Everybody Dies, but Not Everyone Lives, by Josh

Since I came to Los Angeles I have spent a lot of time on the weekends playing Ultimate Frisbee in a park high up on a mountain under the famous Hollywood Sign. This has been a great catharsis for me to release all of my energy and work out any anger I have from the previous week. Through this activity I have also gained a lot of good friends, many of who I hang out with even off of the field. Some have even asked to come to church with me. I have also had the pleasure to have several of my roommates and old friends come to play with us. 


[A few weeks ago], I went to the field expecting the usual Saturday game. Upon arriving, I was informed that one of our friends had passed away. This information really blew me away. Our friend Tom was only 24 years old. I found out that cancer was discovered in his body less than a month ago, and now he is dead. I realize that people all over the world die every day from many different causes, but it still makes you stop to contemplate life when it happens to someone you know. A lady from First Pres. Church of Hollywood died this week in a house fire. You never really know when it could happen to you. 

Think about what you did last year, last week, yesterday, this morning. Would you change what you did if you knew that it was your last day on this earthly plane?  This reminds me of some song lyrics that I wrote last year:

If you were given a warning 

that you’ll die in the morning,

what would you do with tonight?

Would you throw a big bash?

Would you blow all your cash?

Would you try to set things right?

If you were told by a friend

That tomorrow’s the end

What would you do with today?

Would you release all your fears

After all of these years,

Or would you simply run away?

If you are not happy with your day to day life, change what you are doing. Pretend that you knew that you would die tomorrow.  How would you spend your last day? Would you want to talk with your family or friends? Would you rather spend your last living hours watching television? What is the point of not enjoying life? Many people say that they are not happy with what they are doing, but that it will all be worth it for the payoff in the end. Do the ends justify the means? Sure, you can plan for the future, but at what date in the future does the happiness begin? Lately, there have been many billboards put up around Los Angeles that proclaim that May 21, 2011 is the end of the world. This may or may not be true. I personally don’t believe it to be true, but it could be the last day for any of us. We might as well live as if it is. 

I’ll finish this blog with the story of Tom’s memorial.   A few of Tom’s closest friends organized an ultimate Frisbee extravaganza memorial. After church I got a ride to the North Hollywood Park to find games in full swing. Tom’s friends were grilling, having some drinks, laughing, and making new friends. It was estimated that over 70 people showed up throughout the day,and this wasn’t even planned until [a few days before]. It was a great day of enjoying life.  They had a box of some of Tom’s things, like dvds, books, and posters, that they wanted people to go through and take, to enjoy and think of Tom while they do. Overall it was just a great celebration of his life. I’m sure Tom would have had an incredible time if he were there. At the end of the night somebody said that we should have gatherings like this more often. I thought that the comment was very true. It shouldn’t take somebody dying, for the rest of us to really live.

An Idea

You pass it off as a small thing, but it's anything but that. 

Yeast, too, is a "small thing," but it works its way 

through a whole batch of bread dough pretty fast. 

So get rid of this "yeast." - 1 Corinthians 5:6, The Message

Last Wednesday, two speakers from Homeboy Industries visited La Casa de la Comunidad.  These men shared their lives, both past and present, and how the compassion of Homeboy helped them to step away from the patterns of gang life in East Los Angeles.  At one point in the presentation, a very poignant line from Father Gregory Boyle's book, Tattoos on the Heart, was referenced: 

New Friends from Homeboy Industries meet our neighborhood.

"The wrong idea has taken root in the world. And the idea is this: there just might be lives out there that matter less than other lives."  


Indeed.  It's not only taken root, it's produced poisonous fruit.  It's infested our daily bread.  This idea allows us to walk around dirty homeless folks sleeping outside a 7-eleven with no more than a "what-a-lazy-wretch" sneer across our face.  This idea is the seed of the notion, "this side of the tracks, that side of the tracks."  This is the idea that allows slavery, inhumane treatment of prisoners, allows us to look at people as problems, issues, statistics in a world population explosion, and not, as we all were intended to be seen: as the image of God.

One of the Homeboys spoke quite eloquently about the internal damage an idea like this causes.  He said that he had no problem with people calling him a monster, a f*!&-up, a no-good menace to society.  He believed himself to be all those things.  But call him worthy of kindness, call him useful and helpful, call him beautiful even, well, his entire body rejected it, like an allergic reaction.  He said, at first, he would become so angry with a compliment that he would retaliate and work to regain the more comfortable status of being a "low-life."    The idea manifested in our sense of self, maintaining the lie that we can lose God's affection and can't hope of winning it back.  Or, more to the truth, can't believe that we never lost it in the first place.

Dwellers, Neighbors, and friends from Oasis came out.

What if being a "Christian" was, at the very core, simply about waging war with this idea?   I looked around that evening at all the faces listening, together, in kinship.  From different backgrounds, sure, but a gathering of people responding to the gritty truth of God's desire for restoration, as poured through these two former gang members.

I've been following the blog of an incoming Dweller, Ben Adam, who will arrive this fall.  This quote is part of a larger work of his on the politics of the Resurrection, but I found myself feeling the resonance of it during the Homeboys' talk: "The Jesus movement, unlike Marxism or the Cuban Revolution, did not seek to make a poor person into a rich monarch. It was a movement that believed G-d was bringing down the powerful and raising up the powerless so that they could meet in the middle as equals."  Meeting in the middle.  It's the heart of what we're attempting here in Hollywood.   God-willing, bridges of understanding, equality, and a kinship that only God could create, can continue to be built and nurtured.

I turned and looked at our current Dwellers.  I thought about some of the ideas they are starting to share, starting to blog about.  I'll leave you to ponder them, and I pray you are blessed in the thinking:

"God has called us to be present: to love His people as much as we possibly can, despite who they are or where they come from." - Alex

"I think that we all feel deficient, not just when standing in front of God but in many of our relationships, and that we all spend far too much time working to hide these deficiencies instead of handing them completely over to the One." - Robert

"Whether or not he stays does not detract from the fact that we cared enough to keep visiting him, find him help when he asked, and will continue to work with him, no matter the outcome of rehab.  He knows we care about him." - Alayna

"I started thinking about how many people are truly involved in this process of volunteerism.  This is not a one-man show.  If I had to list everyone involved in the process, I know that it would take up pages in very small font."  - Josh

"It's also hard for me to see what good a system is if it can only help some, but not all.  I even get angry that people have to be homeless or that there's such a thing as homelessness." - Brady

"Help [homeless people] feel not invisible as they have been walked [over] by so many people ignoring them.  We are all the same in Christ." - Kyle

May God meet you in your middle today.  Thanks for reading.  - Matthew

"He knocked tyrants off their high horses, pulled victims out of the mud."
- Luke 1:52, The Message