Dear Friends,

The other day a bunch of people e-mailed me the same New York Times column, which cited a variety of scientific research suggesting that what we think of as intelligence is quite malleable in children and owes little or nothing to genetics. What stuck out to me was one study which found that a child of professionals (disproportionately white) has heard about 30 million words spoken by age 3, while a black child raised on welfare has heard only 10 million words. No wonder low-income children often show brain physiologies similar to adults who have suffered damage in the parts of the brain most critical for problem-solving and creativity. In too many cases, their young minds are literally starving for stimulation. Now here is the good news: According to the scientists, it doesn’t have to be that way. If we nurture kids the right way, we can actually make them smart.

What does that have to do with The Walnut Hills Fellowship? Well, since practically everything we do around here is about trying to nurture our kids – and our grown-ups – the right way, it has everything to do with us, especially during the summer, when this little group of intentional good neighbors shifts into high gear.

The action begins as soon as school lets out, when we start shuttling kids to the various summer camps we’ve signed them up for all over town. We might have started a camp of our own if we didn’t have jobs, but in many ways this is much better. The kids get exposed to lots of new places and people and perspectives, and somebody besides us gets to feed and teach and play with and – best of all – discipline them. What we get to do is actively process their experiences in the car on the way home, like a bunch of hyper-interested aunts and uncles. In other words, lots of words.

We still eat dinner together every Monday night, of course, but during the summer we stretch things out. We sit at the table longer, everyone talking about our weeks. We play more games. Nobody hurries home after we’ve done the dishes and put away the tables and chairs. Sometimes, when the weather is nice, we load up and go to the park for a picnic, like one big happy family. And through it all, especially for the little ones, there are lots of words.

Of course, after last year’s epic family vacation to Chicago, everybody has been hoping and praying (and asking and asking) about whether or not we’ll be able to do it again in July. The final answer was given last night, thanks to the generosity of many of you: We’re totally going back to Chicago! We all know what that means (besides a ridiculous amount of planning and preparation for Marty and Karen): Long van rides. Major sightseeing. An afternoon on the beach. A big-time African-American church service. Deep dish pizza. And all along the way, more words.

I haven’t yet mentioned the various housing projects our property guru, Mark, has lined up this summer, maybe because I am trying to pretend we haven’t bitten off more than we can chew in terms of time and money and sweat and (if my past experience in reconstruction is any indication) blood. One way or another, however, I know they’ll get done, if for no other reason than that none of us want to face the wrath of Miss Ella, who is eagerly waiting for us to move her into her new place, which just happens to be right across the street from mine. If you saw where she was coming from, you’d understand her impatience. Mark has a new place for his family, too, and we can’t wait for them to be here with us. After all, besides being our friends, both Mark and his wife Anne are big talkers, and our kids need all the words they can get.

You, on the other hand, must have had more than enough by now. Forgive me for being so newsy this month, but I figured you ought to know that everything in Walnut Hills isn’t dark and heavy all the time. On the contrary, we have plenty of happiness running around us here, in the form of the little people we adore and the big people we enjoy and the ceaseless Grace that holds us all together, even when things get tough. And we have you, to remind us that we are never alone, and never unloved. Whether or not such nurture makes us smarter, it surely makes us better. Month-in and month-out, thank you for that.

Keep the faith,

Bart Campolo

Dear Friends,

I really like Marlena, but that doesn’t mean she is a good person. She is smart and easy to talk to, but only if you are talking about her stuff. She is attractive and has her hair done every week, but every month she asks to borrow rent money. She loves her kids, but she lies a lot and has taught them to do the same. She’s been through more houses, jobs, men and resolutions than anyone I know, always looking for a better deal. So then, even though she clearly understands and openly embraces what out little fellowship is about, it is easy to wonder how long she’d stay with us if our friendship wasn’t such a bargain.

Lately I find myself wondering about that bargain, about whether the ‘grace’ my friends and I give our neighbors here is anything like the real thing. I mean, on one level offering our love without condition to broken people in a hard place sounds like a righteous thing to do. Moving into this neighborhood to establish genuine friendships across seemingly insurmountable barriers of race, class, and culture sounds more authentic than just dropping in to establish food, clothing, medical care, education, or housing programs.

