Episode Seven: The Interview-Marcee

In this full-sized interview, Marcee explains how her work with the homeless led to her miracle-it's all about respect and connection. As she says, "They matter." This concrete belief in the sanctity of all human beings created relationship, relatedness and love. Listen to how one man's life was changed forever because of it.

Transcript

I was at home packing underneath my kitchen sink,

Which I don't know about you,

But my kitchen sink,

Underneath my kitchen sink is like where everything goes to die.

And um,

I,

Uh,

My phone rings and I don't recognize the phone number.

Normally I wouldn't answer it,

But I did.

And it was him.

And he's like,

I hear you're leaving.

And I said,

Yep.

And he started crying.

As a human,

I think that,

You know,

Like we've already talked about,

About being connected to everything.

I think everything that I do has ramifications for other folks.

And so,

Um,

If I think of myself as being a part of this gigantic world puzzle,

Um,

Then all the pieces together,

They really,

Really matter.

And so I think that if we all thought that way,

I think the earth would be in a lot better place.

Because my decisions matter.

They greatly affect other folks.

It's part of my ancestry.

You know,

I,

I came from folks that farmed and dirt,

The connection to the land,

The very survival of their wellbeing had to do with the land.

And so they had a respect for the land and they had a great respect for each other as well.

You know,

I feel other people,

You know,

It's not only a,

It's not only an earth presence,

But it's also an energy presence that I get from the earth that,

Um,

That we all have to,

We all have to,

To be there for each other or the world is not going to,

It's not going to last.

Like folks need to,

Need to be there for each other a lot more than they,

Than they are currently.

And I can feel that I can feel that missing and slipping as I get older.

I define,

You know,

God as my higher authority.

And I think that our higher power,

Not authority,

Um,

Higher power.

And I think that when we really,

Really start thinking about that,

You know,

If,

If we are all divinely created,

Then that comes with a certain responsibility that we all should hold sacred and we don't because culture is so,

Is so against this idea of togetherness.

You know,

We're inundated with this I and me and want and need.

And,

Um,

If we really start thinking about,

You know,

The spirit of interconnectedness,

It matters who my neighbor is.

It matters.

It just matters.

You know,

When I pray the Lord's prayer,

I pray that,

Um,

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

I don't know what heaven is.

I know what the Bible says it is,

But that seems like a useless amount of resources that streets are going to be paved in gold and all that other kind of stuff.

But to think that it's going to be this idea of,

Of perfection,

Then it's my job in this little corner of the world to make sure that everything I do does not hurt the other because I want someone else to have the best world that they possibly could have.

And I don't want to be a part of that imperfection.

My dad was in the Navy.

We moved around all the time.

Every three to four years we moved somewhere and,

Um,

My parents would go church shopping.

And so we went to like all these different kinds of churches and nothing really stuck.

My mom will say that they really liked the on base chaplain when we lived in Louisiana.

So I would have been like not ate there.

I don't remember that,

But she says that we were involved and I have no memories of that.

But it wasn't until my dad got sick that my mom started going to church and then my dad had a heart attack,

Had a widow widow maker heart attack.

He started paying attention more to church.

And then I really looked up to my dad.

And so I would ask my dad questions and he would just give me a very plain answer to things,

Not in a preaching way,

Just answering the questions.

And I in my mind,

I thought,

Well,

If my dad thinks that God is real,

Then I can think it's that God is real too.

And so,

Yeah,

So childhood,

You know,

We would pray that now I lay me down to sleep prayer,

Which is creepy,

By the way.

But we prayed that I remember praying that as a kiddo,

You know,

We would do Easter and,

You know,

I remember my mom talking about Jesus and then we would have I remember a nativity scene being around but nothing.

I don't remember religion being a big part of our lives until my dad got sick.

But we always spent summers in Kansas.

So I didn't have religion of the church.

I had religion of the farm.

And so my Papa was a farmer.

He had cattle.

You know,

I would they were very traditional in their roles.

And so,

You know,

Men did men work and women did women work.

So I watched my nanny cook him dinner and supper.

But the things that I remember about growing up is like my Papa,

After he got done eating,

He immediately went and fed his animals,

Because he didn't think it was right if he got fed and they had to wait to be fed.

And then just the celebration of crops,

That was always a big deal.

You know,

Relying on what the earth was telling him,

Or the cows for that matter,

He would go out and be like,

It's not a good day.

I'm not gonna work cattle.

