Spiritual Birdwatching

Fog...

2009-11-05T19:07:00.000-08:00

Trying to ease myself into a weekend retreat, I paused on the drive at a quiet beach cove. A sunny Friday afternoon in October had brought a handful of families to the beach. I walked from the boulders guarding one end of the cove to the scrabble of rock brought down by a mountain stream on the opposite side and climbed up on a driftwood tree trunk. I watched the waves crash, noticed a girl not much older than one of mine carried by her father into the surf, piggy back style. I studied the sunlight glinting off the water as it ran back into the sea, and laughed at sandpipers as they darted in and out of the waves. Suddenly I noticed the temperature drop. A tiny cloud had drifted between me and the sun; further down the beach was still sunny, but here I was sitting in my own personal fog bank.

That picture of a personal fog bank stayed with me through the weekend, a picture of my own spiritual life over the past few years. Something shifted in me Saturday morning when I sat with a quote offered in our retreat materials:

It is only self-love that grows weary and despondent in doing nothing, seeing nothing and understanding nothing. Yet let self-love grumble to its heart's content. Its very weariness and despondency will rid us of it in the end. By cutting it short of food, we shall make it die of hunger -- a death to be desired indeed! (Jean-Pierre de Caussade)

Oh, someone had my number! Weary and despondent in doing nothing, seeing nothing, understanding nothing. That was life inside my personal fog bank. And how I had let self-love grumble about how dissatisfying the whole deal was. Starve that grumbler -- heck, I'd been feeding it scraps under the table for years!

Grumbling had become habit; the fog wrapping around me was the enemy (if not actually The Enemy). It was my distracted mind, the tyranny of the urgent, the spiritual disciplines that no longer "worked" to produce some sense of progress in growing in God. Fog was the obstacle to be overcome, the pull of gravity weighing me down.

Gradually, over the course of the weekend, a new idea dawned: what if the fog was not my enemy, but my friend? What if, instead of struggling against it, I was meant to rest there in the dimness, right in the middle of not knowing, not seeing, not doing. What if there was an invitation to experience God with me there in the fog?

Pantry Update

2009-08-11T19:54:00.001-07:00

Since I posted about working at the AIDS pantry, I got an email from 'S', the director -- due to state budget cuts (I'm sure there isn't a non-profit in California left unscathed by the sea of red ink coming out of Sacramento), his last day is Friday. The pantry will go on, with other staff covering, instead of one person dedicated to coordinating it. More opportunities for those of us on the "unpaid" staff to serve... I'm off for the summer with the kids, but plan on being back there after Labor Day. Keep you posted...

Spiritual Discipline: Serving at the Pantry

2009-07-27T20:45:00.000-07:00

Christine Sine is sponsoring a summer synchroblog focusing on "What is a Spiritual Discipline?" I promised to write something....Summer being, of course, the worse time for mothers of school-aged children to even think about discipline. Then I left a comment on Jon's blog about volunteering at a local AIDS food pantry, and he encouraged me to write about that. So in the interest of killing two birds with one stone (well, perhaps the birdwatcher in me should find a different idiom), here goes...

It must have been one of those typical Sunday mornings when I really did not want to be at church, turning the bulletin over looking for something interesting to read (the pastor's wife offers up the occasional NT Wright or Miroslav Volf quote for our edification), when I saw the invitation: Help needed at the AIDS pantry, Monday evenings, Tuesday mornings, Thursday afternoons. Call Bob. No thunderbolts, no drama. Just two thoughts that connected in my addled brain: I've been thinking about food and our food systems, why not get involved in helping those who don't have enough food? And, somehow, this might be a place to encounter Jesus.

So I called Bob, and shortly thereafter found myself spending my Tuesday mornings shelving canned goods and "shopping" with the clientele of a decidedly secular GLBT organization that provides supplemental food for people affected by HIV/AIDS. Some of my fellow volunteers are also clients who will take a break to shop for their own needs. S. the director, tells so many stories about his glory days in San Francisco that one day I finally blurted out, so why do you live here now?