For someone like Marlena, however, I wonder if our unconditional friendship isn’t just another program after all. When she comes over for a loan or asks Marty or I for a ride to the doctor, we generally treat her the same way we would Ric or Karen next door, who are our ‘real’ friends. It doesn’t feel the same, though, partly because Marlena is in no position to return our favors, and partly because so many of her immediate needs are caused by amoral, ghetto decision-making we would never tolerate in a real friend.

On Monday, for example, she called me sobbing just as I was preparing the game and a little five-minute talk about the value of community for that night’s fellowship dinner. “I just got a call from my son’s baby-mama. The girl he’s living with now stabbed him three times last night! He’s in the hospital there and he might die…oh Bart, I told him to quit that girl! I’m going crazy here!” I began to comfort her like a pastor, but she cut me off. “Can you use your computer to help me and Shonda get plane tickets to Newark tonight? I’ve been calling my family to borrow the money, but nobody seems to care enough to help…but if I come up with it, will you buy them for me?”

Remember, we don’t have a program here, just relationships. Marlena and I are supposed to be friends. So, before I headed to her house, I called my travel agent and put on hold a pair of $170 tickets, leaving three hours later out of Louisville, 100 miles away. On my way over, I called Marty to see what she thought I should do.

“What choice do you have?” she said. “Marlena knows we have that kind of money, and she knows we’d buy those tickets if it was our kid having open heart surgery tonight. If she’s really our friend, we have to help her.” She paused. “Now remind me again why we do this?”

You see the problem, don’t you? I mean, it is no big deal to help a friend when she finds herself in trouble after doing everything right. It’s a whole different thing, however, when your friend has no money because she quit her job after the boss disrespected her, bought a big purebred dog she can’t afford to feed, and drinks more beer in a week than you drink in a year. Or when her own family won’t help her because, well, they’ve all burned each other too many times. Or when the son she’s crying over has two kids by two different women and is freeloading off a third, who probably didn’t stab him for no reason. Or when the daughter she’s taking with her has already told you she doesn’t want or need a man to help raise her own babies when she has them. In other words, when this kind of ghetto drama is bound to just keep on coming.

And yet, help her I did. I bought the tickets with the fellowship’s credit card, not knowing if or when we (meaning you too, if you’re a supporter) will ever get paid back, and I got one of our young single guys to drive Marlena and Sonya down to Louisville, and I knelt on their front steps to pray with them before they left. Now, a few days later, Marlena’s son is just hanging on, and so is my confidence that I really know what I am doing here.

Giving grace? Maybe. But if it is grace at all, it certainly isn’t the same kind that God gives. God, after all, is no sucker. He may make all the goodness in the world available to anyone who wants it, but as far as I can tell, you have to actually want that goodness in order to actualize it. God makes the first move, over and over until you respond, but it takes two to tango. The gift is being shown the way, and being allowed to learn how to dance in good company, so you show up in shape for the party.

I like Marlena, but that doesn’t mean she is a good person. I gave her my friendship, but she hasn’t earned it. Now what?

Sincerely,

Bart

Dear Friends,

I often tell people not to ask me for statistics, because in this work all the statistics are bad. Ask me for stories instead, I say, because even in the worst of times I always have a good story. Whether it is one of my own or comes from someone else doesn’t really matter to me anymore. What matters is that it rings true. Like this one I picked up on a visit to Philadelphia last week, which was first told to psychologist Jack Kornfield by the director of a nearby rehabilitation program for violent juvenile offenders:

One fourteen-year-old boy in the program had shot and killed an innocent teenager to prove himself to his gang. At the trial, the victim’s mother sat impassively silent until the end, when the youth was convicted of the killing. After the verdict was announced, she stood up slowly and stared directly at him and stated, “I’m going to kill you.” Then the youth was taken away to serve several years in the juvenile facility.

