while i'm here in the library just transcribing endless interviews.
I did this interview with my friend Molly about homelessness and the culture that ties all of the social workers together.
Long story short though -for now- I asked a question about where her motivation from work would come from when things are hard, really hard and it reminded me of something.
A couple of weeks ago while at Tucker I met and sat in a Spanish class while this lady who shall not be named (mostly because she is just like he who must not be named) taught. Afterwards I talked with her about her kids and this is what she said.
"You know, God bless their little hearts but I can't give a damn about them. I come in here day after day and do you think I can care about each one of my six classes. Six classes, darling. Now hear me, that doesn't mean I don't care about them, but if you're expecting me to have any hope for these kids - you've been tricked. You're just innocent, you wait until you teach. Now, there's the easy ones, the polite ones and there are the weird messed up pot smoking kids too. You just have to laugh, sometimes laughing at them after class just makes it doable throughout the year."
Round Two
Me- "Erin, it is so cool you got to teach and be a young life leader at the same time. You met so many kids and really got to see how they live life from the day to day."
Erin -Skipping a lot of stuff to get to the point here "If you teach, you just can't care too much. You have to let it roll off your shoulders and keep going. You come in really idealistic. You said you think education is something that can change their lives, and it doesn't."
And once I read this by Oswald Chambers-
But the chief motivation behind Paul’s service was not love for others but love for his Lord. If our devotion is to the cause of humanity, we will be quickly defeated and broken-hearted, since we will often be confronted with a great deal of ingratitude from other people. But if we are motivated by our love for God, no amount of ingratitude will be able to hinder us from serving one another.
And this is the point here.
Like....I know. I know that nothing I will do will change anyone's life.
But we are called to believe. We are called to care.
If we care selfishly we will fall apart. If we care with the idea that something that we do changes someone then we will fail.
We will fail, we will fail, we will fail.
We do not root ourselves in that though. No. We have to bring it to Jesus. That's the ticket here.
I guess I'm not really complaining here, I'm just saying it will not do. This whole working for a better world will not stand on its own.
I've got to humble myself. I've got to let go of these loves and be okay with letting them go. I have to root into Something other than what I am rooted in now, which is already so beautiful, but it too will die.
The highest does not stand without the lowest.
We cannot build unless we start from the very source it comes from. We cannot replicate this heaven we long for.
But I think I can. And I know it is silly. Just to say "Oh - just love Jesus first." But really. Really. I don't want a man made heaven, I don't want to do things because I think it is the best thing. I want to be a servant. I want to listen. He compares us to sheep for a reason. Kris McDaniel always says this - we were made to listen, to hear His voice. We were made to follow. It is how are souls were fashioned. We can't do it. Love alone is not the answer. Love isn't the answer to everything. Love isn't God but God is Love, as Mr. Lewis says. A loved humanity isn't God. We just think it because it has this beautiful smothering of the appearance of the likeness of God.
But humanity loved is not our first love.
And that's how we love well.
It's okay if we aren't loving our neighbor well all the time. Slowly we slip that into the place of God and then go Yipes! And then keep loving our neighbor well with no time to be quiet because if we are quiet we are not loving our neighbor (in our own eyes) and then everything is ruined. And so we try to fix it by loving our neighbor well. And we forgot. We get too well versed and we forget because we can love people without God, without that sacrificial abiding we must do.
And then we pull a rob bell and say that all we really need is love, that love wins.
But no no no no no. That's Hindu stuff. We have a God who told us to love him, not love.
Blah. So sorry. Those are just the words I needed to say right now, and I can't because I'm in a library. That's how I feel, something like that.
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