No more BostonNOW!

The BostonNOW is no more.  Today marked the final day of the less-than-stellar "news"paper.  I, for one, am ecstatic.  However, it does mean that several of our residents have been laid off, and are now looking for new jobs.  Overall, though, I'm glad to see it go.

Safety

There are times in my life when the idea of safety really gets under my skin.  I hear people talk about 'being safe,' and want to shake them into taking risks and living lives that are 'dangerous.'  I want to walk out of my house without locking the doors, I want someone to mug me [so I can fulfill some sick macho desire in my heart to beat someone up], or I want to pack it all in and take my backpack 'into the wild.'  John Eldredge might speak about these things as good desires, desires that reflect God's nature to be adventurous or, worse, to be a 'risk-taker' [which, by the way, I do NOT endorse].  Others might call these things foolish, stating pertinent reasons why it is stupid to head out into the wild blue yonder without a plan or a friend [I endorse this; it is not wise to go out into the woods, particularly in unfamiliar territory, without a buddy], or why I should lock my doors because my roommate might not share my disregard for personal belongings.  

For more than a year, my ideas about safety have been challenged in a profound way.  We often speak about the safety of our community at the Mission, referring mostly to the healthy, thought-provoking, recovery-centric environment that we strive to create for our residents.  In this context, safety takes priority; it holds precedent in a profound way.  Unlike my personal desires to disregard my own safety, I am forced to consider the safety of the Mission's Community with the utmost regard.  This is a challenging thought for me, mostly because I often hear the word 'SAFETY' with a general degree of stigma.  

In concordance with the Mission's safety, a new thought arises: in order to ensure a positive recovery experience that gives our residents the best opportunities available to succeed and thrive in their recovery, safety has to be paramount.  No longer can safety hold a stigma, but it must be given the priority it deserves - our residents must have every opportunity to beat their alcoholism or addiction.  This happens, primarily, by providing residents with a chance to share openly and honestly in groups, by doing our best to remove the threats of drugs or alcohol being used in the house, and by ensuring that our residents feel cared for at every intersection of their lives.  

Do I still think about safety with a general disdain in terms of my personal life?  Absolutely.  However, the word safety has taken on a new importance when I think about it in the context of community.

Visitors

***  I apologize profusely for the enormous length of time between my last post and now.  ***

From the front, I just need to let everyone know that the community at the Boston Rescue Mission is the most stable it has been in more than two months.  Praise be, praise be.  

The months of February and March witnessed two different visiting groups to the Mission, one from Furman University in South Carolina, and the other from Northwestern University in Minnesota.  

The group from Furman came with wide eyes and bushy tails, extremely excited to learn about ministering to men and women struggling with addiction, but also excited to see what giving one's life away looks like in a context outside of the college campus.  It was great to have this group at the Mish, particularly because two of my best friends, Thomas and Sarah Camp, were leading the trip.  It was wonderful to reunite with them and fellowship with the group, as well, and recount how God was working amongst the community at the Mission through conversations these students were able to have on a daily basis.

The group from Northwestern also arrived psyched up and ready to go.  They were led by some other close friends, Charlie and Jennifer Brooks.  (I graduated a year ahead of Jennifer's sister, Laura, at PC, and Charlie was the Summer Beach Project Director when I was a Team Leader).  These students, too, were able to have a tremendous impact on our residents, and they left the Mission having impacted our men and women deeply with the beauty of the gospel.  

Hosting these groups is a special time, since it was through my exposure to the Mission on a trip like this that I decided to move to Boston and live at the Mission in the first place.  It is always very exciting for me to spend time with these students and share my vision for the poor and homeless of the Greater Boston area, and see the ways that God works on their hearts, revealing sin, increasing their compassion, and sends them back to their respective college campuses with deeper desire to see the gospel impact their communities.  

Chaos

It's been almost a month since I wrote about brokenness, and gave some specific examples of some of the ways I've seen brokenness at the Mission.  In the past three weeks, the community at the Mission has experienced some of the most unstable time I've seen in my year and a half there.  Last November, I sent a mass e-mail to many friends and family, recounting the hardships we were facing at the Mission as we watched 9 people walk out in 11 days - many of them men with whom we were close friends.  Then, last February, I sent an e-mail again, recounting the tale of our run-in with Eddie, a street drunk [and Christian brother], who was going through a particularly rough spell, and who we had to wrestle through the rain, sleet and snow to the Emergency Room so he could get medical clearance to go to detox.  

It's been a year since that run-in with Eddie, and now I can honestly say that I've seen the clearest picture of brokenness and chaos that I've ever seen.  Since February 1st, we've watched more than 20 people leave our community.  That's more than 1 per day.  Not everyone has left under bad circumstances.  A few people have made positive transitions to other programs or to permanent housing.  However, those transitions have been few and far between.  The vast majority of folks have departed for the following reasons:

*  They got high in the house.

*  They went back to prison.

*  They got high outside of the house and disappeared.

*  They got high outside of the house and got caught.

*  They were in a relationship with another person in the house.

*  They disappeared.

*  They got arrested.

This is the reality of the chaos that we encounter every day.  However, it has been more rampant in the last few weeks than I have ever seen it.  For many, it is a hopeless endeavor; it is a battle they cannot win, nor wish to.  As one of our former clients so dismally stated, "I will probably just go back home and screw up again."  This attitude of hopelessness reveals the chaos working at the root of these men and women's lives.  

Please pray for us at the Mission, as we continue to fight to see light shine in the darkness; order restored in the chaos; hope conquering the hopelessness; and brokenness mended by the power of the gospel of Christ.  

Brokenness

It's all around us. From the homeless man I met on Sunday night who so affectionately referred to himself as "Alabama Slammer," to the guys that enter the Mish on a daily basis, to the truckload of people I get off the "T" with on my way to work who work downtown in the Financial District, there are many different pictures of brokenness that I encounter every day.
It doesn't always look the same. One man's garbage might be another's gold. My issues might not resemble the "Alabama Slammer's," but they're still issues that reveal, at the core, a need for some mending. The brokenness I most readily encounter, however, occurs at the Mish, and it embodies forms such as these:

* A knife fight that broke out and almost resulted in one of our clients being stabbed.

* A chair being thrown at a Mission staff member and cutting his head.

* A small (5'2") Hispanic guy leaping through an open door and swinging at a larger (6'2") African-American.

* A client leaving because he was in a relationship with another client.

* A man lying to Mission staff in order to get another fix.

* A man "escaping" into an alley on the way to an AA meeting, and disappearing from the group.

These are just a few real-life examples of the stark reality of the brokenness that plagues our city, and, more pertinently, our planet. These things could happen anywhere. It's not so much a question of where they happen or what they look like, but a question of how we respond when they happen.





*** I would suggest everyone reading John Mayer's latest blog entry, entitled "Under the (impression I can) influence (people around me)." It's pretty spectacular. I know Johnny is a big-time celebrity and all, but it's nice to know that some of them have brains and some self-respect. In this regard, he's a stand-up guy. www.johnmayer.com/blog ***