How art challenges life

My husband started taking pictures of and picking up empty Newport cartons. Not just once. As in All.The. Time. And not just when he was alone. He would ask me to pull the car over and then spend the next 10 minutes walking back and picking up the few he saw on our drive home from work. They were in our car, in the kitchen, the garage. We started carrying plastic bags to carry them when we would take bike rides. He called it “The Newport Trail” and Gatherhaus covered the story. (Go over and read it real quick. It’s good. Then come back.)

He was convinced that highlighting this one specific item of trash would be a way to bring awareness to our neighborhood’s chronic littering problem. And it is a huge problem. On my street alone, I can fill a tall kitchen trash bag with the garbage I find just on one side. One half of one block fills one trash bag. I would call that a serious problem. More than the littering though are all the large pieces of furniture, toilets, cars, and mattresses that get dumped here. On our neighborhood Facebook page, people take photos of soiled mattresses and claim, “St. Mattress visited us again today!”

It’s out of control.

So out of control that by living here, it becomes apart of the landscape. Something you don’t notice or is so chronic that you fall into the mindset that you can’t really do anything about it anyway. It’s just the way it is. This is exactly the mentality that Paul set out to change.

Recently I went for a run and without even realizing it, halfway through I started scanning the ground. I passed up bags of garbage and a few of the highly noticeable teal Newport's and the awareness kicked in and guilt took over. With Paul highlighting the discarded Newport cartons, I unintentionally started looking for them. The catch is though, by looking for and noticing the Newport's, you became keenly aware of the other trash around. Once I started noticing the amount of trash on the ground, I was faced with a choice. Continue to actively ignore it, or do my part in helping eradicate this social and environmental problem.

Two things weighed heavy on my heart.

1. Can picking up trash really affect and change a culture?

2. Can one person really make a difference against such a vast and large issue?

Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “The Tipping Point” addresses the first issue in a very poignant way. It is the idea of “The broken window” theory where when a neighborhood has a home with broken windows, it lowers the expectation and quality of life for its residence. When windows are broken, people have less respect for the space, so who cares if you break another one?

“Minor, seemingly insignificant quality-of-life crimes, were Tipping points for violent crimes. Address the smaller issue, and you can change of the culture of the larger issue.” pg. 114

In chapter four he address the power of context wherein you start picking up trash and planting community gardens, (cleaning up the broken windows) the atmosphere of the culture shifts for the positive. According to Glawell and New York mayor Giuliani this theory proved to be true. So then the issue becomes, can we start a movement of cleaning up and shifting a violent culture of North Mpls by cleaning up the trash?

This begs the question, can one person create this kind of awareness and change with an art project? To that I am inspired by Tyree Guyton of “The Heidelberg Project”. One man who started an art movement on a street in Detroit by using the trash he found to create art. It started small, but over three decades later, it has become a key player in the culture of art and awareness.

Each movement must start somewhere.

Each movement must start with someone.

If we deeply and inherently believe that one person can make a difference, then it takes the courage of one to start speaking up. It is up to the rest of us to make up our minds and stand with them. When we stand together, then no one is alone. When we stand together, act together, speak up together, then change is possible.

I want a neighborhood that has respect for ourselves, each other and our streets. I want a neighborhood free of needles and condoms and broken glass.  I want a neighborhood safe from violent crimes. I want a neighborhood that believes we are better than what we currently are. I don’t want to be the city dumping ground anymore. I want our children to grow up with compassion for the environment. I want to believe that we can make a difference. I want to believe that art can inspire life and be the catalyst for change. If I want it, then I will stand with Paul and write about it. I will pick up trash. I will teach my children and the other kids on my block to pick up trash. I will carry garbage bags with me to continue picking up garbage wherever I go. I will raise my voice in this fight. I will do my part to raise awareness.

I want in on the movement.

I am inspired by my husband’s effort to call attention to an issue that is often overlooked. While the call to action to change the culture of garbage in North Minneapolis seems almost impossible, a change must start somewhere. It must start with someone, so why not start with Newport's.

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What going to the pool looks like now...

I used to be the mom that would meet other moms at a splash pad.

I used to be the mom that would pack one bag for snacks and juice boxes, one with sunscreen, towels, extra clothes, extra bathing suits (for the kid who always has an accident), a bag with toys, water bottles, wet wipes, water guns, sunglasses, sand toys, garbage bags, and of course sweaters in case it got cold. Don't forget my purse and my other small bag that housed the small first aid kit I needed, and emergency kit of Chapstick, essential oils, lotion, tweezers and other small random things that I never thought I could leave home without. You know library books and sewing supplies that somehow just in case I am gifted with 23 seconds of no one needing me, I can get some "Me time". (Cause that totally happens when you are out at a splash pad with three kids.) Then I would stuff the stroller, piling it high so our need to have everything covered was taken care of. I didn't just plan. I over planned. (I think I just stressed myself out reading this.)

