Home is Whenever I’m With You

Dear Loved Ones,

For some reason I cannot yet place, it’s been a tough transition back to New York. For one thing, I had the best summer imaginable and the thought of returning to the challenging work ahead never looks fun from this vista. In addition, much of my circle of friends from the past two years have relocated to different locations across the nation and the majority of those who have stayed in NYC have moved on to different jobs and thus different circles, beginning new lives. Sure I’ve only been back a couple weeks, but I don’t, in any way, feel like I’ve returned home.

At the same time, when I was in San Diego I didn’t quite get that sense of home either. Yes, I had an incredible time in SD, enjoyed every minute spent with my wonderful family and friends, and was tempted almost daily to quit my NYC job, get an apartment by Petco Park and move back to the most beautiful city in the world, but it still just didn’t feel like home. Not in the present “ah, home sweet home” sense at least. (San Diego will ALWAYS be home in the way that Austria will always be home to Schwarzenegger).

A funny thing happened when I had just gotten in the long and winding security line at the San Diego airport to return to New York: I tossed on my iPod, recently filled with new songs, and one of my new favorites began the shuffle. The chorus of this song, by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, goes:

“Home

Yes I am home

Home is whenever

I’m with you”

This put a giant smile on my face. Why? It was a reminder to me that my home isn’t here on Earth but in Heaven, and I’m doing God’s work, following His call for me to help the less fortunate through teaching, showing students love, some of whom have never had someone to love and care for them. There are going to be challenges, and God never promises an easy journey, but what He does promise is a Home in Him, and Home is whenever I’m with Him. I can’t say I’m happy to have absent the physical sense of home, but I know that the blessing is in the struggle, and I really couldn’t imagine being happier with where I am in my life as exciting things are happening, exciting things are to come, and they’re all blessings from following Him. I am Home.

(You can check out the song and video here. Now, if you do check it out you will notice that it’s actually a romantic song, but as Cartman showed us in South Park, any romantic song can be turned into a Christian song by changing a few key words)

for the wild,

andrew

End of Year Blog

Dear Loved Ones,

While my blogging has become more and more sparse throughout my experience as a Teach For America corps member, I find it necessary to put a proper ending to this 2-year journey in the form of a reflective blog. One thing I’m sure most of you aren’t aware of is that I instituted blogging in my 9^th grade ESL classes this year, where I had my students use sentence starters to reflect on their learning and triumphs from throughout the week every Friday. We capped off the year with an “End of the Year” blog, so I figured: Why not do one of my own?

Now, I know that I have discussed with some of you my plans for the near future, but as most of you are probably unaware, let me update you before I move on: Next year I will be staying with my school for a third year again as the 9^th grade ESL teacher. As I teach next year, I will be applying to three different opportunities, all within education: Teach overseas (preferably in Spain); Fulbright scholarship for teaching abroad, and; Harvard Doctorate in Educational Leadership. So, as I am not halting my teaching experience just yet, I think it proper to not end on a note of conclusiveness, but rather one of reflection.

What I have come up with in my reflections are five major take-aways…things I have come away with and learned throughout my time as a New York City public school teacher living in one of the culture capitals of the world. Here we go!

1) The Education System in our Country is Ugly

I know that many of you would agree, before you’ve even seen any statistics. To those of you who are parents, you’ve most likely seen your student’s education both rise in cost and decline in quality. While I do submit that part of this is due to politics and government, I hope you don’t see the problem as being there and only there. Teach For America likes to talk about “Locus of Control”: this idea that, as a teacher, you really don’t have complete control over all aspects of your students’ lives: where they go home, who they go home to, how they eat, etc. We need to instead focus on the things we are able to change. With this, I believe a large part of the problem with our education system is that we as citizens just don’t really give a crap. We spend all of our time arguing political issues like gay marriage, going to war, health care, abortion, etc. and while these are important issues to many, I don’t understand how we have neglected the decline of quality education for our youth without so much as a silent raising of the hand in the back of the room of the national discussion. I’m going to take things a bit farther too: While education in general has gotten worse, how do you think the education for our low-income students has become?

