A call came at an early hour on a frigid autumn morning.
“Ryan, Ted is dead. They found him in an alley in the middle of the night.”
My silent response spoke my stunned state of disbelief. Ted was a forty-six-year-old Native American who, together with his four-legged friend, Lucille, had survived our Denver streets for the past fifteen years. In our world, he was an icon, one of those cornerstone individuals within our beloved community of the chronically homeless. The news was a punch in the gut that left me, and several others, gasping.
As I finished that difficult phone conversation in the comfort of my living room, my four-year old son asked about the source of his daddy’s quiet tears. “One of daddy’s friends died last night,” I explained.
Years back, Ted had volunteered to introduce me to the language and rules of the street community—a tour guide of sorts. My relationship with Ted quickly evolved into a meaningful friendship with life-long impact. Through the wilderness of my years in ministry, Ted is among several who have emerged out of the shadows of the city and into my story as sincere life-giving friends.
As a young pastor, fresh out of the cocoon of seminary, a good friend invited me to serve one night out of my week within an inner-city ministry to the homeless. As I began practicing simple presence among some of the most vulnerable of our city—those dying of AIDS, the mentally ill, and the severely addicted—I couldn’t have imagined the profound influence these people and this context would have on the shape of my walk with God. Moving forward, the lenses through which I’d read the Scriptures or seen any aspect of spiritual formation would be processed through eyes that elevate the humanity of those like our friend, Ted.
Prior to this season of immersion among the poor, my life and its worldview had been shaped primarily within a homogenous white, middle-class matrix. In my rural, Midwestern upbringing, it’s not as if there wasn’t poverty nearby; it just wasn’t the focus of my faith tradition. So, as I entered seminary and the world of Christian ministry, I relied mostly on the metrics of a living faith that you could see clearly, such as good sermons and small groups. Like Alice in Wonderland, I wasn’t aware of what was down the rabbit hole until my increasing curiosity finally led me to plunge below into the unknown dimensions of poverty. I’ve since learned that what we focus our eyes upon consequently determines what we miss out on.
As a result of taking my friend up on this invitation to invest time among some of the most broken and overlooked of our city my spirituality received a disorienting yet life-giving jolt of new energy that would forever alter the manner is which I see everything.
Now, five years into that initial commitment to serve those on our streets, the entirety of my work is centered on intentional presence among Denver, Colorado’s marginalized poor. The significant shift in my spirituality influenced the development of a unique ministry called Access, giving me the opportunity to invite uninitiated people of privilege into a process of spiritual formation, which places them in proximity to those like Ted who dwell in the shadows of the city.
The guiding mission of Access is presence in hard places and honest spiritual formation. Drawing from my own experiences, I designed multiple paths by which the explorer can pursue honest spiritual formation in places that might be difficult for them to enter otherwise. For those who have seldom touched the world of the poor, I created an inner-city prayer walk, during which the learner engages the often overlooked realities of homelessness while taking careful notice of how those realities intimately relate to the interior poverty each of us possess, regardless of our economic position. This gritty formation exercise offers the opportunity to experientially step into the world of poverty by taking a few brief, yet unsettling moments to be a panhandler yourself!
After experiencing this or other spiritual exercises within Access, if the participant leans in for more, I’ll offer them an invitation to our weekly spiritual formation community. This dynamic gathering of friends meets every Tuesday evening to be present among the chronically homeless as well as to engage deeply in centering exercises such as the prayer of Examen. Essentially, we’ve created a space in order to invite others to join an ongoing process in which we seek to learn to see as God sees.
I’ve begun seeing my personal shift in perspective as similar to the story of a most peculiar prophet found in the Hebrew Scriptures. If you can recall a character named Balaam found in the book of Numbers, you’ll likely remember him as the guy who mercilessly beat up his donkey to the point in which the donkey begins to talk back to him. I love this story! Through a disorienting encounter with a talking ass, Balaam begins to see reality. Sometimes I wonder if we Bible people recognize just how many times throughout the grand narrative God seems to get a big kick out of using the most absurd and irrational mediums to restore sight to the blind. Indeed, after this wild donkey conversation, Balaam begins to see everything differently. With his newfound prophetic imagination, Balaam finds himself visualizing beauty where others may only see the unsightly surface of pain and struggle.
