Kenya: Methare Valley (Where is God?)

In my last post I shared a bit about the slum of Merthare Valley in Nairobi where half a million people live. It is a place of contrasts with poverty as a main feature, and yet seasoned with beauty, redemptive smiles of children, and a thin but active economy.
When we first approached Methare Valley in our bus, all I saw was squalor. Lines of abandoned cars covered in dust, trash piled up with old men and children picking through it looking for something valuable, people standing around with seemingly nothing to do – the place looked like what depression feels like. I tried to imagine what it was like living there and my heart sank. I wondered, “Where is God?”
This question that emerges in the midst sprawling poverty, “where is God?” is exposing…of my own spiritual poverty. My immediate assumptions about Methare Valley and poverty and God had immediate implications. Although I did not overtly think this, the assumption supporting my question was that God cannot be where economic poverty is. In short, I was unwittingly admitting that I am much more beholden to the Joel Osteen style prosperity gospel than I would like to admit.

This is embarrassing since I am such a critic of this false teaching. To make the automatic assumption that economic conditions are some indicator light for the presence of God IS THE PROSPERITY GOSPEL!. Of course God is in Methare Valley. God is as much in Methare Valley as He is in my middle class neighborhood in Tennessee, the monasteries of Kentucky, Wall Street, or anywhere else. God does not play favorites and prove who is “blessed” by money.
When I looked to that which contrasted the poverty, I saw God. In the smiles of children, the the families that were still in tact, in the neighborly way people looked out for each other, in hospitable and welcoming spirit people had, in the lack of complaint for their situation – there is life in the slums. Slum churches were vibrant a live in their dark ramshackle structures. In the midst of economic poverty, life emerges, it presses through, and it is even thrives. Like flowers grow through the cracks of pavement, life presses through the pavement of poverty.
God does save people in the poverty of Methare Valley, but God also saves people in the poverty of Wall Street.  The way God saves people usually has nothing to do with how much money they have. People saved out of effects of economic poverty of Methare Valley might never get rich while people saved out of the moral poverty of Wall Street might always be rich. There is no necessary correlation.
There is a life and depth of spirituality alive and well in Methare Valley that I do not have access to in middle Tennessee. There is constant faith for provision that I simply do not consider on a day to day basis. I must purge the prosperity gospel that has a greater hold on me than I want to admit and notice that my confidence in things has so comforted me that I have replaced faith in God with the reliability of the good infrastructure.

Where is God in Methare Valley? When I was there, God was busy - very busy. And one of the things he was doing was undoing layers of internalized bad theology in me.

Kenya: Methare Valley

Methare Valley is a sprawling slum in Nairobi. Half a million people live in this slum. Narrow zig-zag pathways snake between endless ramshackle, make-shift metal housing units where ducks, chickens, and goats lap sewage water that runs in sometimes random places. Low hanging power lines link across the zig-zag pathways and water trickles in the cracks on the ground as you walk creating a constant hazard.
There are far fewer actual roads than the population density requires and the roads are poorly kept. It feels disorganized, unplanned, and uncontrolled. Forget about zoning and HOA rules. This place feels like a free for all. Poverty closes in on all sides as the slum stretches for as far as the eye can see.
The main road passing through the slum bustles with activity. Venders selling their wares and food fill the streets, some of the very engaging and some aggressive as they seek to make a day’s wage. If they can make a couple dollars, they have had a good day. One person cooked french fries over an open fire in the street. They looked pretty good, but I passed by not giving in the temptation.

The smells of the slum were a strange mix of delicious food, raw sewage, and diesel exhaust. The smells were pungent and savory all at once and there was the slight feel of carnival excitement. It appeared as though the smells were invisible to the locals, but what was not invisible to the locals was our group of white Americans walking through the slum.

 
In the midst of the immense poverty, there was beauty. The beautiful children with smiles on their faces played in the streets perhaps oblivious to the extent of their poverty.

Young women with habits looking like nuns enjoyed delicious popsicles as they walked down the street after Sunday worship.

The main focus of our visit was to go with a Made In The Streets staff member named Jackton to visit his father, who still lives in the valley. He lived in a very small place situated deep into the valley. Snaking between the puzzled together houses made it impossible for a newcomer to have any idea how anyone could know how to get there get there or how to get out. All 15 of us found a way to squeeze into the home of Jackton’s father, a space no larger than my bedroom. He told us stories of living in the valley, how he worked as a mechanic, and how his wife lived in the up country on their land in order to protect it from thieves.

