Ordinary Visionary

Excuses come too easy for me on this side of the tracks.

Art by Nick Dewar.

We've been back in the real world now for a week. Portland ended quietly after days of walking through gardens and parks and campuses, eating well, drinking well and sharing a bit of our vacation with friends. The place feels a bit like The Grey Goose must have to Sheldon and Davy in A Severe Mercy: a thing that we hope for and dream about, a place we might one day live, a symbol, perhaps, of our commitment to life together.

There are more than twice as many Portlanders as Orlandoans, yet the city feels smaller somehow. We were able to take public transit everywhere, from Imago Dei to the Rose Gardens to the campus of Portland State University, 23Hoyt, Hawthorne, and the airport. The practicality of it was stunning; most trips through Orlando on Lynx take at least twice the normal driving time, while trips on the MAX or buses seemed to be hardly longer than what it would take to drive. There's a Zipcar network, three forms of public transit that can get you to your destination with less than a quarter mile of walking, and people know how to drive with bikes, buses, and trains in the road. The green movement there isn't something that's underground or visible only through the presence of reusable grocery bags. It's inescapable. Toilets in the PDX airport give flushers the option of whether to use just enough water for "#1" or "#2." Restaurants list the farms where their meat comes from. Rush hour looks like 2pm in Orlando. Community gardens are everywhere.

Portland provides a constant challenge to question my own excess. To think about things as small as reusing the cardboard sleeve on my latte to something as big as giving up my gas guzzling SUV (yes, I still drive one) and not owning a vehicle at all.

It's also a challenge to my role as a witness. In our week there, Vance and I interfaced with hundreds of broken people, on buses mostly, but also in parks and on sidewalks. People desperate for a friend, if only for the twenty minute ride from downtown to Hawthorne. People who love their city and desire to share it with strangers. People who live every day in the unhappiest city in the United States (according to Business Week).

In my LIFE community last night, we got into a discussion about how, as Christians, to deal with the fallout of a violent world. Some said that you do your best to avoid it, choosing places to live that are relatively safe and private schools that advertise values-based education. Others remained quiet or remarked that it's a sad world. Knowing my propensity for rhetorical flourishes and having spoken quite enough already, I remained eyes down and ran my knife over the crease in my napkin over and over.

What I wanted to say was that the most beautiful moments in my life have been the experience of redemption: the entrance into a place of darkness and brokenness with Christ, allowing his light to either shine on me or through me. I wanted to say that as Christians we are called to enter into darkness. Scandalously, Jesus calls us to love the very people we hate or fear:

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
— Matthew 5:43-48, emphasis mine

This would be one of the many portions of The Message where Peterson would stop and write, "Are you listening? Are you really listening?" And I don't, really, if I'm being honest. I live in a city where I'm as closed off from the world as I want to be; I live in my house with my husband, getting calls from true friends once a month or less. I drive my big car to my big office, say good morning to the sweet lady waiting at the bus stop, and commence another eight hours with team members I love and see five days a week. When I'm done I get back in my Explorer and drive home to start the cycle all over again.

In the words of Gustavo Gutierrez, "To be followers of Jesus requires that [we] walk with and be committed to the poor; when [we] do, [we] experience an encounter with the Lord who is simultaneously revealed and hidden in the faces of the poor."

When my brothers and sisters in the LIFE community described their Christian response to violence in the city of Orlando, they immediately referenced the poorest area, a place where I've spent weeks of my life in the living room of a dear friend's home. She is living a Christian response to violence. She doesn't run from it; she enters into it. Excuses come too easy for me on this side of the tracks.

Which brings me back to Portland. One of the scariest things about the city is also one of the most hopeful. Not that I feel presently equipped to bring much light to that place, but that I will see Jesus in the faces of my neighbors every day. That he might have opportunities every day to sculpt me more and more into his image. That I will interface with immense darkness and inescapable community on my commute, and teach my children the value of love, of life, of hope, and of creation.

