July 2008

Dear Friends,

I’ve got about fifty great ideas right now, but after two weeks of looking for fifty great minutes to write them down, I’m surrendering to the fact that is just ain’t gonna happen this month.

Folks often tell me they appreciate that these letters are honest. Well, here’s the truth; summer in the city is no joke, and I’m up to my ears in this neighborhood right now. Between a few emerging housing crises, half a dozen summer camps, a spike in violence, and next weekend’s big Chicago trip (long story short: our entire Monday night dinner crowd is going on a kind of family vacation together), it feels like all of us here are hustling for love and justice eight days a week.

I’ll write again soon with some stories, but for now I just needed to touch base.

Thanks for being on the other end.

Your friend,

Bart

Dear Friends,

I won’t even try to describe all the ghetto details of finding a HUD apartment for a homeless, no-income family which consists of a single mother, five kids under the age of nine, and the two youngest kids’ unemployed but nonetheless nurturing father. Suffice to say that after three weeks of slogging through that kind of absurdity and ugliness, I began to understand why the mother, our friend Jaleena, tried to kill herself when her original building got condemned. Without my car, phone, and checkbook, they would still be in a shelter. Even with all that, we barely managed an awful apartment, and by the time we did most of the furniture Jaleena had left in the old place had been stolen by her former landlord.

So then, there I was last Saturday, along with our friend Kwami (the nurturing boyfriend), loading and unloading a truckload of second hand bunk beds and bureaus, wondering how long my surgically repaired ankles and arthritic hands would hold up. I could have found somebody else to do it, of course, but no one I trust enough to do it right. Strange as it sounds, moving donated furniture into a broken down family’s worn out HUD apartment is an awfully delicate job.

It wasn’t about the furniture, after all, just like it wasn’t about all the phone calls, line-waiting, sidewalk hot dogs, application fees, and driving all over town. That stuff is valuable sometimes, but it sure as hell isn’t enough to keep us here in this neighborhood on a bad day. No, the real job – the job that keeps us here – is about communicating genuine, garden-variety love to incredibly vulnerable poor people who feel quite certain that they aren’t worthy of your interest, let alone your friendship.

To do that, well, you can’t act too cheerful about giving up your Saturday. On the contrary, you have to whine about the heat and swear out loud when your thumb gets crushed between the couch and the doorjamb, like you would if you were moving your sister’s stuff. You take the beer if they offer it, and hint around if they don’t, and either way you let the guy know he’ll be helping you move some of your stuff soon enough. There’s a lot more to it than that, of course, but I can’t really explain it to you. Nobody can. That’s the problem.

These days I encounter lots of people who want to love poor people, just like Shane Claiborne or John Perkins or Dorothy Day or some other radical Jesus-follower they’ve heard of or read about. Some of them want to move to the inner-city, or to an African slum, or an Indian orphanage, or a Native American reservation. Others want to reach out right where they are. Either way, their enthusiasm for serving God’s people in need is positively thrilling to me. And yet…my first instinct is to keep them away from Jaleena and Kwami.

Perhaps it would be easier for us to welcome such people if we were running a soup kitchen or a shelter, but we have no program standing between us and our neighbors here. We have no clients, after all, only friends, and given all the differences and fears and brokenness among us, keeping those friendships genuine is a tricky business indeed. I am often amazed at the beauty of our little fellowship, but I am always aware that it must be protected.

So then, forgive me if I complain about my sore ankles and aching hands, but then won’t let anybody but Kwami help me with the furniture. It’s my job, after all, and I’m glad to have it.

Keep the Faith,

Bart

PS For those of you looking for an update, Bobbie hasn’t yet passed her truck driver’s license test, but she hasn’t given up on it either. It turns out she has four tries before she has to start all over again. Her school will keep working with her for as long that takes, but I still fear Bobbie’s opportunity may be slipping away. Honestly, between the dangers her inner demons, the toils of the learning itself, and the snares of her extended family, she’s going to need more grace than I’m used to counting on. Pray for me.