Many of the children who are at Made In The Streets once lived in the valley. It is a place they call home and it is filled with a strange mix of memories for them, some good and some bad, just like the mix of smells.
It is overwhelming and humbling to walk through Methare Valley. In one sense it feels hopeless. How could there ever be enough economic input the lift this slum from the withering poverty? On the other hand, it appears that for many of the people there, the poverty is more of a problem for me than it is for them. Regardless, the experience in the valley felt like both a gift and an indictment. It forced me to understand myself outside of my most common context, to be in a place where I know that the social forces of poverty are so far beyond the power I have to change it that my own sense of power diminished to some more appropriate level. My privilege became as obvious to me as the color of my skin walking the streets.

Kenya: Teaching

Of the many roles I took on in my time in Kenya, teaching was one of the primary roles. I had two teaching situations: staff and students.
Staff Seminar. For the staff I conducted a 4 hour seminar on trauma and resilience. The purpose of this training was to help the Made in The Streets staff become more familiar with indicators of trauma as well as reinforce community processes that promote resilience in individuals. The focus on community processes was intentional because African culture is much more communal in its assumptions as opposed to individualistic.
The staff received the seminar well. I was not surprised that they were such quick studies on the material as it related to the MITS students, but what did take me off guard some was how readily they applied the material to their own lives. A decent percentage of the staff were once street children themselves. For some of the staff, along with the incredible work they do for the children comes reminders of their own difficult past. It was a great joy of mine to get to affirm what they are already doing right for the students and themselves as well as introduce them to some new and useful concepts.
Student class. I got spend several one hour class periods with the older students discussing their lives in the past, the present and the future. The goal was to get them to imagine a good and successful future, anticipating their success and potential challenges.
The students received the information well and engaged in the role play.

Teaching in a cross-cultural setting has its challenges. Even though the staff and children speak English, that does not guarantee shared meaning. One thing I learned is that English has a much more robust emotional vocabulary than does Swahili and also the tribal languages. So, when asking for emotional expression in words, what I am also asking is for the students and staff to go to their third language to find those words as I am monolingual (blush - shame). The problem is that when multi-lingual people express emotions verbally, their native tongue is most accessible to them, but the language most accessible is significantly void of emotional vocabulary. It is a challenge.

All in all, my teaching role went well and I was pleased with the outcomes. At the same time, if I get to go back and do it again, I believe I will make some changes and engage with more experiential opportunities.

Kenya: In General

The trip to Made In The Streets in Kenya was nothing short of amazing. There were so many things that happened that capturing it all at once is going to be impossible.
I am incredibly grateful to the over 3 dozen people who supported us financially and the many more who supported us in prayer. Thanks to all the people in Kenya who welcomed us, hosted us, made space for us, and shared their lives with us.
Although there are so many different ways to understand the time in Kenya, I try to clump the experiences into something I an put a name to. Here are the categories of things that happened:
1. Teaching
2. Methare Valley
3. Methare Valley (Where is God?)
4. Eastleigh
5. MITS kids
6. MITS Staff
7. Kenya Life
8. Safari
It is my hope to get the opportunity over the next few days to write on each of these topics.

Is the Bible without error?

The Bible is the most printed book in the history of the world. This will likely be the case for a long time. There are many claims about this much printed and much read Bible that are made ranging from “the Bible is perfect and without error” to “the Bible is creative writing project filled with made up stories with questionable literary value.”

I come to this conversation as a Christian, but not as an expert on ancient texts. So my claims are my own and do not rest on extensive research or scholarly reflection. They come from being a reader of the Bible, a believer, and a community of faith. I have taken college level courses studying scripture and even a course on how to read and interpret the Bible. But I come as a regular to this conversation.
I believe that the Bible has errors in it and that it is without error. And so, as you can clearly see, I have a problem on my hands as I am holding together two views of the Bible – each seemingly not allowing the other to exist.

I guess a metaphor is in order here. Any great work of art, whether the statue of David, the Mona Lisa, or any other revered work or art is in one sense perfect as it is. David is in one sense without error. And yet in another sense if you were to inspect the statue, it has errors. It has imperfections in it.

