Unfinished Stories #1: Auckland to Berlin (via Atlanta)

Date: 20150303
Location: Auckland

Time: 1312hr
Sitting in a food court downtown.
Behind, the ladies are complaining about the last meeting they had to sit through.
Across, the gentleman is leafing through his notes.

I check Facebook for the fifth time in twelve minutes.
There are no updates.
So I try Google.
The last update was an hour ago.
Twitter.
At last, there is some vague update that doesn't say very much.
We are still waiting.

I had shied away from posting much about this most recent troubling news because of a variety of reasons, amongst which one of them was that I wasn't sure where I stood about capital punishment or execution.
No, rather, I was ashamed of my upbringing that for so long, I had viewed execution only as a means to keep people out of trouble.
Execution wasn't something I wanted to talk about because there were so many grey areas I wasn't willing to explore yet.
But because a dear, dear friend pleaded and pleaded on all forms of social media, I finally paid attention.

Kelly Gissendaner

Have you met her?

I haven’t.
But I know people who have.
I know people who have heaps of stories to tell of her.
Of her life, a story that is ridden with twists and turns.
But more importantly, a life REDEEMED.

Suddenly she wasn’t just a name in the headlines anymore.
No, she was a friend.
A mother.
A minister.
A fellow follower of Christ.
And she had a story, just like I do.


My mind raced back to that one afternoon in Berlin.

My visits to Neustart had become part of the rhythm of my time in Berlin.
There are so many stories in that tiny space on Kurfürstenstraße, but there’s one that always bring a sting to my eyes at just the thought of him.

Neustart was a café that served as a safe house for sex workers in Berlin. I can’t say that I made much of a contribution to that place in my short time there, but something broke inside me that would leave a permanent mark forever.

I first met him on one of the first few visits I made to Neustart. It had been explained to us that because it was a safe house for sex workers, men were not allowed in that space. But J (identity concealed) was a different story. He had earned the trust of most of the women and was allowed to hang out there while his girlfriend was at work on the streets.

We sat down with him one afternoon. He spoke to us in brilliant English, and we learnt that he picked up the language from a fellow inmate when he was in prison. He was only a few years older than I was, but there was something in his demeanour that looked like the world had taken its toll on him. And then he laid it all out.

When he was about twelve, his parents sold him to druggies. Life on the streets led him to witnessing his best friend being shot the first time he was in Berlin when he was only eighteen. He was so matter-of-fact in telling us his story. I, on the other hand, struggled to believe that this could be real life for anyone.

After that afternoon, I was curious to hear more of his story, but we hardly got a chance to sit down with him again. I would get an update once in a while from one of the social workers there that he was doing well, and that he had checked into a rehab facility and was willing to give God a chance. In the midst of the dark stories in that space, I had found a glimmer of hope. Perhaps I could witness redemption at work in real life after all.

On my last visit there, I asked one of the social workers there if they had heard anymore from him. I had hoped for a chance to say goodbye, and to wish him well as he continued on his journey. I don’t remember how she said it, but the news broke me, and I left in tears that afternoon.

As part of the process to get clean, J had to get tested for HIV.
The test returned positive.

I remembered pleading with God that afternoon on the bus ride home. J had decided to take steps to wholeness and had been doing so well.

It wasn't fair that he had HIV.
It wasn't fair that he never stood a chance.
It wasn't fair that he wasn't even a teenager when he got sold into the drug life.

But it also wasn't fair that I wasn't the one born into that situation. I honestly couldn't say that I would have made better life choices than J tried to if I had been born into a different family. Even now, five years later, my heart still aches that I was born into privilege, and he never stood a chance.

Yet there was something that nagged at me as I struggled to make sense of the latest twist in J’s life.

That’s not the end of the story.

I had no idea what that could mean, but I could only be thankful that that thought saved me from being crippled by despair and helplessness that there was NOTHING I could do about J’s life. His story remains unfinished for me, but there was that twisted irony that I could only trust there would be redemption in his story—even if I would never get to find out what that would look like.