Dear Friends,

There are plenty of times that I miss running a legitimate ministry organization like Mission Year. Like when I’m breaking down my ‘office’ every night so my family can eat at the kitchen table, or hand addressing the envelopes for our donation receipts. (Don’t get me wrong; I love having to send out those receipts). Or when I’m desperately bribing Roman and his buddy with combo meals at Wendy’s to help me move yet another apartment-load of stuff for yet another family in crisis, instead of simply assigning the job to some interns. Trust me, being small time is hard on the ego.

But then there are those magical moments when being small time means you get to make things up as you go along.

A few months ago I found myself sitting in the sparsely furnished, HUD-subsidized apartment of our beloved Bobbie Williams, trying to figure out how such a tough and strong-minded woman got into such dire straights. I won’t trouble you with the details, but suffice to say that in her nearly fifty years, Bobbie has seen more than her share of bad breaks and worse men. Indeed, she feels quite certain she’s better off hungry and alone in this little place than cared for and abused in half a dozen others. Still, she knows she could do better.

On that day I visited her, while Bobbie was wearily describing her latest attempt to land a minimum-wage job at a restaurant downtown, I noticed a brochure lying on her coffee table, advertising one of those big-rig truck driving schools. “Where did you get that?” I asked casually, hoping she wasn’t back to entertaining men.

“Oh that,” she said, her voice brightening as a big smile crossed her face. “That’s my dream, which I’ve been dreaming from the time I was a child. All the other girls wanted to be singers or actresses, but all I’ve ever wanted is to be a long-haul trucker.”

I laughed at first, and Bobbie laughed too, but before long we were deep in conversation about the hard life of a trucker, and about her father forbidding her to pursue it after high school, and about what kinds of resources it would take for her to pursue it now. She told me all about it, the way a lifelong sports fan tells you all about their team, but I didn’t mind. In this kind of ministry, genuine dreams are few and far between.

Over the next few days, I kept thinking about Bobbie Williams and her dream of earning a secure living by driving a big-rig all over the country. The more I thought about it, the more impossible it seemed.

Bobbie couldn’t even pay her rent most months, let alone save $4000 for tuition. When she wasn’t taking care of her grandson, she was out hustling food for herself. She didn’t even have a driver’s license, for crying out loud.

You know where I’m going with this, don’t you? You know Bobbie’s in trucking school right now, almost ready to test for her CDL, and you know who loaned her the money (or gave it, if it turns out she can’t pass the test). A ghetto grandmother with a GED and a sketchy past might not be a good enough risk for a legitimate ministry organization, and trucking school might be too expensive to build into an ongoing employment program. But none of that matters because we’re just the small-time Walnut Hills Fellowship, and Bobbie’s been with us since the beginning, and this feels like as good a time as any to take what any lifelong sports fan would recognize as a Hail Mary shot at giving a dear sister a much better life.

If you haven’t yet stopped to ask whether or not Bobbie is a certified Christian, or to calculate the chances are of us actually getting paid back even if she gets the job, then I think you’re connected to the right little faith community. If what you’re wondering about instead is how she felt about finally getting behind the wheel of an eighteen-wheeler (‘Incredible!’), or whether everyone else in our fellowship is excited about her opportunity (‘Hey, did you hear Bobbie got three out of four on her straight line backing test?’), or if we’re all feeling the pressure as the test day draws closer (Absolutely), well, maybe you should start thinking about moving to Walnut Hills yourself.

We don’t have a real office yet. We’re always having to move stuff. But we get to make things up as we go along, and take chances on people that nobody else would take chances on, and hold our breath together. And we get to do all that with the almost giddy confidence that all the love in the world is on our side.

Keep the faith,

Bart

Dear Friends,

For as long as I can remember, I’ve ended my letters and emails with the encouragement ‘Keep the faith’. I must have picked that up from my father, since he’s the only person I know who signs off the same way. It might have been more lucrative for me to have picked up ‘It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming!” instead, but I’ve always preferred the flexibility of the simpler phrase. Not everyone who hopes for God’s grace is a Christian, after all, and we who are, surely hope for more than that.

