What I Didn't Enjoy About Serving the Poor on Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve 2012, Calgary:  Minus 25 degrees celsius and FREE-ZING.  There went our idea of walking downtown handing out our carefully made homemade care packages for the homeless.  I was wondering what to do, as its no easy task taking two boys under the age of 6 out on the best of days.

I decided we would drive around downtown and pass out the packages through the window.  Easy, right?  It was a brilliant plan except for the fact that there was no one out on the streets.  I decided to pop into our local homeless shelter and they graciously allowed us to stand at the door while guests entered the building to give out our gifts.

The kids loved handing out our packages to the guests as they came through the door.  I was having fun as well, but this nagging thought kept going through my mind as the guests hustled along through the doors after they had received their gift.  "Does this truly make them feel special?", I thought to myself.   My answer to myself was, "Of course, how could it not!", but the more I saw our little Christmas joy as a do-good assembly line, the more dissatisfied I became.

Don't get me wrong, I know the guests were thankful.  It was wonderful to see the smiles on their faces, but I wonder how many people head down to the shelters around Christmas, do their good deed, and then leave?  I didn't want to just give and leave, yet that's exactly what we were doing: giving then leaving.  On the way back to the van, my six year old asked; "Can we go get fries now?".  Good deed done - now lets get fries.   Am I the only oddball to not be ok with this?

I wanted to give these homeless guests something greater that day.  I wanted to give them my full attention, an engaging conversation.  I wanted to give them more than a two second smile before they had to carry on through the door.  I would have loved to sit down at a table to shoot the breeze for a few minutes with even just a few of them. I wanted them to feel valued.... noticed.

It took us only fifteen minutes to give all our packages away before we left to go back to our comfy lives.

When it comes to giving to the homeless, I don't do it to be altruistic or to even teach my kids about "giving back".  I don't do it so we can be reminded about how lucky we are.  I do it because my Savior adores the poor.  I do it because I see humanity in them.  I do it because within the depths of my soul I care earnestly for their well-being.  So you can see why a quick handout isn't enough for me to give.  I long to give them more than that.  I believe they deserve more.

I pray my dissatisfaction can turn into tangible change in my own life in how I interact with the poor throughout 2013.

- Connie Jakab

Originally posted on January 7, 2013 here.

Check out Connie Jakab's blog at http://culturerebel.com where she blogs about her family's adventures in serving the less fortunate and her continued rebellion to what culture tells us.  Be sure to pick up her book, "Culture Rebel - because the world has enough desperate housewives" at http://culturerebel.com/books/.   You can find Connie on Twitter at @ConnieJakab

 

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All I Want For Christmas

I have just celebrated my 52nd Christmas. I feel like that makes me somewhat of a “Christmas Expert”. I mean, 52 years of doing Christmas correctly (and more often than not, incorrectly) should at least qualify one to have an “informed opinion”, don’t you think?

The buildup to Christmas is awesome. It is like the ultimate snowball: flying down the hill, gathering size and speed. There are lights, boxes of decorations to haul around the house, and (not one, but two) trees that require decorating. Generally around our house, the official kick-off begins with a Christmas Eve service, followed by way too much food, all in preparation for Christmas Day, which also involves way too much food.

Don’t forget the gifts – most of which have been purchased with a sense of desperation that can only be found in a man dying of thirst looking for water. With the gifts comes the built-in competitiveness that also exists around most decorated Christmas trees. The feeling that you have to “get them something” and that it has to be better than what they got you in order for you to be the official “Winner of Christmas Day”.  In 52 years, I have never even come close to winning this competition as documented in the “what were you thinking” look on my wife’s face when she opens that carefully and environmentally-negligently-wrapped box the last 25 years.

After all the “Christmas stuff” is complete, I find myself sitting on a couch thinking, “What was this really all about?” I’ve been known to read the Bible on occasion and there is little doubt we are to tell the story of the birth of Jesus and all that it entails, and there is no doubt that is something to celebrate.  I mean, think about it… the Word became flesh and dwelt among us – the incarnation. In Jesus, the eternal, all-powerful and all-knowing creator of the universe became flesh.

But why would God do such a thing? Why would he come as a baby, instead of appearing in power and majesty? Why make himself a true man and live among us, when he knew full well how terribly he would be treated? Well, John 3:16 tells us that His motive was simple: He loves us. Jesus came as an expression of God’s love. Christmas is supposed to be about Jesus. It’s really that simple.

I am as guilty as anyone else of settling for the lukewarm, commercialized version of Christmas. But as I reflect now on my 52nd Christmas, my question is this: Are we in, fact, not settling for much less? All I want for Christmas, I already received in Christ - what else could I possibly need?


- Bill Nixon,  Director of Public Education, The Mustard Seed
@billbytheminute

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Week 4 of the ADVENT-ure

Week 4 (December 23 - Fourth Sunday of Advent – Christmas, December 25)

An Advent Reflection:

The Mustard Seed in Edmonton calls a 100 year old church its home. Originally home to the congregation of Central Baptist Church, later becoming home to a country and western bar, and most recently home to the Mustard Seed, the building has seen many different types of community happen under its roof over the past 100 years.

Today we see anywhere between 200 and 400 people every day coming through our doors looking for ways to meet their needs. Perhaps they have physical need like food, shelter, warmth, or clothing. They may have emotional need too, perhaps they are lonely, lost, or hopeless and they have arrived to see if they can find the care they need for their hearts. We see all kinds of poverty here. We see physical poverty, spiritual poverty, economic poverty, bodily poverty, mental poverty, cultural poverty, political poverty, and societal poverty. Though we don’t hold a formal church service here anymore, I often say that I think we do “church” here every day, sometimes even kind of like it describes in Acts 42-47.