Perhaps I had taken the naïve and easy way out by simply clinging desperately to the belief that there HAD to be a greater being in control of J’s life instead of giving over completely to anger and helplessness. The honest truth was that I selfishly HAD to believe that there was a divine being in control. Because if that wasn’t true, everything I had given my life to so far would have been a fraud, and I was too much of a wuss to live a life without hope. While I didn’t subscribe to the belief that this divine being was, as my spiritual pops Ed puts it, “an interventionist God” who would undo J’s HIV, I NEEDED to believe that there would be an ending to J’s story that would have the ultimate redemption and grace written all over it—if for no other reason than the selfish one: I just need to be able to sleep at night.

Time: 1513hr
I was sick in my stomach waiting for an update and could not finish lunch.
So I moved to a café to start writing.

I scroll through Facebook again.
And then Twitter.
Another Google search.

Kelly’s execution was scheduled for 133 minutes ago. She was sentenced to death for the 1997 killing of her husband, having recruited an ex-lover to carry out the murder. My friend Hannah met her when she was teaching a theology course at the women’s prison in Atlanta. You can read more about that here.

Since I began working on this book, my week in Atlanta has been on my mind a lot. Like the Berlin chapter, there are so many stories from that week in Atlanta to tell, but lately there’s been that one scene that has replayed itself over and over again in my mind recently.

The motel we stayed in during our week there was right smack in the middle of where a majority of the drug deals go down. On our way back to the motel after walking the streets and talking to the homeless one night, I finally paid attention to the people gathered right outside the gates of our motel. We had met a number of druggies by then that I was starting to be able to tell which ones were high. But that was when I noticed that there were kids that hung around that street as well while mum and dad were doing… well, what they did. And the kids. What chance did they stand?

I didn’t realize it until I met J four years after Atlanta, and walked the streets of a community rampant with domestic violence as an advocate for children in Auckland two years after that: that night in Atlanta was when I was just beginning to understand that there was a brokenness in humanity that desperately needed Big Picture REDEMPTION.


Time: 1607hr
187 minutes have passed since Kelly’s scheduled execution.

Checking Facebook again.
And Twitter.
Google at this point is proving pretty worthless.

The people of Starbucks at Aotea Square have come and gone.
Life is still moving on as usual in this corner of the world, and I allow myself a moment to lament that this is what happens when your heart lives in so many different corners of the world at a time.

But I think that’s what gets me.

That Big Picture REDEMPTION is so desperately needed all around the world.

For J.
For the children on the streets of Atlanta that night who are probably teenagers and young adults by now.
And I could tell you about the children in Cambodia piled on motorbikes
And children on the streets of Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota

And grownups around the world crying out for whom Big Picture REDEMPTION.

And then I think of Kelly.
She made a decision to allow that Big Picture REDEMPTION into her life as well.
But yet humanity had somehow discerned that we would make a better judgment call on her life. 

That.
That, I cannot understand.

Allow me a moment of anger to say this:
I have found myself wondering over the last few days if it would be better for her sanity for this to be the end of it all for her.
If it would be better for the twisted nature of human judgment to end here for her.
Because if not, how long?

But yet I want to believe that there is Big Picture REDEMPTION for ALL of humanity.
That we would uncover our own desperate need for redemption that saves us from the need to judge another or inflict revenge, and leave that to the work of a more divine being: A God that sees all and knows all and reconciles all to Godself.

And so we wait.

Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison.
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

Table Talks: Behind the Camels

This week at Table Talks, we got to talking about Joseph. Somewhere between all those discussions and my conversation with Amber on Monday, I got to thinking about prevenient grace.

One of the questions the book we're using asked what kinds of tension there might be in our household. As we discussed the question, I looked around the room and realised that none of us lived in a traditionally-defined household of Mum, Dad, kids and pets. The skeptical self chuckled inside. Cookie-cutter programmes don't cater for non-cookie-cutter groups.