But now?

Now we have traded our half day trip to a special splash pad for our public wading pool at the end of our block. 

We traded our 20 minute car ride for a 3 minute walk.

We traded our one hour of prep time to actually just heading out in our clothes, suits long forgotten and optional at best. (I love how all the kids in the hood just come and swim in whatever they are wearing, no one has towels and empty water bottles are the toy of choice.)

We learned to swim with our mouths closed tight because who know's whats in that inner city pool water.

(Actually I have seen some things in that water I wish I could un-see.)

We don't bring towels with us, choosing instead to drip dry on the cement or on the walk home. Instead of packing sunscreen and googles, we bring trash bags to pick up all the garbage that litters our streets. 

We traded conversations about cartoon characters for big beautiful questions like, "What causes someone to start doing drugs? Do they use these needles or are there other ways to take drugs?" or "Why do people throw their trash on the ground? Don't they want to keep our neighborhood clean?" or "Why are there so many police sirens and shootings here?" 

Right? Big. Hard. Questions about culture, about crime, about hurt and what we do with it and why it's here all the time. Questions that don't have easy answers. Questions that I can either answer with prejudice or judgement, or we can talk it through giving small insights and things to ponder. Mostly I answer with more questions urging my kids to think for themselves. Then at night we pray for what we do not know and ask God in all of his mercy and goodness to reveal himself to those who are hurting and grant us trust to live and love.

We traded planned play dates to walking down the street and kids running out of their houses to join us at the pool. As soon as we say park, it somehow sends a virtual message to other mothers I have never met that send their kids out doors and we all go to the park with the pool together. 

I traded a suburban mindset for the inner city lifestyle.

I traded a host of expectations for the simple act of just living. Not planning, just experiencing.

I love watching the kids at the pool now. I love not being burden down with so much stuff.

I traded my preconceived ideas of necessity for a healthy dose of reality.

I traded mom's regulating everything their kids did with being helicopter parents to being the only parent at the pool and having my kids learn every bad word in the American language.

I traded the simple struggle of stuff with deeper struggles of fairness, culture, neglect, and a different set of rules. Rules that seem to apply to the hood and not in other areas of the city. Rules that shift and change and demand you pay attention so you know how to play the game. Struggles that leave kids that aren't yours in your care. Struggles that have kids stealing from you and playing with your kids and eating your food. Struggles to find a way to respect each other when language stands as a barrier between you. 

I traded a perceived idea of safety with always feeling exposed and vulnerable. 

I traded my false idea that I was in control with the harsh consciousness that my kids are exposed to all sorts of things I don't want for them on a daily basis. Yet, that demands my attention, and our conversations and processing about life means and what respect means and how prayer and faith fit into it all.

I traded what I once knew which was easy with what we understand now which is by far much more complex and tangled and messy. It's harder, but I like it a whole lot. 

So now we swim. I bring my key and my phone and we walk out the door ready to embrace whatever adventure meets us on the way. It's our own inner city neighborhood swim club.

The thing you must realize is that I understand full well the privilege we have as college educated whites. We weren't living in great means and decided to move here. It's all we could afford, and being a one income family keeps us living here. However, we do have privileges and opportunities that many in my community don't have. I understand that we often choose to live simply, but for others, limited means is not a choice. My hood is a really mixed bag of folks. Race, culture, expectations, histories and stories. We are so incredibly diverse and that is the piece I love. Maybe some don't have a towel to bring. Others like our neighbors don't have a mother to bring them to the pool because they were left on the door step over a year ago. But others do have means and still they come to the pool with nothing but the clothes on their back just like us. So I don't sit here and make assumptions and judgements on others and what their story is. I am simply put, just thankful for the constant daily reminder that there is another way than the way I understood things before.

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Community Garden Adventures: A bittersweet life.

I think what I love and what is hard about living in North Minneapolis is that all the time, in all circumstances, no matter what, simultaneously things are awesome and difficult. Beautiful and painful. Bittersweet. Roses and thorns. Inspiring and hopeless. It's a weird thing to recognize and an even weirder thing to live in all the time. 

