From Here

My dad and I went to the Shakopee auction on Friday night.  We got there too early and left well before the normal three hour event wrapped up.  We came home with nothing, despite a couple of attempts at a food processor (for me) and some well-stocked tackle boxes (for dad). We shared a not-good pretzel (what is that cheese stuff made out of anyway? melted tonka trucks?) and largely sat and watched a small slice of Americana unfold.

Despite many differences and my penchant for bleeding-heartedness, my dad and I share a certain element of romanticized love for our country.  I say romanticized not because we're naive or silly but because I think each of us, in our way, recognizes how things should be long before we decide the proper path to that result.  We each recognize the goodness in simplicity and communal solidarity and the likelihood of corruption when things (government, church, restaurants) get too big to be handled effectively.  We may differ in the party we align our (both of us) tenuous allegiance to today, but I think our hopes and worries are probably painfully similar.  And both, at their core, stem from a hope that we are directing our path in a way that honors God first, country following far, far behind.

I only mention this now because I imagine some of my father's attachment to our Friday activity was similar to my own. Some of that enjoyment was likely inspired by a good dose of patronizing people watching (who in heaven's name needs a box of dog costumes?!) but some of it was inspired by the good kind of people watching, the kind that makes you think, "yes, this is how it should be." 

Before the auction got rolling the announcer opened up with a sad and common story.  Fred (or Joe or Hank or Charlie, I forget), who'd lived in Shakopee all his life, who'd raised his kids in Shakopee, whose youngest went to the high school, went to the doctor because he wasn't feeling well and came home with a diagnosis of cancer.  There's going to be an auction in April, catered by our friends at Buca di Beppo, and we're selling tickets for $10 apiece, every cent to Fred and his family.  She spoke and encouraged sales for less than 3 minutes, probably sold half a dozen tickets right there.  No doubt she'll sell them every Friday for the next month, and they'll be pushing them at the cashier's window when everybody pays their night's tally. 

My first thought, upon hearing this announcement, was, "yes! this is how it should be! In a perfect world, this is how communities should act."  But Shakopee is not a perfect world.  So why limit perfection to Perfection? A perfect world, in tiny increments, can exist in auction houses on Friday nights selling bad pretzels and taco-in-a-bag. 

I'm co-leading a bible study right now on C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce.  It is one of the most gratifying spiritual exercises I've ever experienced, and one of the toughest mentally.  For those who don't know the story, Lewis explores Heaven and Hell by way of a busride between the two.  An ancient Catholic thought was that souls in Hell would be given a "day off" out of Hell, a sort of merciful respite from damnation.  Lewis used this concept to bring those souls to the outskirts of Heaven, to allow them to glimpse that side of eternity and, perhaps, realign their perspective in a way that got rid of self-involvement enough to contemplate Grace.  Each of the lost souls Lewis examines is self-absorbed in some way or another, it's the link that binds the lost together.  Whether it be shame, or pride, or addiction to recognition, or lust, all of the sins that make it impossible for the souls to visualize God are sins that place Self far above the Almighty.

In one especially powerful conversation between a lost soul and a "solid person" (Heaven's inhabitants), the Heavenly person says:

There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself...as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist!  There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ...Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all the snares.

This passage has been resonating with me since I first read it, weeks ago, bouncing off the edges of my brain and resurfacing at seemingly odd moments, like when I'm debating the worth of a used food processor at a small town auction.  I think it struck me while the announcer was talking about this stricken townsmember because her plea for ticket sales and her description of the dilemma were in the same tone of voice.  They were of equal import.  The request for aid was a statement as much as it was an actual invitation. It is a plea but it is also a Truth, that we, as a community, should wrap around this man and do what we can.  So tonight, in this auction house, we will sell a few tickets, and then we will sell a few more.  Because that is what good people do, it's what a community should be, and it's what the struggling, the poor, are promised by the Lord, in the person of the Church.

Now we weren't in a church.  And I have no way of knowing whether the people who bought tickets were Christians.  I didn't buy one.  But it struck me that the Church fails, miserably and often, in addressing the needs of the poor, in doing exactly what God tells us to do when he tells us to take care of them.  And because the Church fails, the State steps in.  Poverty is a broad, terrifying thing, but the wealth and power of every Church in America, together, could eliminate it in this country.  We do not.  The Church fails.  There are great strides made, wonderful sacrifices, glorious dedication from men and women and children at various orphanages, soup kitchens, halfway houses, AA meetings, prisons, and wrong-sides-of-the-tracks.  But it will never be enough unless charity grows out of a love for the poor translated into a duty to serve, and not a duty worth nothing more than a tithe. 

 When the auction announcer began her ticket sale for Fred, she appealed to his roots.  He's from Here.  He grew up Here.  He raised his kids Here.  As a community we should rise up and serve him, honor him, bless him in every way we can.  It struck me, I suppose, of how powerful it would be to make the same statement about every single human being on the face of the planet.  If "here" is but a synonym of "God's child," then we are all guilty, everyday, of ignoring our brethren. 

If every single person is from Here, from Him, rather, then we should all be buying tickets.