We hope to be happy and successful, for example, however we measure those things. We hope that our parents love us and that our marriages work out and, more than anything, that our kids will always be safe and sound. We hope for such things, at least, unless we have learned to know better. On the Monday morning after my last letter, a mother and daughter from our fellowship showed up at our side door. Terry is mentally handicapped and deeply damaged. Her daughter has her own set of issues. For months we’d been planning a summer move from their dangerous, filthy, heatless apartment building into a cute little duplex we’ve been fixing up around the corner, but all of a sudden we were too late. “Tanya got raped in the hall last night,” her mother said, and from then until now we’ve been walking on the dark side of love.

The sequence of what followed doesn’t matter, and I couldn’t remember it even if it did. The hospital, the detectives, the rape crisis center. Getting that evil building condemned, relocating the guys in our duplex, finding bedbug-free furniture for Terry and Tanya, finding helpers for the move itself. The girl’s bad behavior as our houseguest, her mother’s worse behavior as a parent. The questions, the doubts, the guilt for questioning and doubting. And then, as if piling on, the quick meltdown of a promising young man we’ve lavished with attention and opportunity for the past 7 months, and the crude suicide attempt of a troubled young woman whose phone call for help I failed to return the day before.

What does matter, I think, is the way all those things have been eating away at expectations of goodness and order I didn’t even know I had. It’s been a while since I believed everything happens for a reason, according to some grand plan, but evidently I’ve hung onto the notion that love always makes some kind of difference, even in the midst of chaos. Even that somewhat less-ambitious worldview, however, seems to be no match for just this one little neighborhood, let alone the world itself.

It isn’t the suffering here that’s getting to me, but rather my neighbors’ dull, matter-of-fact attitude about it. Tanya hasn’t been fazed much by her rape, her counselor tells me, because she always expected to be hurt that way sooner or later. After all, her mom was raped three times as a girl, receiving no follow-up care or counsel, which may explain why she can offer so little now in terms of emotional support. The meltdown guy? He walked away because we called him on a lie and it never occurred to him that we might just forgive him. The girl who tried to kill herself? She lives in Terry’s condemned building and has nowhere to go with five children under the age of 10. One missed call was all it took to convince her nobody cares enough to help.

It seems to me that these are the poorest of the poor in spirit, the ones who hope for next to nothing. To survive in a place like this, such people learn to live almost completely in the moment. They know better thatn to expect any ongoing goodness or order. They keep no faith. We have come to love them, but the longer we’re at it the more I am haunted by the fear that nothing – not even love – may be strong enough. I can celebrate the ways our intentional generosity touches some of our neighbors, but I can’t ignore the fact that both their natural hopelessness and the dysfunctions that inspire it are quite capable of breaking us. Or at least of breaking me.

If that happens, however, it won’t mean I was wrong about Grace, but only that I overreached my limits. And if it doesn’t happen, it won’t mean that love always makes a difference, even in the midst of chaos, but only that I managed to keep the faith. That’s all I’m hoping for now, for starters at least.

Your friend,

Bart

Dear Friends,

We’ve gotten enough calls and emails from folks concerned about my state of mind for me to think it’s probably time for a more upbeat letter. If you’ve been among those worried, you can rest assured that I’m far from despair. On the contrary, I can’t remember ever feeling more alive than I have these past few years in Cincinnati, in spite of all the trouble and confusion we’ve found here. My world view surely has been shaken some, but my soul is safe and sound.

Not to boast, but, amidst our many mistakes in starting over as servants of God, it turns out that Marty and I did right the single, most important thing we had to do right: We didn’t try to do it by ourselves. If nothing else, we have learned at least on this adventure that loving people well, and loving poor people especially, is a team sport. And if I feel alive and well instead of utterly defeated, it is mainly because the other members of our somewhat intentional community here give me strength and security on a daily basis, whether or not they mean to do so.

