Charity with Dirty Hands

Dear, dear friends, bless your kind indulgence in helping out the good folks of Dundee, Scotland.  I gave my word that I would blog, and thus, I fulfill my promise.

The Attic is currently situated in the heart of Kirkton, to which it recently moved from Hilltown.  Both neighborhoods are areas of Dundee which might raise eyebrows and give one less inclination to talk to strangers.  Bruce and his team – mostly of volunteers – are busy capturing the flavor of the place, which is what I love most about his work.  The methodology which drives the heart of this burgeoning community center is one of elbow-rubbing.  There is no fear of getting dirty, and thus there is no co-dependency.

Charity with rubber gloves on engenders a caste system peopled by the powerful and the helpless.  I have, and you have not.  You look to me for providence.  “I give to you,” translates so easily into, “I’m better than you.”  It is a communal Messiah complex that makes the Haves into God and the Have-nots into mere mortals.  Inasmuch as our charity towards people operates on this basis, it cannot love people.  If people change, it is despite this mentality rather than through it.  We have to admit our brokenness in order to be allowed to hear about another’s.  Moving into the neighborhood is part of that.  Step into another’s skin; become flesh and blood.  Tabernacle.

The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s difficult.  Welcome to the Gospel.  I won't say I'm not afraid of it.  When someone gets hamstrung and loses his job, when a lady’s teenage daughter disappears into a destructive lifestyle, when the government decides not to sign the checks anymore, we all come clamoring for answers.  The last thing the Gospel does is say, “Here’s why that happened.”  The whole bodily message of Jesus was the same one that got thunder-whispered from the summit of Sinai:  “I am here.”

What does that look like in human terms?  In Kirkton?  It looks like a job center, a bike maintenance class, a weekly evening of tea of coffee, a visit paid to the baker’s next door where thirteen-year-olds skive off class and smoke on the sidewalk.  It looks like an impromptu concert while kids goof off and make a racket and pay closer attention than you think.  In short, it’s messy.  And it’s just beginning.

“Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’”

                                                                                                               Isaiah 30:21

Under the Thumb of a Revelation

Let us leaf through the archives again, a little further back this time.

We filed into the balcony rows of Central Baptist Church in the evening and sat in those high-backed wooden pews as if we were in the Globe Theatre. And indeed, the Lord’s genius in the evening nearly had me jumping out of my seat and into thin air. The parishioners of sixteen churches from the corners of Dundee filled the ornate old sanctuary to bursting, both with their presence and the iconoclastic hodge-podge of their denominational traditions. Pentecostals sat next to Baptists, and Congregationalists (I’m not particularly sure what that means) sat next to members of the Church of Scotland. We sang together, and we prayed together, and we wondered at the beautiful kaleidoscope of it all.

Unbeknownst to six rather easily-spotted Americans in the balcony, the leaders of those churches had been meeting together over tea for years, simply to befriend each other and discuss ideas and callings. The charter that they unveiled during the meeting was the prayerful work meant to call the churches of Dundee together in a unified rag-tag bunch to serve a rag-tag city. Then Jim Clark preached on Ephesians, chapter 4.

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all.

On Brook Street, the air doesn’t move much, thanks to the high courtyard walls that surround everything in Scotland. But one block south, the wind stretches its northerly fingers in among the houses and whips down the lane off the firth. I turned up my collar and pulled my hat down tighter as I trod down the sidewalk next to the waves lapping in cold dark froth at the stony shoreline. I don’t think it was chance, either, that led me to absentmindedly turn my head to look back at a natural pier jutting out into the dark toward a fishing shack. There, in the lee of the pier, six white swans floated silently on the inky water, holy ghosts bobbing in the loose rhythm of the Tay.

                                                                                                                    Dundee, 2007

Flight Date: October 17th

In a step that feels irreversible, I have purchased a plane ticket.  That is to say, my wife purchased a plane ticket for me as if she were my technologically savvy secretary - which she is.  I shall depart these shores on October the 17th, to return on All Hallows' Eve.

Traveling alone is a particular sort of fasting, one which I tend toward much more enthusiastically than anything involving a lack of food.  Three years ago, when my summer was marked by hiccups of domestic deprivation, my wife was greatly with child - our first - and I jaunted to both Scotland and Hawaii like a bee on a string.  It would not be fair to say I didn't enjoy it, but it was my first real glimpse of the inescapable heart-stretching that comes of pulling away from roots - a blessing I didn't know I had been given.  It could only have been made complete if I had taken Kat with me, but alas.