In Numbers 24, Balaam is led up to a high elevation, overlooking the “wasteland” where the Israelites have temporarily camped along their wilderness journey. At this point in their 40-year plight, God’s chosen ones are severely haggard, broken, and feeling hopeless. As the prophet looks out over the discouraged people his transformed perspective allows him to see something completely different—a scene that recalls the radical harmony of the garden described in Genesis: “How beautiful are your tents, Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel! Like valleys they spread out, like gardens beside a river, like aloes planted by the Lord, like cedars beside the waters” (Numbers 24:5–6, NIVScripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™).
From a limited, human perspective, Balaam’s account would have sounded absurd. His description starkly contradicts the reality of what the narrator of the story experiences as wasteland and wilderness. As my street friends would say, “What was he smoking? I’ll take a hit of that!”
The idea of transformed sight is hardly marginal theme in the Hebrew Scriptures. The story of Balaam is merely one example of God-sight in a narrative filled with colorful tales through which God’s people are invited to see beyond what the naked eye typically perceives. This liminal space is as relevant for us today as it’s ever been. Whether through the voice of ancient prophets, a personal season of hard circumstances, or a conversation with an addict on the street, God continues to offer us His invitations and listens with love for the kind of simple and honest response that the blind man gives when he exclaims, “Rabbi, I want to see!” (Mark 10:51).
Visions of beauty emerging from the waste of the wilderness are part of an ongoing thread throughout Israel’s story especially for those characters immersed in poverty. After Abraham tells his concubine (sex slave), Hagar, that she is relieved of her duties, she finds herself in the middle of the wilderness. It is there that she claims, “You are the God who sees me, I have now seen the One who sees me” (Genesis 16:13).
Likewise, it was in the wilderness that Moses becomes vulnerable, opening himself up to God’s voice and message. Just like Balaam’s encounter, the voice that speaks to Moses emerges in such a peculiar way that it transcends what the ordinary mind could comprehend. Moses, in an intense season of desolation, needed to turn toward burning shrubbery to clearly see both himself and his people through the lens of God’s reality.
Outside of the Scriptures, many of our most beloved epic stories contain a similar story line by which wisdom emerges through strange encounters in the wilderness. In Alice’s wonderland, it’s the mad hatters and talking caterpillars that light the way for the girl adventurer. It’s as if an encounter with the wild and disorienting nature of the wilderness works in tandem with the mystical presence of Christ, inviting us to enlarge our imagination that we might see the world anew.
The unpredictable reality of life among the street community I serve seems to consistently come with invitations to seasons in the wilderness. The recent passing of my friend, Ted, is merely one such story of struggle and loss within an unusually heavy period of intense grief work for our community. In the past three months, both my ministry partners and I have dealt with the deaths of four dearly loved homeless men. In addition to this, earlier this year, we pushed and pulled against a piece of local legislation, which served to further displace the chronically homeless. In our work among the poor, we enter in to these relationships knowing that suffering and darkness are always in the forecast.
While these are real struggles, the external hard places often coincide with—even reflect—the internal work of God in my own soul. There is a particular personal risk that comes with being intentionally present among the poor, which can be difficult to describe to the uninitiated. Over time, I’ve learned that with consistent proximity to the materially poor has come an increasing invitation to see and befriend my own inner poverty, the real me that often lies buried beneath the middle-class surface. As David Benner honestly describes, “The self that God persistently loves is not my prettied-up pretend self but my actual self—the real me. But, master of delusion that I am, I have trouble penetrating my web of self-deceptions and knowing this real me. I continually confuse it with some ideal self that I wish I were.”David G. Benner, The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 61. In my journey with marginalized people, it’s often been the most mentally ill, addicted, and unattractive personalities that have poignantly served as mystical guides, helping awaken me to see the reality of my own poverty.
