Trying for Justice: Personal Stories (Sonya Seng - June 16, 2020)

Observation, Perspiration or Inspiration: 

It’s been such a difficult time for many of us. The national spotlight on the deep sins of racism has shown the terrible burdens of Black American men, women and children and provoked godly tears and righteous anger.  

But it's also been blinding as waves of murderous violence and indiscriminate destruction have covered the country. I've been troubled to learn that some of the most influential justice activists are also expressly "committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure". Whoa. I want to embrace the wounded without welcoming "Trojan horses". 

One way I'm trying to stand firm in this rapidly evolving chaos is to de-prioritize media consumption and re-prioritize personal justice stories. Textured. Imperfect. Local if possible. Like those of the families in our church fostering traumatized kids or friends who have adopted children irrespective of race. Of middle class friends who lived on the street for two weeks so they could love the homeless better. And I’ve wondered how my own spotty experiences might speak to our ongoing commitment to justice. In this spirit, I revisited an early, awkward moment I had. It was when I first felt the discomfort of pursuing justice and had to decide what to do with it. It’s what we might call in our faith community “a Bluewater try”.  It’s simply my story. And it includes ugly crying. I hope you'll enjoy it.

When I was 22 and a recent Stanford grad, I was in a serious dating relationship with my-now-husband Jordan. I had never spent a Christmas away from my family in Honolulu, but at this stage of the game it seemed reasonable for me to visit his family for Christmas in southern Oregon. At that time Jordan was living in East Palo Alto, California with 2 college friends, acting on what he felt was God’s direction to “minister to the poor”.  I lived 20 minutes away in Mountain View but spent large chunks of time in EPA. So I began to learn about justice, and how it played out socio-economically, racially and personally.

In 1989 EPA was a largely African-American, suburban ghetto with the nation’s highest per capita murder rate. The sound of gunfire and sirens was as common as barking dogs.  Shortly after moving into the beige, stucco house on Azalia Street, the guys came under the wing of Miss Lovie Lewis, a well-known matriarchal force in the neighborhood.
We sat for hours in her stuffy front room, getting to know the burdens she worked against and the many people she loved and helped. The rusted fans chided that this kind of heat could not be dissipated, only pushed this way and that; but we shared her faith that God could change the climate.  Lovie opened her missional, mother’s heart to us. She brought us to her church, where, dressed to the hilt, we respectfully swayed and clapped our hands for the 3-4 hour service. She taught us her one-two punch of tough love followed by the endless soup pot, liberally seasoned with “Accent” brand MSG.  She was aptly named, embodying faithful, long-suffering love.

When they weren’t working their daytime tech jobs, the guys ministered and made a way for the rest of their friends to get involved. They built a shower in the backyard and opened it up for the neighborhood’s homeless to clean and find some dignity. Many men were invited to live in the converted garage and several women received temporary shelter in the main house. We cooked up hearty soup and sandwiches which were regularly distributed from the less-than-pristine bed of Jordan’s little white pickup – some things never change. The hot meal was served messily into paper bowls and passed out on the sidewalk to a regular crowd, and sometimes dinners were hand-carried into the dark crack dens at the abandoned lot, which the cops largely avoided. There was always a sense of danger and improvisation.
The guys learned to disarm violent men, carry peace where doors were bullet-ridden and pray for addicts. I didn’t like that Jordan’s favorite running route along the Baylands was also the best place to dump dead bodies. But they called it home. (One of Jordan’s old roommates has lived in EPA to this day. He godfathered Lovie’s young nephew, supporting him through private highschool and making his dream of entering the police force possible.)

Meanwhile at our home church on the other side of the tracks in wealthy Palo Alto, we worshipped alongside pioneers of the internet and old, Jesus hippies. 

