastes of poverty and misfortune, I recalled being much older than 8 months and wanting to be held or wanting to kiss someone just because I needed the intimacy and honesty of someone who cared. Honestly, I wanted to know that someone cared. And the more that I thought about it, I wondered if at 8 months old, Imagine Unique wanted someone to care about her. After all, I didn’t know her situation, I just knew she wanted to be held a little closer by someone who cared. Children in poverty want that. I wanted that. The notice of someone who cares, especially someone who has weathered the same pains, is like a rush of warm water against a body that has been chilled and rubbed in lakes of icy mud. That notice… That notice can breathe life into someone like nothing else ever could."

    It's been two years since I've seen Imagine Unique, but I know she is out there. I just don't know what her life is like now. My hope is that somehow it's gotten better.

    I wish I wasn't impatient with God about things all of the time. Sometimes I just wish I understood more of what was going on in the world, and I wish my mind didn't sometimes feel clouded and overwhelmed by so much swirling overhead on our tiny little planet. Like the lady who "couldn’t get help in an emergency room at an inner city hospital in LA.
So she called 911 and was rejected. People around her saw her
struggling, and no one did anything. She died waiting for help." (www.preachermike.com, for further reading check www.abcnews.com) What is that? Or what about...

    Immigration.
    Aids.
    War.
    Terrorism.
    Torturing.
    Bombings.
    Rape.
    Divorce.
    Mental Abuse.
    Pollution.
    Self-Destruction.
    Poor Health Care.
    Poor Wages Paid to Workers.
    Greed.
    Murder.
    Political Corruption.
    The Prostitution of Religion.
    Sex-Trade.
    On.
    And.
    On.
    And.
    On.

    Even in the little things, like why a relationship didn't work out the way you had planned or an uncle gets sick, or a beloved pet dies, or you have to give up an old pair of your favourite shoes.

    So many questions. Oft I hear Tupac in my mind asking, "I wonder when the world stopped caring last night." And over and over again, without the answers, I just keep looking around at the people and the buildings and homes that house them. And as I try really hard to express myself in tears, all I keep echoing is the words of Oscar Romero,

    "Beloved young people... be a better world."

I'm going to bed. I've got Hip Hop in the morning at the Civic Center.