Until the day we're called to move, which may be years into the future, we must seek the beauty, the quirky places, and the lonely, broken people here in Orlando. There are so many ways we can be used by Him, just on the other side of our protected spaces.

Exciting and mundane things

I'm sitting in Stumptown (Ace) after making a break for it across the Rose Parade route thinking over the last two days. What memories might be worth committing to pen a blog?

The man at the 10th and Jefferson streetcar stop telling us about the two $450 snowboarding jackets he'd won for wearing a tie-dyed shirt, how he was bringing his own chocolate soy milk to the streetcar with the best coffee in Portland across from the chic storefront coffeehouse with the worst coffee in Portland; two brown preteens in the back of an east side bus rapping freestyle to the beat pulsing from the boom box resting on their knees, jumping as their feet arched up with each would-be bass hit; the child holding an entire bag of Honey Nut Cheerios, peering quietly into the display case full of pastries he could not pronounce at Grand Central Bakery; the barista at Stumptown who poured perfect Rosettas without looking down; the three Navy sailors asking where the club scene was; the twenty-something responding that there really wasn't one.

These events are so everyday in this place, but are still somehow extraordinary from where we sit. We've descended upon Portland with our flipflops and preconceptions, expecting the thousands of cyclists, anticipating the fog, looking forward to the many unique and local shops and eateries and yet somehow are still surprised by how close our experience here lives up to Donald Miller's description.

Like New York, there are churches everywhere yet the culture remains hyper-secular. From this single vantage point I've watched people of all walks, people with brightly colored hair, grey hair, new blonde curls five months old, white people, black people, sweet dogs pulling at their leashes, a toddler with pearl earrings, women with worried glances, a girl in a green shirt dancing in the street. All of these people with one thing in common: the city they exist in every day. I wonder if we might be one of them one day, or if Anne Lamott is right when she says, "the fog lets you see what it wants you to see."

We went up into the west hills yesterday, where the houses are big and expensive and beautiful, with the Rose Test Gardens and Japanese gardens right up the road. Our bus driver echoed the sentiment of several locals, commenting on how rough the storm was yesterday, worried maybe we'd resent the city for the clouds. We assured him that where we come from the storm was minor; we rather enjoyed the sounds of the rain smacking against the window pane and the fact that water droplets make for the best rose pictures anyway.

It's only Satuday but we've already tasted the best coffee in Portland, the best dessert, the best views. This trip is a different type of adventure -- an adventure that is the everyday experience of the locals. Our exciting is their mundane. Or maybe life is always this colorful under the misty sky.

journey to the rose city

We left our home in the City Beautiful yesterday morning a little after 8. Vance gave Chester his we're-going-away-for-a-while-but-I-hope-this-will-help treat just before the doorbell rang and Dana walked in. He was visibly conflicted - the only time I've ever seen sheer panic in the eyes of a dog over so silly a choice.

Do I bark at this intruder? Do I jump up and say hi to Miss Dana, who has fed me and walked me countless times? Do I chew the delicious treat in my mouth? Do I run upstairs? Yes, I'll run upstairs to ponder this further… And chewing is overrated, swallowing whole is much more efficient. I'll do that. But first I'll snarl at mom as she attempts to steal my tasty treasure… (I was really just trying to say goodbye; oh the joys of parenthood.)

It was heartbreaking leaving the 28 pound "monk" but we were late as it was and the lovely Dana was ready to go. I finally hugged her, said "good morning," and let myself relax a little after running back in the house to say goodbye to Chester once more, sans angst.

We stopped at the curbside baggage checkin to avoid the long lines inside and I regretted it about two minutes into the man's five minute rendition of How To Construct The Dexter's Chicken Salad spiel. I should have known when he started the "where have I seen you before" act that it would end with the four word plea that he repeated over and over: I'm providing a service. Although I hate mandatory gratuity I forked over $5 so that we could get to our gate and officially be on our way to the Rose City.

Southwest Air has perfected their boarding process now so that instead of a veritable human cattle call that looks something like the line outside Best Buy the night before a video game console hits the shelves, you stand with a group of five determined by what time the previous day you remembered to check in online. Add that to the singing stewardesses and you have something really special.