And as I write this I recognize that this is the nature of humanity. I believe that to be truer than most things I believe in. However, I think we are really good at hiding it. The painful and ugly parts at least. So while we inherently know that nothing is perfect or all good, or just simply beautiful, in many American subcultures it appears to be true. That things are better in the suburbs. That nothing bad happens in rural America. That if you have a big house and someone else comes to cut your lawn and the hot pool boy is just your style, then your life is great. No skeletons in the closet if you will.

And that is total rubbish. 

But living here in NoMi there is no pretending. I mean At. All. People live as unique individuals, fully and wholly themselves. You are who you are if someone has a problem with that, then that's on them. We are a personal and public proclamation that there is good and hard in not only each person, but that it manifests itself in our cultures and communities. Just the other day a gal boldly walked down the street in just her bra and tight pants. People here live their lives out in the open. Arguments in the front lawn or back alley, derogatory remarks being thrown out windows like candy in a parade. We don't hide. We embrace it almost to a fault. I actually enjoy the freedom that this openness brings. But there are many days I wish I could go back to being a bit more ignorant or naive to all the hard things like I was before. Living the lie that if you don't see it happening then it must not be real right? Well, we see a lot here, so our carefully crafted world of make believe no longer exists. Every day we are reminded that humanity and sin can be dark and scary and sometimes it pretends to be your friend, till it back stabs you or shoots you with 9mm.

And yet, there is still something more in this for me. More than the understanding that there is evil in our world. It's never just a reminder that we as people have a long way to go in using our powers for good and not evil. My understanding that because I believe God created each and everyone of us, than each us has been touched by him. That we each live with his imprint on our soul. It is this belief that we have both beauty and madness in each of us, and this has a way of slipping under my skin and actually changing the chemical make up of my DNA and how I live and approach the world from this point forward. 

This past Sunday we hosted a gathering at the NoMi Homie Community garden. It was a time for neighbors to come together and help weed the plots and install the Free Little Library. Folks came and it was so good! Kids were running in the sprinkler, people met new neighbors and got to know one another, and we weeded a bunch. (Yet, with a garden our size, it still didn't seem to make much of an effect!) If the very nature of community gardens is to bring people together to nurture real food and real relationships all the while reconnecting to the earth, than Sunday we hit it out of the park. It was all of those things and I know it warmed each of us there from the inside out, bursting the jaded parts of living here with bright lights of hope. It was restoration of faith in humanity at its most simplest of forms. It was catching glimpses of God in each of us in the way he longs to be seen. When the work was done, we grilled out, harvested lettuce from the garden poured the chilled wine as the adults rested and the kids ran free. 

That was when we noticed a small 2yr old boy running in the sprinkler that didn't belong to anyone. We kind of gave each other the look of, "He has to have parents around here somewhere right? Or at least a brother or sister or cousin who is watching him?" We pulled him out of the garden, (as he was just trampling over everything) and asked him where his mom was. Nothing but a big smile and a giggle.

So we tried again. 

Nothing. We each looked around and came up...empty. No one was around. No one was sitting on their stoop paying attention. None of the kids remembered where he came from. It was as if he just teleported himself there to the middle of the garden to play in the sprinkler. 

We went two doors down and asked the dude sitting on his porch if he had ever seen this kid.

Nope. But maybe we should try the house behind him. There were always kids there.

So my neighbor Joab and I walked through the alley and started knocking on back doors. Now, being someone who lives here and knows how things work, I did this once and then realized we would get no where. Most people don't even open their front door, let alone the back door. That move is marked with shady and laced with danger. So Joab put our little garden boy up on his shoulders and we started walking the street, asking anyone we saw if they knew this little boy. What his name might be. Where he lived. Do they know his mother. Five houses and a few other poor folks who got caught up in our mystery game as they were getting out of their car and no one had any answers.  

I can't imagine what we looked like. Here two strangers walk up to you and ask if you have ever seen this little boy before. They confess they are trying to find his home because he is lost. It was interesting watching the range of emotion of the folks we asked. Clearly, we have a lost child on our hands. Most aren't that surprised. Which is sad in and of itself. A few were in different, most likely understanding that his home would eventually be found, it wasn't that big of a deal. And then you had the mothers who were genuinely concerned. But I just kept thinking, 

"We have to find this child's family. If we don't then we must call the police and this little boy's life from this point forward will never be the same. The mother who lost him, or neglected him, will be irrevocably punished for her mistake. He would be taken from her. He could end up in a foster home that's abusive. He would be separated from his family if not forever than for a long time in a strangers home with strange people."

In this moment we were holding the future of this child in our hands and the weight of that was incredibly overwhelming. It felt wrong and broken and sad. For him. For his mother or family who didn't know he was missing. It all just felt heavy, in the way you have that foreboding feeling that something bad is going to happen. 