After the first half year the mother of the slain child went to visit his killer. He had been living on the streets before the killing, and she was the only visitor (in jail) he’d had. For a time they talked, and when she left she gave him some money for cigarettes. Then she started step-by-step to visit him more regularly, bringing food and small gifts. Near the end of his three-year sentence, she asked him what he would be doing when he got out. He was confused and very uncertain, so she offered to help set him up with a job at a friend’s company. Then she inquired about where he would live, and since he had no family to return to, she offered him temporary use of the spare room in her home. For eight months he lived there, ate her food, and worked at the job. Then one evening she called him into the living room to talk. She sat down opposite him and waited. Then she started, “Do you remember in the courtroom when I said I was going to kill you?” “I sure do,” he replied. “I’ll never forget that moment.” “Well, I did it,” she went on. “I did not want the boy who could kill my son for no reason to remain alive on this earth. I wanted him to die. That’s why I started to visit you and bring you things. That’s why I got you the job and let you live here in my house. That’s how I set about changing you. And that old boy, he’s gone. So now I want to ask you, since my son is gone, and that killer is gone, if you’ll stay here. I’ve got room and I’d like to adopt you if you let me.” And she became the mother he never had.

Honestly, for a man like me, in a place like this, a story like that is more precious than any amount of money or any amount of praise.

Lately I’ve been asked how long I can relate to such badly broken people in this particular way, and the truth is that I don’t know. However long it is, I think, will be determined less by the number of healed lives I see, and more by my ability to sense the depth of the compassion and forgiveness that is trying to heal them. Today, with that good story in my heart, it feels like I may last a while longer than it felt like before I heard it. I hope the same is true of you.

Your friend,

Bart

Dear Friends,

I stayed up way too late in a Buffalo hotel room the other night, eating string cheese and Oscar Mayer salami from the convenience store across the parking lot, watching the tail end of the Connecticut-Syracuse basketball game on television. Unfortunately for the folks I spoke for the next morning, that game went into six overtimes before Syracuse finally won around 1:30AM…and unfortunately for the guy sitting next to me on the plane ride home, I ate all the salami. Still, I have no regrets. That game had more drama than most Broadway plays.

I will spare the details for those of you who are not basketball fans, except for this one: At the end of every period but the last (when the game was finally out of reach), whichever player had the ball took a shot, no matter how off-balance or far away he was from the basket.

Basketball players always do that, of course, at every level all over the world, the same way football quarterbacks throw Hail Mary passes in the last seconds of their close games. Nobody really expects such desperate, unlikely attempts to succeed. Everyone knows that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they don’t even come close. But everyone watches them anyway, holding their breath, because everyone also knows that every once in a while even the longest of long shots is good. And when it is, when that last-second basket or touchdown improbably – maybe even impossibly – wins the game, the crowd goes wild. The winning team goes wild, too, and together they mob their unlikely hero and joyously celebrate what is almost invariably called their ‘miracle shot’.

That is what we are doing here: Throwing up desperation shots, secure in the knowledge that most of them are bound to fall short. Tutoring high school kids who can barely read, let alone hope for college. Searching out jobs for the least-employable adults imaginable in the midst of the worst economy any of us has ever seen. Securing mortgages so we can rent houses to families that have never lived anywhere longer than a year or two. Trying to create genuine, long-term friendships where some friends have cars and credit cards and other friends are losing their food stamps, where some friends read to their pre-schoolers and other friends still smoke and drink while they’re pregnant, where some friends have everything and other friends nothing at all. Loving people who are broken beyond repair.

That is what God is doing here too, I think: Loving us with all his might, seeking our salvation in every moment, ceaselessly calling us to do his will in this world, so as to make it over into that glorious Kingdom that Jesus was always talking about. He doesn’t always get his way, of course, at least if my life is any indication. So often I thwart him. So often I don’t listen, or I disobey. We all do. One day God will have his way with us, but for now we more often use our free wills for other things. We are the problem, however, not God’s will. No matter how broken we are, God always does His best. God always takes His shot.

When I suggest that some people can’t be helped no matter how much you love them, friends of mine say I am limiting God’s power. But when those friends suggest that God can do whatever He wants, whenever He wants to, in the life of whoever He chooses, I wonder if they think God is a monster…or if they are only watching God’s highlights reels, where all His ‘miracle shots’ are collected and replayed over and over again. You know, cancer patients healed, junkies redeemed, families reunited, hurricanes averted, crippled planes landed safely.

