More Than Just Tea

I have often quoted Dr. Michael Rhodes, author of Practicing the King’s Economy. He has enlightened many and trained more to take a cutting-edge ministry to urban neighborhoods.

 “If you want to create the kingdom potluck at the margins, you must relentlessly pursue the sort of community that makes it possible for the marginalized to bring a dish to the table.”

and

“Sharing meals together forced us to figure out how to be the body of Christ reconciled across racial, ethnic, and class lines.”           

Rhodes punctuated my mission statement in Orange Mound shortly after I began there in 2012. My call remains deeply rooted in the powerful message of Isaiah 58:6-12. I have worked among dedicated women with whom I worship, love, and serve, who have bravely shared their burdens for our city. This scripture inspires us to rise and embrace our divine purpose, igniting a passion within us to bring about transformation and healing in Orange Mound.  We are called to break the chains of injustice, to share our resources with those in need, and to shine our light brightly in the darkness.

So, we decided to do it with food.

Lunch became and has remained the anticipated “sweet spot” for all who work at the House daily. A volunteer, usually from East Memphis, drives into the inner city and dishes out a fresh, free feast for our famished friends.  The plates are filled to overflowing.

Within the ten years we have served lunches, I have adjusted my expectations and found that Dr. Rhodes may not have been familiar with the single moms we employ in Orange Mound. 

Some in our family at My Cup of Tea find it difficult to express acknowledgement of the daily fare which is given abundantly.  I question if food scarcity fosters a sense of shame for needing to accept the gift, rather than appreciation.

Most of our employees are unfamiliar with a potluck at church gatherings. On days without a designated provider of lunch, I've asked everyone to contribute to potluck lunches, fostering a spirit of giving, as it's more rewarding to give than to receive.

It seems most of the ladies interpret “potluck” as “let’s see how many items I can snag from the Kroger sale table!” We’ve had everything from half-off, half-frozen catfish to a sizable stack of canned beans.

I have recognized financial constraints can eclipse the ingredients for a simple meal to offer friends. Access to reliable stoves and ovens, and no access to time and energy to prepare, can throttle the best intentions. Cooking skills are lacking for some, and sharing sugary cereals, day-old fries, or stale pizza that works at home is embarrassing.
 
Prayerful and undaunted, I offered a new version of sharing the “vittles” this week.  Everyone harvested bushels of vegetables from our House garden on Monday. For the ladies who have mastered culinary arts, I suggested fried green tomatoes, tomato pie, and green beans cooked Southern. They accepted the challenge and combed the fresh produce on the counter.
 
For those still learning their way around the kitchen, I offered to lend a hand, and we cooked together.  Side by side, we made peach cobbler, apple pie, and sautéed lima beans with bacon. Hopefully, the experiment will be repeated at home. Two prepared cucumber salad, and another brought cucumber surprise. Printed recipes were available, and some picked them up.

According to Rhodes, “In God’s economy, everybody gets to bring a dish to the party”. This tells us two things:

First, the goal is to become an interdependent family gathered at God’s table.
Second, the potluck reminds us that some in the family struggle to bring their best dish because of their economic brokenness or inexperience. That means that if we want the potluck, we’re going to have to bend the way we work, earn, spend, invest, save, and give towards welcoming the marginalized.
 
I bent the rules, and we picked the pole beans. My hope was that every woman would participate, every plate would be filled, every tummy satisfied, and every heart encouraged. The fellowship at the table is made rich when all partake in the labor of preparation.

I have  renamed our endeavor “Mound Manna.”

It worked, and one said today that she is already looking forward to our next one.

Throughout my life as a Christian, I have often observed where God is at work and looked for ways to join Him.  Our missionally focused church has offered many opportunities and matched my enthusiasm to join other world travelers to be among God’s heroes established in the mission fields across the continents. Evidence of His activity and grace rest in my memories and subconsciously reinforce my faith.  Perhaps the consummate dependence on Him from the home front to foreign cultures, climates, and countries has led to the overuse of the term “miracle”. Many of us toss the term “miracle” into the flow of everyday life, when rather than a miracle, a surprise of grace sweetens the predicament and causes us to be in grateful awe.