But that's when I realised that by the time Joseph had to confront the household tension again, he actually was at a pretty good place in life. Pharaoh loved him, and he probably had servants to take care of all his dishes so there was no need to fight over who loaded the dishwasher, or leaving toothpaste stains in the sink. Just like each one of us in the room who had moved away from the families of origin where the household tensions were the strongest.

No, the tension came from a long time ago when he was the arrogant little brat bragging about his dreams. At one point in our discussion, Sylvia asked, "When do you reckon it was that Joseph decided to forgive his brothers and make peace with them? Was it when he was walking behind the camels as a slave that that transformation happened?"

I guess I never really thought about it like that. I mean, I guess I always knew that Joseph would probably have to work through some forgiveness issues, but I had always imagined him to be a humble, long-suffering man. But for the arrogant little brat that bragged about his dreams to turn into a humble, forgiving man, I couldn't help thinking that "soul-searching" process must have been more drawn-out than I ever spent time thinking about.

Which reminded me of my favourite poem by my #1 Dead Man Crush, Deitrich Bonhoeffer. "Wer bin ich" or "Who am I?" was written while he was imprisoned for being a part of the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. If you've read any of my previous theological rants, you would know by now that Bonhoeffer and Luther are the two theologians I have most respect for as far as spiritual formation and reformation is concerned, and no, it has nothing to do with them being German (although I won't deny that just gave me an extra reason to love all things Deutsch). Sure, they wrote impressive stuff, but that's just stuff. At the heart of what caused me to respect them this much was their struggle with their "self," or what Freud calls, the ego.

I remember watching the film on Luther's life in German class. The scene that stuck out to me most was the one of him prostrate on the ground crying out to God to deal with him. Something broke in him that day. And I'd hazard a guess that a similar process happened with Bonhoeffer. That process of wrestling with injustice had led them to a place where they realised aside from the Creator and prevenient grace, we were really a bunch of nothings.

An acquaintance made an observation that I looked like something happened some time ago that broke me. I don't know what it was he saw that warranted that observation, but I smiled, remembering all those times growing up that the grown-ups would say that God deals with us in our brokenness.

For a long time, I had assumed it was Keren's death that led me to my breaking point. But as we were talking about Joseph's experience behind the camels, it dawned on me Keren's death was only one of the markers of what I've come to call "All the Crazy".

I don't know that Luther would have been prostrate on the ground like that in real life as was portrayed in that movie, but I remembered carrying that image mentally to the streets of Berlin. I remembered carrying it with me to Neustart that day as I sat across from "Justin" (not his real name), listening to how he had ended up in Berlin after his parents sold him to feed their drug addiction. At 12, he was raised by druggies, and less than 10 years later, he witnessed his best friend getting shot in a drug deal gone sour. Sitting there, listening to his story and the stories of the other women who had, by the end of that very short summer, become good friends even though we barely spoke each other's language, I was struck with the realisation that if I had been born into the same home background as them, I don't know that I would have made different life choices than them.

I carried that same image the day I found out that "Justin" had decided to get cleaned up and committed to a relationship with Christ. In that same short conversation, I also found out that as a result of getting cleaned up, his medicals showed that he was HIV-positive. I think that was when I found myself prostrate on the ground. I didn't understand. He and I weren't too different, and it wasn't fair that he got dealt the cards he received, and I got mine. I could still walk away from there and go back to my clean-cut, sheltered life. It simply wasn't fair.

I don't know how long I laid prostrate, but when I eventually got up, there were only three truths I could cling on to.
1) God was, is, and will continue to be sovereign.
2) God loves. God loves me for my inability to understand.
3) Grace. Grace existed before me and will continue to exist with or without me. I only needed to jump on board with it.

When Joseph emerged from behind the camels to be sold as a slave, or whenever it might have been, the arrogance was stripped away. His dreams of greatness would have amounted to nothing if not for the hand of God on his life.

