Into the "Ghetto"

A Stones Throw

I was awestruck. I have never driven through the Hill District before. The “Hill District” is one of those places that every Pittsburgher knows about, but that few have actually visited let alone stepped foot into. I woke my housemate up from his nap to join me for a short ride to the dollar-store. When I google-mapped the closest store it happened to be in the center of the Hill District, on Centre Ave. James stumbled and bumbled up from his rest to join me on our quest. He didn’t know where we were going. I didn’t know where we were going. For some reason, although the trip lasted less than 1 hour, it took away a piece of my heart.

It was a blistering hot sunny day; a day that any true Pittsburgher would melt in and that someone from a place like Georgia or Tennessee would call… nice. We walked to the car squinty eyed from the bright burning orb in the sky. “Where are we going?” asked my roommate, “I don’t really know,” I replied… “Center Ave, but not the center Ave you are thinking of.” We drove silently through a long windy road with that familiar bit of city-nature. City-nature is what I call foliage along the side of the road when there are not houses for a spell. It isn’t really nice trees and shrubbery, but loads and scores of vines, sumac, thistle, and ivy. City-nature always made me feel like it was wanna-be nature, which was never good enough to grow quite right. As we approached our destination, the city-nature seemed to mutate into something much worse.

My Grandfather grew up in the hill-district, but that was during the times of ethnocentric streets. He grew up on the Italian street, and even then he would speak of how rough it was and how tough you had to be to survive. Nothing really changed in the Hill District since then, just the types of people. He would tell me stories of having fistfights with steel chains on the front lawn of his house. He always won. The Hill District today is best described as a ghetto, though before visiting it I hadn’t thought of the small town as quite so run down. As one enters the beginnings of the Hill, the first thing one notices is the red brick row type houses, with knocked out or boarded up windows, graffiti written all over the house, and a mother and her child sitting on the front porch. The next thing one notices… the police.

There were more police in this little square mile area than I had probably seen in the past month put together in the whole of Pittsburgh. I have worked in rough areas before with bad crime rates, like McKees Rocks, (a name that sounds rough) but even in the dark streets of the rocks, there were never so many cops. The police cars sat parked on the side of the road. An officer trotted up the street to the right. Two more cop cars turned down our street coming toward us. “James, where are we?” I asked… Silence.

My 15 year old Geo Prizm continued to putter down the road surrounded by people, whom I felt were staring at us as we passed them by. My head began to speak to me and told me that I wasn’t in the right place and that I should leave, but my heart said to continue. Vfluuum! I drove right through a stop sign. “Daggum it” I cried, but no one had seen me. “Oops, oh well.” We arrived at the stoplight right before the dollar-store. I needed envelopes. I had already visited three places that didn’t have what I was looking for.  There was an officer right behind me. He had to have seen me go through the stop sign. He drove on past me. “Why?” I thought to myself.

            We pulled around the side of the building to park when I saw a newer model Nissan Infiniti, probably a good $45,000 automobile with a man and woman sitting in the front, chatting with two other people outside the car. The entire trip I did not see one white skinned person. I didn’t even see anyone who looked Hispanic or Asian. Everyone appeared to be African American, and James and I were the only two white people, I was certain, in the entire town. The Infiniti was running, and they seemed to be enjoying the air-conditioning and their conversation as they laughed when they spoke. What was this car doing in a place like this?

            I have gone on missions trips, worked in very poor areas, and even attended some schools where I was the only white male present. I had never been so struck however, than at this moment. I later came to consider the reason for this total feeling of awe; I wasn’t there to do some kind of work or service, to give or even to learn…no, I was simply visiting and for a brief thirty minutes, assimilating into a culture that I knew nothing about. The dollar-store was packed.  

