Searching the Streets

Angels in our midst, and the Community of God

I took this photo yesterday. I’m not sure what Silas was looking at. Once the temperatures drop it doesn’t seeem there’s much to see around here at all. We’re in the midst of long weeks of feeling cooped up. Simultaneously tired and restless. Lonely and cozy. If he’s anything like his mom, staring at the trees does help.

He looks like an angel, wrapped in a blanket, there with our tiny tree.

Last year around this time we were talking about Christmas and Jesus’ birth and he said, quite casually, “It’s like God on the ground.” They’re words I’ll never forget.

Jesus people do our best to keep our hearts rightly focused during this season. We talk about Immanuel and try to feel the weight. What we’re really trying to grasp is God on the ground, the same ground we’re standing on. What did it mean that God came to us as a baby? What does it mean right now?

I wrote a blessedly brief, 10-day series, to ask these questions. As always, I want the story inside the story, the details that risk being lost along the way. Who else was nearby? What do they teach us? If you follow me on Instagram you might have already seen this announcement. If not, I wanted to be sure to offer it here.

It’s impossible to untangle our narrative from the stories playing around us. We were built for community, and this is a beautiful thing. In our fragile state, we depend on one another. We learn from the unexpected angel at our window.

Even though you’re already on my email list (Thank you!) you have to sign up here to receive God on the Ground.

I’m including a sneak peek of Day 1, below. (When you sign up, you’ll receive Day 1 again. There’s no way around this because of the way it’s being sent out. One day later, you’ll receive Day 2, and so on…)

Researching and writing God on the Ground spoke life to my weary soul. I hope it does the same for you, meeting you right in the gravel.

Weary and rejoicing,

Shannan

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Day 1 - Wet Footprints on the Pavement

The night before Thanksgiving, we were sprawled out on the couch watching a movie with the curtains drawn against the crow-black sky.

My phone buzzed. I glanced. A package had been delivered.

I sent Calvin to grab it, just four short minutes after it was left.

The package was gone.

We paused our movie, peeked through the curtains, did our best impersonations of TV crime scene investigators. “Wet footprints on the porch!”

It was there that the story came together, thanks, in part, to the video-equipped doorbell we installed after a recent half-scary incident involving a strung-out stranger at 3 a.m. and the realization that opening a windowless door without knowing who’s on the other side leaves us vulnerable.

We huddled around the phone to watch the footage. Out of the shadows, a woman emerged, eyes darting. Blond hair in a topknot. Victoria’s Secret PINK sweatpants. I knew her from the line where I serve lunch twice a week. I knew her from the neighborhood. She grabbed the package and scuttled up the street, less than a minute after it had been delivered.

First comes the tremor of minor violation. Next, confusion over how best to respond. There’s the awe upon understanding her calculated system and the weight of imagining the circumstances which must drive her behavior.

And then there’s the reality of what she took.

For all of her effort, she walked away with my new Advent book. She stole the story of baby Jesus, her petty crime illuminated by our twinkling Christmas lights.

It’s an easy punchline and we have learned the value of humor instead of bitterness, whenever possible. But, it’s four days later and I’m still thinking about her.

In the days leading up to Christmas, we wait. Through crow-black nights, despairing days, the unexpected flickers of pure joy. We shop and we wait. We bake and we wait. We do our best to extract meaning and inject wonder, to draw nearer still, to claw for some much-needed peace. We watch. And we wait. All the while, actual life pulses around us.

Eight years on 5th Street have proven the futility of isolating my experience from the lived experience of my neighbors. One of them stole my Jesusy Christmas book. But two days later, another one delivered a steaming tray of tamales in honor of their son’s birthday and the party they couldn’t have this year. Two days after that, someone else brought us a cooler of frozen beef. Desperation and generosity. Isolation and belonging. None of it exists without leaving its mark.

This must have been equally true those thousands of years ago. Who were the neighbors at and around Jesus’ birth? What gifts did they bear? What harm did they render? What can we learn from them? And how might it change our place and our practice among the everyday, skin and bones community of “God on the ground?”

For the next nine days, we’ll gather here for a short reflection on the story within the story. Together, we’ll watch the streets and search the skies, waiting for Immanuel, certain we will find him.

To continue to receive God on the Ground (it’s totally free!) click here.

Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us’.

- Isaiah 7:14