However, what we are talking about is error on two significantly different levels of observation. A nick in the statue is an error, but it does not compromise the authenticity of the statue. A scribal error or New Testament reference of the the Old Testament that is inexact does not destroy the authenticity of the Bible. The reality is that a document written by many different people over many different centuries in an array of different cultures translated into thousands of different languages is going to have some errors in it.

And here is the place where Christian fundamentalists set themselves up for serious problems. When errors in the Bible are pointed out by someone, their response has to be either denial of the error or loss of faith – or a softening of their fundamentalism.  When fundamentalists hinge faith and even salvation on the Bible being errorless at every single point on every single level, skeptics listen and follow the fundamentalist rules. When a skeptic follows the fundamentalist rules of the  Bible, there is no compelling reason for skeptics to part with their skepticism. There are what appear to be errors.

And when that is the focus of the conversation, it is easy to bring that conversation to a close. If we set up an error hunt, that is just too easy. If we were to judge the Statue of David by whether there was a single flaw anywhere in it, then we would miss the beauty of the statue itself. If we set up the rules of good art as being without a single error, then we can conclude that the Statue of David is not really a statue or not really art at all. No one does this with art.

The way I understand it is that scripture is errorless in its story, not its detail. The story of a creative God who created love and freedom and wrapped it in flesh that was a refection of God and set a physical context for love and freedom to play out over a thing labeled as time is at least compelling. Then, to engage that creative expression relationally when love and freedom waned and were at risk for being eliminated, is at least beautiful. Then for this God to engage even more closely, to actually become one of the created and to live a life of freedom and love is at least intriguing. Then for that God-human, out of love and freedom, to lovingly and freely surrender to hate and oppression for the sake of demonstrating that love and freedom are more powerful than hate and oppression, allow himself to be killed is at least shocking. Then for this God-human to overturn death to show love and freedom are what last beyond the worst hate and oppression have to offer is at least inspirational. Then for that God-human to start a movement of people intended to live love and freedom in community that is both now and on the other side of death is at least hopeful.

The story is errorless regardless of whatever errors may be in it. If faith hinges on inerrancy with every little grammatical mark, then the Bible is hopeless – as is everything else in all of life. If it hinges on the story, then the Bible has much to offer humanity. I would argue, it offers a story so beautiful that it is roomy enough for truth.

Second Hand Smoke

I waited for you

To finish your cigarette

Another drag

Another orange swell 

And everything we ever dreamed of

Had to wait

I waited for you 

To cough it up

Another hack

Another lung convulsion

And everything we ever dreamed of

Had to change

I waited for you 

To catch your breath

Another bench rest 

Another thick wheeze

And everything we ever dreamed of 

Faded on the horizon 

I waited for you

To recover from chemo

Another iv

Another lethargic day

And everything we ever dreamed of

Had to happen in the next 6 months

I waited for you

To jump out of the casket

Another joke?

Another disappointment.

And everything we ever dreamed of

Had to stay buried in my heart 

Stumblefriends

We come stumbling,
No matter how planned,
Into this life
And stumble throughout
Like children not watching
Where they are going,
Like teens texting
While crossing the street,
We gaze into the future,
That fabricated gonna-be,
And we walk
And we stumble
Because we cannot see
Because we are little
Because walking lessons
Were made for toddlers

We cannot avoid stumbling
But we can stumble together
We're stumblefriends -
If you friend me
I'll friend you
And we'll fall all over each other
We'll fall forward
You and me and gravity
Finding and fabricating
The most beautiful future

Father’s Day For the Rest of Us

Father’s Day doesn’t mean much to some people. Sure, everyone has a father, but there are lots and lots of people who do not have a good relationship with him. So for so many people, what we have here is a day to celebrate a man who has done little worthy of celebration.

Some people have fathers who they have never met. Others have fathers who ditched out when the going got rough. Some have fathers who traded in their mother in efforts to solve some sort of mid-life crisis. Some have fathers who abused, neglected, and otherwise mistreated them. Some have fathers who they had to parent in order to survive. Some had alcoholic, drug-addicted, workaholic, narcissistic, etc fathers who invested their energy into anything else but their own child. Yes, there are many ways fathers have found to let their children down.