Don’t get me wrong; Over the years, I’ve experienced a few of those ‘miracle shots’ myself. I’ve seen times when everything and everyone lined up just the way God wanted them to, in ways that only a good and loving God could have orchestrated, in what the hymn-writer called ‘a foretaste of glory divine’. Honestly, if I hadn’t, I think I would have given up ghetto long shots a long time ago. Still, I keep taking them because doing so feels like the best, most hopeful thing to do, not because I think they are actually going to succeed. In fact, I almost never think they are going to succeed, and most of the time I am right. Most of the time, at least here in Walnut Hills, broken people stay broken.

So what? Win or lose, loving people is a beautiful pastime. Loving people is a good job, too, and the people who do it are good company. Loving people is a wonderful life. And, every once in a while…the crowd goes wild! And when that happens, I believe God is right there in the midst of the mob, celebrating the miracles that must be miracles to Him as well. In the meantime, keep the faith.

Sincerely,

Bart

Dear Friends,

What does it mean to be an outgoing, white (that is, noticeable) so-called man of God in this neighborhood? Well, for starters it means hearing more than your share of trumped up religious nonsense. Honestly, if I didn’t swear too much and drink a little beer, I’d really be in trouble. In a place that combines so much bad behavior with so much bad religion, even my ever-so-faint appearance of holiness already invites the bizarre theological musings of a wide array of street people inexplicably looking for my spiritual stamp of approval.

A corner guy named Robert, for example, recently pulled me aside to assure me that despite all appearances to the contrary, he too lives by faith. By way of example he regaled me with the story of how just last week, all alone after drinking up his last dollar, he had been visited by a long lost female friend of his, who had been led by the Holy Spirit to appear on the fire escape outside his window, armed with a bottle of whiskey, a bag of marijuana, and an appetite easy love. “I told her I had no money and just a few hours before I had to be back on my job,” he said, “but she just laughed and told me that was plenty of time for what she had in mind.” He paused for a moment, thoughtful. “You see, Bart, these other fools don’t understand it, but God takes care of me. He knew just what I needed that night…and He brought it to me right on time!”

Ah yes, sweet Providence…I had no idea. Seriously, how do you even begin to respond to that sort of ‘testimony’? I remember saying something sarcastic about Jesus’ parable of the Good One Night Stand, but the rest is kind of fuzzy. With Robert, the conversation is often kind of fuzzy. That man knows just enough Bible to be dangerous, and he loves to talk.

My friend Freemont, on the other hand, wastes few words. Big and burly, he was deep in the drug game until a few years ago, when a car accident injured his head. Now he lives with his mother and watches television most of the time, too slowed by anti-seizure medication to handle the pace of his former criminal life. He’s been part of our fellowship for nearly two years, but only recently have I figured out how to get him to open up; I ask him to tell me stories about ‘The Game’ and explain how it works. Then, and only then, does his tongue loosen and his eyes light up.

Even as he waxes eloquent about his bar fights, armed robberies, and cocaine-fueled escapades with women, however, Freemont never forgets who I am. Frankly, sometimes I wish he would. Like the other day, when he and I were hanging out in his cousin’s apartment, and he was telling about the last time he shot somebody. My goal in asking was to get to the place where I could openly acknowledge that, no matter how beautiful or fulfilling it might become, the good life I’ve been trying to sell Freemont will never compete with his old life in terms of raw excitement. Freemont’s goal in answering was to entertain me, at least until the very end.

“So I got dropped behind this little apartment building and walked around it to where these two guys I was after were standing out front. I shot at the one guy, and then the other one started running, so I shot at him too. Somebody must have called the police right then, or maybe they heard the shots, because they were there so fast I couldn’t get back to the car. So I ran into that building, and ran upstairs, looking for someplace to hide. Some lady was looking out her door, so I broke in that apartment and told her to keep quiet. The police were looking around the building, and then I heard them coming inside, so I jumped out of that lady’s window and climbed into the dumpster. Nobody saw me. I couldn’t believe it. I hurt my leg, but it didn’t break. I waited in the dumpster for two hours, until I was sure they were all gone, and then I climbed out and called my friend to pick me up”.