It’s as if these unlikely voices have conspired together with God in carrying out the divine task of holding a clear mirror in front of my eyes. This honest mirror has served to expose my own issues with anger, lust, and the embarrassing compulsions that I’m afforded to keep conveniently under a sophisticated veneer due to my economic standing. St. Vincent De Paul said, “The poor are our teachers and we are their students.” Often times the poor may appear no more rational than a talking donkey—and these relationships have been my best guides in developing a clearer way of seeing.
One of the fundamental shifts within me, which allowed my experience among the poor to become so significantly formative to my soul, was the transition from good-intentioned “service” to carefully reflective “presence.” When I’m most humbly present to myself, I create transparent space to recognize barriers—the prejudices, worries, and fears—that block the vulnerability required to develop a hospitable environment, both internally and externally. As Henri Nouwen describes, “In a fearful environment it is not easy to keep our hearts open to the wide range of human experiences. Real hospitality, however, is not exclusive but inclusive and creates space for a large variety of human experiences.”Henri Nouwen. Reaching Out: Three Movements of the Spiritual Life (New York: Doubleday, 1986), 106.
Learning to be present among any marginalized community in which one finds themselves is unfamiliar territory that requires a significant holding of tension. In being open to these new relationships, we expect a degree of disorientation in which our traditional way of seeing will likely become knocked off center.
As I’ve encountered the invitation to hold the tension that comes amongst the wilderness, I’ve found myself responding in the form of honest questions. Real life questions like, “God are you there?” or “Lord, why so much pain?” Just as the troubled Psalmist cries, “How can we sing the songs of the Lord, while in a strange land?” (Psalm 137:4), honest gut level questions become prayers when our thoughts are most gray and directionless. When it comes to opening up a deeper, soulful way of seeing, I’ve frequently found myself echoing a prayer of St. Francis, “Who are you, Lord, my God, and who am I?”Francis of Assisi—The Prophet: Early Documents, vol. 3, Regis J. Armstrong, Bill Short and J. A. Wayne Hellmann, ed. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2001), 456.
Recently, in the midst of this uniquely intense season of work, I was given the unique opportunity to take a helicopter ride around the city to pray and be presented with a fresh view from higher elevation. What a timely gift this was! Although I’m daily afforded the awe-inspiring sunsets and scenes of the Rocky Mountains, it’s easy to find myself consumed, having absorbed the pain of those we serve. While doing good and intense work such as a prison visit or helping someone sober up, I’m prone to keep my head down, limiting myself and my perspective to the grit and grime of the street.
As I hovered above the Mile High City at five hundred feet, I found myself once again disrupted by the clarity that comes from a fresh point of view. From the perspective of this mechanical bird, the extreme chasms between neighborhoods of affluence and those of poverty were far less dramatic than they appeared in my daily work. I experienced a renewed sense of hope as I imagined the solidarity and common poverty that unites us all. The Apostle Paul’s words came to mind as he expressed the divine vision in which there was neither Jew nor Gentile, slave or free, male or female, but rather the harmony and oneness of Christ.See Galatians 3:28. I laughed out loud at this idea of oneness I was envisioning just a few short days prior to the recent presidential election. As I peered down on the jammed up I-25 traffic, political affiliations dissolved within the shared human experience. Perhaps it was from an elevated perspective such as this that Balaam peered out over the wasteland at the broken people and declared that what he was seeing was the unitive harmony of the garden. Again, I was gently nudged toward yet a further shift in perspective.
In this difficult season, the lens of the bird was just what the doctor ordered. In my work among the poor, I’ve become partial to the view of the ant rummaging through the scraps in the dumpster, but as I floated above the city, I discovered a sense of renewal through a much larger perspective. This integrated, impartial, and whole way of seeing both above and below is the reality of divine seeing. It’s a perspective in which we’ve been prompted by prophets like Balaam to participate in ourselves.
Helen Keller’s words are a sharp reminder that those with the gift of sight aren’t always gifted with the ability to truly see. Keller’s poverty was in her blindness, but that blindness gave her incredible spiritual insight—a different perspective. Just as Keller couldn’t choose to have physical sight, for those in the depths of poverty, seldom is there a chance to view the world from the perspective of affluence. But for those of us whose spirituality has primarily been shaped in the homogenous context of privilege, the invitation to step into the perspective of the poor and truly see is loud and clear—if we would only pause to hear.