So I didn't have I didn't have church of I didn't have church as formal.

But I had I definitely had informal amounts of church.

Sounds like your grandfather was a bit of a mystic.

He was a very fascinating man.

He did not want to be a farmer.

He wanted to be a banker.

And so he was really successful at being a farmer because he had that business intuition.

But he also,

You know,

Grew up from a long line of farmers.

And,

You know,

He did what he needed to do for the family.

And so that's how farming happened.

I it just was who it was who the McMellans were,

You know,

They they came from farmers.

But what was interesting about him is that his books were precise.

And he had this beautiful office set and all of he had books and records and his filing was impeccable.

And,

You know,

He,

He,

He got to do what he wanted to do in life in a very round circle,

Kind of way.

But then he also knew like,

He knew what the clouds were going to do.

He knew if the ground was going to if it was going to be a good crop or not.

I mean,

Those were just things that it was part of his DNA.

It's what he knew.

And my grandparents just taught me a lot of,

Like what respect looked like,

Like they lived as almost as best friends.

But they absolutely respected each other.

And they were married a long,

Long time.

And then when my papa,

My papa got sick and died in March of 2013.

And my nanny died December 2013.

Like they didn't know how to be apart,

Because they they were best friends.

It sounds like they also taught you about respect for the land and for the animals.

Absolutely.

That's actually a really beautiful,

Really important and sacred teaching,

I think.

Yeah,

Like I,

You know,

We lived all over the city.

So we were,

We weren't going to get a farm education.

Like when kids were talking about chocolate milk came from brown cows.

I was like,

No one didn't.

Chocolate milk comes from chocolate.

But,

You know,

We just knew those things.

I remember jumping on hay bales and looking for finding the,

You know,

The kitties and yeah,

The whole cycle of life.

I mean,

It's part of who I am.

And it's a part that I hold sacred still to this day.

And what's interesting is my brother has chosen to live.

So he lives on the,

On my grandparents land with my nieces,

With my three nieces,

And they have animals and they have gardens and all of that stuff.

And I never wanted to stay on the home place.

But it was very,

Very,

It's very important to both of us because it's just so much,

I mean,

It's who we are.

It's who our ancestors were.

It,

Yeah,

It just is.

I often think of that story you told me about you sitting outside of your house and wanting to engage in conversation or commune with that big beautiful tree that was outside of your house.

And it's,

I mean,

That was just such a really amazing image to me,

You wanting relationship with it in whatever form to maybe meditate with it or,

And it just seems like it's,

That has come down to you,

That appreciation for the natural world.

And I think the natural world is what,

Again,

Saved my,

So I had a lot of trauma I had not visited when I started Divinity,

When I started my MDiv.

And I entered into therapy and the therapist said,

What's something that you like to do?

And I said,

I like to look at this tree.

And she's like,

What is,

What is it about this tree?

And I said,

I like the fact that it's not perfect.

I like the fact that it's crooked.

I like the fact that,

You know,

It grows haphazardly and the branches are bizarre and the leaves fall off.

The more that I talked about the tree,

The more she started using the language of the tree,

Helping me to realize that I was just as much as part of that tree as that tree was a part of me.

And what's really got me,

You know,

To this place of understanding that everything is interconnected.

I now,

I have this wild line,

Like this wild flower overgrown thing in my backyard.

And I haven't found that place to look at yet to really center myself.

But where we live is there's a lot of farm ground.

So we live outside of Omaha and there's a lot of farm ground.

And that just speaks to me.

I found a different way to go home.

That's all farmland because it's very much something that is sacred inside of me.

But I will tell you,

The more that I am away from direct services,

The more that I realize how every day,

How privileged I was every day to be able to walk with my folks at Wesley House because,

You know,

My,

And I still,

I say my folks and because it was so much a part of who I was that,

You know,

They,

Especially my homeless people,

They were treated like they were modern day lepers.

Like,

You know,

Downtown was starting to gentrify.

There wasn't a place for them to go at night.

They were using their bodies as commerce.

And everything that they did was about survival until they came into our doors.

And so at our doors,

When they came inside,

Like they could sleep soundly and safely and knew that their stuff wasn't going to be stolen.

They knew that we were going to know their name.

They knew that they were going to be fed well.

They were loved because they mattered and they had dignity.

But the thing that they taught me was their amount of hope for something different was unlike anything I have ever seen in my entire life.

