every One has a Name.

So. Here goes.
I have a zillion scrambling thoughts in my head. Writing doesn't do much good, because it wouldn't be a linear story, not yet at least.

Here are just a couple things. So much is happening. So. much.
For class I'm learning how to become a real life ethnographer,
which means

someone who leaves their world and enters an entirely different world-
learns/or observes their language, their ways of communication, their view on love, life, good, evil, politics, plant life and taco salad.

We're learning how to do this in practical ways. We're learning that we must always always always put our Informants first. Those who give us any sort of information about their lives, from the day to day to their sacred stories to their hopes and dreams and favorite color - those people - are the ones whom we give our allegiance to when we partake in our 'research' for understanding.

This stuff could change the world. Think about it.

We love them so much, or in real life terms I'd guess you'd say, Anthropologists are required under code of ethics that if they, the Informants, are doing something illegal, and perhaps get caught, we cannot testify against them in court because we are not there to rat them out. No. We're going to pass the crack cocaine from one person's hand to the others and watch and listen.
Do they like this life? Do they want something besides drug dealing?
Are they giving up? Have they given up?
Do they believe there is something more? Or is this their something more? (not in a condescding way....please don't take that the wrong way.)
What is beauty to them? Who do they believe they are? What things do they have to teach us as well?
All of this is done in such a way that believes that are just as valuable as we are.
And that whole earn the right to be heard thing lies in there somewhere too. it changes "ministry" a little bit. It changes the fact that "white people changing things" isn't necesarily what Jesus told those who followed Him to do.

So these sociologist grad students at University of Chicago in 1989 were put on this massive survey/questionairre project where they were required to ask specific questions and then examine the data.
But this one guy.....this one crazy indian guy who grew up in California (which is a very important detail....he hadn't seen the "ghettos" before due to the demographics in California and so he studied up on the Civil Rights movement, and studied all about the Black Panthers..I think that's what they're called..anyways, he was real excited to get to meet some "African-Americans"). Anyways. This guy, Sadhir, he decided to go to their homes to ask the question, mainly the projects since the research project was focusing on the upward mobility of blacks in poverty.
Boom. So he goes. he picks a random address out of the phone book, 4040 blank street and picks a couple of apartment numbers.
Clipboad in hand, hair pulled in pony tail, shiny appropriate dress shoes squeaking, he walks into the doorway of a run down, broken windowed building that could be compared with a toothless man who'd been in a terrible fight.
He walks in, it smells like alcohol. There aren't any lights, just huge black men that stood like statues quietly threatening his existance with only their eyes.
He keeps walking, "If only I could find the elevator and ask my questions and get out of here to not make these people any more pissed off at me..." he thinks.
He gets in the elevator, doesn't work. He turns down an open hallway and a man lays a heavy hand on his shoulder, turns him around and asks what is his business.
Long story short.
They keep him overnight.
The head gang guy walks in, J.T. and asks him surrepticiously what does he think he is doing?
Sadhir says, "I wanted to ask some questions for research. I'm a sociologist."
"Ask your questions" says J.T.
Sadhir fumbles with his clipboard and squints to find question number one.
"How does it feel to be black and poor?"
J.T. has a smile that starts slow and then explodes over his whole face showing everyone of his gold capped teeth.
J.T. leaves. Sadhir is stuck in a dark cold stairwell with a ton of gang members who slightly acknowledge his presence, but mostly just talk about what's going on, where they're going to have to move, women, the Mexicans, etc. You're average everday gangster banter that turns out, we white people actually know nothing about.

Here's a quote
"I couldn't follow all the nuances of their arguements, especially when it came to local politics, but even I could see the huge gap between how they perceived the world and how sociologist presented the life of urban poor people."

The next morning, after Sadhir's sleepless night, J.T. comes back and tells him to go.
He leans in real close to Sadhir before he goes and says
"You shouldn't go around asking them silly-ass questions. With people like us, you should hang out, get to know what they do, how they do it. No one is going to answer questions like that. First, you need to understand how young people live on the streets.
The next day Sadhir returns with a six pack of beer at 2 in the afternoon. All the guys are leaning on their cars and talking about the day when he walks up. He holds up the pack and says, "Beer?"
They laugh and say something like "You crazy nigger."
Or, "Is this son of a bitch serious?"
He hangs out with them for an hour and listens to them talk of rims and deals. he just listens and intermittantly asked questions.
And they become friends.
J.T. and Sadhir beging to meet on and off for breakfast or lunch or coffee and the J.T. always pays.
J.T. explains to him the business structure of dealing drugs, and it's just as brilliant as any well run American business.

Alright. Let's just skip forward (I'm not even done reading the article yet....so there might be more...)

Things are getting real busy, J.T.'s got a neighborhood merger on his hands
so Sadhir says, thinking this whole being friends things gotta come to an end,

"Hey man, listen. I really appreciate your time. I just wanted to thank you-
JT: "Nigger, are we breaking up?" He said through laughter
S:"No. I'm just trying to..."
JT:"Listen my man, I know you have to write a term paper- and what are you going to write it on? On me, right?" He giggled and stuck a cigar in his mouth.

"It seemed that I was more than just entertainment for him. I was someone who might take him seriously. I hadn't thought about the drawbacks of having research dependant on the whims of one person. But now I turned giddy at the prospect of continuing our conversations.
"That's right," i said, "'The Life and Times of John Henry Torrence.' What do you think?"
"I like it, I like it." He paused. "Okay. Now get the fuck out, I gotta run."
He offered his hand as I opened the car door. I shook it and nodded at him.






Also. One more incomplete thing I can't stop thinking about is how Jesus calls us by our names.
How He made, fashioned, created, breathed life into each and every solitary soul.

C.S. Lewis says. You are not a body. You have a body, you are a soul.

And one time this summer a wonderful wonderful friend told me he didn't believe we, God's children, had the right to speak over someone that they were ugly. Not in any shape or form.
Because in reality. The reality that Heaven is among us and will be the last standing thing is a very very very True thing,
that would go against it.
I mean, I still believe in the reality of sin,
but I also believe we all exist and were created "to journey further and futher into the mountains" (to quote Lewis again."
He said, my friend Tatum, that we can't tell people something that God doesn't say about a person.
God made us and calls us beautiful. The ugliest people we know, He sees their souls. While we can't see them, they're there somewhere.
Ergo we don't judge. No more judgement. Only listening and quiet and loving people for who God made them to be.

And. That's separate. It's separate from sin and it's separate from reconciliation.
And I have a lot more thoughts I need to spill out over something or someone, but I'm gonna take a break now. Bah.

Jesus is really beautiful. And that's all I really have to say right now.