Well, El Nino has finally come to Southern California.  After months of projections and predictions, the showers started yesterday and promise not to let up for a week. As I sit here and look out my window at my backyard soaking up this downpour, all I see are unfinished projects: a deck not stained, a staircase that needs to be built, a half built chicken coop, and a struggling vegetable garden. It's days like these that I can lay in bed with a cup of tea and say to myself, "Well none of that is getting fixed today."

It's easy for me, a former Pacific Northwesterner, to sit back and enjoy the rain.  It soothes my soul as only few things can. I realize many right now do not feel soothed. My friends who are closely connected to orphanages in Haiti have had sleepless nights and a week of torture waiting by the phone or computer. Not to mention, the people of Haiti and the reality they are living in the images and videos I see on my computer.  I can turn off my computer -- they can't turn off their lives.

On a day when everyone is quoting Martin Luther King, Jr. on their Facebook status and donations are pouring in from around the world to Haiti, I am struck by one simple fact: People are not projects. I fear that well-intentioned people will turn Haiti into a hobby and not help the people of Haiti help themselves. Obviously right now, everyone needs to come together, but Haiti is a nation of people, with organizations who have been there for years helping them.  It's not a matter of creating new ones or jumping on a plane right now to take away food and beds from those who need them; it's a matter of building relationships with the people who cared about Haiti before this even began.  They are the ones who know what help is needed.  

During Christmas, I was struck by the number of Project Vietnams, Operation Christmas Childs, Project feed the hungry or clothe the homeless. No names, not even mention of long term relationships, just emotionally charged literature and videos.  Sure these might be alright short term solutions or make someone feel good filling up a shoe box, but how does this affect the good for the long term?

Martin Luther King, Jr. knew racial reconciliation was not a project. It was a way of life -- one that requires no start or end dates, rather a commitment to stay at the table, no matter the cost or length of time. By calling everything a project, an operation, or even a mission, implies that these matters are concrete and fixed. "Mission accomplished." "Operation contained." "Project completed." If I learned anything this week it is that concrete is not fixed. It's riddled with instability and the power to crush and forsake. 

The only concrete thing Jesus gave us was himself -- a man who was/is fully God and fully human.  He didn't start charities.  He worked within a system by gathering people to care for the things God cared about.  He founded no country.  He waged no war.  He was not about projects, he was about people. He gave of himself body and soul.

In some ways it is very easy to give of ourselves from thousands of miles away.  There is no relationship or attachment for most of us. The challenge is giving of ourselves in our own neighborhoods, or asking for help from our communities.  Who have we deemed as a failed project?  The man living next door?  The girl who only comes to church once a month? The family who looks different from our own down the block? Our own self? 

It's going to be a much greater challenge for Haiti in the future and the uphill climb for racial reconciliation in this nation continues to go on as well.  How will we stay at the table with these issues and the other ones facing our neighborhoods?  How will we truly commit to restoration and reconciliation of the body and spirit? I don't have answers right now, but I do have faces in my head of people I want to sit with.

I can't dig anyone up from my bedroom, but I can look out over my yard and instead of projects, I can now see a future home for chickens whose eggs will help feed our community. I see a deck that has been a gathering place, stained or not. I see a vegetable garden being nourished by heavy rain without pesticides to help ourselves and our neighbors. This is about people, and I hope it always will be.