Most of the time, working at the pantry doesn't feel particularly spiritual. Often enough I leave wondering whether I've been tainted by the conversations flowing around me. One day another volunteer spent the morning flirting outrageously with the clients. Another morning S. put on the 6 inch heels that had been hanging on the coat rack all winter and revealed a bit of that wild personality he boasts of. There are clients who come in and grouse about whatever is going wrong in their lives, and others who are clearly moved with gratitude that they don't have to be hungry this week.

What's a middle-aged, white girl to think of all this? At the very least, it is entering into the world of "the other" -- folks whose life experiences are about as far from mine as I can imagine. As sophisticated as I might think myself, I'm sure my eyes bug out when S. starts in on his stories of drag queen races. I wonder what I have to offer, besides decades of experience in grocery stores. "How's your Spanish?" S asks, before introducing me to a young woman with a hesitant smile -- not so great, but I try.

Richard Foster's classic "Celebration of Disciple" defines a spiritual discipline as something that gets us into the ground where God can work on us (rough translation). Working at the pantry has its formative moments -- those times when I find my tendency to snap judgments and even idle curiosity putting a distance between me and the people I'm serving or serving with. I'm challenged to see into someone else's world -- as different as it may be from my own -- and find common ground. I'm learning what it means to love someone I'm not naturally drawn to, to serve in simple ways. I haven't seen Jesus walk through the doors yet, but perhaps my eyes and heart will be tuned by showing up week after week, and one of these days...

2009-05-29T08:52:00.001-07:00

Jon at Blog One Another posted an interesting take on a recent episode of This American Life, the NPR radio show. In the segment in question, Ira Glass records a couple of phone conversations between Kris Hogan (a high school football coach who enlisted his team's fans to cheer for a team from a local juvenile hall) and a woman who was moved by the story, and wanted to talk about faith. Trisha is a lapsed Catholic trying to reconcile her desire to believe in God with the recent death of a friend from cancer.

Jon does a nice job of pointing out how stuck in Christianese Hogan is, and how unhelpful some of his apologetic arguments are. His wife adds a concluding point, blaming those who taught him this form of evangelism:

"The coach was doing his best with every tool he had been given. He was taught this stuff, just like you were taught it, and it's pure crap. The teachers are totally to blame."
Most of what you were taught about evangelism is now irrelevant. Actually, in a post-Christian society, it's worse than irrelevant — you may inadvertently be practicing "devangelism"! For your outreach to be effective, you must adopt a missionary mindset and missionary methods. If you have a teacher who is talking about evangelism without training you to be a missionary, walk away and find another teacher. With the Holy Spirit guiding you, that teacher needs to be a "native."

The whole post is worth reading, but a couple of thoughts are stirring in my mind. We may need to peel the onion back a few more layers. I'm not sure that the problem is that traditional evangelism lacks a missionary mindset -- in other words, it misjudges the distance in terms of culture, language and worldview between the evangelist and the other person. If that's the case, then the coach just needs to find a new language for expressing the old arguments.

What if we throw out the whole idea that what we're doing in evangelism is providing answers or reasons to believe? What if this is not an exchange of information between people who know about God and those who are curious or ill-informed? If the evangelist is not teaching/preaching/arguing, what are they doing? Ironically, the image that comes to mind is Hogan's profession: coaching.

What I have in mind here is spiritual direction, but you could call it coaching. Trisha calls Coach Hogan willing to reveal the tenderest part of her heart -- her grief and questions around her friend's death. Jon describes the scene well:

So they try another phone call, being clear that the purpose is to discuss Trisha's questions about why God allowed her friend to die. It's a good question. It's a tough question. And from my perspective, even a direct question like this should not have an immediate answer, but be treated as an invitation. Trisha is exposing a very sensitive part of her heart, and that calls for respect and an exchange of trust.