“What happened then,” I asked. “Did you actually shoot those guys? Did they die? Did the police – or those guys’ people – ever find out it was you?”

“Nah,” he said dismissively, “nothing happened. Later on I found out I hit them both, but nobody died, and I never caught any charges on that one.” I thought he was finished, but he wasn’t. “God was really with me that day”.

What does it mean to be an outgoing, white so-called man of God in this (or any) neighborhood? Well, for starters it means learning not to laugh out loud.

Keep (and try not to twist) the faith,

Bart

Dear Friends,

I want to be hopeful these days, what with Barack Obama just being inaugurated as our nation’s 44th President, but Tanya and Terry are making it awfully hard. I know I shouldn’t let the problems of two little people here in Walnut Hills undermine my confidence in the potential for global change, but, well…there you have it.

Maybe, if they had given me just a few hours to soak in the pageantry of Tuesday’s ceremony before calling me to intervene in their latest crisis, I could have held onto some of the inspiration I took from President Obama’s eloquent call to responsibility and sacrifice. Instead, those few good words were quickly overwhelmed in my consciousness by the many bad words of the worst mother and daughter combination I know.

On the surface, the situation is simple enough. Tanya is fourteen, looks much older, and desperately craves male attention. Lately she has been running away to stay with the worst kind of older boys. Terry is fifty-something, mentally handicapped and hardened by street life. Thanks to disability payments, she has always provided food and shelter for her daughter, but never much affection. When the girl was little, she kept her inside all day, but she knows that strategy won’t work anymore. Her two older sons are in prison, and she fully expects Tanya to end up the same way or worse. They lived in a horrible apartment until Tanya got raped there last year, after which we moved them into a trim little house. That’s where I found them on inauguration day, fighting after Tanya skipped school and stayed out all night again.

I can’t remember their order, but these are some of the things I heard: I hate you, you bald-headed bitch. I wish I aborted you when I had the chance. Yeah, I got raped again, but we didn’t report it because my Mama said she didn’t want no trouble with those boys. Shut the fuck up, liar. So what if my man tortures me? They gonna lock you up and those girls in there are gonna whip your ass. I didn’t get no love growing up, so why should she? You snuck out, so you deserve what they did to you. Where am I supposed to find nice friends in the ghetto? She don’t care about me. Nobody cares about me.

Did I finally manage to calm them down? Of course I did. Did we make up some new house rules, and arrange for some more counseling? You bet. Did they grudgingly apologize and hug one another before I left. Yes they did, believe it or not. They hugged me, too, after I somewhat indignantly reminded them that there were plenty of people who cared a whole lot about both of them, starting with me. It was a bitter, ugly fight, but it ended well.

So then, am I hopeful now? No. I don’t believe for a minute that Tanya will stay home from now on, or that Terry will touch her kindly again without my prompting, or that some cut-rate counselor provided by the state will be able to help either one of them unload the baggage of two lifetimes of abuse and neglect and ignorance. I don’t believe that the part-time love of our little faith community will ultimately transform them into reasonably good people, or that their transformation will be part of the global change that President Obama – not to mention Jesus – says is possible.

And yet, my hope is not entirely dead. All evidence to the contrary, I believe that somehow, in ways I don’t fully understand, Tanya is better off, and Terry is better off, and even sorry little me, despite the ongoing destruction of my optimism, is better off because I stepped into their conflict that day, and because my friends and I remain in their lives. It may not make the difference between triumph and tragedy, but clearly I believe our love makes a difference nevertheless. Otherwise, I’d be long gone by now.

So then, here is my message to President Obama and to Jesus and to anyone else with confidence in the future of humanity: Don’t give up on me. I am not convinced, but I am still here.

Sincerely,

Bart Campolo

Dear Friends,

For as long as I have been writing Christmas letters to our supporters, I have assumed you folks were better off and more stable than our neighbors here in Walnut Hills. This year, however, I am not so sure. Oh, I know the economic crisis hasn’t brought you down to worried-about-your-next-meal status, but I also know that most of us don’t measure our well-being in absolute terms. Instead, we compare how we are doing right now against our past experiences and expectations. By that standard, I think, it isn’t the permanently unemployed or the perpetually dependant who are hurting most these days, but rather those folks who are used to working hard, paying their own way, and even looking out for the less fortunate.

