Celebrating: the home turning 100, Jill turning 70, retirement from Mission Door (since 1978), and completing of a bathroom being built!
The parts highlighted in red were added after the party.
I was so worried that very few people would come to our party. You have all so blessed me and Anthony today with your presence. How many of you planned and thrown a party for 100 folks? Doing this at 70 is really something. I love the many human interest stories that LA Times columnist Steve Lopez writes about—but he has moved from writing about homelessness to aging. As I age my body tells me in 100 ways that I am indeed 70. This sabbatical I have spent at least a third of my time in doctors’ offices or doing physical and other therapies. And at least 1/3 of my time has been supporting our work crew to build bathroom. My second home has become Home Depot—I seek to support the Home Depot staff as well with compliments and sharing God’s love and giving time to be fully present with folks.
Anthony has been able to focus on his calling to seek to stop the genocide in Gaza—I so believe in him, that I have been glad to support him in this and am thrilled to see the many successes with statements passed with Quakers, including $10,000 for humanitarian aid and more. I have very intentionally not done my housing justice work doing this sabbatical other than read some excellent books and the newspaper and radio programs like Democracy Now and Thom Hartman. My heart sings when I read about successful affordable housing communities getting passed and my heart breaks daily when listen I read about Gaza and recently the very insane pronouncement by governor Newsom to undo encampments, their only home and protection from the elements. This is an extremely cruel and bad policy. We know that ends homelessness and its homes that they can afford combined with support services. In Pasadena we have lowered our chronic homeless count by 50% in the past 10 years with 90% retention rate using this model. It works!
There is nothing like having a party to make us set goals to have our home ready. I have been working on Green initiatives for this home since I bought it in 1994. We have been able to lower our carbon footprint by 80% water use by 50% even though we have 22 fruit trees—due to our 4 grey water systems. We have been working on making sure that our home would be affordable to the next owner—so we are in the process of putting our home in the SGV CLT—San Gabriel Valley Community Land Trust—whereby our home would be sold, but not the land—the land would be placed into the community land trust, thus making it permanently affordable for future purchasers. Some you may want to also consider doing this with your home. This is very much in line with the Early Church in Acts chapters 2-4 where they shared all in common and ended poverty among them.
This summer we wanted to have chickens, so we built a chicken coop and have been enjoying raising these fun creatures. In preparation for this party I wanted to be sure you are safe. So, I got the cracks in this driveway filled with mortar. My rough and sore fingers were worth it.
But thinking about cracks, it reminds of what it has taken to get both Marks’ bathroom finished and mine as well—mine had sinking floorboards that needed to be strengthened. After finishing the floor and new tile, it was just two nights ago—on Thursday evening, when Juan and his crew got ready to put in the toilet that we had ordered and the style was so new and modern with very sketchy instructions that we decided to return it and get a simple, standard style at you know were??—Home Depot!! As it was being lifted from the box-it cracked! So off we went to fetch another. Finally, at 11:30pm this past Thursday, just two days ago, the bathroom was done!! What kind of work crew is willing to stay that late?? Thank you Juan!
So, as I have been fixing the cracks in the driveway and have also been reflecting on my own cracks and blind spots these last few days. I have been asking God to help me know myself better with the time that Anthony and I have left of our sabbatical before Sept 1st. At our church we have been reading the Bible in a year and right now we are in Jeremiah—who used a clay pot that he cracked as a way to communicate to the future of Judah. I also read 2 Cor. 4:7:
“We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.”
So, when I think about celebrating today it’s so much about God and his incredible love and faithfulness. Growing up I felt invisible and struggled to be seen and feel good about myself—God makes us visible and sees us fully.
Despite my cracks and even because of them God has used this clay vessel to do more than I could ever imagine-
Today I am celebrating many things—not only our home turning 100 and my 70’th year but also retiring 46 years since I joined Mission Door as a missionary. During this time, I was a college campus minister for 7 years in Fullerton, San Jose and Salem, Oregon. Also, I was spent time coordinating transformational work teams into Kenya, the Dominican Republic and Mexico—and I lived in Mexico for 3 years. I had the joy of helping to start the STARS afterschool program at Lake Ave Church. When this grew beyond my skills, today with 40 staff running a fabulous program. But when I saw the apartment buildings sold out from under many of these families, and then I learned about the Apape Court, and affordable housing development, I was able to help get some STARTS families to move in. All of the kids who moved there ended up graduating from collage—the first in their family to graduate. The parents had time for their children, not having to work so many jobs to pay rent.
That is when I wrote/edited my book Making Housing Happen: Faith Based Affordable Housing Models, that totally unbelievable to me has been used on university campuses and churches. This winter, our Congregational Land Team was also able to provide a chapter about our advisement work. It’s in this book called, Gone for Good: Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition. We help congregations envision affordable housing on a portion of their land—and making sure that it is feasible. Over 100 congregations have approached us in So Cal. We also have an apprenticeship program with teams doing this work in TX, CO, WA and Nor CA.
So my time with Mission Door is now complete, but ministry for me continues. Almost all there who had been supporting me have transferred their financial support to MHCH—Making Housing and Community Happen. At this time of retirement, I see my role to do more One Day Housing Justice Institutes. Placer and La Canada are next. We did one in Arcadia and Fullerton in the past two years and these teams are now strong –one affordable housing complex got approved this week in Fullerton!!
Mission Door required that at attend seminary and it was there at a Conservative Baptist seminary that I got many of my radical ideas, who knew?? I took classes in Liberation Theology, different Theories of war and Emotions and the gospel. That is when I became a Passivist in 1982. Because of Bert’s Mennonite passivists theology he stated the Palm Sunday Peace Parade, where I met Anthony.
So together we wanted to celebrate with you all these milestones. Be sure to look at the finished bathrooms-with no cracks in the toilets!! Another big milestone to celebrate. Thank you for attending the party today!!
Making Housing and Community Happen 
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