I’m going to try to shorten this up a bit and give some scary statistics:

a. The national graduation rate is about 68% (1/3 of our students don’t graduate high school!)

b. The graduation rate for Whites and Asians are 75% to 77%

c. The graduation rates for students who attend school in high poverty, racially segregated, and urban school districts lag from 15% to 18% percent behind their peers (which is referred to as the “achievement gap”)

d. In New York City, about 30% of Hispanic males graduate high school in four years.

Some offer that the problem of the achievement gap is the parents: The absent father. The 16-year old mother. The abuse. The neglect. But blaming this on the parents is too easy and largely uniformed for us from privileged backgrounds to do. It’s a cycle. Listen to my stories, read my past blogs, and then I think you’ll see what I’m talking about.

2) Change is Possible

This summer I’ll be working at one of the most amazing and incredibly successful experiments in urban education: The Harlem Children’s Zone. (Watch the commercial American Express put together about them). Basically, this revolutionary idea was realized by Geoffrey Canada, who saw a cycle in Harlem that needed to be broken. What he did was set up a network of programs and schools that aimed to solve the problem near the beginning: He would see young pregnant girls walking around the streets of Harlem and bring them in, offering them classes on how to parent while promising them that if their child was raised in the network, attended a HCZ school from pre-kindergarten through high school, that their child would not only graduate and go to college, but graduate college as well. My job this summer will be to see this through as I prepare 17-21 year olds to pass the entrance exams to community colleges, which will allow them to bypass the remedial courses which cost money and provide no credits: a dropout point for many low-income students who can’t afford to do this.

In addition to this network and many incredible charter schools, there is a new film that was just released called The Lottery. The trailer can be found here, and the reason I am so optimistic about this film is the potential it has to finally start the national discussion on the achievement gap. The film might be able to do for education what An Inconvenient Truth did for Global Warming, and let’s hope and pray that is does because we need a sense of urgency; the time for true change needs to be now.

3) A Glass Can Only Spill What it Contains

These are lyrics that come from a mewithoutYou song that is about the need to fill yourself up with everything that you want to give out. If I want to love, I need to first have love to give. If I want to mentor others, I need to have good advice to give, coming from experience and perspective. If I want to show others what it means to live a Godly life, I need to first know the Bible and know what it means to live a Godly life. If you want to set the example of how to have a long lasting marriage, you need to have a long lasting and successful marriage. Etc.

I have seen such a great need for a spiritually absent and selfish city like New York City to experience the love of God on a daily basis, yet I have found it such a struggle to do my part every single day. I’ve wanted to badly to just be a channel of God’s love, but I don’t always have anything in my cup to spill. Whether it was because I fostered malicious thoughts in my heart, neglected to read the Word during the week, or forgot to pray that God would use me as a channel to pour out his love, I often failed in my attempts to love and to care as I was just as empty as the person I was trying to help. I recently heard a quote: “If someone asks you if the glass is half empty or half full, respond by asking them ‘Who said it’s not filled to the brim?’”

If I were to get a tattoo, it surely would be a wine glass filled to the brim spilling over with the text, “A glass can only spill what it contains.”

4) Humans Are Meant to Live in Community

My biggest struggle in living as a Christian in New York City: lack of a Christian community. My roommate is “straight edge.” This mean that he doesn’t drink, smoke, or do any drugs of any kind. He listens to hardcore music and has so many tattoos that he will have to wear long sleeve shirts to work for the rest of his life, or at least until this generation has completely taken over the work force. He has a community, and he hasn’t “broken edge” at all because he has a support system of friends who go to the same concerts, eat the same veggie food, and drink the same Coca-colas at bars with him.

