These Streets

Today, I feel quite saturated. I’ve just come home from visiting 40 children who come to kidz klub, plus their parents, older siblings, younger siblings, friends, friends’ parents, etc… I’ve met a lot of people tonight. I’ve walked a lot of streets. But it’s not a one-off; I rode these streets on a bus on Saturday, collecting and returning children. I was there again on Monday visiting older siblings. Yesterday I spent the evening with those siblings just down the road. On Saturday I’ll see them and the cycle will begin all over again.

I enjoyed today. This bizarre Indian summer weather meant that people were outside, they were happy, and leant a feeling of hope to the beginning of term. I enjoyed playing with children and chatting with parents. I loved meeting new people who were positive about kidz klub. Everything went well and I came home satisfied and happy. Is that why I feel I own these streets tonight, because I’m happy on them? What about when summer fades? When it’s wet and windy, or when someone breaks into the car, or takes issue with something that happened on Saturday? Will I still own these streets then? How deep does my compassion run?

I’ve been thinking recently about where I live, and why I’m here. I am part of a group of people who have all been drawn to this place, to this geographical location for a purpose. There are as many different purposes as there are people in the group. But what is my purpose? Why did I choose to move to this run-down part of town that used to be beautiful, in a crumbling house, with neighbours from every walk of life but my own? The story is a long one that runs far back, but ultimately my purpose is this: to love broken people.

Broken people aren’t always nice. They aren’t always happy to see a person of light. They don’t always feel positive and friendly. I am a broken person, I should know. But in my brokenness I have found a hope and a love that comes from beyond me. I may be afflicted in every way, but I am not crushed; I may be perplexed but not driven to despair; persecuted but not abandoned; struck down but never destroyed. My brokenness has been and is being healed by love.

May the saturation continue, in good times and bad. May I continue to look beyond what my eyes can see to the world just beyond this one. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

I sprinkled a couple of bible references from 1 Corinthians 4 in there- can you find them? I’ve got lots more to say about them in a blog I’ve been meaning to write for a couple of weeks, so watch this space for the details.

Walking Home

It is dark, but not cold. It’s warm enough that I can walk home with just a light t-shirt and not feel the chill. The streets, so familiar by day, seem strange and unknown in the dark. The pavements are patched up with tarmac that gleams under the streetlights and its inhabitants are almost entirely unisex, the women having gone indoors long before dusk. Only a trio of girls whose mothers believe they are at a friend’s house and a lady out drinking with her man and his mates buck the trend. There is an aroma of fine spices and the faint sound of Asian music. Shops that were weathered and empty this morning are now lit up and filled with people in their best finery, feasting and celebrating. I am not in some far-off country but in Harehills, Leeds, a neighbourhood homing representatives of almost any other nation you could name.

I’m walking home. I notice the strangeness, feel a little alien on the streets. I enjoy the freedom of walking alone but there’s a slight thrill, a sense of danger and I’m glad my mother believes that I am at a friend’s house too. This may be “my” country, but these are not my streets. Not because I’m white; some of those out tonight have British ancestors far out-dating my own; but because I’m green. I’m new. It’s still strange to me. I pass two men standing in a bus stop in long kurta robes. I turn off the main road and meet the smell of alcohol as a group sit in their yard drinking beer. A bunch of noisy youths cross in front of me and finally it comes into view, and then I am there: home. The gate squeaks, the door clatters open and closed again and the strangeness is gone, locked outside on a warm, dark night.