December 11, 2005

• I am seeing a lot of parallels between a house and an "oikos" (greek for "household" but carries more meaning than the english does: includes those who are close to us, our "real family", and ripples outward through the rest of our social networks to some extent). Both of them provide shelter, shape our identity, give a sense of belonging. Both of them are contexts in which we raise our kids, experience our marriages and close friendships: they are where memories are rooted and life stories are written (or for a physical home, at least begun).
  Feeding happens there.
  Rest happens there.
  Our safest comfort and our strongest challenges to grow ought to happen there.
  And, betrayal hurts most when it strikes there.

  Like it did today. A young man whom I had hoped to draw into my oikos, whom I had invited into my home, took advantage of that vulnerability and stole Kathryn's laptop computer while we were out celebrating Kathryn's birthday.
  
  (poof, it was gone. He even unplugged it and left the power supply.)

  My neighbor Julio noticed this young man (whom he had not met) behind our house acting suspiciously, and confronted him on the sidewalk, calmly but directly.

  Anger. Fear. Threat.

  Julio went to the back of our house and, finding the back door open, realized the young man had taken something and had been hiding it in his sweatshirt. Julio hopped in his car and caught up with our young friend, followed him until he noticed Julio and realized what Julio was doing. More vile invective, then the young man cut through someone's yard and over their back fence and disappeared. Julio later talked to that family; they had never seen our young man before, and did not take his side.

  Julio meanwhile had called the lady who lives behind us and told her what had happened. She looked through our house, found no obvious damage, and made sure both front and back doors were closed and locked (she has keys to our house, as we have to her house).

  When we got home, we had not even made it in the door before she met us and briefed us on what had happened. Checking the house, we knew immediately that Kathryn's white Powerbook had been taken, but apparently nothing else. He had been noticed too soon. I did not want to believe it was my young friend, but as Julio and I drove around looking for the thief and I heard his description, everything matched. I guess I'll be angry later (Kathryn sure is) but right now I am mostly disappointed.

  Sure, that was an expensive possession; worth more than the truck I drive, most likely. And my young friend won't get even a twentieth of its retail price when he fences it; one neighborhood friend we checked with believes he'll probably sell it for little more than the cost of his next fix, whatever his drug of choice is (I had not suspected he used drugs until just this past Wednesday afternoon— a story in its own right). All things considered, my life is not really harmed much: hindered, sure, but I can't say I will suffer deeply from this loss.

  On the other hand, he will. It will catch up with him: the drug use, the petty crime to finance it. His own destruction of his oikos already has caught up with him, and destroyed him.

  There is a billboard in South Central Los Angeles right now that shows a close-up head shot of a man who looks badly beaten: black eye swelling shut, cut and grimy and bruised face, haunted eyes. The text below it says something like "If hepatitis C was attacking your face instead of your liver, you'd do something about it" and includes an 800 number for hepC sufferers to find help.

  It's a good ad. It would motivate me. I want a TV ad that shows a man destroying his own house all day long, with sledgehammer and wrecking ball and bulldozer, then pushing aside some of the rubble to find his bed and have to sleep in it. The caption and voiceover would read "If you were destroying your physical home instead of your oikos, you'd do something about it."

  My young friend has thoroughly destroyed his oikos, and continues to destroy the positive relationships God is trying to bring back into his life. He continues to neglect the attitudes, actions and habits that would build up his life, and instead feeds his appetite for the attitudes, actions and habits which salt the soil of his heart and cut him off from the human beings he needs in his life.

  Not that he needs me in particular. I'm sure I'm a distant tenth-best option, just the most recent person to drift past. But he has alienated himself from his family and (from his own account) any friends who can really help him in life. He has alienated himself from employers and social workers alike. Just now he has (again?) violated the terms of his parole, forfeiting his precious freedom, because he did not use his freedom wisely. He is homeless right now, not because he is a victim of circumstances beyond his control (aren't we all?) but because he made himself oikosless.

  It is hard work to build an oikos. It takes time to lay foundations of trust, to build walls of shared experience and values, install windows of insight and doors of hospitality and generosity. It is difficult to keep the roof of mutual responsibility whole and sound. Furnishing and decorating the inside with memories and all that we receive from others which affirms our worth, affirms who we are; this absorbs much of our attention but isn't the real framework of our self or our oikos. If we build strong and deep relationships with others, marked by trust and vulnerability and authenticity and love, we can get by with spartan decor: we don't really need the frequent strokes we seek from others, if the reality of relationship is there.

  But how do you teach a person to build, and not destroy, their oikos and hence their life?

  . . . . . : : : ::|||:: : : : . . . . .

  Glimpses of our own building effort, taken this week:
  (I wish I could show you photos of our oikos-building efforts, but like a liver, those mostly ought to be left hidden from view, not pulled out to display to the world)

  Nathaniel at the front door (er, where the front door someday will be):
  

  The house is taking shape at last! (view from front of living room through whole ground floor)
  (those black steel frames you see in the background are the garage/apt. in back)
  

  • 10:29 am
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