When I was back home in San Diego, or at school at Pepperdine, this is exactly what I had: community; Friends who had the same radical ideas of changing the world as me. People I could see Lupe Fiasco with one night and Radiohead with the next. Movie lovers who would see the latest indie flick with me on any given night. Fellow abstinents (yes I made the adjective into a noun) who understood that dating a girl with the same values was a requirement, not something to be compromised not matter how attractive a girl might be. These are absent here, and let me tell you that this is my biggest single critique on living in New York City. Life is meant to be lived in community, and NYC is a community of secular living that is largely absent of true community and fellowship.

(Also, just watch the film Up in the Air)

5) The Rat Race is an Unfair and Stupid Competition

The above comes from that Bansky quote that has guided this blog and gave it it’s name, but I use this part of the larger quote here to discuss the way in which ambition and selfishness blind those who succumb to them from true happiness. What I have witnessed as a professional has been disappointing and appalling. What I have witnessed this year many of you who have been in the work force have known for years: That politics, jealousy, cattiness, hunger for power, etc. are a pervasive force in this world that prevents us from simply loving others and being productive.

When I was first looking around for a home church two years ago, I had listened to a sermon from a pastor who was addressing a congregation I thought would be my community for a couple years. They were creative, loving, and young. His sermon was a personalized message to this specific community that revealed something I really didn’t feel I wanted to be a part of: He said, “I know that none of you sitting in this church right now moved out to Manhattan to take a pay decrease, and, say, become a teacher.” My reaction: “That’s EXACTLY why I came out here!” And I was proud of that. But upon reflection and prayer, I realized that I didn’t want to become a part of a community where I was the outlier; where people followed their ambition to the point that their end goal was a raise and a promotion and their name in a publication rather than changing a life or being changed by the resilience and pure joy from the marginalized and less fortunate. While I’m not offering that I live a better, less sinful life by any means, or that you must be a teacher or missionary or full-time philanthropist to help others, what I realized is that you must first question why you live for your life, and whom you live your life for. The pastor of my now home church, Dr. Tim Keller, recently put it this way (not verbatim):

“Think about where you root your life: A person who roots their life in their job will be crushed when they lose their job, or don’t get a promotion. A person who roots their life in their status and possessions and money will have a similar reaction when they lose these temporary things. A person who roots themselves in Christ will not be crushed by these things or look at others in jealousy.”

What do you root yourself in?

This was shoved into my face when the guy next to me at Starbucks spilled his coffee on my expensive shoes. Too embarrassed by how much I paid I won’t document the price here, but let’s just say that I was pretty upset initially. I wanted to say something in anger towards him, but then I thought about how stupid it is that I invest my money and “root myself” in things that can get ruined just like that, and cause me to emotionally harm another human being rather than show kindness and love, which is fortunately what my “glass” had just enough of.When I was in the Dominican Republic, I saw a similar dual reaction in one of the volunteers who was playing basketball with one of the orphans when he dropped his expensive Ray-Ban sunglasses. The kid accidentally stepped on them, causing the volunteer to react with a loud curse word. Realizing how stupid his reaction was and that here he is getting upset at an orphan with nothing, not even parents, for stepping on a pair of sunglasses that he could afford from a weeks worth of work he quickly stepped in to apologize and put a smile back on the kids face.

These examples are admittedly on a very small scale in the grand scheme of things, but people often don’t live their lives thinking this way. They root their lives in their jobs, status, wealth, etc. and the only way that I can be of any use to God’s kingdom is to show others that life isn’t meant to be lived like this. It needs to start with me, and it’s another cup that I need to fill. My interactions with colleagues have often left me disappointed and frustrated. They have shown me that the rate race is an unfair and STUPID competition, and I want to streak!

Take these reflections for what you will, I thank you so much for your support over the last two years, five years, twenty-four years even because if it weren’t for you I wouldn’t have had these lessons to learn and be the person that I am today.

for the wild,

andrew

The Blessing is in the Struggle

Dear Loved Ones,

I believe this is my first blog entry during this second school year, and this is a shame. Believe me, I have tried to write, but each time it just didn’t feel like writing, and my blogs really are as much or more for me than they are for you. I apologize to those of you who just want updates…feel free to give me a call or send me an email and we can have that personal communication and I’d be happy to do that. But I want to reserve my blog for something different…something that will allow me to express my challenges, wonderings, or experiences in a way that will help me grow and also you, hopefully in some way.