           In the Bible, a miracle is a supernatural event performed by God that is beyond the power of nature or human beings. It's an extraordinary event that demonstrates God's power, sovereignty, and divine intervention in human affairs. Miracles are distinct from blessings in that miracles are specific, extraordinary interventions that demonstrate God’s power, while blessings are the good things God provides. And miracles are beyond natural law. They are events that cannot be explained by natural laws or scientific principles. Examples of miracles include the parting of the Red Sea, healing the sick, raising the dead, and Jesus’ miracles during his ministry.

            I have seen countless examples of God at work, but I have not seen a miracle in Orange Mound. A miracle must have no other explanation but the intervention of God.

We dwell in daily drama at The House in Orange Mound.  The dilemmas of “hood life” refresh our prayer life throughout each day. Chronic illnesses plague all of our employees and their families. Dependable transportation is unaffordable. These predicaments are common to all, pervasive, and resolved often with prayer.  The illness dissipates, the car starts, and the treadless tires get replaced. But though I can’t explain them without God, they are not considered miracles.

 Reflecting on the Lord’s surprising grace is the dailiness of life in the Mound. It instructs and enlightens us to His presence and preference for the poor.  Grace is the specialty of undeserved gifts God often proffers bountifully without being consulted.

From recent weeks, here are a fraction of the surprises and blessings of His handiwork for which we did not pray.

·         He brought a family member, who has made regrettable choices, to our house for lunch, and she sang of her desire to repent and trust the Lord for her addictions.

·         He opened the enrollment with one slot remaining at a superior high school, and a granddaughter was able to slide into her best fit possible in the fall to continue her education.

·         He has brought 4 ladies to apply for ownership of the 5 houses under construction on our block.

·         He has caused all our seedling plantings to thrive in our new gardens.

·         He has kept our temperamental air conditioner working through these stifling, humid, and hot days.

·         He has enlightened a kind doctor with the proper diagnosis for one of the ladies who had been given the wrong medicine for her asthma and was failing in health.

·         He has provided work and sustenance for the ladies who have needed extra hours of work this summer.

·         He has brought fresh marketing strategies for our coming gift promotions.

·         He has opened new portals of food pantries for a lady who lost her SNAP benefits.

·         He has inspired others on our block to repair and refresh houses.

·         He has raised the credit score 50 points for one of our employees.

·         He has protected us from harm.

·         He has brought us favor among donors and foundations.

·         He has led us in the discovery of His love and mercy in studying His Word.

·         He has renewed our faith.

·         He has released a family member from jail for good behavior.

·         He has brought attention to our product line through the media.

·         He has sustained our cash flow.

·         He has brought us new customers.

·         He has protected our property.

Most of us are unaware of the common grace that abounds in one week in the Mound and even in our own lives. While God is blessing us, He is keeping our neighbors under our grace cloud as well. His mercies are fresh every morning, and His indiscriminate kindness to believers and unbelievers is without measure, and sadly, often without notice.

But even when the blessings of His grace are not immediate or tangible, like many in this list, His grace is still unmatched and unending. As the classic hymn reminds us,

Sin and despair, like the sea-waves cold,
Threaten the soul with infinite loss;
Grace that is greater– yes, grace untold–
Points to the Refuge, the mighty Cross. 

Grace, grace, God's grace,
Grace that will pardon and cleanse within;
Grace, grace, God's grace,
Grace that is greater than all our sin!

Social media posts about childhood trauma are the “Red Badge of Courage” for Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Are you even really a part of those generations if you can’t articulate some trauma, how it stunted your progress, and how you have bravely overcome it?  Scores of videos on Tik Tok and Instagram recount the “abuse” experienced by teens and young adults as children. I put abuse in quotations, not to make light of it, but to underscore that the definition has broadened.

