Ashes for Beauty

Ash Wednesday is, on the liturgical calendar, the beginning of the season of Lent. The day is 46 days before the church's celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. Ash Wednesday is observed by fasting, repentance, many will hold services where there heads are marked with ashes made from palms from the previous years Palm Sunday. Ashes are a sign of mourning, grieving, or repentance and are seen constantly throughout scripture as mourners dawn 'sackcloth and ashes.'

Typically the words of Genesis 3:19, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust shall you return," are repeated to each who participates as a reminder of both mortality and guilt. This begins a season of fasting known as lent. Lent is 46 days long, though the six Sundays are considered feast days as they are when the community gathers to celebrate the Lord's Supper. The remaining 40 days are usually spent fasting as an allusion to the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the desert, where he was tempted by the devil. 

"Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him..."

Our community constantly faces reminders of our own guilt as well as our general fragility and mortality. For many who have no safe place to be at night death always feel like it might be just around the corner. Much of our work is a calling to mourn with those who mourn, and so today, as the calendar points all of the church to remember, I can't help but smile. 

When Jesus returned from his time in the wilderness he entered a synagogue and opened a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He opened to and read aloud Isaiah 61 as an announcement of his own work and ministry to fulfill it. 

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendor.

They will rebuild the ancient ruins
and restore the places long devastated;
they will renew the ruined cities
that have been devastated for generations.

May we, who are well acquainted with suffering and grieving and guilt and death and despair, make our city whole again. May resurrection be more than 'believed in,' may it be practiced here at the Well.  May we too, like Jesus, give ourselves fully to this task.

A Holiday Message and Invitation

We Got Our First House!!!

     

The above house is an opportunity for the Well to provide housing for core team members. It is the beginning of our Housing Pilot Program. We believe in a creating an environment of social equity, in which each person who pours themselves out on behalf of the community can do it in a safe, healthy place, knowing they are taken care of also. For the upcoming year that we have leased this house, we hope to learn and demonstrate that this is possible. We will also be documenting this experience to produce a guide of lessons and protocols for future housing projects that we plan for this to be a springboard into. 

We have obtained the Spruce Street house for a 13 month lease. The first three months will be paid for in the labor and repairs the home needs, and the following 10 months will be $600 a month for rent. It will be an additional $400 a month to cover water, electric, liability insurance, pest control, and all the miscellaneous costs associated with managing a home.

In addition to that, we will need approximately $2,500 to begin working on the home to make it livable. Will you consider partnering with us to spruce up the Spruce St home?

Support Goal: $1,000/mo + $2,500 for start up/repair material costs

Total: $12,500 for thirteen months housing for currently house-less team members of the Well. 

Here are some needed items:

• 40 yd dumpster rental 
• a fridge/freezer 
• Washing machine 
• Lawn mower & weed eater 
• home depot gift cards 
• cleaning products 
• broom 
• mop 
• curtains for 11 windows as well as a sliding glass door
• 4 twin mattresses (beds or box springs would be cool too) 
• sheets/bedding
• some nice porch furniture 
• kitchen table and chairs
• a few couches 
• Kitchen supplies
• and anything else you would want if you were moving into a new place ;-) 

As I post this, Tom, James, & Ben are at the house to begin working on this new home! 

Please join us in this effort to harbor the harborless, build community, & support those who are supporting our work in the commuity with their blood, sweat, and tears. 

Finding Comfort Over Ramen Noodles in Tampa

Warm, salty, and savory. It's the flavor craved by people from cultures the world over, and we're no different here in Tampa. Ramen in Japanese translates literally to "Chinese soup," and from Asia to North America it represents comfort food prepared with a certain simplicity. Whether you acquired your taste for ramen as a frugal college student or as a student of traditional Japanese cuisine, there's a certain magic as you inhale the steam from the broth and slurp up long, curly noodles.

Ramen has been all the buzz lately at The Well. No less than three noodle shops have opened up around Tampa in the last month or so, and the latest is just up Florida Avenue from our own dining room. Then last week a food donor provided us with two whole pallets of instant ramen noodles. The packets come in either chicken or beef flavor, and are one of the most popular items among guests of our Free Market.