I say ‘somewhat intentional’ to avoid giving the impression that we are some kind of religious order, with formal rules and a common purse and a weekly regimen of prayer. If you thought that, I’m afraid you’d be sorely disappointed when you came for a visit. What we are instead is a handful of families and individuals who have moved next door or around the corner from each other on purpose, so we can share our lives and our meals and our stuff more easily, and so we can all love the same neighbors without having to walk very far. We still have our own jobs and houses, but because the houses weren’t very expensive the jobs don’t take all our time, so there’s more left for each other and for the folks we’re trying to bless one way or another.

Like last week, when Marty and I weren’t sure about inviting a struggling kid who’s on his own to come live with our family, and we ran next door for Karen’s advice. Or the week before, when Karen, Ric, and Marty handled the whole Monday night dinner party because my plane home from Vancouver was delayed. Or the other night, when Sarah walked over to talk through her career options now that she knows she doesn’t want to be a massage therapist forever. Or the night after that, when Sarah offered to tutor the neighborhood girl the rest of us just couldn’t fit in.

If that kind of give and take sounds appealing to you, well, join the club. Especially for those of us with kids, it is a pure joy to have such wonderful brothers and sisters around to help raise them. And when it comes to coping with the often absurd consequences of our beloved neighbors’ bizarre combinations of poverty, neglect, and dysfunction, well, we’re all better off with plenty of partners to share the load.

Out on the road as a speaker, when people tell me they admire the sacrifice of our ‘radical’ inner-city ministry lifestyle, I can’t help but smile. If they had any idea how amazing it is to be daily surrounded by the kind of love, support, understanding, and practical help that my family literally takes for granted here, I think their admiration might turn to envy instead. After all, who else gets to live so close to their friends?

Please don’t worry. This street-level ministry stuff is indeed much harder than I remembered, mainly because I know better now what it means for a child not to have a decent parent, or for a parent not to have a decent job, or for a family not to have a decent place to live. But it is richer now, too, because I also know better the true value of love, which is our God. And because here, in that knowledge, I am not alone.

Thankfully,

Bart

Dear Friends,

I do my best with these letters, but no words can really communicate the essence of what we are doing here.  For that, you’d need Smell-O-Vision.

In case you didn’t know, Smell-O-Vision was a system developed in the 1950s that released odors during the projection of a movie so that the viewer could actually smell what was happening onscreen.  Thirty years later, cult filmmaker John Waters tried the same thing with scratch and sniff cards.  In both case, the idea was to take advantage of the scientific fact that smell is easily the strongest and most vivid of our senses when it comes to processing emotional experiences. If you’ve ever smelled something and had memories you hadn’t thought of in years come flooding back, you know what I’m talking about.

What you may not know, however, is what the scent of urine in a hallway tells you about a low-rent apartment building, or what the combination of cigarette smoke and baby formula on an infant’s blanket tells you about a family, or what cheap liquor on an addict’s early morning breath tells you about the rest of their day, or maybe the rest of their life.  These are some of the smells I’m learning these days.

I know a few already.  At the grocery store the other day, I didn’t even need to turn around, let alone ask any questions to be sure the man behind me had no house, no car, no job, and nobody looking after him.  What I needed instead was the intestinal fortitude to talk with him like a friend even though he was mentally unstable, and to offer him a ride to the soup kitchen even though it would take half a day to get his stench out of my van.

I know marijuana in the afternoon air means I’m going to have to answer a lot of bizarre theological questions from my street corner buddies Richie and Big Mike.  I know the smell of mold and too many cats means helping a friend pass her Section 8 housing inspection is going to take more than a morning, and the smell of an open electric oven means we might as well not bother because her lousy slumlord still hasn’t fixed the furnace. And, unfortunately, I know the smell of fecal matter coming out from under a dirty set of clothes means it doesn’t much matter how skillful I am as an after school tut
There are wonderful smells here too, of course – ammonia in the spotless kitchen of a single mother with two jobs, soul food in a neighborhood restaurant, talcum powder on the older church ladies, my warm house at the end of a long day – but not nearly enough to cover the others.  If you are highly sensitive in that way, like Marty, how much you can love poor people sometimes boils down to how long you can hold your breath.

