Problems, problems, and more problems! We scratch our heads bald, we let the anxiety become a looming mountain, we get the hernia operation, we try to push problems away or fight or flee.
In the end we will discover our problems should have been treasured!
Everyone heroic or truly virtuous that I have ever met in my life has overcome problems or is facing their problems head on. Great human beings embrace real problems; and their problems are what give them greatness. When I meet people who say they have no problems I feel kind of sorry for them. How can a person grow heroically without them? People who push away their problems or those of others face a life of mediocrity. What would Martin Luther King Jr. have been without Jim Crow and the insufferable oppressions of the Southern United States, or Mother Theresa without the destitution of Calcutta? What would our historically prominent political and religious leaders have been without the massive issues they faced head on? Yes, we hear people lament that their favorite politicians have to face the times we are in now, but these times are perfect for one who wants to be remembered. Problems define us. A time that needs great solutions will make the true leaders stand out and make their humanity shine; can we imagine a Lincoln without the Civil War, or FDR without the Great Depression? I tell the kids at my school, almost all of whom live below the poverty level in a very hopeless neighborhood, all of whom try to feed themselves spiritually from a bankrupt culture: identify and celebrate the problems you have, embrace the problems of injustice and despair you see around you! I tell them: overcoming your problems and those of your community is what will make your life magnificent. Most people turn their backs on these kids, and not many teachers have what it takes to work with them. This is mostly because they cannot treasure the problems the kids bring. But those who let the problem of poverty in young people define them shine the light of grace in the world.
Years ago, I chose to help poor families in the inner city with a school that would provide them medical training in Certified Nurse Assisting for free, because I knew I could give them a better life. That is what Christ wanted me to do. He gave me this problem as a gift. I am helping kids, by the grace of Christ. The problems are why I own a school in the inner city. The problems are why I work for the poor. The kids bring me lots of problems, each day, each hour of each day. I pull my hair out, I am disrespected by those I want to help, I deal with their rage and fear and feelings of inadequacy, I discover with them their greatness. Their poverty goes deeper than family finances: there is an entire culture of poverty in America, one that is growing, and it is emotional, and intellectual, it involves human skills which allow for opportunity, a lack of social abilities that the middle class takes for granted but that are simply out of the reach of some children. I have so many kids monitored by CPS or living in group homes because of family poverty, not having a home, someone to whom they might belong. The teachers at my school and I cannot turn our backs. Where other schools in Arizona are failing, charters whose owners are pocketing most of the money and not putting it into classrooms, charters that have given up on the dropouts even though they enroll them, we are raising expectations and putting money into the classrooms. Some charters teach automotive for the boys and cosmetology for the girls to increase their numbers; we are teaching students medical assisting in pharmacy and Certified Nurse Assisting because that is where kids will find the jobs and a real future; yes, the math and science are hard, but we refuse to allow failure. A big problem is despair: we help kids dream. A big problem is failure: we create a system where they cannot fail and we irritate kids and families until the kid is made to work and succeed. Problems, oh yes! We have come to love them. We will either fall on our faces during the Arizona Tea Party and go bankrupt, as kids are the last priority on Arizona's list, or we will overcome that problem too. I work in a public school, and Jesus works with me there, and so I have to trust. I think that is why Jesus impressed people with who He was: not as a magician or wonder worker, but because he embraced those that others thought cursed by God.
On the other side of my life, there are are also problems. I wake at five in the morning. I read the scriptures and pray. I start to write. The writer who says he or she has no problems is probably a sad writer: what would we be as thinkers and makers withough committing ourselves to some real problems? We have to change ourselves, our world, our limited views of life. We have problems and they challenge us. And the greater the problem, the better for us.
In my private life, I committed myself to this problem: create a living, entertaining, Christian epic, that people would not be able to put down, and by which they would see how our Lord can transform lives. In it, celebrate the Word of God that lasts forever, and the Truth and the Life in that Word Who reveals Heaven itself (Anagogical reading in the Holy Spirit). I also wanted to make a spirituality for family life. In a homeless society that values power, possessions and pleasure above persons, and has traded the sacredness of other human beings and God for idols, this last was the greatest problem of all. The family is being crushed by America, and it needs help to stand.
But a real problem: to be a Christian epic lyrcial poet. Christian and epic and lyrical and poet. What a mess is that combination! Who wants to read poetry? Not many want it, anymore. And among the literati that do read poetry: who wants poetry that rhymes? It's usually bad stuff. Only a couple of memorable epics are written each century, and the writing has gone to prose. And a Christian world view? Literature in America is, for the most part, the catalogue of the destruction of forms of Christian community and morality and the celebration of human liberty: to exercise power in adventure, to wallow in pleasures of the flesh, and to acquire possessions, these are hallmarks of the new American spirituality! To be a Chistian, with epic lyrical and poet? Somebody shoot me.
I should talk about these problems as I have faced them. These were some good problems. I'll start with the poetry problem in my next blog, but, again, there were three: the Christian epic lyrical poetry problem, the problem of a family spirituality in a homeless culture, and the Christian problem of bringing myself and other people to Jesus. Great problems. Over the last ten years, the poetry problem has defined my vocation, and the problem of the family occupied the earlier part of my adulthood. And bringing myself and people to Christ has always been a solution more than a problem.
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