Part of the Cure

A week ago last night I was in Atlanta at the Coldplay show. I've seen Coldplay before and I'll have to say they're my one of my two favorite bands (second only to a particular quartet from Dublin that I'll be seeing live later this year). This most recent Coldplay show was quite a bit different for me than the previous times I've seen them, however. I was at this show as a volunteer for OxFam America (www.oxfamamerica.org), an organization dedicated to serving those affected by extreme poverty, as well working to eradicate extreme poverty itself...as Nelson Mandela has said, poverty is not natural, but man-made, and therefore we can end it if we truly want to.

The purpose of our work at this show was to get as many Coldplay fans as possible to sign a petition that calls on President Obama and the Congress to devote more energy and resources to the issue of climate change, as climate change-related disasters affect the world's poor 20 TIMES MORE than the rest of us. Coldplay has been heavily involved with OxFam since the early days of the band, so a lot of Coldplay fans know about the work OxFam does, and are proud to be part of it.

We stood in the cool rain of the late afternoon and early evening getting fans to sign the petition while the warm-up bands (Howling Bells and Pete Yorn) played, and then joined several thousand of the rest of our friends on the lawn as Chris, Jonny, Guy and Will reminded us again why this music means so much to us. Then we were privileged to help hand out the band's brand new live cd that they're giving away for free at their shows and on their website. It was a lot of fun, not to mention exhilirating to be there working on behalf of those who are typically not heard, and therefore rely on voices like yours and mine to change their world.

But, the most important part of the night for me personally was not the show or the people who our team signed up for the cause. Instead, it was meeting a young woman named Soha, who is the OxFam rep on this leg of the Coldplay tour. She made sure we all knew everything we were supposed to know in order to make the most of our efforts as volunteers, plus she did a wonderful job making all of us feel welcome and important to the cause. She was born in Beirut, immigrated as a child to the U.S., and she grew up in Los Angeles.

As we were walking around the venue, she asked me what led me to become part of OxFam, as well as what kind of work I did. I told her that I do a few different things, which include being the co-founder and futurist for Second Life of Chattanooga (www.secondlifechattanooga.org), an organization dedicated to raising awareness about the issue of the sexual exploitation and trafficking of children in the U.S. She seemed very intrigued about how I came to be involved in such an issue, and I told her that a couple of years ago I heard someone in a meeting in Orlando briefly mention the issue of trafficking in the U.S. and I knew I had to do something about it.

Soha was amazed that hearing a couple of lines from someone in a meeting would cause me to take this kind of action. So amazed, in fact, that she told me she was doing a blog while on the tour, and she wanted to video me for it, letting me tell people briefly what Second Life is about, and how it fits with the mission of OxFam (the youtube link can be found at www.oxfam.org/coldplay and then look for the May 18th entry).

Once the show was over and we'd handed out the free cd's, put away all the info., taken down the OxFam tent and said goodbye to the rest of the team, Soha and I stood next to the seats where thousands had just been part of a great experience, and she had me talk for just a minute about why I was doing what I was doing on behalf of so many who are waiting for someone to set them free. As we walked out of the venue, Soha once again told me that she was inspired by my decision to do the kind of social justice work I'm doing. It was then that I told her I did this out of a sense of calling, and I finally let her know that I am a follower of Jesus, as well as a pastor.

I told her that I don't usually lead with this information, as it has a tendency to shut down dialogue because of the very crappy way so many Christians present themselves these days. Soha immediately began to tell me that she understood where I was coming from, as so many who share her Muslim faith have made it about nothing more than "the rules." We both talked about how we felt our respective faiths called us to something deeper and higher, and that we could be part of something better than our particular groups so often were known to be part of. Like those words from the Coldplay song "Clocks," we both find ourselves choosing to be, "...part of the cure," and not "...part of the disease."

We said our goodbyes, hoping to re-connect further on up the road. In the early morning hours of a rainy Monday in Atlanta, the young woman in the head-scarf from Los Angeles and the middle-aged man in the baseball cap and bandana from Tennessee were part of the cure. Thanks be to God.

Re-connecting

I heard from a long-time friend yesterday, someone I hadn't talked to in quite a few years. During college and for several years after he and I were closely connected and stayed in regular contact. As so often happens as we move through our lives, however, we lost touch after a while, and went several years without hearing from each other. But, through the wonders of Facebook (the social network that seems to be almost exclusively staked out by middle-aged people at this point), we found each other a little while ago, and yesterday we had out first real time, voice to voice conversation in quite a while.

It was one of those times that you've probably experienced before, as if we'd had taken a brief break in an already on-going conversation, and then picked it back up with, "Okay, so what was it you were saying?" We laughed in the same way, shared the same confidence and fear about life and ourselves, expressing some of the same hopes and doubts, only now through a middle-aged filter. God, it was so good to talk to him, this life-long friend of mine, the older brother I never had until he came into my life all those years ago. Some face to face time for later this year was discussed, and is greatly hoped for.

These re-connections always leave me wondering about both friendship and what it means to be the person I am. Friendship is a tricky thing, something I take very seriously, a fact that I have found over the course of my life places me in a minority. What most people call friendship is really nothing more than our being acquainted with certain surface facts about another person, all the while knowing little to nothing of the truth about that person, who they are in their most hopeful place, as well as in their darkest. One of my on-going frustrations is that it seems many people are satisfied with this surface acquaintance, as it makes the whole idea of friendship much more linear and sanitized than I believe it was ever meant to be. These surface acquaintances also allow others to rip you apart when the real truth of you, the one they never took the time to get to know, begins to come out, shattering not only their view of you, but also their view of themselves, pointing out the disconnect between what you might need from them and what they're willing, or maybe even equipped, to give another person.

When it comes to being myself, each time I re-connect with a true friend such as the one I spoke with yesterday, I can't help but be reminded of who I hoped to be all those years ago, as well as who I swore I'd never be, and how I've tricked myself a bit on both sides of that equation over the years. My friend yesterday reminded me that at least some, maybe even a lot, of the person who hoped to become certain things in his 20's still remains, only maybe the man in his 40's knows a bit more about what is worth becoming and what isn't than the guy in his 20's knew. He also reminded me that true friends also want to occupy the space of failure and it's accompanying pain with you, as the true friend knows that pain is sacred, but when shared becomes powerful and life-giving as well.

So, yesterday my friend and I gave a bit more oxygen to each other's dreams, as well as experienced a bit of the life that only pain can bring. We were and are two men still becoming, still hoping for the best, still believing we will find what it is we're looking for, and that we will celebrate those discoveries together.

It was great hearing from you JWD. It was also great to hear from myself.