Burning Furnace of Charity

After we had lunch with Karina on Sunday, we moved on to have a bit of "church" in Boys Town. Here's the account, taken straight from my journal. So..."dear diary..."

When we left Karina’s room, we went down to Nora’s bar to find Nora asleep on her bed. Lucia was trying to wake her, but to no avail. We sat outside of Nora’s while Erin played the guitar and we all sang. Lucia just hung on me and listened. When she could, she sang along in Spanish. I really loved singing “Abre mis ojos, O Cristo" (Open my eyes, Jesus) in BT. As we sang, “Yo quiero verte…I want to see You,” I looked around the dusty streets of my Boys Town. I saw little Carlos across the street at the Ho Mi Nina cantina, drinking Mexican whiskey from a plastic bottle and dusting off a car with a dirty rag. I saw a young girl in a doorway, waiting for a customer. I saw another girl walking hastily down the street, very unsure of who we were. I saw Lucia struggling to keep up with the singing, though still singing from her heart. I saw cars driving slowly by us, also unsure what exactly was happening at the old cantina. I saw Jesus, in the face of young girls selling their bodies, in the face of Carlos drinking his Mexican whisky from a plastic bottle, in the face of Lucia trying to remember a sound of heaven she hasn’t really heard in many years, in the faces of Kim and Erin as they sang (somewhat uncomfortably) on the street of this little red light district that so clearly owns my heart these days. I think we were all hoping His words are true, “Whatever you have done unto the least of these, you have done unto Me.”

From Nora’s, we moved on to the courtyard behind Kilo’s old bar. We sat out in the open and sang some more. Lucia went around to the rooms to round folks up – she finally was successful when we saw her with a very sleepy Chavela, still buttoning her shorts as she came out to meet us. Liliana came out while we were singing. While she was opening her can of jalapenos with a rather sharp knife, she said, “We don’t need to go to a church – we have the temple right here!” Later, she came back to the courtyard and we read Psalm 139 aloud together, alternating verses. Chavela was out there, just mesmerized by Erin’s voice and guitar skills. It was like having a little kid around with Chavela…she just laughs at silly things and makes silly faces. Her leg looks kind of normal now, and her countenance is so different. It’s really beautiful what Jesus is doing in Chavela.

I got a little distracted while Erin was playing the guitar. I kept looking around at the disheveled courtyard…random pieces of trash everywhere, wires strung along from room to room, sheets for doors, the smell. That’s what Kilo saw and smelled everyday when he woke up. It must have been a heavy weight for him to carry. I’m glad he doesn’t have to see that any more when he gets up in the mornings. A girl named Ruby now lives in Kilo’s old room. An older American man was with her when we first got there. It’s still hard for me to feel compassion towards the American men I see in there using my friends.

It’s only about 9 pm, and I feel as though it’s about midnight. I love BT a lot, but it certainly zaps me. It’s a good kind of tired, I suppose.

Last week, my friend Karina (who sometimes goes by Tahiti) invited us to have lunch with her on Sunday in her room in Boys Town. (Her room is the usual bedroom with a small toilet area behind a wall.) Karina insisted that we do nothing - she wanted to provide lunch and drinks and tortillas. Erin, Kim and I showed up on Sunday afternoon, not really knowing what to expect. We were very warmly greeted by Karina at the door. A couple of friends had been eating with her, but they left shortly after we got there to make space for us in this very tiny room. One of them went for tortillas, but Karina forgot the cokes. So, she left Erin, Kim and I in her room while she went to buy drinks. It was only a few minutes, but it felt like an awkward eternity as the three of us sat in the room behind a plexiglass door. A few men (Americans and others) walked and drove by rather slowly, looking in the room as though they were window shopping. Each time a customer drove or walked by, my first reaction was to look away very quickly. I didn't want to make eye contact so as to invite unwanted attention. It occured to me in that moment what Karina and so many others are forced to do each and every day and night - as a woman, they are forced to ignore their most natural instinct to look away. They have to make eye contact with perfect strangers if they want to eat and pay rent and provide for their children who often live hours away. What would I have to turn off inside of me just to make eye contact with these customers? What kind of robot would I become? And suddenly, the blank stares that I find on the faces of most of the girls in Boys Town made perfect sense to me. These precious ones for whom Jesus died stand in their doorways with blank stares as cars pass by ever so slowly.

It was strange to think that maybe those men who passed by actually thought I was a prostitute. I guess some people might have wondered what Jesus was really up to when he partied with sinners. Jesus didn't seem to be too concerned about his reputation; I guess I shouldn't be either. It's all fine and good when it's clear to everyone that you're just doing something nice for people who can't do nice things for themselves. But when people wonder if you're "one of them," that's a whole other mental ball game.

You might be wondering why the name of this blog is "Burning Furnace of Charity." Well, it all started a few months ago when I had an evening to myself for flipping the channels. I came across the Catholic station which was televising liturgical prayers. I didn't know it at the time, but I was watching the Litany of the Sacred Burning Heart. The priest was leading a group in this prayer which would go, "Heart of Jesus...(some description of the heart of Jesus)," then everyone would say, "Have mercy on us." It was this one line that got my attention: "Heart of Jesus, Burning Furnace of Charity..." It hit me in that moment that I normally envision charity as sweet old ladies who bake cookies for the neighbors. But when charity and kindness show themselves in the Heart of Jesus, it is like a burning furnace - white-hot flames that are placed directly in our path which force us to choose either to walk towards the flames and be consumed, or turn and walk the other direction. The Bible says that it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. What if we truly allowed Jesus to impart His heart to us, to also become burning furnaces of the kindness and charity of Christ? What if our lives caught flame with the love and kindness of Jesus in such a way that would cause the world to change? What if we allowed ourselves to be inconvenienced by sharing kindness and charity with AIDS orphans in Africa, or the child prostitute in Thailand, or the lonely widow next door? This blog is an attempt to chronicle the life and times of a few people trying to love their friends who live in a red light district in Mexico. Most of the time, the posts come straight from our journal entries. Our prayer is that we, as followers of Jesus, would continue to surrender our lives in such a way that we disappear and simply become burning furnaces of the charity of Christ.