Again with the Christianese.

But Kris Hogan doesn't waste any time sticking his foot in his mouth: "This is the most common question that folks who are anti-God ask."
Whoa! In a single statement, he slaps Trisha as "anti-God," and dismisses the possibility that earnest followers of Jesus also wrestle with that same question.

One way to reduce the distance between Christian and non-Christian is to fess up to the fact that this is the most common question human beings faced with loss or tragedy ask. Yes, Christians may come at it from a different perspective, but anyone who says they don't ask Why? of God is either deep in denial or lying. And we don't always get neat answers, or completely satisfying ones. People of faith, by definition, are the ones who keep wrestling, keep believing despite the questions.

So what if Coach Hogan could put himself in the position of a spiritual coach and offer Trisha some resources as she wrestles -- including first of all a listening ear and a safe relationship where all questions are admitted? If might mean entering into that uncomfortable space where Sunday School platitudes and philosophical arguments get exposed for what they are, while we wait together for God to speak. The old apologetics might still be helpful to frame the questions or define new ones: What does it mean to live in a fundamentally broken world? What can we expect if God's Kingdom is here but not yet? A coach's role is to offer resources, teach some skills, but in the end the athlete is the one who who plays the game. Spiritual coaching assumes that the Holy Spirit is at work and trusts that those who seek will find.

I'm just an April Fool!

2009-04-01T12:44:00.000-07:00

Dang, twice in one day!

First it was Bro Maynard's story about how his former church wants to engage him as a consultant to monitor their change of heart...

Then, the food sustainability stimulus story from Civil Eats!

I guess it's easy to get sucked in by things you'd like to believe are true...

Slow Food, Real People

2009-03-23T09:57:00.001-07:00

It rained over the weekend, or I would have attempted to get some veggies into the dirt in my backyard. I've been procrastinating -- even Michelle Obama beat me to it this year! I finally got a chance to watch the 60 minutes piece from last week featuring Alice Waters and the Slow Food Movement. While I'm sure Waters deserves all the credit she gets for moving sustainable food from the fringes to at least the mainstream media, a slow burn was growing in me as I watched the piece.

What irks me is the mindless association of fresh, local, sustainable food with the notion of being elitist. Yes, I want to cheer when I hear Waters say: "I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. And that's not elitist." Absolutely. Amen and amen.

But then she goes on to purchase grapes for $4 a pound and cook Stahl a lovely breakfast that no one that has to get children to school or themselves to work could afford to labor over for so long (not to mention the gazillion-dollar kitchen in which it was cooked). And like a compliant dope, Stahl asks "probing" questions about whether schools can afford to teach kids to grow and cook their own food. As opposed to training them to take multiple-choice tests till the cows come home? As opposed to feeding them fast food and candy bars in the cafeteria? But the whole exercise demonstrates nothing better than the inability of the major media outlets to hold an intelligent converstation. If Stahl had been doing her job, she might have left Waters in her dream world and asked some of the other folks shopping at the Farmer's Market how they balance their food budgets and juggle dinner prep. Here's a clue -- look for the women with kids grabbing samples off the tables.

What the sustainable food movement needs is not a gourmet chef explaining how to roast an egg over an open fire, but a real Mom explaining how fresh and local can be affordable, and how real food can make its way to the table via a few simple techniques before the kids melt down. Thanks, Alice Waters for launching the food revolution. But please, go back to your kitchen, and let some regular folks take it from here.

16 Decisions for Kingdom Living

2009-03-04T21:35:00.000-08:00

Well, maybe not 16. As promised, I'm posting some thoughts I have about some key commitments that might help us resist the lure of affluence and materialism in favor of Kingdom values. I'm taking off the Grameen Bank's list of 16 Decisions, which guide their members -- mostly poor women -- in lifting themselves out of poverty . For the most part they are simple and concrete, memorable and measurable.

So here are some ideas -- feel free to suggest additions or deletions.

