A Weak Apart

…if you want to know me, don’t ask where I live, what I like to eat, how I part my hair; rather, ask me what I live for, in every detail, and ask me what in my view prevents me from living fully for the thing I really want to live for.
Thomas Merton

Lindsay spent most of this past week in Durham, North Carolina, visiting her best friend Tiffany, mother of 5-week old Jude William Ashworth. These two met more than a decade ago in South Orange County, but have spent most of this time trying to creatively figure out how to connect while living in different locales. Tiffany moved to Carolina almost 5 years ago when her husband Justin started his ThD program at Duke Divinity School.

For five days, Lindsay spent plenty of time cradling Jude and catching up on Life with Tiffany and Justin. Many laughs were had, as well as many sour cream glazed donuts & good coffee consumed, as Lindsay mostly marveled at precious Jude and the incredible endurance and sacrificial love on continual display by his parents. They celebrated a HUGE Blue Devils win the last night, and Lindsay flew home Monday: heart full, thankful for precious time with framily (friends who feel like family), and, most of all, that she & Tom are called to Detroit… rather than the FAR more life-altering challenge of a newborn!

Meanwhile, Tom held down the fort in Detroit. He made a couple of water deliveries (one to a family with 8 children in the house), facilitated the weekly lectio divina Bible Study, visited Cesar Chavez High School to offer students some post-graduation options other than college or the military, organized and vision-casted the RadicalDiscipleship.Net blog, cleaned up around the house, attended the “What The Bleep Happened To Hip-Hop (a fascinating collective of hip-hop artists in Detroit who lament the violence, misogyny, homophobia and crude sexualizing indicative of so many rap artists), worked with tenants at the Peace & Justice Hive at St. Peter’s and spent some down time reading the paper and Dorothee Soelle’s The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance (2001) and even got to watch a few college basketball games.

We kicked off Holy Week together on Monday night when Lindsay flew home and we floored it from the airport to a vigil for victims of tax foreclosures in the city—an estimated 100,000 residents will lose their homes in the coming months. We gathered in front of the home of Wayne County Treasurer Raymond Wojtowicz. We silently encircled the sidewalk and then two representatives knocked on his door to deliver signed petitions requesting a moratorium on all foreclosures. Like the water shut-offs, this action by the city targets low income residents decimated by high unemployment rates and really creepy tax policy, including outlandish interest rate penalties for those struggling to pay tax bills.

Yesterday, we joined community organizers and pastors downtown in a rally in front of his office building and across the street from the historic 2nd Baptist Church of Detroit, a hub for the last stage of the underground railroad in the 19th century.

Many churches all over North America have committed to participate in a different kind of Holy Week leading up to Good Friday and Easter, choosing to actively stand in solidarity with poor and marginalized people, calling for justice, not just charity. Leaders are dubbing this #ReclaimHolyWeek or #HolyWeekofResistance. Join in on the Action!