Several of us from my house joined Tampa's most discerning noodle connoisseurs, waiting outside the new shop up the road on its opening night. The broth was perfect, and we thoroughly enjoyed the various extra ingredients that were available to add into your bowl. It was simple, warm, and delicious. We sat and ate and talked among the upper-middle-class crowd about Seminole Heights and how the neighborhood has changed over the years. To a supermarket ramen purist, we no doubt paid too much, but the ambience was cozy and relaxed, and whole experience was sublime.

Even more recently, I sat with a friend who depends on The Well for food, watching as he heated up a couple of packets of those 25-cent beef flavored instant noodles. For all that it lacked in pedigree and plating, the bowl emanated flavor as it steamed and simmered. Both of us tired after a long day, I watched as he carefully sipped on the hot broth before rolling his eyes in relief and sighing out loud. We ate, talked, laughed about something I forget now, and leaned back satisfied in our chairs when we were done.

As I think about these two different experiences, I'm struck by how similar they are. Rich or poor, there is something magical about gathering around a table and enjoying a hot meal together. We all get tired, and comfort food provides much needed relief to people from all walks of life. We are not so different.

Food. A safe place. Community. In so many ways, we crave and respond to the same things. We believe at The Well that there is something amazing that happens when we, rich or poor or somewhere in between, come to the same table and share both a meal and ourselves. We learn so much from each other in those moments, and the conversations born there grow into amazing ideas and initiatives. It's something we strive to do often, and you're invited to be a part of it.

Let's get together and noodle on something.

Made Whole

I want to paint a picture for you. Imagine Jesus surrounded by sick, deaf, blind, paralyzed, hurting people. What look is on his face? I always imagined his face to be somewhat stoic and impersonal. But then I read Matthew 9:36 which says, "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." Jesus' face would not be like a statue, doing the duty of healing. His face is full of compassion and care, and love for the people surrounding him. All of Matthew 9 is about Jesus healing people. He heals the dead daughter of a ruler, two blind men, a paralyzed man, and numerous other people as he travels through the country. When I read the ending verse of his compassion for the crowds of people, I had to reread the whole chapter in a new light. I could see him meeting a blind man, cupping his face in his hands and staring deep into the unseeing eyes, and I could see his will to heal that man. I saw him stoop low to be on the same level as the paralyzed man, I could see him gripping the hand of the dead girl. His heart was full with the will to heal people; his desire and joy was to see people made whole.

And then I saw him at the Well, surrounded by needy people, with his heart full of compassion and love for them, and an eagerness to see them whole. I must confess I was humbled by this image. Often, when I get a moment to sit among our guests, without any tasks to distract me, I realize just how much I love being with them. But it's not long before I also realize just how much need there is in our family room and I am overwhelmed. We do what we can, but it is nowhere near enough to heal people from addiction, mental illness, and poverty. I was humbled at the thought of Jesus on one of the couches in the family room, because he is the one who walked this earth and healed the blind, the paralyzed, the deaf, the diseased, raised the dead, and forgave human brokenness. Jesus made people whole, and he can and will make people whole again today.

In the next verse, Jesus tells his disciples, "the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." I tend to repeat that verse and am discouraged by how much work there is to be done and how few workers there are. But that is the wrong perspective. The harvest, or the people ready to enter God's kingdom, ready to meet Jesus and his way, is enormous. However, that is not a problem when we remember there is a Lord of the harvest, and he wants to send workers out. I have seen this even in the past two weeks as volunteers have put themselves forward. From individuals who want to commit to coming once a week to help during the day at the Well, to a full team of enthusiastic engineering students from USF unexpectedly came to serve at the Banquet. The regular Banquet team was able to take the night off and eat dinner as a guest thanks to them. I, nor others at the Well, have sought these volunteers, but they still hear and they come to take part in the work at the Well. They still come to do their part in this small corner of God's kingdom, because it's God's will and joy to connect them here. God wants to send people to do his will and it is him sending them. And he sends us because he wants to see people whole. He wants to see us made whole in the work of serving him and loving our neighbor, and see our neighbor made whole as they encounter the love of God through community.

So don't be discouraged by overwhelming need or brokenness you may encounter. It is Jesus' will to heal people, and his joy to send us out.

