Clarity on the horizon

Last night I found myself enjoying the company of a friend and classmate on the second floor balcony of her Greenlake home, right in the heart of Seattle. It overlooked a very small backyard plot and many many other homes. It was not quiet and there were no stars to be seen when darkness fell, but there was still a beauty that comes from living in such proximity to so many stories and needs.

We had gathered to dream about a photography project with street women in Seattle. Sex workers to be more precise, though we talked about the demeaning label they have come to embody; the dehumanizing way we reduce individuals to categories, strip identities and lump them together. The complexity of entering in to a needy life seemed to overwhelm the dream, yet I left invigorated.

I am reading sub-merge; Living Deep in a Shallow World; Service, Justice, and Contemplation Among the World's Poor by John Hayes for class and it is challenging me in ways reminiscent of my college days in Chicago. I am questioning my place in the city, my role with the world's poor.

Chris and I are in the last year of grad school and beginning to bring shape and clarity to the next step. Seattle always was a transition and the foggy days of moving forward in faith are giving way to some exciting definition. But as we dream about the synthesis of new passion and ministry I feel old dilemmas creeping in; the struggle we've always had with ministering in cities but longing for the mountains.

We just returned from a vacation in the mountains where our entire family came alive with hiking, biking, climbing, rafting while dreaming of all the other adventure sports we could do if money weren't an obstacle. And I will never forget the brief trip back to Colorado from Istanbul when Chris wept, pleading for God to not make him return. Ministering in the city has always been a sacrifice for him.

But when I sit on my friend's balcony I imagine being a part of a community that exists on one street. When Chris returned from Chicago last week he had stories to share of our old church engaging the people who have come to inhabit their neighborhood. I get jazzed about that...

I know there is brokenness, poverty, and needy lives everywhere: in the mountains of Colorado and in the cities of Thailand. And I know there is beauty in the stillness of a mountain sky and the skyline of a pulsing city. What I don't know, and wonder, is how God is going to synthesize our passion and need for both.