There is more to it than that, though.  As I said earlier, smelling things is probably the most powerful way that we feel where we are and what we’re doing at a particular moment in time.  No wonder a hospital administrator recently told me that his boss devoted an entire staff meeting to making sure their hospital smells as clean as it is, in order to subconsciously instill confidence in their patients’ families.  For better and for worse, smells communicate things that words just can’t.

The bad smells here do not instill confidence at all.  On the contrary, what they communicate is a deep, visceral sense of neglect and decay and futility that threatens to overwhelm this whole neighborhood and our hope along with it.  So then, when I tell you that my dream is to motivate and organize folks to clean things up around here, you can rest assured I mean that quite literally.  We have plenty of souls to soothe, to be sure, but we also have bodies to bathe and clothes to wash, basements to clean out and houses to renovate. 

I know we can’t change everything in our poor little neighborhood.  Honestly, my best guess is that we can’t even change very much.  But even on my most dismal days, when the odors of brokenness around me are more than I can stand, I believe we can, at the very least, leave some places and some people around here perfumed with the sweet smells of care, healing, and hope.  After all, most of those smells are simply a matter of soap and water, and hammers and nails, and meat and potatoes.

In the meantime, since you don’t have Smell-O-Vision, or Odorama, or probably even a good Aroma Therapy kit, I guess you’ll have to take my word for it that loving poor people can be an awfully smelly business.  Then again, maybe not.  Maybe you just know a different set of smells than I do, because you are trying to love a different kind of poor people.  I hope so, because I suspect that at least part of the reason God calls us to all this smelly loving in the first place is so we aren’t completely knocked out when we’re the ones who stink.

Thanks for helping God keep us here. 

Your friend

Bart

PS.   If you would rather receive this letter by email, just drop me a line at bartcampolo@gmail.com and we’ll switch you to the email list.   

Dear Friends,

Lately I keep wishing I was somebody else. Somebody different. Somebody better than me.

Don’t worry. I’m not depressed. I am well aware that I have many good qualities and many more good friends. My marriage is strong. My kids are fine. Moreover, I am ever increasingly convinced that the God of love loves me, no matter what I do or don’t do.

Unfortunately, none of those things changes the fact that, after nearly 45 years of countless growth opportunities, I remain essentially the same careless, undisciplined fool I’ve always been. Everybody makes mistakes, of course, but mine are almost always the kind a more thoughtful, more focused person could easily avoid.

On Christmas Eve, on my way to the YMCA with Roman, I ran a stop sign and hit a car just a block from my house. The other driver was young and furious and, given our neighborhood, both Roman and I thought we were in real trouble. We might have been, too, if he hadn’t recognized me as a friend of his nephews. Even so, I cost my family our $1000 insurance deductible, not to mention the rate hike sure to come when this claim gets added to the massive speeding ticket I got a few months earlier, while Miranda and I were visiting colleges in North Carolina. Because we were late for an appointment. Because I didn’t read over the directions the night before. Because I’m an idiot.

I’m not kidding, either. Believe me, there’s nothing funny about missing a plane and paying the change fee and getting stranded alone in Honolulu for two days at the end of a ten day speaking trip, all because you didn’t bother to double-check your departure time. Nobody laughs when you leave your son waiting in the rain outside his school because you lost track of time at the office, or blow a valuable new friendship because you didn’t even call after you forgot a lunch appointment, or let your wife down for the millionth time because you got so wrapped up in a conversation with somebody else.

If you’re wondering why I’m beating myself up this way, well, it’s because a few days ago I wasted a bunch of your money, too. I got hustled out of it, actually, but only after I carelessly violated just about every urban ministry principle I’ve taught for the past twenty years. Honestly, the guy who hustled me wasn’t half a slick as I was stupid.