On the last leg of our flight, from Kansas City to PDX, I sat down next to a soft, pale woman with stark white hair. The second I sat down, she kindly winked at me and said, "You know, we play our cards right nobody will sit next to us." Vance followed shortly behind and broke her sweet heart, and I moved to the seat she'd hoped would stay empty, trying my best to be completely invisible so she would be comfortable for the hours that followed. She mostly alternated between a new age paperback book and dreams, nodding off every ten minutes or so for a quick nap. Must have been a good book.

Ten hours and five delicious chapters of Anne Lamott's Blue Shoe later, we arrived at our gate in Portland. From there we still had at least an hour of public transit to ride before we could unlock the door to the vacation rental we hoped wouldn't be in the back alley of a strip club somewhere. (Spoiler alert: it isn't.)

As the red line took us quietly over the highway filled with rush hour traffic, we could see the majestic Mount Hood and a bit of Portland's lush landscape through the windows. Vance commented on how green it all was, as the window before us was engulfed in huge trees that have been there since long before the highways or trains were constructed.

There were four women sitting to our right, each coming from a different city and converging on Portland like a church bus unloading on Sunday morning. The voice of the only one not wearing a wedding ring provided an hour of background noise for our journey. She described her former husband, who suffered from anger management problems in the past, as "a humble man," to which her friends turned to her aghast as if she had commended Mussolini on his good manners. He was in therapy now, she said, physical therapy for a form of MS that was rapidly taking over his body.

The other women commented on the weather, and the public transit, and the adventure the "four old ladies" (their words) would have in this city.

The train slowly filled to the brim with cyclists and wandering homeless men, two dogs and two men with identical wedding rings discussing philosophy in the corner. Everyone who didn't have a suitcase seemed to be reading a book. Public transit seems to create the time and space for reading like no other daily event. I considered whether I might start taking the Lynx back home, and decided against it when the image of the man waiting at the stop on 436 every morning, punching the sky, flashed in my mind.

Our condo was more than what we had expected. Rather than being adjacent to a brothel or crack house, it's two blocks from a grocery store and a block from the streetcar line, close to art galleries, restaurants, and coffee shops. It's a studio with a modest living room, modern kitchen, and clawfoot tub in the bathroom. As soon as I stepped in I had this urge to unpack everything all at once, to move in. Once the clothes were hung and the laptop connected to the protected WiFi network, I felt my shoulders relax and my heart rate slow.

We're here.

In this place.

But we were also hungry in this place. The night begged for celebration, so I suggested a place that was described as a neighborhood gem with some of the best food in Portland, a place that would have had lines out the door if more people knew about it: 23Hoyt.

We arrived to find a restaurant in the middle of a neighborhood shopping district. From our table we watched dozens of people on bikes, people dressed more for comfort than for fashion forwardness, people carrying boxes of pizza or ice cream wrapped in housemade cones, people sipping local beer at the pub across the street, people calmly taking in the cool Wednesday evening air as they walked with their dogs and their lovers toward the homes nearby.

The menu at 23Hoyt offered some creative takes on ordinary dishes -- butter lettuce salad with ruby red grapefruit, avocado and chili oil, chilled asparagus salad with hard cooked egg and arugula, penne with sausage, arugula and chilies, scallops with mushrooms and brown butter sauce… Our waiter poked his head out several times to update us on the chef's progress, his worried posture letting on that the seared scallops were proving to be a challenge. But when the food finally landed on our table, the scallops cut like butter left out for ten minutes, and tasted better than any I've ever enjoyed at a fine restaurant. The food was beautifully but simply presented, and the restaurant comped dessert for us because of the wait, which I would hardly have noticed if not for the waiter's genuine concern. After seven layers of chocolate and Vance's roasted pound cake with sorbet, our bodies gravitated toward our downtown condo.

It's here in this place that we unwind, here that we take pictures and smell roses and drink way too many lattes. Keep an eye on this blog for updates on the mundane and exciting details of our first "braincation."