We will attempt to follow the great commandments: to love God with all our hearts, souls, minds and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
We will work together to help each other become better stewards of the resources we have -- breaking the power of consumerism by sharing together and talking about how we spend money.
We will be better stewards of the environment: waste less, buy local, grow our own food, carpool, etc. [Maybe some of these need to be spelled out separately?]
We will include the poor, marginalized and those not like us in our lives through acts of friendship, hospitality and service.
We will give time and money to help empower people in need in our community and around the world.
We will nurture one another's love for God through worship, prayer and other spiritual disciplines practiced together.
We will maintain an attitude of repentance regarding our own failures to swim against the current of our culture and grace towards one another.
We will enjoy God's creation, regularly spend time outdoors and teach our children to appreciate and protect natural environments.

Well, that's a start. Have at it -- debate, discuss, add, subtract.

Lenten Journey: Broken

2009-03-03T21:40:00.000-08:00

I'm following along with Christine Sine's Lenten Guide this season. See her blog for a list of others writing on the topic.

I have to say I'm having a tough time getting into Lent. Ash Wednesday was the one day last week I could hang out with my parents before they flew back to Boston, so I went ashless. Since I've been worshiping with my Episcopal friends on Sunday mornings, I had really been looking forward to starting Lent right, but so much for my plans...

I haven't decided to give up anything specific for Lent, but I've done enough of the self-improvement sort of fasting from chocolate or coffee that I still feel a bit uncomfortable reaching for dessert or a glass of wine. I almost gave up caffeine by accident, but decided that sleep walking through Lent might not be the best plan, either.

So here I am again, with all my efforts at spiritual disciplines falling to dust around me. Really, should I be surprised at this point?

I walked the beach again today. I found myself wrestling with a question I'd read in Gerald May's book on the Dark Night of the Soul: In the midst of the dislocation of the dark night, would you really want to go back to the way things used to be? It was one of John of the Cross's diagnostic questions for recognizing a "dark night" or season when God was working in hidden ways in the soul. For me the question came out, would I want to go back to 1995? That's another story altogether, but whenever I bump into the fact that all is not as I would like it to be in my life with God, I find myself looking back to that particular season. I don't know whether I was sadder at the idea of giving up that idealized -- idolized? -- picture of the spiritual life and its consolations or at the realization that I was so deeply attached to that particular set of experiences.

So I think I've figured out what I'm supposed to give up for Lent: control, expectations. Sounds simple enough, let me make my list of ten things I'm going -- oh ... yeah.

16 Decisions

2009-02-23T20:24:00.000-08:00

No, I haven't changed my mind about New Year's Resolutions ... I've been reading Muhammad Yunus' Creating a World without Poverty. I have to say it's one of the most inspiring books I've read in quite some time. In case the name doesn't ring an immediate bell with you, Yunus is the founder of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, pretty much the inventor of the idea of microcredit for the poor and winner, along with Grameen Bank, of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

One of the things that struck me reading Yunus' account of the evolution of Grameen Bank was the 16 Decisions that every member of the bank pledges to follow. They support the agenda of social transformation -- Grameen Bank is not simply about lending money to poor women, but about lifting families and villages out of poverty. I'm going to quote them in their entirety, because they form such a powerful statement of how a society mired in poverty can be transformed. And they made me think about how those of us trapped in affluence might formulate a similar set of decisions to help us swim upstream in our own culture:

