Philip's Tunnel to Nowhere 3

I’m always looking for thought-provoking mp3s to listen to while I walk for exercise. Lately I’ve been listening to Smart City by Carol Coletta, which i gather is an NPR program about issues of urban development. This particular episode happens to feature Alan Webber, co-founder of Fast Company.

Webber says a lot of stuff worth listening to. One point that’s really grabbed my attention is the importance of iconic projects in moving from a plan to implementation. Since I’m someone who’s much better at devising plans than implementing them, this should be a topic tailor-made for my needs.

Around 20:00 Webber describes an experience working for the mayor of Portland, OR, in the 1970s. As he describes it, PDX back then was nothing like the annoyingly hip place it is now. A key step in its development of a pedestrian friendly, transit-compatible downtown was their success in luring the Seattle department store Nordstrom, which apparently even then had enough cachet to lead the revitalization of downtown.

The point is that one such “iconic project” can be critical to promoting a broader change effort. It’s really something I need to hear. Mind you, on a visceral level I think I’ve realized this before — for example, back in Massachusetts when we talked about getting a place for the Pit kids to hang out, this had the potential to be an iconic project. In more mundane aspects of my daily life, something like getting to where I can beat a live poker game soundly enough to make a modest living at it before I start investing effort to learn how to beat more advanced but potentially more profitable online games would be an example.

I will try to think a bit more about other places I can apply this lesson in my life. Back to the whole underground outreach topic, I think that’s one area where I can apply this principle. I just need to get involved in something local and helping bring it to some modest plateau perceived as “success” (which of course only really comes by the Holy Spirit).

A couple of weeks ago, a friend suggested that I make a concrete effort to put into writing some of the past aspirations that I’ve had, in particular those involving faith-based outreach. I think the idea is a good one, and it’s just a matter of making time and giving myself permission to write down stuff that may seem incomplete or even not that interesting any longer. It’s a leap of a faith, albeit a small one, because I’m trying to believe that God has given me this little snippets of experience and little dreams and aspirations for some valid reason and that writing them down will prove beneficial.

First some background: from 2000 to the end of 2004 I had gone from praying that God would somehow enlighten me about how to do outreach to the people in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA; to discovering that there were already people in a nearby Vineyard church doing outreach by buying pizzas, hanging out, and talking with folks under the name of Harvard Square Outreach (H2O); to getting involved in H2O and eventually co-leading it. In early 2005 I had a profoundly negative experience in ministry in a different place. I had planned to move back to Boston in June but daunted by the high cost of living there, never ended up making it back. So I was never again involved in H2O, and as far as I know it sort of fell apart we sort of drifted our separate ways* from that point.

But I’d like to think back to 2003 or 2004, when it seemed like we’d at least established a certain comfort level with doing the weekly pizza outreach and my brain was doing its thing of trying to innovate the next great innovation, and document some of our aspirations about the future of H2O from that point. For one thing, we talked about the need for “a place”, some building or storefront or something where we could potentially hold musical and other events and provide a sort of safe hangout for the same people we were already buying pizza for. We had also discussed using our “place” as some sort of accomodation for homeless young people, but this idea was sort of undercut by the legal implications of working with runaway kids. In short, it was my understanding from other volunteer stints with secular organizations that Mass. law didn’t provide for any sort of housing-related services to runaway minors. Giving them a place to stay could constitute kidnapping!

Nevertheless, we talked and prayed about some sort of place to call our own. I had volunteered for a secular homeless youth drop-in center near Harvard Square called Youth on Fire, and that experience helped shape my vision for the sort of project we could build if we had the resources. Of course high rents make any consideration of finding space in metro Boston seem like something that can only be accomplished by divine intervention! Meanwhile, I also wanted to visit other similar projects that were working in other cities. One such trip was a bittersweet one involving my then-girlfriend Casey, a friend in NH named Gessica, and me to Portland, ME, to visit a project called The Well. I think I had met the organizers at Cornerstone (2003?) or some such, and I can’t recall if they were opening weekly or monthly or how often. At any rate, they weren’t able to continue renting their space, so the occasion when we visited was their last night. That’s too bad, because their “place” appeared to really fill a need for the alternative young people of that city.

Eventually this desire to learn from other places led to my cross-country trip of Oct. – Nov. 2004, and to my ill-fated time in early 2005. I suppose it’s a little ironic that my desire to learn from others sowed the seed of my disillusionment and lack of desire to do anything related to “ministry,” although more than anything it reflects my general lack of tenacity that’s cut short any efforts to discover God’s will for my life. Perhaps documenting past false-starts will help me become more faithful in the future.

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*EDITED because the first draft sounded like I was trying to make myself sound indispensible, which was not my intent. As I recall we were all getting pretty busy with other stuff throughout 2004 anyway, and my geographical move just sort of sealed the deal as far as my own involvement. There may have been other outreach activity under the H2O name from 2005 onward that I just wasn’t aware of.