And I've lived all around the world and I have never seen their hope to keep on putting one foot in front of the other because it may be different.

We are created with this unbelievable amount of persistence.

It was just amazing to watch.

And just before I left,

There was this guy that I had walked with him for six years and he was,

When we came,

When I first came in contact with him,

He was a hot mess.

Okay.

I remember my mom being there and my mom like taking him.

We took him to the gas station to get him gas because he didn't have any gas in his car or in his truck.

I have spent numerous times in the hospital with him,

Sitting with him in the ER to make sure that he would get fair practices.

And the work that direct service folks do is very thankless.

And so,

Six years of resources and time and all kinds of things with this guy.

And I had given him my phone number and I was at home packing underneath my kitchen sink,

Which I don't know about you,

But my kitchen sink,

Underneath my kitchen sink is like where everything goes to die.

My phone rings and I don't recognize the phone number.

Normally I wouldn't answer it,

But I did.

And it was him.

And he's like,

I hear you're leaving.

And I said,

Yep.

And he started crying.

He was housed.

He was working.

He was waiting for a decision to be made with his disability.

He had restoration with his son.

And of all the things that he could have done,

He called me to tell me goodbye and to tell me thank you.

And if I don't do another good act in my life,

Which I can't imagine my life not being filled with good things,

That is enough to carry me for a lifetime because no matter how crazy he made me,

He was always a child of God.

You know,

All the times that I,

He was in the hospital because coming down bad from drugs or whatever,

He was still a child of God.

Other people didn't treat him that way.

They treated him like a sack of crap.

But when I looked at him,

I saw something divine in him.

And it made me always be in his corner when nobody else was.

And so,

But yeah,

There was something spiritual there underneath my sink and hearing him saying,

Goodbye,

Thank you,

And I love you.

I think what's really beautiful about that and what's really interesting is that here you are in the middle of this mundane,

Probably slightly disgusting activity,

Down into it,

You're in the weeds,

And then a phone call comes reminding you that God is all around us and miracles are all around us.

Yeah.

And that,

You know,

People can,

People can restore and people can,

But you know,

I remember a time when that guy was digging out of the dumpster,

You know,

And just to know that he had the hope to continue on because he knew that his days were going to be brighter.

And they were,

They're not like that for everyone,

But for him,

They were.

And it was interesting to be a part of that.

You know,

We were part of so much of the highs and so many of the lows.

You know,

When I said my farewell address,

I always said,

We break bread with our people.

We laugh with them when they're happy and cry with them when they're sad and we celebrate their successes and we mourn their losses because they have value.

And the value that I see in them is not what they can give me,

But the value is who they are,

Who they,

Who they were created by.

And that I have a responsibility to them that is,

The responsibility to them is because I subscribe to this idea of a higher power that calls me good and calls me worthy.

And I haven't done anything to deserve that.

It's important for me to find opportunities to do that for others.

I think what's really fascinating about what you're saying is earlier we were talking about how America is such a gluttonous kind of consumerist society.

And part of becoming that society means you absolutely do not see most things as divine or sacred,

Including other humans.

Everything becomes disposable,

Including other humans.

And so we've kind of become this throwaway society.

So oh,

You're homeless,

You're just a loser and you're hopeless and I don't have time for you.

So it really takes a very special,

Committed,

Devoted person to see the divine in everyone and in everything.

You know,

And this understanding,

I think what people need to understand is that,

You know,

The systems and the people that are victims of the system did not create the system.

And so the very system that was created,

They're doing their very best to navigate that broken system.

And so we blame over and over and over again the people who are in poverty that they created those systems and they are no part of it.

And those systems are archaic and,

You know,

Continue to push them further and further down.

So,

You know,

It was really important for me the last couple of years that I was at Wesley to do advocacy work because I wanted folks to hear that that message.

I wanted a platform where I could use my social capital to get the people's voices who needed to be at the table,

That they wouldn't been able to get there themselves,

But I knew I could get them there.

And sometimes it was awesome and then sometimes it really backfired on me.

But I continue to do it.

It's what has led to this position now is because I think that's important.

I think we all have the right to,

You know,

I think we all we make enough food.

In the world that everybody could eat.

And be full and that doesn't happen.

People die of starvation.

So what does that say about the world?

Wesley House,

It was an outreach mission or is an outreach mission of First United Methodist Church in Pittsburgh,

Kansas.

And so it was the largest food pantry in Crawford County and the only daytime homeless drop-in center in southeast Kansas.