The Wrong People

When investors look into a potential investment they are interested in making sure that they are investing in the right people. They also might hope that the right people have the right strategies, tactics, and expected outcomes. At the Well we invest in people all the time. While we don't deal with a lot of money it still wouldn't be wrong to refer to us as investors. We invest in people with hopes of returns. Our strategy and tactic however is that we invest in those whom your traditinal investors would probably consider the wrong people. We look for those who are having a hard time, those who struggle with mental health issus, those who are unemployed, those who are isolated, and we invest in them. We do this because we believe it is right and we believe it is also the right strategy. 

There is a passage from the bible that you may know, even if you don't know the bible well, thanks to Bob Marley: "The stone that the builders refused has become the head cornerstone." 

Have you ever worked on or visited a construction site? Do you know where you might find stones that the bulders refused? I have and I know exactly where you find them. You find the rejected stones in the trash pile. God, it seems, is a dumpster diver. Gathering stones, even the keystone itself, from the refuse pile and assembling them into a kingdom. 

This is why we believe that working with the folks that our society has rejected is exactly the way that God would have us invest in our city. It is with these stones that the builders refused that the kingdom of God will be made known. Just as life springs from the compost heap so glory rises from ashes. We stand with the despised and rejected and we invest every bit of our time and energy and resources in them because we know that these "wrong people" are exactly right for the work of redemption in Tampa. 

Always on Stage

Have you ever been on a stage? Usually a stage implies an audience. Stages are places where performances are done or where speeches are given and where audiences cheer or boo the one in the spotlight. There are very different responses among people when it comes to the reality of being on a stage. For some the idea of public speaking or being front and center on a stage is terrifying. Others crave attention and live their lives as though they are always on stage. I imagine there are some pretty unhealthy reasons for both drives. We all lean one way or another and must live our lives as best we can with that reality.

If you think about your own life as a kind of stage play you will realize that you have an element of your life that is lived on stage and another portion of your life that is lived behind the curtain backstage. You have a private life and then a public persona if you will. Depending on the kind of person you are you will choose to keep certain parts of your life private while other portions of your life are proudly presented to the public. Especially in the age of social media we are a people that are constantly creating personas or avatars that may or may not actually represent who we are backstage. All of us, if we are capable of honest reflection, know that there are many things in our lives and personalities that we are not exactly proud of. We usually choose to keep those things backstage while we often want everyone to know when we accomplish something or do something good and we proudly display them on our stages (never mind that Jesus encouraged us to confess our sins and then pray and fast in secret and when giving not to let our left hand know what our right is doing).

We make choices. We make choices about overcoming fears about getting on stages when needed or learning humility and stepping off of the stage at times too. The choices we make are important. It is important that we push ourselves to make good choices but more fundamentally it is important that we have the ability to make those choices to begin with. Could you imagine if this choice was stripped from you? What if you were forced onto a stage and had to live your whole life there, a perpetual audience watching and judging. Conversely, imagine you were forced to live the life of an invisible person? What if nobody saw you ever? Choice matters. Mankind was created to be free. Either of the scenarios above would be dehumanizing, in that they would strip a person of their human freedom. One would be turned into a kind of zoo animal while the other would be a kind of non-being.

Our friends who live on the streets often experience life as both. Because they have no private residence they are forced to live life on stage. Sleeping, washing, drinking, urinating, you name it, if nobody shares their space with you it must be done in public, on stage. At the same time these men and women that live their lives in full view of everyone are also treated as though they are invisible. People intentionally act like they don't see them and they constantly divert their gaze. On stage and invisible existence at the same time.

The other night a few of our friends who live in this perpetual tension had a particularly terrible and degrading experience. While they slept, on stage and totally vulnerable to anything, a car full of teenagers pulled up and proceeded to throw eggs at these brothers of ours. As they shared this experience with me in the morning and literally had egg on their faces I couldn't help but think of this stage image. We actually have a saying about having egg on your face which is a reference to having made an ass of yourself on a stage where a crowd booed and threw eggs and other items at the actors. These men live on a perpetual stage in a society where the audience who sees them either pretends not to or typically spews venom and hatred.

I wanted to share this for two reasons: One, to be a confession about our culture that dehumanizes and dishonors the most vulnerable among us. That thing which we want to ignore or hide should be confessed and put out on stage, because Jesus. Two, because I hope it breaks your heart.