DRIVING TO ELLENSBURG WITH STEVE TO STUDY BONHOEFFER

 

DRIVING TO ELLENSBURG ON I-90

TO STUDY BONHOEFFER WITH STEVE

BEFORE THE 2024 ELECTION

        --for Steve Hill

Driving home he says these things

come up on his phone every day--

I get the last one: What good shall I do?

This thing called grace, the cheap one,

what we talk about. Steve’s catalogue

built from yard sales, a garden with no

white space, surrounded

(immersed?) by the homeless

(and every homeless plant

re-planted) is a catalogue of things

to do daily advocating for those

living in tents, sleeping under tarps.

Shopping carts, dogs, doorway

urinals, letters to city hall, nothing

eliminated from Steve’s agenda.

You don’t go off the handle,

ever? Nope.

What would that do? The book

in his bag, today, Trash.

But I thought you were reading Bonhoeffer?

Steve is costly grace. Steve has

his twenty people, it’s such a small

circle, he says, walking me through

his compost system, from kitchen

waste to aged-top

soil, showing me how his sprinklers

keep things moist. Here pick

some figs, he says. This is Cedar

Monroe’s poor white journey, Trash.,

still deep suffering to attend to,

still much work to be done,

Steve handing Monroe’s book

to me in the car, paraphrasing

his own neighborhood full of color,

and poor whites: 66 million poor

whites in America: If you are housed,

or at least a verbal agreement to live somewhere…

Pastor Monroe. His cross on his desk:

We are not trash. The systems that kill us

are trash, his epilogue his anthem. Steve’s

got his hat on, his suspenders,

in cutoffs, looking at a boarded up

Victorian house as we drive

neighborhoods: Wouldn’t it be fun

to get that house and a bunch of kids

and fix it up! Bonhoeffer knows

deeply, he knows, how the Gospel

gets turned into its opposite through

such easy moves. How does Jesus

read scripture! So interesting.

Where do you begin?

The way Steve opens his phone--

Names what he’s grateful for,

three things, asks, What good shall

I do today, saying

Good things will happen.

One can’t be Christian and nationalist.

Answer your own questions.

Jim Bodeen

20 September-1 October 2024