We the year that I left.

So I left in June of 2020 in 2019.

It had close to 12,

000 people come through its doors.

Southeast Kansas is Crawford County is pretty,

Pretty poor.

And so how did you do you see anything divine in the appointment to Wesley House?

Yeah,

I mean,

I was a broken person.

I lost,

You know,

In 2013,

I lost my papa.

Then I lost my dad and then I lost my nanny.

Three very integral parts of who I said that I was.

This is the interesting thing.

This is something I've been thinking about a lot because it happened here as well.

For so I started ministry in 2008.

In 2010,

I started writing in this sheet that the Methodist Church used to make you write about like,

How happy where you are at your current appointment.

And then you had a list of things that you could rank one through five.

And then at the bottom,

It would say,

Is there anything else the DS needs to know,

The district superintendent.

And so at the bottom of that sheet from like 2010 to 2013,

I would write,

I want to go to Wesley House.

I want to go to Wesley House every year.

I wrote that every conversation I had with the DS.

I want to go to Wesley House.

I want to go to Wesley House,

Not really knowing what the heck it meant to be an executive director or I never ran a nonprofit before.

And I got to Wesley House.

I have been married to Zach since 2008.

We would always drive through Council Bluff area on our way to Yankton.

Council Bluff and Omaha basically overlap.

And I would say as this area in Council Bluff that you could see from the interstate as it continued to grow,

I would say,

Man,

I would really like to live here someday.

Every time.

Man,

I wouldn't mind living in this area someday.

Here I am.

I have to believe that everywhere that I am put is because I am supposed to do something there.

I don't know what that is here.

I know Wesley House,

I was supposed to help more people.

We succeeded in that.

Not necessarily numerically.

In fact,

The numbers started going down because people were being more successful in the community because of educational and different opportunities that were available in the community and through Wesley House.

But I know that it's not happenstance that I'm sitting where I'm sitting here today.

You know,

I remember I remember making I remember my dad was sick.

I would make these let's make a deal prayers with God.

I would you know,

I didn't know who God was,

But it seemed like everybody was praying to him to save my dad.

So I thought I would I would try it too.

So I would do these whole you know,

If you do this,

God,

If you get him out of the hospital this time,

I will you know,

Stop drinking.

So you get out of the hospital when he had a heart attack.

If you get out if he gets out of the hospital,

I'll get baptized.

So I got baptized.

I have no idea what that meant,

But crying the whole entire time because I thought the church was going to explode.

But all throughout what I realized is that I've been carried for some reason for a higher purpose.

I don't know what that is.

But I know that I'm good at making things new.

And I know I'm good at making people feel like they matter.

So basically,

I find this so great.

So basically,

Your relationship with God began as a series of deals.

Oh my gosh.

It was like,

Yeah.

Yeah,

It was like,

Let's make a deal.

Yeah,

My life was a hot mess.

And I think about all the things that I was exposed to throughout the years and how I survived them.

I don't think that's happenstance either.

Now,

I don't think that should I have died in any of those that God made me die.

I don't think that.

You know,

I think people are still people are still people.

And things still happen.

And the earth is still the earth.

But I think that there is a reason for my presence.

And I absolutely believe that when I stumbled into church,

That was the best version of church that I could have experienced at that time.

Or I would have turned around and walked away and who the hell knows where I'd be right now.

I don't know if I would be married to Zach,

Which brings tears to my eyes because I can't imagine my life without him.

There are so many unknowns in in that scenario.

But I know at that moment when I walked into that church because there was nothing left on the table,

Because my life was a hot damn mess.

They loved me the best way that they knew how and I love them back.

And in figuring out how to love them back,

I figured out how to love myself.

I want everybody to experience that.

This has been Episode seven of Bite Sized Blessings,

The podcast all about the magic and spirit that surrounds us,

If only we open our eyes to it.

And whether you choose to listen to our Bite Sized offering for that five to 10 minutes of freedom in your day or the longer interviews,

We're grateful you're here.

I need to thank Marci Binder for sharing her story today,

As well as the creators of the music used,

Sasha End,

Raphael Crux,

Agnies Valmashia and Klaus Appel.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite Sized Blessings website at bite sized blessings.

Com.

And remember that's bite spelled B-Y-T-E.

On the website,

You can find links to other episodes,

As well as to books and music I think will lift and inspire you.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Stay like Marci and know that everybody and everything matters.