Beautiful Rene

My head was thick and my eyes bleary with the effects of a bad cold. Urgent chores at home had kept me from breakfast. So when I walked into Aurora Commons* I was moderately miserable. Rene took one look and demanded with beguiling authority, “Did you have breakfast? Do you want me to make you some pancakes?”

“Sure, I'll have some pancakes. Thanks.”

“You want some eggs, too?”

“Yes, that would be nice.”

She added my order to her backlog and went back to the griddle. I greeted others. Chatted with Andy, the director for the day. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Rene at work. She filled a plate with pancakes, buttered them, added eggs and handed the plate to another hungry soul. I saw plates of pancakes here and there around the room. Rene greeted everyone that came within her circle. I laughed inwardly as I saw her patting the pancakes with her hand after flipping them on the griddle. I couldn't tell if she was showing affection to the pancakes or was checking their cooking progress.

She dished several other plates. Finally, she tapped me on the shoulder and handed me my plate. I poured Aunt Jemima, then walked across the room and sat with another of her customers, a hard- looking man that I thought I recognized. I tried to start a conversation. He refused to talk. Instead he simply shoved a container of syrup toward me. At least I guessed it was syrup. The container was a glass jar. The liquid was brown with mysterious specks in it. He handled it with a dry dish rag like it was hot. After some minutes of silence, he said, “It's seasoned with nutmeg.” And lapsed back into silence. I added some of the mystery juice to my pancakes and kept eating.

A little later Rene came back to check on me. She touched my shoulder. “Is it good?” I nodded and made happy noises. She, in turn, was obviously pleased with my pleasure in her cooking. She headed back to the griddle. Andy said she had been cooking pancakes for all comers all morning.

I had not met Rene before, but I'm at the Commons only an hour or two per week. She was obviously a regular and knew many of the folk that came in and out. She added sparkle and warmth to the place. For the time I was there last Tuesday, she was the matron, the mother of us all. The world of Aurora Commons was better because she was in it.

I thought of the stark contrast between Rene's identity inside Aurora Commons and outside on the sidewalks along the Avenue. There she is a street walker. A figure in Seattle's criminal underbelly, a visible testament to human brokenness. Here she is beautiful, admirable, noble.

So which is she? Matron or street walker? Care giver or parasite? Scrappy survivor or temptress? I don't know enough about the world of Aurora sidewalks to offer meaningful commentary on that . world. I don't understand prostitution, drug addiction, unemployment, human trafficking. But I do know that inside, within the walls of Aurora Commons, Rene is beautiful and nurturing. She is admirable and admired.

Maybe this is a model for church. Some of us have details in our lives that are sketchy at best, maybe even base and despicable. Our current lives are not our ideal lives. Still we come to the House of Prayer. For an hour or two inside these walls we bask in a different identity. In worship we know ourselves as beloved daughters and son. In community with one another we experience admiration and appreciation from our sisters and brothers. We kindle again our hope that God's promise of transformation and redemption reaches even to us. In the physical space, the rituals, and the humanity of church we taste, we know by direct experience, the Gospel.

*Aurora Commons is a drop-in center sponsored by the Awake Church. It offers sanctuary to the street walkers, homeless, addicts, mentally ill and everyone else in the vicinity of Aurora Avenue and 90^th Steet.