So what do you do when your faith is no longer working when everything that you thought that you believed no longer makes sense?
I experienced this kind of faith crisis about 13 years ago. Several really painful experiences coincided in a really short window of time, and suddenly everything that I had been raised to believe... everything that my husband and I had been training others to propagate around the world was no longer working.
My Crisis
In an attempt to find our footing again, in the midst of that crisis, my husband and I examined all the world religions and I found a lot of attraction to Buddhism. I loved the kindness and the compassion that I saw there. I loved the harmony that I saw in Taoism, and I was attracted to the teaching of oneness that everything is connected in the religion of Hinduism.
Grand Experiment
But I couldn't get away from one thing, that was in the Jesus that I was taught to admire growing up. Not only did he teach these things of goodness and kindness and love for one another, but he showed us how to do it in his daily interactions with people. Those people who were especially poor and sick and the outcasts of society, he demonstrated what this kind of love and living in community with one another is like.
So we decided to conduct a grand experiment based on two questions. The first was: is it even possible to live the way of love that Jesus taught? And then second, if it is possible, and does it make any difference? Not just for individuals, but can it change a community? Maybe could it even change the world?
We chose a place where we thought that the rubber would really meet the road in trying to live this way of love, a part of our city, that is a red-light district. It’s a part of the city where there are a lot of people that are living in extreme poverty, people that have a lot of drug addiction and mental health problems. There are a lot of folks that are living outside homeless. A high percentage of felons live in this neighborhood, where the strip clubs are the main industry of the town.
Joe’s Addiction
We figured that these are the kind of people that Jesus hung out with. So what a perfect place for a grand experiment of this kind, then we opened up a coffee shop. I grew up in Seattle, Washington, so it was not a far stretch for the Muse to inspire me with coffee. I think it might even be in my veins. We opened up a coffee shop right next door to Valley of the Dolls. We call it Joe's addiction.
My dream for this little coffee shop was that it would be like that comedy Cheers. You might remember that bar it was a place where everybody knows your name. That was my dream, that a little community would begin to develop in this coffee shop, a community of people who are doing life together and a community of people who are learning To follow the way of Love together.
So over these last 14 years, people from this neighborhood have been deciding that they want to follow the way of Love, gang members, and sex workers, people who are living outside, people who are addicted to drugs, people who are just trying to figure out how to pay the bills and to feed their children.
Together with me, we are learning:
Some of the most difficult things there are in following this way of more than just some poor people being helped. What has happened is that we have found a place of belonging together, a place of acceptance, a place of love, and a place where I have been accepted by people who are very different from me and from my background. We are learning together how to walk this way of Love.
It is my hope that, as you read this book, as you read the stories of the people that have become my friends, people who are still today, many of them struggling in the abuse that they have experienced in their lives, struggling with living outside homeless, struggling In their addictions and their mental health problems... as you read these stories and as you read my story of the evolution of my face and my walking away from religious judgmentalism to following a way of Love, my hope is that you will be attracted to Love and that you will find within yourself a longing to participate in the beloved chaos.
