Zero Tolerance

I think zero tolerance policies are stupid. 

I need you to know that statement just cost me five push-ups. "Stupid", "boring" and "shut-up" are all profanities in our house. They are words that shut down people or situations so they get classified as profanities because they are words that take the sacred out of life (unlike "shit" and "ass" which make my brain happy and better able to engage a situation).

But, I'm going to take the push-ups because I can't think of a better word to describe the "zero tolerance" fad.  

My instinct tells me it is a relatively recent phenomena brought about by fear and a movement away from relationships. It tries to assert control by moving us towards efficiency and certainty. 

So I looked it up and realized there's a lot more written about this than I feel inclined to read, but I'm mostly right. The first major "zero tolerance policy" campaign showed up in the 1980s in the war on drugs and has rewarded us with 2.3 million people in the penal system (the island of Seychelles is the only place in the world with a higher incarceration rate). There's a ton of articles about what "zero policy" has meant for prisons and schools, but I need to make dinner so I didn't read them all.

I was mainly pondering it because of the most current immigration and sexual harassment kerfuffles. I might also have been threatening to make my own zero tolerance policy on 11 year old boy farts. 

Here's what I'm thinking in regards to farts and major national policies. 

I'm voting for  "~16% tolerance policy." 

I know it's not as catchy and it would take the work of engaging people and situations as unique, but there are times exceptions need to be made. 

Policies and laws give us structure and order, but they need to be balanced with relationships. I'm going to go ahead and follow Jesus' lead on this one. When a law kept him from loving someone, he erred on the side of compassion. It's popular to talk about Jesus dying for your sins, but we often miss the part that he was crucified for breaking Roman law. He threatened the Roman promise of peace and order (through fear and intimidation) with God's vision of community and forgiveness. 

So I will correct my original statement, even though I've already done my push-ups. 

I think zero tolerance policies are unfaithful. They keep us from the hard and messy work of loving and forgiving each other.

Holy

Holy Shit. 

These were the first words that escaped my lips when I walked into church Saturday morning, which was better than the vomit escaping. The smell of shit was strong enough to kick in my gag reflex and instantly make me open all the windows and search for the source.

In the morning rush for families to leave the church before the food pantry guests arrived, a trash can full of dirty diapers was missed and allowed to stew in stench. 

After swearing some and throwing a hissy fit about what a pain it was to clean out the trash cans and also unclog a bonus nasty toilet, I thought of how our dear Palestinian exchange student Nadeen would tell us only God is holy so "holy guacamole", "holy cow", and "holy shit" were all offensive to her Muslim ears.

But maybe shit is holy, especially the stench of hospitality offered to families who are experiencing homelessness and trying to find some stability so they can work on the hard stuff of life. The families we walk with are so brave and patient. It's hard to move towards sustainable housing when the steps feel so overwhelming. We can only take the hard stuff one step at a time and our families courageously keep stepping. 

Maybe the shit is holy, because the stink and inconvenience of life is often where Jesus hangs out. He's known to hang out on the margins, in the midst of the hard stuff of life, with those who have seeping wounds, broken hearts, and crushed spirits. 

We had a full house this last week with seven of our guests under the age of three. That's a lot of diapers.

I realized how pathetic my pity party was as I remembered our families trying to juggle little ones, trauma, and homelessness.

We've been taught to avoid discomfort and inconvenience (consumerism and convenience often go hand and hand), but this avoidance disconnects us from each other and fails to prepare us for the hard stuff of life. 

I remember asking an imam in Dearborn how they could possibly expect families to get to a burial within 24 hours of death and his response was, "Death is inconvenient." 

I think about that quote whenever I gripe about being inconvenienced. I try to change my thinking to celebrate whatever inconvenience I'm facing and how it better prepares me for death. Yay! 

There was a saint once who practiced sucking maggots out of the wounds of beggars so nothing would repulse her any longer. I'm not there, but I feel like cleaning up the diapers has moved me at least a little closer to holiness.

Smiles

It's not snow; it's cottonwood fluff. 

When my allergies are irritated, I am a crabass. There's enough pollen flying right now that I'm a crabass field (I kind of thought this was a real word until I realized I was thinking of crabgrass).

My tool for when I get irritated is telling myself jokes. I normally tell them out loud to myself while I'm hiking and I make myself laugh out loud. It's only awkward if people are around or if I admit to people that I do this. 

None of my jokes worked today. So I just talked to myself until I thought of  Dag Hammarskjöld.  There's nothing like a Scandinavian name with all those consonants shoved together to get me giggling and I truly love Dag Hammarskjold.

He was a UN Secretary General and it was only after he died that the public discovered what a deep philosopher and theologian he was. 

I'll go ahead and confess that I might also be irritated because it is hard to yearn for shalom in a culture that's hellbent on being crabasses. 

So I came home and reread some of his famous quotes mostly from his journal Markings and they truly were a salve so I thought I would share:

You wake from dreams of doom and--for a moment--you know: beyond all the noise and the gestures, the only real thing, love's calm unwavering flame in the half-light of an early dawn. 

It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity. It is when we all play safe that fatality (helplessness in the face of fate) will lead us to our doom. It is in the "dark shade of courage" alone that the spell can be broken.

To have humility is to experience reality, not in relation to ourselves, but in its sacred independence. It is to see, judge, and act from the point of rest in ourselves. 
In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. 

It was when Lucifer first congratulated himself upon his angelic behavior he became the tool of evil.

It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.

I freaking love those quotes. They all seem like conversation starters instead of diatribe igniters. 

So I'm in a good mood now. Thank you Dag Hammarskjold and to the fellow at the store who asked if I'd heard any good jokes recently and then told me the joke, 

"What kind of music do whales like?"    
Orca-stra!!!