The Sixteen Decisions:
1. The four principles of Grameen Bank -- Discipline, Unity, Courage, and Hard Work -- we shall follow and advance in all walks of our lives.
2. We shall bring prosperity to our families.
3. We shall not live in dilapidated houses. We shall repair our houses and work toward constructing new houses as soon as possible.
4. We shall grow vegetables all the year round. We shall eat plenty of them and sell the surplus.
5. During the plantation season, we shall plant as many seedlings as possible.
6. We shall plan to keep our families small. We shall minimize our expenditures. We shall look after our health.
7. We shall educate our children and ensure that they can earn to pay for their education.
8. We shall always keep our children and the environment clean.
9. We shall build and use pit latrines.
10. We shall boil water before drinking or use alum to purify it. We shall use pitcher filters to remove arsenic.
11. We shall not take any dowry at our sons' weddings; neither shall we give any dowry in our daughters' weddings. We shall keep the center free from the curse of dowry. We shall not practice child marriage.
12. We shall not inflict any injustice on anyone; neither shall we allow anyone to do so.
13. For higher income we shall collectively undertake bigger investments.
14. We shall always be ready to help each other. If anyone is in difficulty, we shall all help.
15. If we come to know of any breach of discipline in any center, we shall all go there and help restore discipline.
16. We shall take part in all social activities collectively. (pp. 58-59)

I've spent a little bit of time in South Asia, and these commitments struck me not simply as nice ideals -- the way I feel about my daughter repeating the Girl Scout oath -- but as a powerful counter-cultural statement by people who have decided that they no longer will live under the oppression of poverty. They are practical (grow vegetables; dig latrines) and measurable. They are radical (rejecting dowry and all the enslavement to debt and endangerment of girls that goes along with that practice). They are commitments to community and to hope.

I was in Las Vegas this weekend for a family wedding. With the worst of American culture's enslavement to greed, lust, entertainment and consumption on vivid, neon-lighted display up and down the strip, I began to think that anyone choosing to move out of that oppression into the freedom of the Kingdom would need some simple, direct statements about their day-to-day life, too. The kind of affirmations people stick on the bathroom mirror or repeat at 12-step groups. Maybe 16 is too many; maybe not. Grameen's list evolved out of the experience of people striving to escape the grinding poverty of Bangladesh in the 1970s and 1980s. I can imagine neighbors talking to one another, urging them to stand firm in their decisions. This is life and death for our families: We will send our kids to school; we will take the time to boil water. There is no going back to disease and despair. As hard as it is, we must move forward.

There is something in me that wants to take a stand against the forces of materialism that would have me fritter my life away in shopping malls and in front of the TV. It rises up in me as the need to say NO! to the lies of the advertisers offering convenience and something bigger, better and newer. I want to have some friends who stand with me and remind me that my kids do not need that new gizmo or another set of lessons. I want to worship with brothers and sisters who do not believe that Jesus came to make me a better consumer of religious goods and services but an active participant in the expansion of his Kingdom in this world.

So here's my question: What would be on your list of 16 (or however many) Decisions for Kingdom Living? I have some ideas I'll share in few days, but first it's your turn.

Google Meme

2009-02-22T20:31:00.001-08:00

I've been out of town for the weekend, and actually have some thoughts to write about when I'm not so tired, but I saw this meme at Kingdom Grace and wanted to have a go at it.

I was tagged by Bill Lollar to do this meme. So I took a few minutes to check it out.
Google your full first name and the word "needs" like this - "William needs" - and then post the first 10 things that Google finds.

So here's what Maria needs…

On second thought … that one seems X-rated, and this is a family-friendly blog. Moving right along…
Maria needs further surgery (thankfully, not me)
Maria needs – Leicester (huh? I think that's a city in England … pretty sure I don't need it)
Maria needs a job (not yet, anyway)
Maria needs your love
Maria needs your help
Maria needs your prayers (am I seeing a theme developing here?)
Maria needs you (now we're getting to the point)
Maria needs shadow to save (again, huh?)

and my personal favorite…

Maria needs diamonds

On that note, I'm going to bed and will hope to write something profound another day…

Desire

2009-02-10T20:28:00.000-08:00

I was standing in front of the altar waiting for communion. The manger scene was still set up, right in front of me. I was making surreptitious glances to the right to make sure I didn't goof up when the elements came to me. I wasn't expecting the realization that hit me that moment -- how much I wanted Jesus -- baby Jesus, crucified Savior, risen Lord.