People keep asking me if this economic crisis is going to stop us from caring for our neighbors. Happily, the answer is no. We may have to do it differently, but the good news about having almost no programming is that there is almost no programming to cut when money gets tight. Our Monday dinners may be more potatoes and less meat, and our vacation next summer may be a day-trip to Indianapolis instead of a weekend in Chicago , but beyond that nothing much will change. Our relationships here are practically recession-proof.

For many other ministries I know, however, things are much worse. An old friend of mine neatly summarized the problem: “When budgets get tight,” he said, “goodness is almost always the first thing to go.” As ministry supporters ourselves, Marty and I know just what he is talking about. All of a sudden, as we are facing difficult choices about our kids’ educations, we realize we can’t give away as much money as we used to. Even so, we don’t have to look very far to see people in much worse shape, who can’t afford for us – for any of us - to stop caring.

So then, instead of another story, this month I am writing to you with a simple request: As we settle into what may be a long hard time, don’t let your goodness to others be the first, or the second, or even the hundredth thing to go. Like our little fellowship here in Walnut Hills, you may need to care for your people in different ways than you are used to, and you may not be able to send as much money to ministries like ours, but for God’s sake, and for the sake of his neediest children, keep doing what you can. And as you do, know that we are praying for you, with both concern and thanksgiving.

Merry Christmas,

Bart Campolo

Dear Friends,

Twelve years ago our dear friend Julia took a badly neglected baby boy away from his crack head mother and made him her own. That boy, Michael, is now a strong, quiet, menacingly handsome teenager who adores his “Mom” and grudgingly appreciates our fellowship, but is increasingly attracted to street life. Well loved as he is, we will lose him before long.

Inner-city street life now is like crack cocaine was back in the 80s: So potent that almost anyone who tastes it becomes an instant addict. The difference is that while I never understood how anyone who had seen a crack zombie could even consider trying that stuff, I know all too well why boys like Michael are drawn to the corner like moths to a flame. To paraphrase the title of Chris Hedge’s recent book about the narcotic nature of war, street life is a force that gives them meaning.

As a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, Hedges saw war up close in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central America, but his descriptions of the ways desperate people mythologize the glories of conflict, demonize their enemies, corrupt their own language and culture, and becoming preoccupied with grim perversities of sex and violence remind me of behaviors I see in Walnut Hills, and not only among the hardcore ‘soldiers’ of the drug trade. In a very real sense, many of our neighbors here embrace the physical and emotional intensity of their daily struggle for survival the way WWII General George Patton embraced combat. “Compared to war,” he said, “all other forms of human endeavors shrink to insignificance. God, I love it so!”

Young Michael is not so eloquent, but he and the older boys he admires feel much the same. Their gun battles and fistfights, their ceaseless movement from house to house, their ready money and easy sex, and their constant vigilance against the police and the other gangs, create for them a sense of immediacy and camaraderie that no classroom, sports program, or regular job can match. Hustling for food, shelter, the next dollar or the next high does the same thing, not only for junkies and prostitutes, but also for lots of ordinary poor people navigating the traps and hazards of underclass America. There is no peace in the midst of these struggles, but there is plenty of drama, excitement, and singular purpose. Again, street life is a force which gives them meaning.

What street life does not give, I have come to understand, is true friendship. Instead, the various street soldiers I know here experience that same kind of closeness that real soldiers find in combat, which Hedges describes as comradeship. The essential difference, he writes, is that where friends find in their relationships a heightened awareness of their individual identities, comrades suppress – and thereby escape – such self-awareness in the pursuit of a common purpose. In their shared struggle for survival, they learn to value one another primarily on the basis of shared danger and immediate utility.

In other words, Michael has a better chance of taking a bullet for one of his buddies on the corner than he does of discovering the other boy’s fondest hopes or deepest fears, or his own for that matter. They may be together for decades, in and out of prison, drunk and high and straight, fighting side by side for money, or women, or whatever they mean by respect, without ever really understanding what makes each of them uniquely precious.

