Metanoia Story: Ed Lucas

Stiffneck vs. The Spirit: A Suburban Metanoia

Ed LucasIf, in retrospect, a person’s first thirty years aren’t deemed a waste, they must then be the best teacher. It was about that long that I lived under the influence of the wrong stuff. The appeal for life-as-I-knew-it was great, with A) all the lures of bliss through consumption, and B) the promise that technology was ever on the verge of saving us from whatever problems we either have been plagued with for eons, or those just discovered we had (some of which were results of item A). The household my father provided was stable in the ways he intended, and he often reminded me of how little upheaval and instability there was in our lives. It was quite a conservative and sheltered setting where the world was “out there” and we were to be glad that it did not intrude on our lives “in here.” No one ever really taught me to consider whether my daily life had anything to do with the plight of others. I was to be content with my boring life because it was better than that of so many others. There was a distance between me and the rest of humanity that only delayed the time of reckoning when I found I was part of it too.

I feel that in many ways the last two generations were just living a giant detour from sound living, and that it is my responsibility to pick up where my erstwhile Midwestern farm-raised grandfather left off when he took a career in the Navy and later worked for the State of California. His life and that of my father were defined by the rising trend line of material wealth and success that clearly is not something my generation is assured. Just as well. Their success in material terms could only last so long. But for my family, it resulted in a lot of dysfunction, estrangement, and eventually total collapse, and all this because the economy of scarcity that accompanies housing values in the market. What was supposed to bring us together under one roof was the thing that drove us apart.

My father was not religious except perhaps in his enthusiasm for property values. At one point, he owned all three of the houses that I ever knew our family to have (his own, his parents’ where I lived for a while, and a mountain retreat/rental). Prior to that, he was scheming for how to manage property he did not own by his meddling in his parents’ property concerns, ostensibly for the good of the residents—sort of an empire model at work in the domestic sphere. Perhaps as a result of this concern of his, he was always a miserable man who alienated people. Wealth did not equate to any degree of happiness for him even though his prayer was always to “raise the value of the house.” I struggled mightily to retain residence in one house that he inherited from his parents, but eventually his sense of property values drove the last wedge between us. The landlord part of him consumed my father. It contributed to an existential depression of mine, accompanied by suicidal ideation.

The years surrounding this experience were my metanoia years. They were the eye-opening, soul-transforming years that helped me see another reality that was totally lost on him, or others of his mindset. In the Universe’s odd way of demonstrating providence, in the space of about ten days in the summer of 2005, I met Lee Van Ham of Jubilee Economic Ministries, and shortly afterward, was evicted from the house that I had struggled to stay in for a few years. The message was clear: my father apparently placed such tremendous trust in the housing market that it wasn’t too hard on his conscience when his only child was the loser for this. Or was I? Sure, the rejection was heartbreaking and tragic. I had gotten married less than a year before, and was planning on sticking with this house for the long haul, since it was my second home (my grandparents’) and I had lived there for seven years anyway, and had begun to show the stability and responsibility that was usually used as bait to see if I would warrant more such intra-familial economic blessings.

At first, Lee may just as well have been speaking a foreign language with his talk about Sabbath and Jubilee economics, scarcity and abundance and all. But it was he and JEM’s message that helped me organize my thoughts into something that helped me understand and contextualize my experience. The distance between my father and me is not just a generational gap; it is that too, but it is a paradigm mismatch now. He understands things according to the old paradigm, and I’ve had that shattered. When he sold the house a while later, the market was close to its peak and he got a pretty astounding return on his “investment.” He inherited a house that was bought by his parents for $18,000, and they were the second owners anyway. And then he sold it for $515,000. But it cost him every last familial relation he had.

My metanoia awakening instructed me according to different values: the market declared the house worth that much, and he got that for a sale of wood, stucco, plumbing, glass and other material. But what he did not get—and that I did get—was the home. What he did not retain was the memory of or the prospect of laughter, storytelling, meals, or other experiences that unite and strengthen relationships. For rhetoric’s sake, I’ve remarked that the house was worth more when my family was intact, even if that was say, in 1983, and the house was market-valued at maybe $70,000. When the market declared it $500,000, I was watching my family crumble to the ground. Needless to say, the rampant talk about the rise or fall in housing values means nothing to me, because I see through the emptiness of those figures and the misplaced faith people put in them.

As horrible as some of this was, it was liberating at the same time. Having had my little mundane suburban existence totally turned upside down, I decided maybe that was a clue to my next moves. JEM was instrumental in giving me a framework for discerning what might be next. It dovetailed with my wife being a seminary student bound for congregational ministry, beginning that process in the same summer as the eviction. Between JEM opening my eyes to the millennia-old radical principles in the Bible, and a secondhand seminary education through Kelli’s enthusiasm for her studies, I was finding myself empowered to move on. I was able to find a new story, different than that of my father’s. And a good thing too, because more and more, his story—the story of the classic American dream of house ownership, accumulation and concentration of wealth not always earned by honest effort, and consumption—is doomed anyway because of its own success. It’s sort of like I was thrown off a bus that was doomed to crash before I got to my stop. Yeah, there is bruising from the impact, but it beats what awaited me.

These days—many tears, pastoral and therapist sessions, and even a few transitional residences later—things are more in perspective. I don’t recommend anyone follow my lead into the dark corners of total family dysfunction and collapse. Some will respond to subtler urging. The process led me to meet or deepen my relationship with some splendid people, to hear and resonate with touching stories, and to get into the nut of life in a way that I would not have had everything been normal and comfortable. (A pearl comes from an irritated oyster, after all.) I do now believe and wish to urge folks to see what good can come from the ruins of the American Dream. My new interests in gardening and better eating, biking most places, getting off the consumer treadmill however possible, and other changes in behavior and lifestyle, have all been satisfying. The people around me are of higher caliber and deeper conviction. My marriage is a great oasis to retreat to, where I know my best ally is ready to walk with me. It is a built in practice space for Sabbath and Jubilee living, a proving ground for larger efforts. Yet, for a while before my metanoia experience of the last five years or so, I clung fearfully to a house that really was only a shell of the place that it once was, even as the market declared it worth more than ever. It seems preposterous to consider now. How much do we cling to something that has no future? And at what cost? Have we missed the party bus to heaven because we had other plans? Are we the people who skipped out on the banquet with Jesus so we could wrest that miserable buck from the stock market? Will he offer that again?

This notion of paradigm shift is not always something we would willingly embrace—and I fought it kicking and screaming. Not every one of us is prepared to be Abraham and nod, “Yes Lord, here I am” but for those, the Spirit has other plans. You know the song, “Spirit, stir me from placidness…”

Ed Lucas produces The Common Good Podcast for JEM and occasionally is “on mic.” Listen to episode 2 for more on this topic.