Too many of the stories are horrific, and the perpetrators are deserving of prison sentences. The survivors need love, support, counseling, and empathy to overcome the psychological, emotional, and sometimes physical wounds they have endured. However, for someone born a Baby Boomer, Gen Xer, or even a Millennial, some of the stories sound like character-building struggles we all must endure, rather than life-altering trauma.

To the credit of the younger generations, we talk about trauma these days, rather than ignoring it or sweeping it under the rug. Spend any significant time with a member of Gen Z, and it won’t be long until you’re hearing about a pop star, movie icon, or athlete whose trauma affected their lives and careers. This trauma-focused banter has normalized the topic and led to healing for countless people, but it is also important to keep our trauma in perspective.

There are some tragedies that we can all agree would be traumatic for anyone – the loss of a child, being robbed at gunpoint, etc. Aside from these grave instances, people tend to process the same difficult situations differently. What is traumatic for one may be only an unfortunate circumstance for another. However, chronic instances of struggle or difficulty can also be traumatizing, and this is what we see and have seen with many of the women in Orange Mound we served.

We have told you before about the exposure to violence, physical and sexual abuse, and the struggle with addiction, many of the My Cup of Tea ladies have endured. These are for sure trauma-inducing events. What is equally impacting, or perhaps more potent, are the ongoing, chaotic adversities that plague the lives of some of the ladies–one psyche-rattling incident after another for life.

One recent morning, Cheryl, one of our supervisors, received a phone call. On the other end of the line was a tiny voice saying, “My mom needs help. She can’t breathe!” The child was one of the daughters of an employee. Cheryl told the daughter to call 911, grabbed another one of the ladies, and headed out to help.

When they arrived, the paramedics were already there working on the mother. Somehow, in the midst of the crisis, the mother had contacted her nephew to come and pick up her daughters. The nephew was with another man and needed the mother’s vehicle to transport the girls to the mother’s friend’s house. This raised immediate red flags for Cheryl, but after some intense questioning, it was determined it was safe for the girls to leave with the nephew.

The ambulance transported the mother to Baptist Hospital East, several miles East of her Orange Mound home. After a battery of tests and without a clear diagnosis, they released her, but she had no transportation or keys to her house. Debbie, our Operations Manager, drove to retrieve her. Then they traveled to the North part of the city, an area called Frayser, to collect the daughters. However, the house keys were not there. The keys were in the Northeast part of the city, still miles away from her neighborhood.

Eventually, the daughters, the vehicle, and the house keys were secured.

All’s well that ends well, right?

Not exactly.

For the moment, things are calm-ish, but this is simply a single occurrence in the cycle. It likely won’t be long before chaos ensues again. Violence or death will be imminent. There will be minimal, if there is any, support from family or friends. Financial resources will not be available to mitigate the circumstance. Fear and uncertainty will be like a concrete slab laying on the backs of those involved, paralyzing forward movement. And these events will continue to hammer the spirit of the ladies and their children, sowing new trauma and exacerbating the old.

We are not experts at addressing trauma, but we now have a better sense of what it looks like. Here are some steps we have taken that help.

It starts with the environment at The House. Debbie can often be heard saying, “My God is a god of order.” And The House is always in order, without ambiguity, and a place of peace.

We’ve written about our Kintsugi sessions that used the ancient Japanese art form to help the ladies process trauma. The tangible results of that effort are displayed in the kitchen at The House.

More recently, Dr. Fred Gilliam, a licensed professional counselor, has joined us for lunch on Wednesdays to hear from the ladies about their challenges and to equip them with the emotional and spiritual tools to cope.

Some of the ladies have taken advantage of therapy offered by Christian Psychological Center through the Memphis Resilience Project.

And, of course, we pray – a lot.

By today’s definition, most of us have experienced some type of trauma in our lives, and perhaps it has some long-lasting negative effects. What is also true is that most of us have never and will never live the repeated trauma faced by Orange Mound women. That fact can cause us to minimize the struggles they face or fail to recognize them at all.

While most of us scratch our heads at how Gen Zs and Gen Alphas view the world, we can be grateful that they have seen the trauma we couldn’t see and refuse to shut up about it until we start addressing it.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. II Corinthians 1:3-5