I sit down to write this entry as this year has presented many challenges that are in some ways making this year more difficult than last. You see, you always hear that your first year of teaching is the toughest, the worst! This is mainly because you have NO CLUE what the heck you’re doing. You don’t know how to lesson plan. You don’t know how to manage students. You don’t know how to be as effective as you’d like to be. You begin questioning yourself: Why did I sign up for this? Can I really make a difference? Can I even make it through this year? Am I doing more good than harm by being in this classroom? These questions are extremely typical for a first year teacher, and yet I don’t believe I ever asked myself one of them last year.

The second year is supposed to be leaps and bounds better than year one. You know what you’re doing and you get to start out fresh. You have an air of confidence and believe that this year is going to be amazing, filled with incredible student growth and you’ll get to take credit for it. This year did, in fact, begin this way. It felt so awesome during September and every other second-year teacher I know all felt the same. It was incredible, to feel like you have a handle on this profession, that you don’t need to pray to just get through the week, but you pray that you have enough time with the students to accomplish all that you know you and they are capable of. This was September.

Today it’s November. Dread creeps in with thoughts about going to work tomorrow because the students have slowly but surely begun to take over the class. More and more battles are losing ones, and the true confidence once felt when an administrator walked into the classroom in September now turns into fear that those same people will come in for a visit. What happened? How did my class turn around so quickly? How is this year so different from last?

Well, last year, almost all of my students were recent immigrants. With this, though many of them lacked education and basic abilities present in 5^th graders, I had incredibly invested and well behaved students. While my friends had stories about students physically pushing them, or not being able to teach one word of their lesson because the students simply decided they had their own agenda (which included playing games and cussing at the teacher when they attempted to stop the behavior), my headaches came from one student who talked out 2 or 3 times during the lesson. I didn’t even feel like I was allowed to complain last year because I really didn’t face challenges even close to what my colleagues were facing at different schools. (To be fair to myself, none of my friends had to walk into a class for an hour and a half and teach the entire time in English to a roomful of kids who didn’t speak a word).

This year, however, I finally get to experience the students that we call “Americanized.” These are the kids with the foul language, pants literally below their butts, knives in their knickers, babies in their bellies, you know the type. I could go in depth into what made this community (the poorest congressional district in the nation) turn into the awful and dangerous place it is. I could explain why 95% of its inhabitants are Black or Hispanic and how our nation neglects to believe that this type of place exists, or that the story of Claireece ‘Precious’ Jones is not a unique one. We would end up tracing it back to segregation and then slavery and that people today just blame it on black fathers not being fathers, neglecting to realize that NO ONE is helping them and that these fathers grew up with out fathers (or positive male influences) and that their fathers’ fathers were either imprisoned for being black or lynched (or just simply not given opportunities to be educated). Let’s forget about this terrible history for a second and look at the present: The term that’s used to describe these students is “Americanized.” Funny how many people would think this term should mean free, or liberated, or full of opportunities, yet it comes to mean something that represents the complete opposite ideal of the “American Dream” even while those who it describes are pursuing just that. And while my students say that they want to find a way out, to go to college and not become drug dealers like their cousins, I can’t shake the idea that I’m failing to help them do so. I allow them to behave badly when they don’t know any better. I allow them to distract other students and hold back my consequences for bad behavior because I feel sorry for them, and know that for many of them a phone call home would mean a black eye or bruises in areas that could easily be concealed from a teacher. But I’m brought back to a conversation between Coach Boone and Coach Yoast in Remember the Titans: The white coach was caught ‘babying’ the black players when he felt bad for them. He wanted to show that he wasn’t racist. When he told Coach Boone (Denzel Washington) to lay off one of the black players, Boone calls him out. He says that Coach Yoast doesn’t baby the white players when he (Boone) yells as them, but every time he hurts the feelings of a black player Coach Yoast is right there beside him to help him through it. He tells him that this does nothing to help the players. They don’t need handouts because this will continue to hold them back.