Somewhere in the dark of last winter, there was a Sunday morning when I opted out of church and walked on the beach. The darkness was spiritual and emotional; I think it was a sunny day. A smooth pebble caught my eye and I bent to pick it up, and then another. My handful of rocks reminded me of another beach, encountered at the end of a chaplaincy internship at Children's Hospital. A rock for every deathbed I attended, every child whose family I connected with at some level. Tossing rocks as far out into the waves as I could, I said their names and grieved and tried to let them go.

I tried to name my frustrations and griefs as I picked up rocks. False promises -- a daily quiet time and you'll always have God's peace. Disappointments -- why is church the hardest place to make true friends? My pockets were getting a bit weighed down as I approached the slough. I turned toward the incoming tide and started launching. Done with that one. Give up that expectation. I can live without devotions, without church and its trappings. Finally I was down to one smooth stone. Its name was "desire" -- my desire for God. I looked down at it, turned it over in my hand a few times, put it back in my pocket.

So now on Sunday mornings, I stand with a handful of brothers and sisters and open my hands and receive. Body and blood, food from heaven, forgiveness and grace, life.

Is it Friday already?

2009-01-30T08:00:00.000-08:00

It wasn't quite an invite to an inaugural ball, but a friend called us last week and invited us to help out/attend a meeting of the Explorer's Club being held at our local Natural History Museum. It's always interesting to see how the other 1% live. Our friend is the most humble, down-to-earth guy ever, and he's due to get an award for his humanitarian efforts around the world, but the Explorer's Club is definitely an old-fashioned elite establishment. It was a lovely dinner, with interesting speakers discussing everything from recent missions to Mars to kayaking through Antarctica. I found myself the most interested in the discussion of local Chumash Indian culture from a staff member of the museum. As much as I enjoy travel (I'll stick to subarctic regions, thank you very much), I find myself more and more interested in my own backyard -- and I realize how little I really know this place I call home.

Meanwhile, in my own backyard baby grass is poking its collective head up out of the ground. It's looking like our eventual plan to relocate the patio closer to the new addition will be a smart one -- there's very little sun in that area, and precious few blades of green so far. This weekend is fully booked, so there goes another week for planning the vegetables...

The weekend is largely taken up with a board meeting for a non-profit some friends of our started. I've been treasurer for a decade now, and much as I would like to give the job away, I know there will be no takers. It isn't a huge amount of work (we don't raise that much money), but it has its moments, like figuring out tax forms and such. So I thought nothing of it when a friend asked if I'd consider being the treasurer of the PTA this year. There's so much piddling paper work, trips to the bank with several hundred dollars in coin, etc. Such fun! I'm starting to wonder whether I'm like the deer with the target on its belly in the Far Side strip -- do I have a sign on my forehead that says "Will do bookkeeping for non-profits"? Need I mention my father is a CPA, and used to take me to work with him on occasion -- setting me to foot long columns of numbers with an adding machine. I knew from an early age that accounting was not for me. Heck, I consistently make addition mistakes with my own bank deposits!

My parents arrive Saturday evening for a month's respite from frozen snow-and-ice-land (also known as Boston). Ray has been counting down the days for while now. About two weeks ago she was saying they're coming the day after the day after tomorrow. Well, not quite. Now we're down to "Grandma and Grandpa come in two more days!" Meanwhile she came home with a book in her backpack -- "Countdown to Grandma's House." How appropriate, but where did it come from, exactly? First, her teacher gave it to her. Then a friend -- whose name she can't quite remember, but maybe it's Ariel -- gave it to her. Or loaned it to her. I've got to remember to track that one down today. Dear little Ray is turning out to have an aptitude for fiction, I'm afraid.

