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