When I stood up again, when I came out from behind the camels again, I was more aware than ever that without the hand of God on my life, I was nothing. My vocation, my work, my writing, none of it would amount to anything without Grace and Agape love. I no longer needed to understand even though I knew I would continue to wrestle--simply because I'm human, and that's part of the human experience.

Who am I? In the words of Charles Naylor, "I am the Lord's, I know."

Wer bin ich? - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Wer bin ich? Sie sagen mir oft,
ich träte aus meiner Zelle
gelassen und heiter und fest
wie ein Gutsherr aus seinem Schloß

Wer bin ich? Sie sagen mir oft,
ich spräche mit meinen Bewachern
frei und freundlich und klar,
als hätte ich zu gebieten.

Wer bin ich? Sie sagen mir auch,
ich trüge die Tage des Unglücks
gleichmütig, lächelnd und stolz,
wie einer, der Siegen gewohnt ist.
Bin ich das wirklich, was andere von mir sagen?
Oder bin ich nur das, was ich selbst von mir weiß?
Unruhig, sehnsüchtig, krank, wie ein Vogel im Käfig,
ringend nach Lebensatem, als würgte mir einer die Kehle,
hungernd nach Farben, nach Blumen, nach Vogelstimmen,
dürstend nach guten Worten, nach menschlicher Nähe,
zitternd vor Zorn über Willkür und kleinlichste Kränkung,
umgetrieben vom Warten auf große Dinge,
ohnmächtig bangend um Freunde in endloser Ferne,
müde und leer zum Beten, zum Denken, zum Schaffen,
matt und bereit, von allem Abschied zu nehmen?

Wer bin ich? Der oder jener?
Bin ich denn heute dieser und morgen ein andrer?
Bin ich beides zugleich? Vor Menschen ein Heuchler und vor mir selbst ein verächtlich wehleidiger Schwächling?
Oder gleicht, was in mir noch ist, dem geschlagenen Heer,
das in Unordnung weicht vor schon gewonnenem Sieg?

Wer bin ich? Einsames Fragen treibt mit mir Spott.
Wer ich auch bin, Du kennst mich, Dein bin ich, o Gott!

Who am I? - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a Squire from his country house.

Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As thought it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectations of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.

Who am I? This or the Other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!

Neustart: We Are All The Same

Today we're kicking back a bit. At least, MaryAnn, Amity and I are. And I've just spent the last hour indulging in one of my guilty pleasures... Bejeweled!

The rest of the group is out working this morning. Two of the girls, together with Amy who's here with us for a few days to help translate, are back out at the cafe. The guys are at another ministry site. But yesterday being as long a day as it was, we were given the option to stay in this morning. I figured since we're watching Schindler's List tonight and going to Sachsenhausen, one of the concentration camps tomorrow, I need at least part of today to just veg a bit. And besides, I need to write.

Neustart

I don't know the exact translation, but if I could guess what it means based on the limited German vocab that I have, Neustart probably means new beginning. This is a cafe for prostitutes (I love how "in your face" the German culture is. No sugar-coating or anything like that. Straight to the point, this IS a cafe for prostitutes.) Yes, we did come all the way to Berlin just to drink coffee with prostitutes. No, we - or at least I - don't have an agenda. Oh, but if you could only hear the stories these women have...

One thing I learnt yesterday: you can never assume the stories of any of these women. Some of these women are the nicest, most compassionate and beautiful women I've seen. One of the ladies working with us told us that their stories vary widely. Some of these women were trafficked in as sex slaves from the Eastern European countries. Others had to deal with difficult family situations. Some did it to pay for college and decided to stay in that line of work because it paid more than other jobs would. Still others were German housewives whose husbands and families decided they needed extra income to help pay for the pool.