So, for those of us who have a good relationship with our father, today is a good day, but for the rest of us, today is something else. It can feel like Valentine’s Day for single people, Christmas for an atheist, or Thanksgiving Days in America for recent immigrants – that’s a nice holiday if it applies to you, but it does not apply to me. 

So, what does Father’s Day mean for the person whose father has done little or nothing to deserve a day of celebration?

Here are a few ideas for how to redeem Father’s Day.

Celebrate your “back up dad.” A back up dad is a man who was not your father, but was a good man who invested something into your life. He is a good man who had a little extra time for you. Maybe he is a neighbor, an uncle, a man at your place of worship, a coach, or a teacher. He may or may not have known your father did not meet up to your needs, but it did not matter – he took a piece of himself and gave it to you. Go tell him thanks and tell him why it meant something to you.

Celebrate a father. There are a lot of good fathers out there who go about being awesome and never seek out or even expect praise for the awesomeness. At the same time, it does not mean that a genuine expression of appreciation would be meaningless. In fact, he might not even know how much it would mean to him to have someone tell him how great he is. He may not be your father or your “back up day,” but he is a father who is making a difference in the life of his children. Give him some kudos and make his day.

Forgive your father. Many people whose fathers were not there for them have already grappled with this one, but many have not. For many, there is a lingering, simmering, smoldering hatred for their father that is alive not too far under the surface. They try to manage it, but it is toxic. It is hoped that this festering wound could be contained and not spread to other relationships, beliefs they have about men, and their own beliefs about themselves, but in most cases even the best efforts at managing the hurt eventually fail. Plus, it takes a lot of psychological energy to manage such a bundle of unfinished business. Forgiving a father of his wrongs is the pathway to liberation for you and opens the door for reconciliation, at least on your end. Unforgiveness, though understandable, is allowing him power in your life that he does not deserve. Unforgiveness is not justice, it is unfinished business, it is a self-inflicted wound, and it has no redeeming value.

Be a great parent. Having a father who failed to be the kind of man you needed him to be has a powerful influence on a person. Sometimes the worst in a father is intergenerationally contagious. If you are a parent who had a poor relationship with your father, be aware of what you did not like about him trying to reproduce itself inside of you. Then be proactive to replace that with something far more life giving for your own children. The joy of redemption is knowing that intergenerational contagion ended with you. 

Be a “back up parent.” You do not have to look too far to find children whose father is not there for them. They are in your neighborhood, your place of worship, and your area schools. Finding ways to invest into children whose father is so important and can be very powerful. How? Be a good neighbor who knows your neighbors and their children. Volunteer to chaperone that youth trip for your place of worship or even local school. Get connected a the local YMCA. There are many ways to be a “back up parent.”

Father’s Day may be a difficult day for you, but it does not have to be meaningless. You do not have to endure it, ignore it, or dismiss it. You can redeem it. With effort and intentionality, you can still make this a happy Father’s Day for you and for someone else.

Before you become a father

Being a father has been one of the most important processes of my life. It is not the only way to be a man (Jesus was not a father and neither was the Apostle Paul), but it is a way of manhood.

When I was a boy and became a young man, I always knew I wanted to be a father, but I was also terrified of it. Would I be any good at it? Would I make the same mistakes of my own father or grandfathers? What was a good father anyway?

Now that I have been a father for over 16 years, I have a learned a few things about being a father. I have also learned enough to know that being a father does not end – ever. Once a father, always a father. I have also learned enough to know I have so much to learn about being a good father, but at the same time have learned enough about being a good-enough father.

Below are some things I have learned about being a father. It is uncertain how much these learnings could be grasped by a young man considering fatherhood (or terrified by it), so I offer these seeds of understanding that have the potential to grow in the hearts and souls of young men and become something much greater than the understanding itself.

Fatherhood is a process. It is not a one time moment of passion with a genetic contribution. It can start there, but it most certainly cannot end there. The word for that is not “father.” Instead, fatherhood is a developmental process of constant growth and change and investment. As your children grow as people, you grow as a father. The process ends not at genetic contribution (or adoption), not at high school graduation, not at the death of your child (God forbid that happens first), and not even at your own death. This process of fatherhood outlives you in the lives of your children and grandchildren.