I kissed her goodbye on the ramp up to the gates at McGhee-Tyson Airport, my last treasured glimpse of color - hazel green and hopeful pink in a halo of brunette - before I entered the grey sensory deprivation of air travel.  Beyond the Rubicon of the metal detector, I walked upon apathetic carpet; its patterns stretched blase geometry from wall to wall, their only function to disguise dirt and lint until some diligent soul with a vacuum could suck it up.  What drywall there was stared back with a uniform sigh, brooking no history to trespass upon its quieting hue.  Pants-suited modernity gobbled up errant snatches of architecture, denying the lone traveler the visual pleasures of, say, a train station.  Mostly, there were windows, great endless portals of glass that let sharply cut sunlight through to illuminate the grey.  I spoke little, of course.  Most lone travelers speak little in an airport.  They talk to security and staff, working out their issues and offering only the most timidly chaste blandishments as conversation.  Jokes are not allowed.  Much of your behavior therein is based on security and safety, no laughing matter either one.  Airport security work must either be the most depressing job or the one most nearly akin to sitting in the back row of a church sanctuary, trying with moderate success to dam up your laughter at the pastor's galavanting jowels.

Airports are seen as great opportunities for architects, but many of those I have experienced - the open-air verandas of Honolulu aside - are largely homogenous.  You are given views of the tarmac, the gates, the sundry fast-food and newsstand diversions, and, in small doses of hopeful reminder, the sky.  You sit.  You wait.  You give your time to pilfered newspapers and borrowed magazines, and you people-watch, but mostly your mind is increasingly abuzz with the numbness of waiting.  You think about the odd minutiae of life.  Who was the first person to put aglets on shoelaces?  Where did people suddenly gain the courage to eat tomatoes, which are part of the nightshade family?  Do jellyfish sleep?  It is at this point that you awaken from your stupor to the realization that you've been staring unblinkingly at an older woman for the last fifteen minutes.  She does not look pleased.  You bury your face in Newsweek.

I have found wonderful snatches of odd conversation in airports and on planes, but these are mere rents in the veil of isolation that descends upon me when I travel alone.  Some seat-mates are glad to talk to another human being in that sea of strangers, but some give out the terse answers and sterile smiles that unmistakably say, "Leave me alone."  Some fake sleep.  I have moments of existential semi-clarity in which I say things to myself like, "I am sealed up in a self-sufficient tin can at 35,000 feet with two hundred people I don't know."  The weightier implications of this begin to feel like rocks on my chest.  I long for more coffee, or for any self-medication, really.  Anything to break the oppressive feedback loop of being forced to live with myself alone.  I've heard of park rangers coming upon groups of campers to sit near them in mostly unbroken silence, just listening to conversation; there are stories of officers pulling people over just to see a human face up close for a moment or two.  When we are forced into the dark, we will take what light we can get.

After I have endured this fast for more than eight hours, it becomes unnerving.  After twenty or so, it approaches the limits of my forbearance.  It is in this harrowing mental state, however, that, after enduring the final trial by customs with their cosmological questions ("Why have you come to the United Kingdom?"), I emerge to discover the un-recycled air on the other side, being breathed in and out by my coyly grinning friends, who are waiting for me just beyond the gate.

Of Baking and Boldness

There exists a terror of illegitimacy surrounding those talents and energies which God has given us.  We fear the far-fetched pipe dream, the imagination as applied to the real world.  Play-acting is something best left to children and their unicorns.  Nothing so unrestrained belongs in the arena of maturity, whirling like a tempest against the house of grown-up cards.  Yet, it takes a great deal of imagination to be truly good at anything, especially something for which you have an affinity.  Great mathematicians dance on the verges of faith.  Architects live in buildings that don't yet exist.

These all, so we hope, have a sense of purpose in their work, a direction in which they are journeying, both following and guiding the dream.  It is to the guiding voice of the work given me that I have now, finally, begun to give ear.  In raising money for The Attic and Nightclub Outreach, I have played shows and will continue to do so.  Now, it is time to throw open the doors of the kitchen here at Sinclair's Eve.

My wife and her mother will tell you that I have a talent for cooking.  What this truly means is that I understand - to a certain degree - what I like to taste.  At any rate, a fair number of scrumptious concoctions have issued forth from my stove, and it is finally time to apply the work and experience to a use beyond the right and good act of feeding my own family.  This coming two weeks, I will be making a number of loaves of bread to sell in order to continue raising money for the aforementioned groups.  My trip, in case you are still wondering, is paid for, but the real work of fundraising is now afoot.  I am gratefully sublimating another of my favorite activities:  baking.