There we stood looking at each other, neighbors and friends, holding this very sweet little boy with no home and no name. (the kids had kindly nicknamed him garden boy) We were running out of options, but we weren't ready to involve the cops. Not just yet. Joab had a gut feeling about a house across the street and down the block. So we went for it. As we approached the house, we called out to the people on the porch. When the guy game out he looked at us a little strange, and it actually took him till we asked, "Do you know this little boy? We don't know where he lives." that he actually gave the child a second glance and was like, "Oh yeah, he's with us. Thanks." All casual and cool and nonchalant. You know, as if missing a 2yr old for almost an hour is no big deal.

So we handed him back. Just gave him over to a family who didn't notice he was missing. Who wasn't looking for him. Who apparently didn't notice his lack of activity in the house or voice or his getting into everything because you know, he's 2!

It was indifference. 

And so with the little boy handed back to his family, we headed our way towards the community garden to share in the communal meal that was prepared. To sit and be with one another. It was supposed to be a beautiful moment of rest and peace and laughter after a few hours of hard work to bring beauty to the northside.

And now it was tainted.

It was bittersweet. 

Beautiful and hard.  

It was tainted with sadness and heartache and the heavy that comes from the awareness of the broken places that always exist that we wish didn't.

From our little corner where we ate, we watched our little garden boy run away from home a few more times. Each time now however, there was a mom chasing him. Or getting to him before he made it completely back to the garden.  And as I sat there, watching all of this, experiencing it in the moment, I thought lots of things:

- That poor mama who's mistake is being witnessed by strangers and most possible being greatly judged for her lack of focus for her child. My empathy is not a full pass to neglect, however, I have also been the mom who didn't know where her kid was at one time. (each per kid. Maybe once a year.)

- It becomes easy to judge others. To sit there throwing around words that cut her down without ever even talking with her and finding out her story. Because I don't know her, she becomes an easier target for my hate and frustration. In on simple act, she becomes the spokesperson for all that is wrong in our neighborhood. The story we make an example of when trying to tell people of all the crazy crap that happens here. It becomes unfair to her and wrong of me to put the entirety of the burden of a downtrodden culture squarely on her shoulders. 

- Then in that moment it had me pondering all of my mistakes which are many and great and happen frequently. I am no different than this woman. Our shortcomings and weaknesses and temptations might be different, but we still both have them.

- The lack of this understanding started to become abundantly clear. One of the issues I have living here is how quick people are to judge and yell and cast stones. And we do because its real easy. I mean people do some really stupid crap here. Then those choices start to separate us. We use it as a divider to keep us apart and on different sides of the block. The people who do bad and hurtful things, and those who don't. Those who are trying to make this place a little bit better, and those who could care less. Those who take peaceful walks, and those who sole purpose is to disturb the peace and shake people up. The more we separate, the less we understand and less we show mercy. Our culture over here on the north side is one of abandonment. We are all on edge living by the scraps of our teeth. We don't have a surplus of mercy because we haven't been shown mercy. I must think about myself because no one else will. I am on my own and have to fight tooth and nail to just break even. 

- When you live in that mentality, yeah, you judge others. You judge because you don't have time for other people to be stupid where you pay the price. This is the underlining current that tears at the need to be connected, especially with your neighbor. It is destructive instead of restorative. We see how we are different, not how we are the same. When I need to look out for myself, I don't have time to look out for you. 

- I really believe in order to create healthy communities, we need to show mercy. We need to find ways to connect despite our gut reaction to judge and tear down. When we tear people down, we tear cultures and society apart. A healthy community can't be built on the backs of broken people.

We need understanding.

We need mercy and patience. 

We need time.

We need to be connected. 

We desperately need to judge less and love more.

We need Jesus.

That mom made a mistake. Yet, I also saw her trying to be better. There is good in her, a divine imprint. And it is also in me. That brokenness and darkness and weakness in her? That too is also in me. Those things we share because we are human. Empathy is not our "get out of jail free card" to excuse all behavior. It is however the bridge we need to cross the wide divide to meet each other. To see where we are the same instead of standing in judgement of our differences. 

So I helped a little lost and forgotten boy find his way home.  I met neighbors I had never talked to before. I witnessed a family be reunited and I experienced a well of emotion and slowly started to evict some of my old school thinking and understanding. I think I started to understand the way of things a little bit more here, and as we all know, understanding creates space for mercy. God's kind of mercy.

Man we desperately need more mercy around these parts. 

And I am extra thankful that the cops weren't involved in this little gathering, as they historically somehow seem to be when we are involved. 

It was a bittersweet day and we live a bittersweet life.

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