Advent is drawing to a conclusion this week. Tomorrow, Christmas will be here. For many of our community members, they are wrapped up so deeply in poverty, that this great occasion of celebration that we have spent the last four weeks preparing for, will simply go by unnoticed; just another day. For others will be one of the most painful days of the year; a day of feeling the pain of having no place to call home and no people to call their own.

Today we invite you to have the eyes to see people in poverty in your life. People who are experiencing some type of poverty; physical or otherwise, and invite them into a place where they can belong.

Author and advocate Chris Heuertz shares a beautiful and touching story about seeing Christ here on earth in the clip Remembering Mary and Joseph, check it out:  http://vimeo.com/33829623

An Advent Invitation: (an idea for getting active during the advent season)

Help us continue to be a place that provides a place for people to belong. By supporting the Mustard Seed, you are helping us to provide homes for people who need them, and fostering community for those seeking a place to belong. Visit our website for more information:  http://www.theseed.ca/christmas.html

Have you had an advent reflection of your own to share? Write a blog for us and submit it to: JenniferFast@theseed.ca to be posted on our blog.

Prayers for Advent:

This week please pray for all the people in our community who struggle with the holiday season. That the love of God would bring peace and comfort to them in difficult times.

Please pray that we would be able to provide a community that everyone who walks through our doors would feel appreciated and accepted in, and that the love of God would be present in our work.

Jesus you are the Prince of Peace, you are the Justice of the Father. Grant us the courage to emulate your ministry by bringing healing to all our relationships. Grant us the wisdom to know what is pleasing to your Father.

A Prayer Excerpt from Common Book of Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals:

Christ is coming. Christ has come. Christ will come again.

Psalm 104:32-37 Isaiah 10:20-27 Luke 1:26-38

Christ is coming. Christ has come. Christ will come again.

Thank you Lord that your promises are not for some distant future but are to be claimed right now, today. Teach us what we must do and say in our local communities and in our larger world to participate in your promise. Amen.

A big Merry Christmas from all of us at the Mustard Seed, check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKZcvICpzS4&feature=share

The advent season has come to a close, but follow our twitter feed (@mustardseedyeg) and our blog for more thought provoking reflections throughout the year----- Subscribe to The Mustard Seed Blog via RSS

Systems and Stories

Working in the Employment Department at The Mustard Seed necessitates walking a fine line between systems that we implement in order to help people find work, and entering into their stories.  As a society, we are very focused on systems.  It is the way that we garner information and the source upon which we base our successes and failures.  In our line of work, it is often very tempting for us to fall into the same mode of seeing things around us and only looking at how many people landed jobs or how many companies in our city have offered to work with us in a given week.  Granted, these things are important.  We need to have tangible data in order for us to see what is working and what isn’t, what needs to be jettisoned in our program and what should stay.  The great danger comes when only numbers matter.   

In my opinion, I think that having a “system only” focus keeps us safe.  Because society has laid out the “system” for us already, we, as members of that community need only to “buy in”.   It shelters us.  It protects us from leaning into discomfort.  The system tells us that everyone should have a job and that if they don’t, they are “lazy bums”.  It says that addiction only happens to people who are weak and if they would only try harder, they would have success in beating their demons.  It labels success by monetary means and failure as anything less than the ideal.  Unfortunately, when we begin to buy into this way of reasoning or adopt a way of seeing life that keeps us sheltered and protected, we do ourselves a great disservice. As our belief in success vs. failure, rich vs. poor and addict vs. clean begins to widen the gap between us and those around us, I feel that we lose touch with our own story.

           

 As humans, we are born for community.  We see it everyday in our shelter in South East Calgary.  People who have lived for a long time “on the mats” can sometimes have a problem leaving the confines of those walls, not because the beds are particularly comfortable, but because of the people that they have grown to know and love that share that space.  The “problem” with true community is that in order for it to work right, it necessitates vulnerability.  Most often that vulnerability presents itself in story.  As I have worked in the Employment Program over the past year, coaching many people to move past barriers and find sustainable, long term employment, I have realized one thing over and over again: we are ALL the same.  There is no one “better” or “worse”.   I have heard story upon story upon story, some filled with great tragedy, others filled with incredible joy and victory.  And as I have had to listen to those tales about divorce, addiction, insecurity, and pain, I have been forced to look into my own heart to deal with my divorce, my addictions, my insecurities and my pain.

            To see one of my guests beam because he has been two weeks clean and hasn’t exploded at his boss yet.  To hear about the pain of Christmas from another who won’t see his children this year.  To sit with someone as the arthritis in their knees has forced them, yet again, to leave a job that they loved.  To laugh and cry, many times in the same conversation with a man who was forced to carry a gun through jungles at the young age of 12.  These are the moments that carry weight.  And in these moments, I have realized that for whatever time, I have gained some incredible friends that have helped me see my own flaws and failures, my incredible strengths and telling successes. 

            This week, I will be leaving The Mustard Seed and even now I feel the tears welling up in my eyes as I think about those I will be leaving behind.  It is not the numbers and targets, the paperwork and the administrative tasks that I will take with me from here.  For the rest of my life, I will carry those stories in my heart.  I will see their faces etched in my memory.  And I will remember that while the system only ever gives us data, it is the stories of those around us that help us to face ourselves.

            I ask that next time you see that panhandler sitting on the corner, the drunk man stumbling into McDonalds to use the washroom, or the high powered businessman rushing past you to make a meeting, realize that there is a story behind every one of us.  It’s a story that weaves us together and perhaps in that realization, it will begin to help us help each other.

- Jay Brazeau, Employment Coach, The Mustard Seed

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