6/18-6/23

Monday it had been decided that we would have Carlos and his wife Arlene over for dinner. As with most things with Carlos this turned into a straight up Block Party. Our current family, which consists of Jeremiah, Jesse, myself (Aaron), and our close friends Julie who recently graduated and her younger brother Wes, had already grown a little since our friend Andrew was again visiting not to mention Brooke, Jesse’s girlfriend, was in town for a few days. Carlos invited his friend Tarik a new neighbor of an Egyptian upbringing who is a young architect in town and who is extremely burdened with bettering the lives of our neighbors. Carlos also invited his good friend Chudy who came here from Nigeria and who runs a body shop and is also an artist. We also called our friends Matt and Michelle (with whom I previously blogged about having our crew over for dinner a few weeks ago) who in turn brought two of their friends Dan and Grant. So in total our intimate shindig turned into a block party for 15. Fortunately Julie, Brook, and the rest of the gang pitched in and we had just enough kabobs and jasmine rice to go around which is especially incredible since our oven kept tripping the breaker almost getting the better of the ever-patient Julie. Jesse and Jeremiah beasted the grilling, Wes made the sweat tea, Andrew made pita chips and humus dip and I showed up last second from a hard days work just in time to pour drinks and chat everyone up. After the amazing dinner we sat around in the living room and talked about what it looks like to really help the people in our neighborhood. Carlos brought up the true point that often churches come to a neighborhood like this and give out hot dogs for a day and while this is helpful it doesn’t solve any of the lasting problems. The churches go home feeling better and stomachs are full for a night but no lasting change occurs. We continued talking about what real justice would look like. Sometimes people need financial help, sometimes they have been denied work because of broken social issues, sometimes they were raised with broken philosophies and need a true unconditional relationship, but in any case it is the call of the Christian to bring justice and mercy to those who are broken, needy, and hopeless. But no matter how big or lofty this metaphorical "hotdog" is it still is, at best, an 80 year solution. We really have no hope but Christ and there is the constant balance we try to strike between meeting the temporal need and addressing the eternal one. A hungry man can’t listen till his stomach is quieted. About halfway into this conversation our neighbor Harry-O Busted into the door. Harry-O is a sixty something retired, veteran, disabled, black man from two blocks down. We see him hobbling very amiably every day on his way past our house to ride the bus to get some fast food and liquor and it should be stated rather euphemistically that due to the constant cup in his hand and daily liquor trip that he is always “feeling good”. Harry-O has a dominating presence and he often attempts to speak in rhyming poetic verse. Harry-O took full advantage of his large crowd and honestly between the slang and spirits we only understand him about half the time. He asked what we were talking about and since Harry-O never really gives you much of an opportunity to answer the minute he heard the word Christian he went into a tongue in cheek almost mocking rhyme on being good Christian boys. We didn’t know how we should respond to his words but when he was done he said Jeremiah looked like John the Baptist and that he was gonna sit down and that someone else should talk. Out of context and culture we had no response as we presented him with 15 plastic smiles. He continued with the Harry-O show for a while; a joke, everyone laughs but none louder than himself, and then he gives everyone a high five… every time. He finally left and a discussion between Matt and the rest of us ensued past midnight. It was a meaningful discussion and we appreciated all of the wisdom that was conferred upon us.
Tuesday morning found most of us quietly sitting in the chill room each quietly reading and spending time with the Lord. The rest of the day was rather uneventful but we accomplished a lot of work at the warehouse and continue to embed ourselves in this neighborhood. However one exciting thing of note happened. Our good friend T.J. moved in permanently to visit us. He had come to visit us a few weeks ago and has decided to become a part of what we are doing and will be with us till he leaves for four months in Africa in September. He is an amazingly brilliant, softhearted and funny guy. Wednesday morning we had another addition to our fold as Carlos’ friend Levi has moved in with us for a month or so. He recently left Charlotte for JAX but he wanted to come plug back in with his ministries here till his fall semester starts back up. We had a few more beds to spare so we are more than glad to take on another guest at this time. Wednesday afternoon we lost Andrew again as he left to go back to Lynchburg and spend some time with his brother and sister-in-law before they moved to KC. So we said another temporary goodbye and then the rest of us (Me, Jesse, Jeremiah, Julie, and Wes) headed to our friends Nells and Naomi’s house for dinner. Nells is actually Scott’s (one of Watershed’s co-pastors) brother and I have known him since two summers ago when we he had first moved here to help his brother and Matt start Watershed. He also owns the custom countertop business where Jeremiah works (he is actually the only employee and he loves it). Nells and Naomi are just super pleasant and fun people and we had a great time having dinner and playing with their two children and their three dogs. It was a blast and they are such good parents and will be increasing this fold very soon as Naomi is great with child.
Thursday was another killer day and ended well with dinner at our friends John and Kayla’s (we say yes to all dinner offers). They are close friends of mine from Watershed and I was excited for them to get to know the rest of the crew. John has been teaching middle school at an inner city school a few blocks from us for sometime and this winter they decided that in order to truly minister to these kids they needed to move into the neighborhood so they left their cozy uptown apartment and moved into the neighborhood next to ours. Dinner was great and we talked for sometime about life, ministering to an underprivileged urban community, and we even gleaned some wisdom from their young marriage. It was a blast and they came over to check the place out after dinner. We only live about 5 blocks away and when we got home we found our friend Neal sitting on the steps. We had a great time hanging out and conversation and Mario-Kart lasted well past midnight.
Early friday morning Jeremiah and T.J. had decided to take the day off and went on a 40-mile bike trip to the Catawba river and back. The rest of us went to work but since Jared didn’t need me today I volunteered to help our friend Matt out. He is coordinating the Gala, which is to raise funds for the Optimist Park Neighborhood Association, which will help to better the lives of the people our neighborhood. Once we have a neighborhood association we will be able to speak publicly in governmental forums about our neighborhood and attain tax money for beautifying and other valuable projects in this community. Matt is Larry’s (the coppersmiths) assistant he is really good at organizing these crazy art parties and I helped him prepare all day building easels and painting surfaces as he wanted to do a dry run tonight for the event which happens next week. As we worked we talked a lot about what God is doing in this community and what he is teaching each of us. We talked quite a bit about Harry-O’s addition to our Monday party. Matt said he was doing slam poetry, which is a tradition in the African –American culture of standing and speaking in rhymed verse and then sitting down to another’s response. This is done in a very ecclesiastical format and Matt said he used to go to poetry slams and speak Paul’s words from the Bible in poetic slam format and thus sneak the truth into the mix. Matt told me he was ticked that he hasn’t practiced in a while because he would have loved to answer Harry-O back in kind instead of flashing another confused plastic smile. Just for the heck of it I had Matt write his poetic response to Harry-O and even though he didn’t think of it till he was laying in bed later that night I am praying that God will continue to let us love Harry-O and speak truth to him.