            As we entered the building it became quickly apparent from the outside and the inside, that this dollar store was one of the nicer places in town. As I entered the store, immediately, everyone who had seen me enter fixed their eyes to mine, and then quickly turned away. I was a white face looking into many white eyes with black faces. The feeling that came over me however, wasn’t discomfort or paranoia, but an overwhelming feeling as if I was being drawn deeper inside the community. I wanted to interact, meet and share in this society, not as someone coming in to help and serve, but sincerely desiring to simply meet a group of people I never knew existed, only 1.5 miles from my home. It was as if I was entering a different world and I wanted to introduce myself and get to know my neighbors. Why did I feel so different than everyone else?

            I walked down the main isle and came to an intersection with 2 taller teenagers probably around 18 years of age. The taller of the two seemed to have gentle eyes and he smiled while motioning me to go ahead when all of the sudden a larger and plump lady with a short weave quickly moved past the four of us standing at the intersection of the isle. “Ladies first!” I softly said as I laughed and smiled, then the two boys in front of me laughed and smiled too. It seemed to me that already and so soon I felt some kind of connection.

            As I continued through the store looking for what I needed, the thought crossed my mind again and again that this is what is must feel like to be the only black person in a sea of white people. It felt intimidating and I quickly felt out-of-place, like even if I stayed they wouldn’t want me because I was white. The thoughts were completely unfounded and ridiculous, but so often our logic isn’t coherent with our emotions. Perhaps everyone was staring at me… perhaps they weren’t.

            The reason I’m writing about all of this isn’t because I am some white boy who was amazed at a ghetto full of black people. I am not writing because I have some agenda of gentrification or political ideology. I am writing this because I was struck when I remembered that the Gospel of Jesus is not for the rich, but for the poor. Now this doesn’t mean simply that the Gospel is only for those who are physical impoverished, but for those who have need of good news, for those who are poor in spirit. We will never desire Christ if we are content with this world and yet how can those who are content with the world know how much they are missing? We need to have something taken away and replaced with something better in order to see just how bad off we were in the beginning. I was surrounded by the poorest in the city of Pittsburgh and what I wanted to do more than anything else, was to be their friend. To let them know that we are not so different. I am far worse than them.  

            Now you have to ask why I wanted to befriend everyone and of course there are both good and bad reasons why. To begin, I am a sinner and there is no doubt I had moments when I thought of myself as better than these people, which is wrong. Though there was more to the matter; it wasn’t just an issue of befriending out of pity. No, it was a desire to befriend them because I felt these people had something to offer me that I don’t have. Perhaps a sense of community or an environment of united struggle with which I am not accustomed. I can probably tell you that I am poorer than most of my friends, but even the poorest of my friends are rich.

            The light that reigns in the heart of every Christian spoke to my soul and my desire to preach the word, to tell of Jesus, to scream to all these poor people the best news the poor could hear… that they were rich!!! The reason I am going to seminary to become a pastor is because my God-given passion in life is to share the message of the Gospel. Every other Christian seems to have some passion in addition to sharing the Gospel that they make into a career. I just wasn’t given another passion. Yes! I am deficient.          

            Where I will serve as a Pastor, if I will be a Pastor, where I will be, what I will be doing: these are all so unknown to me. As I continue down this road to seminary I am frequently asked what kind of ministry I am interested in. I have such an issue with this question, because the reality is that when I am in the Hill District, that is where I want to minister and when I am in the country, that is where I want to minister. I think the better question is not where do we want to minister, but where does God want us to be? Each and every person should be asking this question in his or her own lives. No one can minister to those people at work the way you do and you can. No one has the unique opportunity to go and preach Christ to Florence the secretary or Don the boss. God places us where we are to minister now, and I think if anything this was a reminder to me, that wherever I am placed in the future isn’t the point. The point is where has God placed me now and what am I doing to bring the Gospel to those he has placed in my life.

            Perhaps one day I will be given such a gracious opportunity as to preach the message to hundreds of black faces, or to tell the tale of Christ to the farmer and his boy. I don’t care. I don’t care where I am placed because I know that wherever it may be it is where I am supposed to be. Our God is a great God, who desires to feed the poor, heal the sick, and to give power to the meek.  Perhaps everyone in that “ghetto” is far richer than me.