It all started when our friend Mark and I, along with a bunch of college kids, rebuilt the porch and cleared out the basement of this old twin house he bought in our neighborhood, where we have our offices, board a few interns, and rent an apartment to a really cool woman we’re trying to draw into our fellowship. Anyway, we ended up with a ton of junk in the front yard — including about 50 old cans of paint — that needed to go to the local landfill. The next day, as we were sorting it out, a friendly man came by and offered to load it all up and haul it away for a mere $50.

“I’m a strong, Christian man and I need the work,” he told me. “I’m not one of these other black guys out here stealing to buy drugs. My cousin owns that truck over there and a buddy of ours has a junkyard on the other side of town. We can do the job right now. It sure would be a blessing if you could trust me to help you out.”

I should have said no, of course. In the first place, Mark and I were perfectly capable of hauling the stuff in his truck the next day, as planned. It was going to cost us a lot more than $50 to dispose of it properly, of course, not to mention our time, but we didn’t need any help. Moreover, even if we had, we had ten friends within three blocks who needed the work as much or more than this guy. Even so, I hesitated. Looking back, I can see I was afraid.

I didn’t want to seem like an untrusting racist. I felt guilty for being so much better off. I didn’t want to disappoint this guy, even though I barely knew him. And besides, the deal itself was too good to be true.

So then, before you could say ‘there’s a sucker born every minute’, I was off to the ATM for $80 in cash, which I promptly deposited in my new friend’s hand, so that he and his cousin could gas up their truck and get some dinner before commencing to work that evening. He pumped my hand and hugged me in gratitude. The job would be finished by the time I got back in the morning, he assured me, but we exchanged cell phone numbers just in case.

You already know the rest of the story.

Why didn’t I just tell that guy to come back and work with us the next day? Why didn’t I insist on paying with a check, and even then only when the job was done? Why didn’t I call to ask Marty what she thought I should do? Why didn’t I worry about the probability that our toxic waste would be illegally dumped? Why didn’t I recognize the red flags of race talk and Christian talk and trust talk that indicate an urban con job?

The short answer, of course, is that I am a careless, undisciplined fool, but in this case there’s more to it than that. In this case, even after more twenty years of urban ministry, racial reconsideration, and earnest soul-searching, it is painfully evident that I still have enough unfocused white guilt to make me vulnerable to just about anyone shrewd or desperate enough to work that angle. Living where and how I do these days that could be quite a problem.

I really do want to be better, not only for my neighbors here in Walnut Hills, but even more so for my family and friends. It is perhaps to my credit that I am so adept at confessing and apologizing and winning back people’s trust, but it embarrasses me that I’ve had so many opportunities to practice those skills. I’m tired of saying I’m sorry for the same things, over and over again.

God knows I’ve changed before. Now God knows I want to change again, and so do you.

Sincerely,

Bart

Dear Friends,

Lately I’ve come to believe a good Christmas letter is much like a good graduation speech: brief, upbeat, and well aware that it is not the primary interest of its audience. It’s the photographs that wind up on the refrigerator, after all, long after the words are forgotten. You may not be prone to keep this picture of a motley crew of people you’ve mostly never met, but before you let it go I hope you will stop for a moment to really look at the upturned faces of our family and friends here in Walnut Hills. These are the folks I’ve been telling you about, after all, whose lives are so tangled up with our own.

Our photographer friend, Juli Boehm, captured this image at one of our weekly dinner parties, after she had done the family portraits we are framing for everyone for Christmas. Years ago, Juli and her now husband David, were part of Mission Year with Marty and me, so it was fun to have them visit our new, small-is-beautiful ministry in such a natural way. People always want to visit our dinners, but we’re generally not comfortable inviting them unless we have a good reason. It would be different if they were moving in, but it just doesn’t feel right to be watched by outsiders when we’re all still learning how to love each other.

Which is, perhaps, one reason Jesus became one of us way back when in Bethlehem. Thank God He didn’t show up to watch, but rather to join our struggle and show us the way. Hopefully, we will follow Him around our neighborhood better this year, and you will too.

