sufficient

on class and diversity

I have a new friend. She's 11 and lives a block from me with her grandmother. She also goes to my church and was baptized and joined the church about 6 months ago. The church as a body has adopted her. Every week, one of my friends picks her up for church or anything else that's going on socially. Saturday night, I arrived at game night to find her there, along with about ten of my other friends. This is normal: my eleven year old friend and a bunch of 20-30 year olds.

I've wanted to meet her grandmother for awhile- since I live a block from them, it would make sense that I pick her up sometimes. So Saturday night close to midnight when Shannon took her home, I followed them and met grandma. We stayed for about an hour to chat and make plans for me to pick my new friend up on Sunday to play ultimate frisbee. I did, but it was pouring rain, so five of us threw around for a little while and then headed home to dry out and warm up. My friend was hungry and clearly wanted to see my house, so I took her home, gave her some dry clothes, and made us lunch. We talked and played some Wii before I took her back home. (I should note that she managed to knock me down in boxing, but I prevailed.) 

She explored my house and told me a couple of times how much she liked it. She knows that I'm about to move out of my house in with a mutual friend, Laura, and asked why I was moving and Laura's not just move into my 2 bedroom house with me. Part of the reason I'm moving is because of my landlord and crappy lease, but part of the reason is also because my house is very small and both Laura and I want more space, especially so that we can have more room to have people over and have parties. Four people is the most I've had over and it was tight. My new friend also wanted to know why I didn't have parties there. She lives with her grandmother, in a house about the size of mine, maybe a little bigger, and her house feels like a good size for a party to her. Mine feels tiny to me. I just answered her question with something about there not being much space.

These questions got me thinking though because it was so far beyond her thinking that I could live in that 2 bedroom house by myself and not have enough space for a party. In talking with her grandmother the night before, she had also asked why I was moving. A large part of why I am moving is the things that my landlord is not responsible for according to my lease. But it's also because of the house itself: the linoleum in the kitchen tears frequently if you move the table or a chair, the hardwood floors are in pretty bad shape, and the walls are not painted correctly, so every little thing that touches them mars them. But I know in the grand scheme of things, those are small things and I only think about them because I can afford to, financially. 

The sermon at church last night was on Ephesians 6, "slaves obey your masters," and at the end, Craig talked about about reconciling diversity at the end: both racial and socio-economic diversity and focused on how hard it really is to socialize with people from different classes because you are coming from such different places. He shared an illustration about food: poor people ask, "Did you get enough," middle class people ask, "Did you like it," and wealthy people ask, "Was it presented well?"

Because of different life experiences, I've spent a fair amount of timing thinking about reconciling racial diversity. But that, coupled with my afternoon, made me really think, for the first time, about how squarely middle class I am and how that affects my thoughts, actions, etc a lot more than I think it does and a lot more than my being in Christ does.

posted by CP @ 5:52 PM 2 thoughts