If you would like to purchase a loaf, contact me:

adamwhipple[at]hotmail[dot]com

The Great Sell-Out

Blogs, periodicals, and individuals that habitually speak to matters of fundraising are customarily disappointing to me.  It seems there can never be an interest in anything more personal than the ledger lines.  How droll, then, that I should find myself composing a blog which is about nothing so much as fundraising.  God's sense of humor prevails.  Therefore, I humbly invite you to come root through the Whipple esoterica and other sundry treasures in a Fabulous Yard* Sale in Which You Never Know What You'll Find (*The actual yard is not for sale).  Join us in Halls, at 4710 Cabbage Lane, on the morn of Saturday, July 28th.  Any items sold from Sinclair's Eve (my house) will benefit both The Attic and Nightclub Outreach in Dundee, Scotland.



View Larger Map

I've been to Dundee thrice now, and loved it each time.  My wanderlust overcomes me more than a sense of obedience to the Lord.  Adventure is my temptress.  The little snatches of neo-Gothic architecture, the different constitution of old sidewalk concrete, the spiderweb of hidden garden paths - all these perplexities which go without saying for the natives are matters of excitement and curiosity for me.  So, to bring you up to speed on the course of this journey, we shall delve into the archives.

                The conductor for the shuttle bus pointed all in the direction of a tiny inlet of asphalt.  He rattled off instructions in a high Glasgow tongue and several of us disembarked, stepping uncertainly in the way that he indicated.  The small cul-de-sac was actually a car park for cabs, several of which idled there on Woodside Way like oversized bees waiting for passengers.  Above them stood a white portico with the words “Queen Street” emblazoned on the side of the grimy overhang.  My luggage rattled behind me on the bricked sidewalk as I walked through the automatic sliding doors, which would have closed had their efforts not been punctuated by a steady stream of people rolling out onto the street.

                Hiding its bulk behind shops and tiny stone inlets, a cathedral of transportation arched its back above the seven sets of tracks.  The sun shone through the frosted glass skin of the station.  People sat quietly in bunches or drank coffee or paced or plowed forward with bits of luggage in hand.  The spindly ticking of bicycle wheels and the snuffling of dogs mingled with a river of human voices.  My nagging loneliness from the long journey was lost in sheer amazement at this grand business of moving people.  Men and women of Indian descent stood about pressing the crowds to buy cell phones.  A group of German accents congregated jovially and walked through the gate to board a train.  The marquee on the wall flashed its heraldic scheduling as the trains all left on time – that is to say, within fifteen seconds of the clock changing to their scheduled minute of departure.  It was an impressive showing of punctuality.

                I found an automated ticket machine in the breezeway outside the grandeur of the terminal.  After retrieving my ticket, I decided that it was high time to get the sound of native speech in my ears again.  I walked back and forth down Georges Square looking for a local dive before deciding on the pub right outside the train station.  Two women who might have been mother and daughter squeezed out the thin red door under the sign advertising “The Junction Bar.”  A tall, well-built young fellow with long dark hair who could have passed for an American manned the bar.  A couple of old men stood at a high table working their way through several pints and laughing over business.  The quickest reminder of the many tasks and problems at hand was lopsidedly planted two tables down from me.  A man whose age had been furthered by drink sat and preached a stream of incoherent cursing at the invisible person in front of him, who, judging by the man’s conversation, was waffling between occasional acquiescence and outright denial.  The vibe in the pub seemed to indicate that the drunken man was something of an embarrassment.  He was by far the loudest representative of the clientele.  I pulled my luggage up beside me at the table and glanced over the menu trying to remember the song and dance of ordering food in a foreign country.  After no one came over for a while and I remembered that it is customary, in a pub, to order one’s food in person at the bar, I walked up and asked for the haggis and a pint of whatever local stout was on tap.  It is always a puzzling sensation to thank God for beer.  My conscience which tells me that I should pray thus also suffers from the erratic spasms and hissing fissures of legalism.  But I was glad to have arrived and to eat, and sitting back with a plate of local fare and listening to conversations, I let the sense of the place – what the French call terroir – wash over me.