Similarly, one of the main problems in education with the achievement gap, is that wealthy white students are told they have no excuses. Their teachers have high expectations, they believe that they can achieve at high levels and expect no less. Our country has told the poor black and Latino student that they can’t achieve, that we need to have lower expectations for them. This is so completely false, and while I know this and wholeheartedly believe this, I am not following my beliefs when I don’t come down on my students. I am not keeping them at high expectations, I just decide that it’s easier to let them win the battle at times…but it’s only easier for me, and I’m not, then, doing the job I came out here to do. Now I ask myself, in this second year, “Why did I sign up for this? Can I really make a difference? Can I even make it through this year? Am I doing more good than harm by being in this classroom?”

To be clear: I write this not for pity, or for emails of support like “You can do it…you’re doing a great job. You’re doing better than you think.” That’s not what I need. I just need to be honest with myself. I need to write this blog, to have it on paper, to admit this to you and to me and to the Internet. I need to read it again and again until I have changed. I don’t have any Christian or community supports out here to admit this to (which has been an additional struggle) so I decide to write to you. I am challenged. Through Christ, I will prevail. My students will achieve way more this year than last because of what I am going through right now. Step one: Admit you have a problem. Done. As Lupe Fiasco states, “And don’t forget, the blessing is in the struggle.” Thanks for reading.

for the wild,

andrew

Contract for Success

Below is the contract I am having my advanced English speaking class sign. I love them already and I can't wait to see their progress throughout the year. I am also including my contract to them.

A CONTRACT FOR SUCCESS

I, ___________________________________ , want to succeed at the Academy for Language and Technology and to achieve in life. To help me with this, becoming a fully bilingual individual will allow me many opportunities to be the successful professional that I want to be in my life. In wanting to become a fully bilingual individual I need to do well in my English classes at A.L.T. To start, I pledge the following:

• I pledge to be in class, on time, and prepared to do my best work all the time.
• I pledge to try my best to speak only English in Mr. Simmerman’s class, except when instructed differently, or if I absolutely need translation help.
• I pledge to be honest and not make excuses.
• I pledge to respect Mr. Simmerman, other teachers, staff, my school, my peers, and myself all the time.
• I pledge to bring my personality to this class in order to create a fun, engaging, challenging, and successful classroom.
• I pledge to support my peers and give help where help is needed.
• I pledge to learn, laugh, and challenge myself to become a better student and person in Mr. Simmerman’s class.

Signature _________________________________________________

Date ____________

A CONTRACT TO HELP YOU SUCCEED

I, Mr. Simmerman, want you to succeed at the Academy for Language and Technology and to achieve in life. It is my goal to help you become fully bilingual individuals, as it will allow you many opportunities to be the successful professionals that you want to be in your lives. In helping you become fully bilingual individuals, I need to do all that I can to challenge you, set high expectations, and give you the support that you need to find success in all of your English classes. To start, I pledge the following:

• I pledge to be in class, on time, and prepared to do my best work all the time.
• I pledge to challenge you to speak only English in my class, except for a few times when Spanish will be allowed, or if you absolutely need some translation help.
• I pledge to be honest and not make excuses.
• I pledge to respect every student, other teachers, staff, my school, my peers, and myself all the time.
• I pledge to set an example of what respect, loyalty, honesty, integrity, fairness, resilience, and humility look like.
• I pledge to bring my personality to this class in order to create a fun, engaging, challenging, and successful classroom.
• I pledge to support every student and give extra help where help is needed, even if it means staying after school with students.

• I pledge to learn, laugh, and challenge myself to become a better teacher and person for the students in this class.

