That first Tuesday noon after the eviction, I got into my car and did not know where to go to have my bagged lunch. The week before, I would saunter down the church hall, knock on Elder Pointer’s office or Pastor Danny’s office and cajole one of them to lunch with me. I would microwave my pasta, talk Barth and how tragic it is that the boy bands are making a comeback. Now, I didn’t have that luxury, those daily habits that become luxury when you lose them. I ended up eating at McDonald, buying a small coffee as WiFi fee and feeling pitifully homeless.
I did not know till that moment how much of my self-worth was tied to a place. Of all the things which we prop up our ego, office space wasn’t even on my list. I should not have been surprised by it. We use the slightest apparent advantage to garnish the ego, even something as accidental as skin color! So space as an extension of self shouldn’t have surprised me.
This is why the bigger you are in an organization, the bigger your office space. The square footage doesn’t reason function but shouts status. You are as big as the unnecessary space you can occupy. Then we decorate the walls of that status-space with our accomplishments — seen anyone frame a diploma from a community college?
Us pastors fill our shelves with all the books we amassed through our seminary, preening our currency of authority, knowledge. Never be so rude as to pick out a specific book and ask the pastor if they read it. If they blink twice and say “yes” then never follow up with “did you finish it?” Leave him with his dignity.
My ordination plaque is snuggled between ups boxes in my loft storage. Most of my books were sold to Amazon, because I just didn’t have space to flash them. Few books I brought home though. I confess, I kept my 14 volume Karl Bath’s Church Dogmatic because the hard dark velvety books spanning a whole row of a shelf just looks damn cool — I have a right to a little vanity — and I honestly do confer Barth a lot, finding him lot more useful in church work than in seminary.
Still, boxing up my vanities didn’t hurt as much as not having a place to eat, and people to eat with. Having no place to eat, I felt homeless. A homeless in the street might take issue with this analogy. Or having suffered much, he might empathize with me. Having no place to go makes you profoundly doubt your worth. Worth and place are connected for most of us. I wonder if this is the first pain of a person without home, even before hunger pangs? Perhaps this is why a homeless might use the change he gets for a booze over a burger, because alcohol can numb their pain of being without place.
Matthew 8:20 Jesus replied, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
About a third week into my “office-less” existence, I remembered that my children’s elementary school has an open door policy to their cafeteria. Parents are welcome to sit and eat with their children. They even have a table with a tent card sharpied “Parent’s table.” I had no other place to go so why not?
“I am going to eat lunch with you this week Ian and Elina!”
“Why? You don’t have a place to eat?”
“No! Because I want to spend more time with you?”
Outside of the teachers, I was the only adult at the cafeteria. My cheek flushed red. The “Parent’s Table” tent card read “Loser’s Table” and my hyper sensitive ears picked up the whispers of the teachers, “He must be out of job, the only parent to actually come and eat here since we opened!” But those voices were quickly drowned by my chatty kids telling everyone within an earshot, “This is my dad!”
I am not sure if my kids were happy to sit with me or that they got to sit at the parents table (I know both will not be the case from middle school on so it doesn’t matter and I should enjoy it while they still celebrate my presence). Some of their friends begged if they could join us . My kids finished their lunch with gusto and when they lined up to return to class, they were beaming and their classmates were little green with envy.
“Dad, can you come every day!?” Elina begged me that evening as she slurped her spaghetti. But if I go every day, then I know the teachers will be talking.
“Honey, you are 43 and you have no office! You are eating lunch on plastic chairs made for kids. Are you okay?” My wife inquired of my soul, fingering more noodles for my plate.
Then we both smiled, first at the absurdity of a 43 year old sitting on a children’s chair having lunch regularly at a school cafeteria, than at the absurdity of seeing such opportunity as an absurdity. We all laughed and it was like a switch was flicked and the light of laughter dispelled the fears because there was no substance to the shadows.
“You know,” I answered, “those chairs were not that bad, and cafeteria lunch has drastically improved…no sloppy joes, and that name says it all, and it is kind of nice to eat with your kids and not have to clean up after them, and that they only have twenty minutes and I am not the one shouting at them to hurry up, now that is really nice,” I finished off my spaghetti with a little gulp of water, “I get to actually enjoy lunch with them, like a date with the kids!”