Yes, the stories of the women who were trafficked in as sex slaves break my heart, especially when you really look at how beautiful these women were. But when I think of some of the other circumstances in which these women come from, I can't help but wonder, what in Pete's name is the world coming to? How or why would husbands or boyfriends allow or even encourage these women to do this? And what does that do to their intimacy?

As we were hanging out there, we learnt there were rules.

1) We don't beat them down with the Bible. There's already another group doing that, from which the group at Neustart split from because of that reason. This group tell them they are living in sin, make them feel dirty and says things like they're breaking up families. I'm sorry, but did we forget that these men are the ones who come looking? If there weren't men looking to begin with, maybe the trade wouldn't even exist. It kinda takes two hands to clap, doesn't it? So we don't preach. We don't evangelise. We are just there if they want to talk about their kids, or like Jenny who showed us pictures of the kitty litter she found and decided to adopt.

2) When we're out on the streets handing out coffee, we don't approach any and every woman. Some of these women work for pimps and if their pimps catch them spending too much time chatting and not working, they could get into trouble. Suzanne, one of the ladies who volunteers at the cafe, told us a story of how a girl once approached one of her colleagues for coffee and asked if she could pray for her. Suzanne's colleague agreed, and laid hands on her and prayed. The next day, this girl was no longer on the street. Suzanne's colleague asked the next girl down where she was. The girl told her she couldn't talk, and to leave her alone or they could get her into trouble like they did to her friend. Apparently the episode from the day before had upset the pimp and the girl was beaten up and couldn't work for a month.

3) If the woman is being approached by the client while we're talking to her, we immediately say goodbye and leave. They are at work and we cannot - and should not - interfere with their business. One of the girls told us that her brother had passed away a few days ago, and her sister two weeks before. She desperately needed money to go to, and to pay for the funeral so she was under immense pressure to work even though she really couldn't make herself do it. With stories like that, and realising that they really have no other option, I had to come to the realisation that there's really no way I can make myself tell them to not work, even if what they are doing is counter to everything I believe about sex.

4) If we see someone we know on the street going off to work, we don't acknowledge them. We only see them for who they are, and not objects of their line of work.

When Rachel and I did our first outreach (as Suzanne calls it - we basically walk the streets where the girls work and approach them with coffee, tea or chocolate and tell them that there's a cafe around the corner if they want to hang out, seek help - there's a social worker there just in case, or just to stay warm) yesterday morning, we saw a really beautiful young girl being approached. The guy appeared to be giving her directions and soon he starts walking off with her following just a few steps behind. In all my years at TK going to school fairly close to a redlight district and the occasional run-ins with other women in the same line, this was the first time I actually witnessed this happening.

But it also made me wonder about the guy. What drove him to that place? What was his first time like? Did someone teach him how to approach a prostitute? And what about the language barrier? How did they negotiate when one spoke Bulgarian and the other, German? Were there standard protocol for the trade?

It is a fascinating side of society that people don't like talking about. But it's real. And when you put names and faces to something that society simply labels "PROBLEM" or "VICE" and walk away, you can't help but realise how human it really is. When you hear the stories of Jenny, or Chan, or Antonea, you can't just say, "ugly, ugly, ugly" and walk away. (Left: Amity with Amy Froese - Dr. Walter Froese's great-niece - trying to explain where Michigan is relative to the rest of the US. Amity did portraits of the women last night.)

And the bottom line is this: with as many varied backgrounds and stories as these women come from, it really could have been me, or any of the other ladies I've spent time with on this trip - or even people I'm in classes with. Or anyone at all. They're not just "PROBLEM." Or "VICE." Or "ugly."

Maybe we are the ones who are really ugly who don't know how to deal with the broken pieces of life. Maybe we are the Problems who can't even deal with ourselves enough to have compassion on others and just want to beat on their heads with judgment and our supposed "sacred words."

Oh God, with as much as we've talked about mercy, grace and freedom this past week, fill us up and send us out to live out what that really means.

Break my heart for what breaks Yours,
Everything I am for Your Kingdom's cause.