Signature _________________________________________________

Date ____________

A win

Dear Loved Ones,



I wanted to share with you a “win” I’ve had with my (advanced) students this week. Without going into much detail as I should be in bed right now, I was able to facilitate a conversation with my advanced English speaking class (though the convo was in Spanish) where 3 of the biggest troublemakers of the class turned into leaders as they realized the opportunities ahead of them and how they’ve been blowing it in their efforts. They began to discuss how they need to all pull together as a class to make the most out of the rest of the year and become achievers and set themselves on paths for success. They asked me if I had anything to share and I was able to, first the first time, feel like I could inspire them and really communicate my belief in their abilities (on a week where I’ve mostly felt like a failure). I followed up this conversation with an email (we have a school website and all have email address…visit it at: alteagles.org) and I am sharing this with you below…I received my first (and probably only) reply to the email and wanted to share that as well (short but amazingly sweet).



Dear Bañuelos,



As I reflect on our discussion in class today I feel very inspired by your potential. I know that each and every one of you has special abilities that will help you go very far in life. YOU CAN ALL BECOME SUCCESSFUL!



The reason I told you that only 23% of Hispanic High School students in NYC graduated last year was not because I wanted to scare you or discourage you. I don't want you to think that it is too difficult. I hope that seeing this number of Latino graduates gives you the push and the motivation, that you need to achieve. Si se puede! We are in a special school and you can all graduate and go to college! You are all brilliant students and every time we have a visitor they always tell me what wonderful teenagers you all are.

I feel very luck as a teacher to have you as students and I hope that I can help you go in the right direction, to be a success in life, and to always achieve in everything you do.

I know this email was long (and is a lot of English) but I needed to send this to you.

Have a safe and wonderful weekend! See you all on Monday.



-Mr. Simmerman



“Thank you for your help to learn English.”

-MG



Maybe it's not much of a response to you, but it is to me...and I wanted to share.



for the wild,

andrew

I'm here...

So I’m writing right now, and it feels a bit weird somehow. Maybe it’s because I haven’t written an entry about my students in a while or maybe it’s because I continue to find ways to procrastinate and push away my lesson plans for tomorrow, but whatever it is, I’m writing…and it might be more for me than for you.

I just spoke with a good friend who is doing Teach For America next year and was prompted to write after I put down the phone. Jess is an incredible person who is passionate about serving others and loving God’s children and in many ways inspired me to do what I am doing today. When I found out that she had job offers from TFA, Invisible Children, and International Justice Mission last year, I decided that I needed to get my butt in gear and find ways to streak for a living. I then applied for Teach For America, and here I am today. So when Jess talks to me about her fears, or wonderings rather, about what’s to come in the following two-year commitment, or if teaching should even happen for her it’s a little weird for me to be in this position of experience as it was I who was asking her for advice during the interview process.

When I first heard that Jess was wondering if TFA was right for her, I needed to call her right away and see why. She told me that she had been doing a lot of reading on what the organization believes and wasn’t sure if she really agreed with some of the major philosophies of Teach For America. The biggest one she is having problems with is: ALL children can succeed…it’s up to the teacher to get them to. Teach For America believes in setting high expectations and believing that EACH and EVERY child can achieve greatness; that our students in low-income communities can pass the same exams, graduate with the same high schools standards, and get into the same great colleges as their wealthier counterparts.
After my experience with students like Victor, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who is ILLITERATE in his own Spanish language with parents who are struggling to find work and keep them in the states I begin to wonder how much I believe this. I am reminded of Marino who, try as he might, still has Mount Everest to climb. In fact, new statistics came out recently about the graduation rate of immigrant students (aka MY students): 23% of eligible immigrant students graduated in 2008. 23 %! I am supposed to believe that it is mine and the other teachers’, principals’, and educators’ fault that this rate is not the above the 60% graduation rate of the white, higher-income students?

