Always in Crisis

It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in something. There are no shortcuts.  Just 10,000 hours of practice.  Poor people can’t do this. Taken from Outliers by Malcolm GladwellIn his book Outliers (which I’ve quoted from before), Malcolm Gladwell does a great job of debunking the myth of the “self-made man.”  Using popular examples of wildly successful people he demonstrates, through their stories, how much help each of these successes received from the community at large.  Part of Mr. Gladwell’s point is that no one can “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”  We are all standing on the shoulders of those that went before us and we all avail ourselves of public goods (roads, education, sewer systems, etc) that help us to get along. Mr. Gladwell, in his quote above, is not trying to disparage poor people. Rather he is trying to make (the rather obvious) point that if you are spending all of your time simply surviving you do not have any time left over to put in hours of practice to become an expert. Many people from the middle or upper class that are brave enough to plunge into significant relationships with those living on the edge are quickly discouraged or become irreversibly jaded because they are exposed to crisis after crisis encountered by their generationally poor counterparts.  Part of these crises are conditional.  If you are operating paycheck to paycheck and depend on your car for your living and if that car breaks down and requires a $500 repair that just isn’t possible for you. And if you lose your job because your car isn’t working then you quickly lose your home which causes a whole other chain of crises.  Hard working people who are living close to the edge often have to live in a state of constant crisis.  Parents who are working full time and raising children train their children how to survive in this setting. Middle class parents teach their children to plan ahead and think about tomorrow and next year and how their performance today will affect their ability to get into college.  Children of generational poverty are being told, “let’s just get through today” in response to their questions about what might happen next week or next month.  As a result we are quickly trained in poverty to focus on the moment.  That’s how we survive. Because in the middle or wealth class one has the luxury of planning on everything going right. But when you live on the knife’s edge all the time you expect things to go wrong because they so often do.  And when things go wrong it’s hard not to try and just become numb because so much of what happens is out of your control. Recently a man attended church at Parker Lane.  It was the first time he had stepped inside our church.  He is living in an impossible situation with three family units sharing one two bedroom apartment.  None of the families are entirely healthy. There was a conflict at home and instead of getting caught, once again, in a cycle of violence this man left the house wandering the neighborhood and cursing up a storm venting his frustration at God and the world.  He wandered by the church and someone invited him in.  Shocked at the invitation he followed the person up the hill to the church.  When he arrived he stayed and after worship came to the pastor’s office in tears grateful that God spoke so clearly to him in the midst of his despair.  What he did that day was nothing short of miraculous -- breaking the cycle of violence -- choosing to leave his house to wander the streets and then actually accepting an invitation to a house of worship. God is faithful to meet us when we are in despair.  The question is -- are we as church willing to step into messy situations and relationships to let God transform us and our community bringing reconciliation and wholeness?Tomorrow that man might make a different decision.  Rest assured he will have to make a decision everyday about how he is going to live his life even as he faces day to day challenges.  If you want to find out more about how Parker Lane is helping our neighbors meet these challenges you can read more at parkerlane.org If you’d like to support the work of the church you can donate on line at that same website.