                Taking pictures inside a public train station in a country that is beset by terrorism is not the healthiest of endeavors, but not to be deterred, I forewent dessert at the pub in lieu of finding the right shot.  A man in a uniform came up to me and politely informed me that I should not take photos of the station.  Understanding his concerns as a representative of the government, I left my post outside the front doors and went to take more covert photos inside the station proper where so many good shots were hidden amongst all that Euclidian architecture and steel framework.  Trying to get a finger on the pulse of the country, I picked up a free independent weekly and flipped through the articles, landing on one about a British musician that had moved to Montana to find writing time away from the frenzy of recording and shows.  Still, peace eluded me.  Often, the Peace of Christ is something I try to find by seeking out instead of resting in.  This anxiety causes me to avoid my iPod or anything else that could be entertaining in order to keep from being what Neil Postman called “amused to death.”  But, finally, when I got on the train myself and discovered that, unlike in the airliners, I would be alone at my table, I acknowledged the fact that God made me a musician – and that music, to me, is much like a lubricant to the wheels of prayer.  I turned up Rich Mullins in my ears and Glasgow rolled away as we entered darkness beneath her streets.  The distance and movement was measured only by my body telling me that we were rocketing onward.  My face stared back at me from the darkened window until, without warning, we emerged far from the crowds in golden fields of oilseed rape beneath a cobalt sky.

                                                                                                Glasgow, 2009

Thank God, the Joke's on Me

I pottered down to the Jig and Reel to sit alone and transcribe strings parts.  Not the most exquisite of evenings, I know, but I enjoy the work, even if it's tedious.  I knew a couple friends of mine would be playing, and I planned to pop in on them and listen to a song or two.  Wednesday nights aren't known for being outlandish, so I hunkered in an armchair by the door with my effects spread out around me looking like the semi-mobile office of a mad composer.

About forty-five minutes in - or, refusing to save face, thirty - I felt the mighty need to procrastinate, so I happily hopped up from my seat to answer it.  Tim and Jodi were on stage, wailing away at old folk standards to the delight of a pair of full tables in the room, and in between songs, Tim asked me to come up on stage.  Of course, having no idea what we would play together, I attempted to refuse, but the table full of ladies would none of it.  They hollered me up onto the stage, where Jodi handed me her mandolin and took the bass.  We ended up playing three songs, in between which I shared a small conversation with Tim and Jodi about my friends' work in Dundee and my efforts on their behalf.  I wasn't even sure the dialogue got picked up by the mics.  Heaven knows I didn't try to advertise.  I was just answering Tim's question when he asked, "What are you into?"  Then, after I walked off the stage from someone else's gig, the table full of ladies, who were all from Ohio if that makes a difference, began rooting through their purses and handing me cash for Bruce, Andy, and Sarah and their work in Dundee.

I didn't go to play a show, much less a benefit show, but I ended up playing both.  It is said that the Lord works in mysterious ways.  I might amend that he's also funny.  All the best jokes, like all the best stories, are real.

The Unmuzzled Ox

Once in a while, my wife and I will look at each other and exclaim, as if for the first time, "We've got kids." We've had kids, in the plural, for over a year now, and it's still wondrous and alarming all in the same breath, like finding out you've stepped through an enchanted wardrobe. We had another encounter of that sort on Saturday night at the Sharehouse. Just down the road from where we live at Sinclair's Eve, a number of friends and strangers gathered for a show benefiting a handful of inner-city Kingdom endeavors in Dundee, Scotland. Two hours and a broken string after we began, Katrina sat down to count the money. It is a task which I purposefully shy away from when I can. People who come to shows, either generous or not, are not nearly as apt to label my worth in dollars as I am. In this case, the money going to something altogether more pressing, more seemed to be at stake. I glanced at my wife's face on occasion as she counted, and counted - and then counted some more. I tried not to think about it and went on talking to my friends. A few minutes later, she came to me and surreptitiously flashed the number to me on her phone calculator. I tell it to you now, because it does not belong to me, and I want to thank those who participated.

$864

Kat and I looked at each other in silent amaze.  Such a number meant that all the work from that point forth, all the fundraising, would go directly to those who needed it most.  We were prepared to continue hammering away at the work before the work, if you take my meaning, but were flabbergasted, relieved, and grateful to find it accomplished in one swift stroke.  Seeing as it was never our work to begin with, I say (with some trepidation) that I should not have been surprised, or at least could have guessed.  The hearts of those present answered the call of compassion, given by the One who cups the sea in his hand.

Our resolve is renewed.  I have a hammer, therefore I shall hammer.