Here is what I know: I love my students. I hope for my students. I work my ass off for my students. I try as HARD as I can to give them the gift of the English language, which without they will never receive the opportunities to succeed in this faltering country of ours. All I can do is love. All I can do is try. I need to forgive myself and my students when we fail. I need to pick myself back up daily and KNOW that God placed me here for a reason…He put me here to give these kids the love that many of them do not receive at home. I am here to represent white, Christian, straight, able-bodied, wealthy males…to expose these kids to someone of the color that often oppresses them and let them know that I am on their side…that I truly believe that they deserve a chance to succeed in this life. But “We all need someone to take out the trash” (I’ve heard this before)…I am here to fervently argue that it shouldn’t be because lack of opportunity…I am here to teach them how to love and how to care. I am here to teach them respect, and that they will receive respect when they give respect. I am here to love them.

Maybe this doesn’t make me a good teacher…maybe these things just make me a good mentor and role model. But as I know that God has me here for these reasons, he is allowing me to teach them along the way. Because my students know this is why I am here, they try for me…they learn for me…and maybe they will achieve for me. Regardless of how we get to the places where we are, if we are where God wants us to be then He will work through us and we don’t have to worry if we are doing a good job or not because God’s work is always and will always be GOOD.

for the wild,

andrew

Gratuity and Giving to ALL Who Ask

Gratuity and Giving to All Who Ask

I was reading an interview with my favorite author Shane Claiborne the other day and he brought up a verse that oddly enough I had never heard, or taken to heart, before. Luke 6:30 says, “Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not insist on getting it back.” You know, I actually remember this verse now…but it said something different to me, or was taught differently to me, than the way it speaks to me today. I remember this verse as saying “Don’t expect your money back when you loan it to friends,” not what it actually says in “Give to EVERYONE who ASKS.”

Shane says that he takes this verse to heart…that he literally gives to ALL who ask. What an idea. I always seem to justify why I do not give to many people on the Subway. “If I gave to everyone then I would be broke….so I just don’t give…they’re stories are complete lies anyways…I’ll would buy them food, but I’m on a Subway.” I’m reminded of Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm where he jokes/complains about how he has to tip everyone he comes in contact with…the taxi driver, the doorman, the guy that brings his bags to the hotel room, and so on and so on. The crazy thing is, we all tip these people. We tip our haircutters. We tip our baristas, our waiters. I’ve benefited much from tipping in the past. What strikes me is odd is that this is the social norm and yet we don’t always give to those who ask…who probably need it more. Wait, they’ll probably spend it on alcohol or cigarettes…or gamble it…they’re story is complete BS anyways, right? “Give to EVERYONE who ASKS of you.”

My roommate Nick is a great guy with a huge heart. As most of you heard about the “Miracle on the Hudson” last week where a heroic pilot safely landed all 155 people on board the US Airways flight in the Hudson River, my friend Nick hadn’t watched the news that day. The first time he heard about the story was when a woman and her kid approached him at a coffee shop and said they were on the plane. She worriedly told him that they had no place to stay and no food to eat and they were supposed to move to her cousin’s place out in North Carolina, but when the plane went down they were back on the streets. She told him that she needed groceries and had a list of things for him to buy if he had it in his heart to help out…and of course he had it in his heart. My first reaction to this story was “Baloney. If she was really on that plane she would be having a debriefing with authorities and then have a bomb hotel suite waiting for her.” Instantly realizing how callous and un-Christian my sentiment was I added (more for my sake than for his) “You know what though, she needed it. However much she was lying, she truly needed your help.” It was at this moment that my attitude changed.

This is my new attitude: I don’t care if you are lying. I don’t care if you say the same exact made-up thing every single day to convince the tourists to help you out…I need to help you out. “Give to EVERYONE who asks of you.” My point about the tipping earlier is this: If we give 20 percent to people who are doing their job (and only 15 to those who aren’t doing it so well) then why can’t we also give to people who NEED it and ASK for it? The second part of that verse was to “Not insist on getting it back.” I think we should read this as “(Do) not insist on getting any sort of payment in return.” Let’s all just give to those who ask, no matter what…wouldn’t that be radical? I’ll take the lead.

for the wild,

andrew