You sound about as Christian as an apple pie
Even Demons know the turh while they live the lie
Don't come pussy-footin round these wildcats like we're some dandy lions
You are trapsing through the garden of the Army of Zion
So go on whistling in the dark by the light of these sparks and that's your decision
But if you continue living on your own
You wouldn't find your way home if you were a Harry-O-Pigeon



This once again sparked the ongoing conversation of knowing when to let love be the language and when to speak the hard words we know this world needs to hear. All these discussions usually come to the same conclusion; we can’t get away from being spirit led. I helped Matt all day and at the end of the day our whole crew went as guinea pigs. It was a blast as about 30 of us painted and manipulated each other’s shadows onto canvas and went crazy with paint. Once again many amazing conversations ensued and Neal spent the night again. It was crazy to think that today at only our 1-month anniversary of moving in we only had one extra bed left out of our 8 still free!

Saturday began with some work and then Jeremiah, T.J., Julie, Wes, and I headed north to hangout and help out with a scavenger hunt at my old youth group in North Charlotte. It was a blast seeing my old kids and catching up as they are growing up. Saturday afternoon Jeremiah and I hung out with Harry-O he took us to his house to show us some bikes he had (he had seen us working on ours and wanted to be a proper neighbor). As we walked to his house he told all the neighbors we were his white bodyguards and we continued to invite everyone to our new weekly barbecues. We had a discussion about continuing to find balance in ministering and spending time in the different worlds we have been given (watershed, the neighborhood, and the art warehouse). So we decided to start having cookouts every Monday and inviting anyone we meet in the neighborhood. Relationships are the key and we are going to whatever lengths necessary to infiltrate this place. Later that day we biked downtown because there was a huge concert outdoors and we new we could watch for free and we honestly just love biking around uptown (downtown). We ran into some friends and T.J. and Jeremiah split off briefly. When we met back up they said they had seen some travelers digging food out of the trash and had bought them some food and given them our number incase they needed a place to stay. Travelers, for the uninitiated, are people who live homeless by choice and travel the world by hopping trains and hitchhiking. They are extremely street smart and see so much in such a short time. Both T.J. and Jeremiah were highly involved with a community of travelers in Lynchburg and had made a number of traveler friends even though the cast constantly changes. They called us an hour later as we sat with our bikes downtown and we met up and took them home to our place for the night. And thus we met Brendan, Acacia, and Sean. Brendan is originally from Miami, a piercer by trade, and 20. He has been traveling since he was 15 and met Acacia in San Diego in the past year. They have been traveling together since then and were married by another traveler a month ago. They both met Sean in Buffalo two months ago and the three have been together ever since. They are all three so kind and it didn’t take us long to be playing Mario-Kart and laughing like old friends. Before we went to sleep they were telling us of their stop a week ago in Philly. They had been staying in a squat (abandoned building known by travelers) in the extremely dangerous Westside of Philly when two other travelers, who they had briefly met named Conner and Echo, brutally killed another traveler. They were shaken up by it and since the police were arresting everyone in the vicinity who met the “traveler’s” description our three friends had been arrested and questioned for 6 hours. It also just so happened that fox news was getting helicopter footage of the event and Brendan showed us the actual helicopter footage of them getting arrested. This led to a sweet discussion about how precious life is and the inevitability of death. We gave Brendan and Acacia the Chill room and Sean took one of the open beds in our bedroom and thus ended a quite eventful Saturday.