Of course, there is one key difference between Christmas letters and graduation speeches: at graduation nobody thanks you for your money and then asks you to consider a special year-end gift. But I am thanking you, because your support has allowed us to do such amazing things with and for our neighbors. And I’m asking, too, because we’re just getting started and the potential for goodness here is even more amazing. You may not be from Walnut Hills, but you are not outsiders, either, because you are the extended family of our fellowship here. We thank God for you, too, and we love you for loving us in such real and tangible ways.

Merry Christmas!

Bart

Dear Friends,

First of all, for those of you who have expressed concern for our safety, we are alive and well here in Walnut Hills. I generally don’t like it when the onset of cold weather drives everyone inside, but this year I’m a big fan of winter. Hopefully, the guys pulling the triggers around here will forget what they were fighting about by the time it warms up again.

In the meantime, we’ve mainly been trying to make sure the people closest to us here have warm, decent places to live. Honestly, until very recently, I had no idea how hard it is for some of our friends just to find somewhere to lay themselves down to sleep at night. I knew that inner-city families moved around a lot, but I didn’t realize how much heartache and humiliation goes before and after most of those moves, both for the families and for the neighborhoods they come and go from in search of better space.

Part of the problem is low incomes, of course, which leave almost everyone around here one minor setback way from missing rent. But beyond that there are often rats and roaches and bedbugs to contend with, along with those normal, everyday conflicts with neighbors that, in this environment, can quickly become unacceptably dangerous. There are broken pipes and broken heaters and, as often as not, broken promises from landlords who live in a very different world.

Of course, the broken promises go both ways. Every day we see neighbors say and do things that would rattle almost any property owner, and we have learned the hard way not to immediately take any story of mistreatment at face value. Still, there is no denying that lots of money – much of it taxpayers’ money – flows through neighborhoods like ours into the pockets of people who care too little about those they are supposed to shelter.

Last week our friend Ella and I spent the better part of three days driving all over town tracking down birth certificates and proofs of custody and income statements and police background checks, hoping to qualify her for a HUD-subsidized apartment near enough that her grandson Jackson could stay at his school and that both of them could stay in our fellowship. Ella’s recently deceased mother had been paying the rent for all of them with her Social Security, but all they have now is Helen’s part-time home health care paycheck and Jackson’s food stamps.

Without my car, my computer, my money (actually your money) at certain offices and my white male privilege at others, the whole endeavor would have been utterly impossible for Ella, who is herself in need of some home health care. Even with my help, we needed a few kind folks to bend a few silly rules in our favor. By the time we got everything squared away, I was worn out and cranky. Being poor is an awful lot of work.

I write these letters by myself, but thank God there is a whole bunch of us here, living together and loving our neighbors as a team. While Ella and I were jumping through HUD hoops, Karen and Donna were tracking furniture for her and three other families in the fellowship whose living spaces are nearly empty, and our newest partner, Mark Leeman, was tracking down donors who want to invest in some rental properties we can fix up and manage right, right here in the neighborhood.

We know we can’t house everyone, but the more we see what’s going on around us, the more bound and determined we are to take care of the handful of neighbors we feel God has given to be our closest friends. After all, there is no way to build the kind of close-knit community we keep dreaming of without first making sure that all of us are safe and sound. Believe it or not, I almost wrote another paragraph, trying to explain what it feels like to worry about the people you love. Then I remembered who I was writing to, and how you love and worry about us. Rest assured, we love and worry about you too, no matter where you live, and thank God for the privilege of doing so.

Sincerely,

Bart

hello from the walnut hills fellowship!  for all you web-savy folks out there, please bear with us as we catch up with the technology curve.  for those of you who have visited in the past and posted a comment, well those comments are finally up for all to see.

in addition to improving our technology skills, november has us redistributing furniture from some kind neighbors to others, hunting down turkeys, and planning some fun holiday surprises for our neighbors.  we promise to try and keep up and keep you posted on our corner of the world. 

be well,

from all of us.