We proposed hosting one of the church’s weekly "kinship" groups at the EPA house; these groups met for prayer, Bible study and fellowship. Leaders discouraged our attempt saying, “you’re nuts – no one’s going to cross the 101 to go a kinship group in EPA.” But by the time we left the area, it was the biggest group in the church with up to 52 people attending the dynamic weekly gathering. It was the first group Jordan and I ever led together and, though diverse, was deeply bonded by a rare sense of fellowship. We spent a long season studying racial reconciliation together and practiced “identificational repentance”, asking one another for forgiveness for atrocities committed by our various people groups, Black, White, Asian and Latino. The weekly gathering became well known on the block. Friendly drug dealers would spot clueless looking people driving slowly down the street, realize they weren’t there to buy, and give them directions to “Jordan, Steve and Erick’s house”.

So, it was in the middle of this great effort that Jordan and I were also moving toward marriage, our own little cultural collision.  After all, he was a working class, White boy from a rural town, and I was a wealthy Asian girl from a big city.  And now his calling to minister to the poor, and by extension to heal racial wounds, was starting to push against my comfort zone. Because of my Christian faith, I was eager to participate but was so unfamiliar with the whole scene. Then Christmas came. 

We decided to host a little Christmas Eve dinner for some of the Azalia house regulars before driving to Oregon on Christmas morning, to spend our first Christmas ever together! Jordan’s roommates had headed off to Seattle and Kansas City earlier for the holidays so it was just him and me.  I was excited to be working as a ministry team – serving the poor together on Christmas. What could be more romantic and spiritual? We made a spaghetti dinner. I was used to parties of a certain type and busied myself with decor, drinks, plates and utensils. But from then on I found the night extremely trying.

For a time I tried to make meaningful conversation with our guests, mostly homeless, black folk. But I couldn’t seem to come up with anything that led anywhere. And they seemed to have no category for relating with me either. Particularly because it was Christmas, I wanted the evening to be a particular way. I mean, this wasn't the street-side soup and sandwich distribution. But beyond the plates of food, there wasn’t a whole lot more to say. I was a fish out of water. We may have sung a Christmas carol or two – which meant, Jordan and I sang them. Finally, scrambling for a way to make a connection, I found paper and scissors and began showing two really loud, messy, pregnant gals how to make paper snowflakes. 
They were streetwise way beyond anything I could imagine, but the only way I could relate with them was to do a child’s craft. Over and over and over and over again. And over.  Again. Whee. So much fun. At least we made a lot! We taped them to the large bay window under the string of white lights. Then the ladies fell asleep on the floor amid their dirty dinner dishes, tomato sauce on the carpet. I kept my happy game face on the whole night but I was completely exhausted from the effort. We cleaned up around our guests and then Jordan, observing my distress, prudently sent me to the most distant bedroom to sleep so no one could disturb me.

The next morning, we hugged our guests goodbye and watched them lumber down the block. We closed up the house and started the 7 hour drive north. I cried about 6 hours of the ride, angry, ashamed, afraid and disappointed. Merry Christmas. The process of resolving these feelings was both mystifying and educating – and honestly continued long into our married life. I wanted a romantic first holiday away with my boyfriend and I had idealized that serving the poor could easily accommodate that. But I'd overestimated my social limitations, underestimated my personal preferences, ignored factors of time and energy, and got blindsided by the unpredictability of working with another mere mortal. I was pretty naive.

That Christmas started my recognition of my own “sacred cows” which included feel-good family time and fanciful holidays. That Christmas was my first opportunity to sacrifice one of them. (And I haven’t even talked about the interesting time I had the rest of the week with Jordan’s family.) And that Christmas was a powerful lesson that a “try story” can be meaningful even if you can’t “put a bow on it” yet.

Two more short, related, personal stories.

First, Hyde Park.  A month after we were married, Jordan and I moved from California to the notorious South Side of Chicago so he could get a Ph.D. He began in Race Relations and moved into International Security Studies. But living on the South Side for seven years was like getting a double Ph.D. in both race relations and security studies. South Chicago was far worse than EPA for its massive size and long history of black poverty and ongoing violence. The oppression was palpable. 

For 4 of those years, we lived 5 doors down from Louis Farrakhan, founder of the unabashedly violent, black supremacist Nation of Islam and a constant presence due to his 24/7 armed guards on the street. In the neighborhood, students were regularly mugged. I learned to don a hard game face in order to survive in public and not get harassed but I was a wreck; really we both were. I began looking for a way out. Maybe a cute apartment on the north side, close to safe cafes and theaters? 

