Wedding

The Resident Love Goddess and I attended a wedding Saturday in another city. Beautiful church, beautiful ceremony. The bride loves butterflies, so after the ceremony we all stood in the garden and were given a small cardboard box. After the groom's uncle read a Native legend about how the Creator gave butterflies with the ability to carry our prayers to Him, we each opened our little boxes and set the creatures to flight. It was wonderful.

We went to a nearby banquet hall for dinner, visited with family we see only once or twice a year, had a great dinner. We danced a little and laughed a lot. All of the tables were covered in white linen, as were the chairs, with ruffles and bows on the back. Sparkling china and glassware, gleaming silverware, flickering candles atop the centerpieces. As we were crossing the room to our table we walked across the polished hardwood dance floor and, as I looked down to where the wood met the plush carpet, I couldn't help but think of the floor in our dining room at the Mission. It might be a commercial grade of linoleum, but it's linoleum just the same, and should have been replaced years ago. All the seams are lifting - we're constantly gluing another spot. The walls in the dining room need to be resurfaced, as do the stairs and the front doors leak cold air like a sieve in the winter.

I don't begrudge the banquet hall for any of it. I also know the lavishness of a wedding is hardly an everyday event in anyone's life. We had a wonderful time at the wedding and reception and it was both an honour and a pleasure just to be there. But this work at the Mission changes you. Time spent in this environment makes you aware of things you never would have noticed otherwise. In one of our conversations three women were discussing the money their sons had spent on new suits for their junior high graduation. In every case, the suit for a 15 year olds party cost more than most of our dinner guests would make in a month. You begin to ask questions after you've been here for awhile, questions that don't have easy answers, and none of those questions rest easy in your spirit.

At one point after dinner - between the coffee and the Petit Fours - I was thinking about how very different this experience was from my dinner the night before, about how vast the gulf was between the two worlds, about how I wasn't sure to which one I belonged. One of the women at our table - sitting across from the Resident Love Goddess and I - asked what I was looking so "pensive" about. It seemed obvious there was absolutely no way I could explain any of it - the distance was too great. Oh, she could certainly understand the words and grasp the idea, much the same way that I might grasp the Grand Canyon's enormity if someone explained it to me. Hiking the trail down to the river bed is something else altogether different, isn't it? So I dodged the question and rejoined the conversation at the table.

And you know, it's not my fault, either, that I have no idea what the Grand Canyon is really like. I mean, I've never been there. I've never even seen it, so how could I possibly know what it's like to stand at the precipice and gape in awe and wonder?

No, really - how could I?

Comments

[lorna]

appreciate this post. Hope you get to visit the Grand Canyon someday --- I came home more in awe of God than ever. Only Jesus though helps bridge the gap between chasms ... and we sometimes use word to try.

Bless you for your work, and for what God's changed in your heart.

[awareness]

it is the big gulf between the two worlds which i struggle with whenever i return to my hometown.....a city which knows very little poverty. prosperity, materialism and very different lifestyles are prominent, as opposed to the lives and life i immerse myself in during my daily work. i completely understand your observations and feelings.

i have tried to "bridge" the gap between these two worlds.....tried to explain my feelings and sometimes disgust at the lack of awareness and the pettiness i hear when i'm caught in the middle of a bizarre conversation on the price of houses or the purchase of a fully loaded new vehicle etc,etc....but honestly it never works. i only end up being an irritant.....

i think it's important to bridge the gap for ourselves....to be able to adapt to both (all worlds and communities) we live and work in, because it will only allow us to learn how to possibly bring the worlds together.....

[[rhymes with kerouac]]

lorna - Thanks - The Grand Canyon is one of the top sights I have yet to see in the USA.

awareness - There is so much truth in what you have just said. The gap is enormous. Vast. I spend so much time just biting my tongue because I would become way more than an 'irratant' - I'd just be a raving madman in the face of wealthy 'me first' Christians. Perhaps there's a time and a place for ranting, too, but mostly it's just counterproductive.

[Robert]

RWK I really identify with what your saying as well. My youth pastor preached an excellent sermon last sunday in 3 parts showing the church as traditional contemporary and emergent and how we need to reach out and engage the world being missionaL. The verese where Paul talks about being *all things to all men that he might somewhow save some* really resonates with me in what your saying about bridging the gulf like you are saying if we try to approach people even *mefirst christians* in a way that lacks grace love and truth then we will have no real impact or effect we need to approach from inside their skin like Paul said does that make sense??

[[rhymes with kerouac]]

Robert - I agree -we do need to approach from "inside their skin" as you say. The gospel needs to be communicated in such a way as is relevant and meaningful to the person hearing it.