Category: A Contemplative Life

Soon after we moved into the city, someone asked Maile, “Do you feel safe walking around the city?”

Maile wasn’t sure what the person meant. “Do you mean at night?”

“No,” the person pressed. “Just during the day. Anytime. Don’t you feel scared?”

* * * * *

It’s late at night and through our bedroom window I can hear the occasional car pass by on James Street. When we first moved into our small city five years ago, the passing traffic kept us awake. It took me at least a week before the sounds of cars and people walking the sidewalk and the occasional ambulance didn’t keep me awake long into the night.

We love it here in Lancaster. Our kids love it. Our older two walk downtown to meet friends or sit in coffee shops. Mai walks the younger kids to parks and occasionally museums. Three of our oldest four walk to school, and Sammy, the only one who still has one of us accompanying him, begs to walk by himself.

Our neighbors take our packages into their house for safekeeping when we’re away on vacation (even when we forget to ask them to), or water our plants when we’re not around, or shovel the snow off our front sidewalk if I haven’t yet gotten around to it. We look out for each other.

So, it’s strange to me when the first thing nearly everyone asks when they find out we live in the city of Lancaster, population 60,000, isn’t, “What’s your favorite restaurant?” (Luca or Himalayan) or “Where do you volunteer?” (we’re a little lost with that right now) or “Can you see the fireworks from your house?” (Yes), but whether or not we feel safe.

“Do you walk around town by yourself?”

“Are you okay letting your kids walk a mile to school?”

“What about crime—do you ever feel that you’re in danger?”

* * * * *

“…we are tempted constantly to grab a little bit of power that the world around us offers…But as we dare to be baptized in powerlessness, always moving toward the poor who do not have such power, we are plunged right into the heart of God’s endless mercy.”

Henri Nouwen

* * * * *

Normally, I quickly try to assuage people’s concern over the safety of living in the city, and for the most part I believe my own lines.

For every questionable interaction we’ve had, there have been a thousand positive ones, I say.

People look out for each other, I say.

People are, generally, good to each other, I say.

But I wonder sometimes if I am candy-coating things. After all, last year someone shot a gun at someone else just behind our house and across the alley. This probably wouldn’t have happened if we lived in the suburbs. And we routinely see police arresting people or bringing them out of their homes—a few weeks ago, the SWAT team was tracking someone down about eight houses away from us. At one point, an unstable man across the street insisted to me that my house was his house.

So maybe the city is more dangerous.

Maybe, when people ask us why we live here…aren’t we worried…am I nervous raising children here…I shouldn’t shy away from the fact that there are inherent risks with living in the city. But the thing is, we don’t live here because it’s safer.

We’ve tried to move away from making big life decisions based on fear.

We live here because we love city life.

We live here because our kids love their city schools, their city friends, and their city school teachers.

We live here because it’s a wonderful place that offers community to us in ways we haven’t experienced before.

And, as Henri Nouwen writes, “as we dare to be baptized in powerlessness, always moving toward the poor who do not have such power, we are plunged right into the heart of God’s endless mercy.”

Living in the city and having our kids attend city schools is, in some ways, being baptized in powerlessness. Things are not always “fair.” People are not always “nice.” Most places we go, whether it be PTO meetings or the Y, we are in the minority.

We find ourselves often unable to curate our (and our kids’) experiences.

But we’ve found, in this powerlessness, that we have been plunged directly into the heart of God’s endless mercy. What a feeling! What a way to live.

* * * * *

This is not a post arguing that everyone should move into the city.

This is not a post arguing that you should send your children to public school.

This is a post about not letting fear keep you from moving into a greater sense of God’s mercy.

Make decisions that work for your family, yes, but don’t make these decisions out of fear! I have so much more to say about that, but this post is already long enough. Maybe I’ll talk about that in more depth some other time.

Do you dare to be “baptized in powerlessness”? Do you dare to join the poor who do not have power, come alongside them in some tangible way, choosing to share in their poverty?

Maybe consider answering those questions the same way you might answer this one: Would you like to experience more of God’s endless mercy?

The kitchen is uncharacteristically quiet, probably because Maile and I told the kids they didn’t have to clean up after dinner, that we would take care of it. So the two of us mill around, wiping down the large table, loading the dishwasher, hand-washing whatever won’t fit. Outside, the hot August dusk wilts the leaves on the trees. A storm rolls in.

Our conversation is meandering, comforting. We talk about the kids, the music that comes on, our plans for the week. We talk about my work, the payments we’re waiting for, the ones that should come in soon, the bills we’ll pay when they do.

“Well,” I say. “We’re getting there.”

Pause. We both stop and look at each other. Rain splashes up in the alley, a mist.

“Remind me,” I ask. “Where exactly is ‘there’?”

* * * * *

Poppy is our youngest, the baby of the family, the one who, when she wakes up and comes downstairs, is greeted with cheers and celebration. Surely this shapes a child, being the recipient of this kind of familial adoration.

I bring up Poppy because Maile and I have been changing diapers, off and on, for 16 years. Cade was born on a warm June day in Wendover, England, and I still remember changing that first diaper. I thought his fragile little legs might snap off if I wasn’t careful, and he wailed at the cold air on his new skin. Ever since then, apart from a few short gaps between Lucy and Abra, and then again between Sam and Leo, we’ve stocked diapers in the house.

Yesterday, Maile decided to try to potty-train Poppy. And, unlike our other children, it seems to have taken almost immediately, with incredible success. She tells us when she needs to go. She even goes on her own, less than 48 hours into the experiment. I am still waiting for her efforts to come back down to Earth. After five other potty-training experiences, I know these things do not always stick.

Yet, just like that, we’re finished changing diapers. It’s rather shocking, actually, this idea that something I spent 40% of my life doing is now over. Never to be done again.

I can’t say it saddens me at all, the vanished need to purchase diapers. What will we do with all the extra cash? Maybe pay for another set of braces, I guess. But it is sobering, this entering of a new era, one where everyone, for the most part, sleeps through the night, and eats on their own, and doesn’t need a diaper change.

Where do the years go?

* * * * *

There is no ‘there.’ You know that, right? There is no magical future era where everything will be easy and everyone loves you and you sell enough books or make enough money or get the raise that solves everything. The marriage will not be perfect–it might even get harder, or better, or you might come to a new understanding. But the future holds no magic pill. There is only here, now.

Sometimes I know this. Sometimes I can feel the now in my bones. Like tonight, when the air conditioner kicks on and I can hear the rain pinging on the windows, when some of the kids are playing in the basement and Lucy is working on an essay and Cade is reading and Maile is upstairs writing novel number two. The light glares off the table and I don’t care about the bank balance or the manuscript due dates or the trim in the house that needs to be replaced. I take one breath, and another, and another. I can feel the now moving in and out of my lungs, pulsing with the heartbeat in my neck. There is something tangible in this present moment, and I am more aware than usual of each passing second.

Could it be that the only ‘there’ to get to is here already? Right now? In the good and the bad, the joy and the heartache, the diaper-changing and then whatever phase arrives in its wake? The sleep-deprived nights and the lazy Saturday mornings?

What will I do with it?