Fatherhood is opportunity. There are many diverse pathways of  manhood, but there are some unique opportunities in being a father. The door is open to fathers to reproduce their own best qualities into the life of another. This is not accomplished by force, of course, but by being the best person you can be day and day out in the presence of your child. It also allows for ample opportunities for self-correction as well.  Fatherhood has a unique social context that can be an opportunity to influence another person to be a great person.

Fatherhood is presence. Being presence both physically and psychologically is at least half the the job of fatherhood. Fathers who are physically present, but psychologically absent or physically absent, but psychologically present create ambiguity for their children. Chronic ambiguity can be traumatic for children. Being present in a calm and safe way with your child has a powerful effect of preventing so much negative that can happen in this world.

Fatherhood is formational. Under the ever present eyes of a child, there is a constant context of accountability that requires self-confrontation in order to grow. Being in the presence of a child, your child, forces the question of your own growth and development as a person. The reality is that a father’s growth trajectory is experienced by the child as a highly influential lesson on how to be a person. It does not determine the life course of the child, but it is what the child sees most.

Fatherhood is earned. Engaging in the process of fatherhood  as a way of living creates the accumulated credibility that the label “father” is a legitimate label. We used to use the term “illegitimate child” to refer to children who were born outside of marriage. What we really had was wide spread “illegitimate fathers” who did not raise the children they helped create. It is earned by being present, being calm, being kind, being attentive, being patient, being honest, being forgiving, being forgivable. You do not have to be the best father; instead, you do have to show up and be good.

Fatherhood is exposing. Just about every flaw, imperfection, and failure you have or will ever do is exposed when being a father. This is probably terrifying to some young men and may make them run for the hills, but it is one of the great mercies of being a father. So many times when I have felt like a failure as a father, it has prompted some corrective effort. In short, fatherhood is like an early detection mechanism for poor choices and inadequacies that, left unchecked, could have become way worse and hurt a lot of people, or resulted in self-destruction.

Fatherhood is redemptive. Although fatherhood has a constant social context that exposes shortcomings, it also provides a social context for making things right. It is a context for apologies and forgiveness, for humility and clean slates – it is a context for constant redemptions little and big.

Fatherhood is vulnerable.  Being a father is a vulnerable position to be in. The responsibility is huge and the stakes are high. Your reputation and name is carried around by children who have free will. But that is the easy part. Each day a father must make the choice to let the forming and vulnerable heart of a child into his own heart or to put up walls and not let the child in. It is a vulnerable feeling to let someone into a place where they could hurt you, but it is also one of the most amazing things in life. Being vulnerable with a child is the context the child needs to grow.

Fatherhood is power. The power a father has in the life of the child is essentially impossible to calculate. What the father does is the reality in which the child lives. Father create reality! That is power. And yet power and vulnerability are two sides to the same coin. Fathers cannot not create reality for their children. The question is: what kind of reality will the father create? Even the absent father has created a reality for his child – the reality that fathers leave. The resent father who leans toward virtue creates a reality that makes it easy for his children to lean the same way.

There is so much more to fatherhood than this scratching of the surface. These a just a few things I have learned and am learning. May these seeds of understanding land and grow somewhere.

You’re Ghana Love it

I arrived back from Ghana a couple days ago, so my jetlag is just about resolved. My soul-lag, however, lingers. I love children who live half way around the world, and they love me. My soul is stretched across the map as part of me lingers in Ghana while the rest of me is back here in the states.

I had the privilege of leading a group of Lipscomb University Marriage and Family Therapy Masters students on a Mental Health Mission trip to the Touch A Life Care Facility in Kumasi, Ghana. The trip was epic. We learned so much from this venture and bonded as a team. We also developed relationships with children and adults in Ghana that are going to last a long time.

The mission was to provide some clinical assessment, inquire about important relationships in the lives of the children and to listen to their story. WOW!!! Our eyes were opened and our assumptions rattled as we got an amazing and tender look into the lives of these children. What we found was a resilience that was strong and the incredible ability to hold in tension what might seem like conflicting attachments.

I am inspired by the children and Touch A Life and the incredible staff on site. There is so much love in that place.

I am also inspired by the Lipscomb MFT students who took two weeks of their lives to invest into this mission. The two weeks’ investment resulted in a lifetime of memories.

I will be processing this trip for the next several weeks. Some of that processing will make it here to the blog.