It isn’t just the boys on the corner, either. It is the girls who flock to them, too, and their babies, and all the others who get caught up in the madness they make out there. No matter how long they live that life together, in the end they are always alone.

That is the real horror of street life, I think: Not that we will lose Michael, but that he will lose himself, and in the process, everything else in the world that matters. In the Bible, they call it his soul.

The longer I live here, the more helpless I feel. If only true love was even half as attractive as it is beautiful.

Keep the faith,

Bart

Dear Friends,

No big long story this time, just four important little shorties (Bobbie Williams, a little jobbing, a ‘come and see’ weekend, and the return of my killer blog)…

_____________________________________________________________________________

Remember Bobbie Williams, the tough but hopeful friend we sent to truck driving school back in May?

Well, the bad news is that Bobbie washed out of the course a few months later, after her adult daughter suffered complications in childbirth and Bobbie had to take the newborn home for a few weeks herself to keep it out of foster care. It was truly painful to watch Bobbie’s dream (and her family’s best chance at a steady income) derailed by a bunch of typical ghetto nonsense (an unhealthy diet, an invisible baby-daddy, and an insanely unsupportive extended family). For a long time, she avoided us altogether, out of a sad mixture of embarrassment, anger, and despair. In the end, however, she had nowhere else to go.

The good news is that last Friday, after all kinds of obstacles (Bobbie’s school-based loans had fallen behind, so we had to risk even more of our money, the school itself moved so far away that we had to find a host family – an amazing host family at that - in the far suburbs for three weeks, and for the first two of those weeks, Bobbie just couldn’t figure out double clutching on the downshift) and all kinds of doubts and fears…Bobbie Williams of Walnut Hills passed all three parts of her Ohio Class B Commercial Driver’s License test!

Now I know better than to think we’re out of the woods on this thing yet. The Class B license made sense for Bobbie, but it makes it harder for her to get a job. We’ll have to offer a lot more support in that process, and more still once she starts actually working. After all, knowing how to drive a big truck and knowing how to keep a career-type job when you’ve never had one are two different things. Still, even if none of that stuff ever happens, it means something big to Bobbie, to her family, and to all of us who love her, just knowing that she passed the course and passed the test. In a place where very little of what gets started ever finishes in the right way, that Class B CDL is a huge victory we can celebrate, and a happy milestone in a hard life. Thanks for asking, and praying, and giving to help make it happen.

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Speaking of jobs, I need one here in Cincinnati. Actually, I need three or four…but not for me. Right now, within our inner circle of neighborhood friends, we have some wonderful friends looking hard for work, and we also have a work-support specialist named Mark Leeman who is ready and willing to work with good-hearted employers to help them succeed once they find it. Now all we need are those good-hearted employers. If you are one, or know somebody who might be one, please let me know. Better yet, let Mark know at marklingua@yahoo.com or 513 324 5483.

Ever since we got things rolling here in Walnut Hills, people near and far away have asked about coming over for a visit. Some are urban ministry folks, interested in the practical ways we love our inner-city neighbors. Others are not-so-churchy folks, more curious about the way we live together as a community. Some are financial supporters who want to better understand what they are supporting. Others are seekers who want to talk about what comes next in their own lives. The rest are just dear friends who want to see where and with whom we landed.

Up until now we’ve held everyone off, fearful that hosting guest after guest might throw off the very lifestyle all those guests were coming to experience in the first place, and mindful that we could have a much better conversation if they all showed up at the same time. Now, happily, the time has come

So then, consider yourself invited to a Walnut Hills Fellowship Weekend, October 31 - November 2, 2008. It won’t be fancy at all, of course, but it will be a great opportunity for anyone who wants to hang out, see the sights, ask questions, talk shop, eat chili, and maybe make a few new friends.

As an extrovert among introverts, I’ll be your main host, but the others will join us for some meals and conversation. We’ll figure out accommodations for the non-Cincy folks and all the other details once we know if we’ll have closer to 5 or 50 guests, but you can be pretty sure we’ll gather for dinner on Friday evening and disperse after lunch on Sunday afternoon. You can also be pretty sure that it will be a loose, casual time together with some really good people, and that it won’t cost much to participate.