Adjusting our vantage point in order to see as God sees is a necessary movement toward a more just way of living in the world. For some of us this means engaging in relationships with those in the most disadvantaged slums or oppressed ghettos of our cities. We know severe poverty exists within those urban shadows, but the horrible tragedy in the quiet suburb of Newtown, Connecticut, is a brutal reminder that poverty takes a variety of forms and is located much nearer than we imagine. An immigrant struggling to feed her family, a bullied high school student sitting alone in the cafeteria, or the widow peering out a nursing home window—those whom we simply don’t see are likely a few short paces from us at this very moment.
As I earnestly seek a more just way of living and responding to our groaning world, I’m quieted to listen to God’s creative prompts toward the wilderness. Historically, it’s been the untamed wilderness where we find ourselves holding tension, curiously aware of God’s voice mysteriously infused in unlikely persons such as Ted. Presence in hard places with the most unpredictable of individuals, have been the relationships that have taught me to remove my shoes. Yep, indeed, this is holy terrain. As they cry out of their own neediness they simultaneously illuminate my own. I’m convinced that this way of seeing is extended to everyone. If God chooses burning bushes, dying addicts, and even a talking ass, then all of us are invited to broaden our field of vision because the possibilities are endless.
Conversations Journal: You mentioned that you practice the prayer of Examen in your ministry. That’s intriguing to me. What does that look like?
Ryan Taylor: So much of Access involved experiences and conversations filled to the brim with tension. Like I mention, these tensions exists externally in our work as well as soulfully in our personal journey. Because of these choppy waters, centering exercises such as the prayer of Examen have become a necessity for our community. Practicing Examen allows us to walk that uneven pavement in a healthy manner.
Sometimes we’ll formally practice exercises like lectio divina or Examen. But the rhythm of our weekly gatherings tend to naturally take the shape of Examen as we have learned to quietly express our gifts, locate and acknowledge struggles, and together discern the sense of invitation we are experiencing both as individuals as well as communally.
CJ: Ryan, you’ve talked about how being an intentional presence with the poor has helped you see your own places of poverty and sin that are so easily glossed over by our economic standing. What’s a more recent time that this has happened for you?
RT: Well, I’ll briefly mention two individuals here. Ed (not Ted) was a man who passed away earlier this fall, and he was a man who lived as generously as anyone I’d ever known. He truly loved people and would give the shirt off his back. This relationship helped me see my love of possessions and moved me to give more generously.
And then there’s my friend, Jason. He has bipolar disorder and experiences ongoing fits of rage. Through him, God has taught me more about my own issues with anger and reminds me that he loves both Jason and me the same even when we’re preoccupied with anger.
CJ: I admit that, as a contemplative, I’m a little afraid of just “doing things” for those in poverty. I also know that I’m pretty far away from the poor in my daily life. I want to follow Jesus, but I’m scared of uncontrollable encounters with people who struggle with mental illness and addiction, with stories so unlike mine, but that also could be me one day. What words do you have for me as I step into this downward journey, to see more as God sees?
RT: The fear you mention isn’t altogether a bad thing. Among those we serve, many don’t live within the same sense of boundaries as you and I do. So, in one sense I encourage you to trust your feelings of discomfort knowing that some people have been conditioned to take advantage of another’s weakness as a way of survival.
While I mention our value of careful boundaries, I also acknowledge our embedded presuppositions as well as our tendency to constantly be over-assessing the risks in our culture. While our fears can be healthy, they also can be the source of further dehumanizing and marginalizing the poor.
This is where the gift of contemplation is so necessary as it relates to work among vulnerable people. Our hope is to empower the poor and do work that endures over time. We lean on Christ through prayer to accomplish this.
Ryan Taylor leads Access in Denver, Colorado (www.accessdenver.org), an affiliate of Mile High Ministries. More of his writing can be found at www.tallmonasticguy.com and www.geographyofgrace.com. Ryan is married to Angela, and they have two sons, Josiah and Micah.