To Live My Story

In the past year I have read Donald Miller's Million Miles in a Thousand Years, I have talked about it before once or twice. Since then, I have gone to Boston and been involved in a conference with the Fund for Theological Education where I was able to think about my story somewhat. I began thinking about what it meant to live my story, how I could live that story, and what that meant for me and those around me. I have not completely figured out my story, but what good story is the ending known at the beginning? However, I am beginning to know who I am more fully and where I am headed. Hopefully my story will be full of twists, every day adventure and character development. So.... for now, some things I do know about my story.

Next year I will be attending Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. I however will not be living on campus, and this is very intentional. Next year I will be living in the community around the seminary. I have always believed that an education without any application is quite useless. A seminary education, specifically my masters of divinity really truly would mean nothing to me without any application. This intentional living in the community is one reason why I picked to attend Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

The area around the seminary is an amazing and complex area. On one side of the school is East Liberty, a socially and economically depressed area with some new life budding. On the other side of the school is Highland Park, a middle to higher class area full of beautifully renovated old houses, coffee shops, and parks. Both neighborhoods are beautiful and wonderful and are full of amazing people. I want my story to be living in community with these people. I want to know the people that I pass by on the roads and be able to invite others over for dinner or coffee. I hope to know my neighbors and to be intentional about making it known that I will be a true neighbor, available for any needs.

Specific examples of this hope of mine continue to fall into my lap each day I get closer to moving in to my new apartment. First, a friend of mine told me that I should contact an old friend of his who works at a church in East Liberty. This friend of his, is already doing exactly what I want to be doing and I have had the great pleasure of meeting some of his coworkers this week. These young men started a community building, The Union Project, while in seminary that helps family buy and own houses responsibly and affordably so the people that make up the community can continue to live in the community. Shops are not what makes up communities, but it is the people that work at and frequent the shops that make a community. The Union Project also runs a community garden, growing in previously abandoned gardens. Where there used to be ruins, life now grows. Where there used to be depressed houses, life is now living inside. Where there used to be an abandoned community, I want to help bring life and love.

I began this journey of living today actually, while I was at a seminary camp for high school students. I was stopped to get gas in the neighborhood and a homeless man came up and kindly asked if I could spare a few dollars for food. At first I was hesitant because I really did not think I had any money. However, as I was pumping gas I looked through my wallet and found a few dollars. When I called the man over a second time, I took a good look at his face, something I am not sure a lot of people around him do, and it was at that moment that I realized I had met BIll before. Five years ago when I was attending the same seminary program that I am now helping to lead I had met Bill, talked with him, and a group of friends and I had taken him out to McDonald's. I asked Bill if he remembered me and told him that I remembered him. I had a conversation with him for a while and respected him as a person, looking him in the eye. I told him that I was going to the seminary next year and that I will see him around town. He mentioned something about needing a hair cut, exactly what he had said five years ago. If Bill needs something as simple as a hair cut every five years and a friendly face to talk to, I think I can do that. I hope to see Bill again soon and begin frequent conversations with him. I hope to meet others like Bill, and I hope to be other people's Bill as well, living together in a community joined by love.

I am not sure where this story of mine will take me, but I hope it is not comfortable, predictable, or even safe. I hope at times I wonder what I am doing and why I am doing it. I hope that I fail, and that I learn from my failures. But most importantly, through all of these times, I hope to be in a community in which I am interdependent, loving and receiving, bringing love to the broken places and life to the abandoned.