If you are even a little bit interested in joining us, just drop a note to our new administrative pal, Leigha Mackin at Leigha.whf@gmail.com or call our office at 513-221-1488.

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A while ago I essentially abandoned my blog, partly because it muddled up my speaking website (www.bartcampolo.com) but mainly because I stopped thinking that it made any difference in the world.

Since that time, however, evidence to the contrary has convinced me to revamp and re-launch my blog as a separate entity, with more frequent, timely, concise, and funny posts than before, easier interfaces, and more links to other content I think you’ll enjoy. It may still be too edgy for some, of course, but then again so am I. You can see for yourself at www.bartcampolosblog.com.

Of course, if you’re not into blogs, don’t worry. We’ll just stay in touch the old-fashioned way…via emails and cell phones.

If, on the other hand, you enjoy what you read at www.bartcampolosblog.com please spread the word. Remember, right now Britney Spears is the most searched name on the Internet. Together, we can change that…or maybe something else.

Next month, I promise I’ll send a real letter. In the meantime, keep the faith!

Keep the faith,

Bart

Dear Friends,

The other day Marty invited some neighborhood kids over to help with a mailing she brought home from work. Before they got started, she sent twelve-year-old Heather across the street to fetch 13-year-old Jasmine, who has been part of our fellowship from the very beginning. Heather returned a few minutes later, alone and puzzled. “They were in there, but they wouldn’t open the door” she told Marty. “Jasmine’s mother said you need to call her”.

You should know that Jasmine’s parents, Jacob and Mariah, are good people who have had hard lives. They generally steer clear of our dinners, but I’ve gotten to know them pretty well just stopping by their house. They have been hurt in some awful ways, but they have worked hard to keep their family together. They have also supported their youngest daughter’s friendships with all of us. Until now.

“Jasmine can’t hang around with you people anymore,” Mariah told Marty over the phone a few minutes later. “We know who you are.”

Marty was confused. “Who are we?” she asked.

You’re reptiles,” Mariah replied matter-of-factly. “You don’t want to be reptiles, but you are.”

Marty was even more confused. “What are you talking about, Mariah? Who told you this?”

“It is a Prophecy from the Most High,” Mariah replied.

By now, Marty felt sick to her stomach. “Please, Mariah,” she said, “I don’t understand.” She heard Mariah ask her older daughter Jade to explain, but Jade never came to the phone.

After Marty hung up, Heather and the other kids told her they weren’t surprised. Evidently, they had been hearing strange things about us from Jasmine for a few days. Later that afternoon, I went across the street to talk to Jacob face to face, but he wouldn’t even look at me. No wonder. Reptiles, it turns out, is his storefront church’s euphemism for children of Satan.

If all of this seems bizarre or ridiculous to you, well, I can see why. But to me, to all of us here, it seems tragic as well. Suddenly, because some crazy storefront preacher has appointed himself as prophet, and because extraordinary suffering has made Jasmine’s whole family somewhat paranoid in the first place, Jasmine herself has been cut off from a circle of friends who have done nothing but bless and support her.

We have been rejected before, of course, albeit in ways not quite so bizarre. Last year, when one of our favorite neighbors suddenly would no longer speak to us, it took me months to find out that her oldest daughter, the victim of a boyfriend’s molestation, had demanded her mother have no relationship with any man, including me. Over and over again, people in this neighborhood who are starving for love and friendship draw close enough to us and one another that they can almost touch those things, only to push us away for reasons that don’t always make sense. And it hurts, every time.

Of course, given who and where we are, I always expected us to deal with lots of rejection. After all, this is a hard place filled with hard people who have learned the hard way to beware of strangers. What I didn’t expect, however, was that so many people would reject us long after we had proven our goodness to them. I should have, of course, being a student of Jesus.

I won’t insult your intelligence by spelling it out, but I will say this much: God knows better than anyone how it feels to have someone take the full measure of your love and throw it back in your face, even when both of you know they’re going to have a hell of a time trying to live without it.

Keep the faith,

Bart