But I had the very strongest impression that God wanted us in Hyde Park, so I sacrificed my cows of safety and beauty, and stayed put. I walked our dog daily in front of Farrakhan's guards, got pushed off the sidewalk by African American teenage girls and hurried past Polish construction workers heckling “China Doll!” at me. 
And I did my weekly wash at the corner laundry, admiring the exquisite braids of the scampering, black children, their young mothers sparing no effort with their colorful beads and clips while chatting and laboring under giant loads. I learned from those seven long years that there are super saintly people and super twisted people in every color, so I’m not free to wave the banner of any one race. And I have no pride over my own efforts there because I whined so much and was not strong in so many ways. I simply marvel that when we left Hyde Park at age 31 we had somehow, unintentionally, planted a neighborhood church. It had a racially diverse core, a girl from Korea, one from Africa, several Jersey kids, a well-pierced Vietnamese girl from LA, and a band of white boys known as “Dickey’s Funky Love Bomb”.  The day Jordan and I loaded up our moving truck and drove away, we were very tired. I may have even shed tears again, this time of relief. But that beautiful church has continued to grow, 20 years strong now, worshipping humbly and joyfully across race and class.  What else could God plant right in the middle of our fears and discomfort?

Lastly, SEED. Eight years ago, I was the general manager of Bluewater’s justice restaurant, SEED, which we created to employ trafficking victims and former prisoners. It was time to “try justice” again.  I had to put on my big girl panties to tough-love some very rough people with minimal skills and horrific personal issues. A good percentage of these hires were racial minorities, Hawaiian, Micronesian, and African-American but everyone, including myself and our team of volunteers, was dealing with areas of brokenness. Everyone needs the healing grace of justice. 
I had to learn about administering urine drug tests and bear the responsibility and frustration of firing those who came to work high or who didn’t show up at all. I still have PTSD from the 5am text that for the 3rd time, the Micronesian kid, one of 9 children and a new father himself, wasn’t going to make his shift.  I was going to have to fire him AND tell Jordan to get his SEED shirt on and go wash dishes. I was regularly late picking up my kids from school. Some days, I worked until 2am trying to help our team to clean the greasy floor from hell. I had to humbly ask friends for money when our equipment failed and I suffered a lot of well-placed YELP wounds.

Lives WERE changed for the better. The 60 year old, Hawaiian convict who worked at SEED after serving a 20 year sentence. The 50 year old White mamasan who came to us after 30 years on the Waikiki track. Still, the personal costs were massive and the eventual failure of SEED as a business was devastating for a lot of people. Pain over the venture simmered in our marriage for a long time, too. It was like ugly crying all the way up to Oregon again but a much longer drive. When can you tell if an awkward and costly try for justice is worth it?

These 3 snapshots of some of my “tries” are just that. Freeze frames. Like an embarrassing picture of you chewing mid-bite while something is also in your eye. Our "tries" show beautiful humanity but also cringy incompleteness. They remind me that I am not the author of my own faith, nor of any ultimate justice on earth. But God is, Hebrews 12 says. He calls all of us to participate, to try. Maybe all of our freeze frames will connect masterfully one day. But according to Isaiah 9, only Jesus' reign can establish and sustain justice for us:

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.”

When Christ returns to this wounded world, his perfect justice will, I think, bring ugly crying as has never been seen on earth. There will be tears of the most bone-chilling sorrow and tears of unimagined joy and long-delayed relief.  And every knee, from every class and color, will bend in worship.

Until then, will I do my part and keep trying? I hope so.

A Prayer:

Lord Jesus. You know what complete justice will look like and it's beyond what I could dare approach in my sinfulness. Yet through the Cross, you made a way for us. Help me to work for justice without judging anyone else, even myself. Thank you that you will cover my costs in the end. Lord, strengthen each person who is doing their level best to live just lives. Show me how to encourage the best in those around me. Amen.

An Idea:

Don't watch the news today. Instead do something healing that can become good news.