Doe had a late afternoon snack last night, and being less interested in dinner than usual, decided to give us a recap on a story her teacher read today. "It's realistic fiction," she explained. "That means it's non-fiction," Ray countered. "No, it's realistic fiction. That means it could have happened but we don't know." I didn't realize that was a technical term, so I tried to paraphrase for her, and was soundly corrected: "It means it could have happened but we don't know." OK, that's how your teacher defined it, that's good enough for me.

I've been meaning to write a church update, but for now I'll just say that Communion has opened up for me in a whole new way. I've been thinking about the process of receiving from God, and what he gives in that simple sharing of bread and wine. Ricci Kilmer links the Lord's table with food issues, and asks about giving: "What does it mean to BE Christ’s body for people? What does it mean to say that his body is offered freely? And how should that change me?" I wish I could join her for her "Justice at the Table" workshop next week.

Food safety sermonette of the week: If you needed another reason to avoid high-fructose-corn-syrup (beyond obesity, diabetes, etc.), check this out: It turns out that many foods sweetened with HFCS contain mercury, left as a residue in the production of caustic soda, a key ingredient in HFCS. And worst of all, the FDA and the industry have known about this potential toxin and has continued serving it up since at least 2005. If there's any merit to the claims of many parents that mercury in vaccines is behind their childrens' autism, consider how much more exposure kids have from sodas and other foods laced with HFCS.

Friday's here again... 7 quick takes

2009-01-23T08:34:00.001-08:00

I'm thinking about renaming my blog "7 Quick takes Friday" because that's about all the blogging I seem to be doing these days. But Jennifer might object, and she's gone to all the trouble to put together this nifty logo.

The big news (locally) this week is that my father-in-law made it through his surgery with flying colors. He was home the next morning and is resting comfortably at home. He seems to have better color and alertness -- something to do with getting enough circulation to the brain, no doubt. Thanks to those who prayed.

It's raining, finally. Hubby worked like a dog last weekend putting in grass seed in the backyard (leaving some edges for the vegetable garden), so at least I don't have to worry about keeping the precious little seeds wet. Hope they don't wash away. They weren't kidding about "when it rains, man it pours" in the old song. (There I go dating myself again...)

L.L. contends that Writing a Poem isn't Rocket Science. Maybe not. There are poetry people and there are prose people (I suppose fiction/non-fiction folks, too). Somehow poetry intimidates me. All those memories of high school English, the teacher digging obscure references out of words that sat opaquely on the page in front of me. But maybe I'll gather up my courage and try a haiku.

Speaking of intimidation, my first piano teacher had a theory that learning music was easier if you sang the notes you were trying to play. I understood that the spot on the page corresponded to a key on the piano, but to go from there to "do" -- a vibration coming out of my mouth and landing on the correct pitch, not so much. I can carry a tune if I'm standing right next to someone who's singing the same part (hubby has to sing some version of harmony no matter what, and consistently mixes me up!). All of this came to mind trying to follow the closing hymn with my new Episcopal friends on Sunday -- once a month, the organist comes in early and plays a hymn for the early service.

I heard the swearing in and Obama's speech on the way to the hospital waiting room Tuesday, then watched the TV coverage after the kids had gone to bed. I found myself wondering about what makes a leader. How does someone like Obama find themselves in possession of such a driving vision of what the country needs and how it must proceed to face the challenges ahead. For my money, he hit the right notes of hope and confidence measured with realism about the problems we face. So much of Obama's gift for leadership takes the form of oratory that comparisons with FDR or Lincoln seem inevitable, but it seems that is what we need these days -- words that will breathe courage into us as a nation.

It makes me wonder about leadership in the church. In the post-modern, emergent conversation, this kind of "man with a vision" leadership is roundly rejected (and yes, the leader in question is nearly always a man). There is talk of preaching, not as the pragmatic how-to teaching that is typical in most evangelical churches, but as proclamation meant to fire our imaginations with the possibilities of the kingdom. The trick, it seems to me, is to be able to articulate the biblical vision without putting oneself in the position of the one who makes it happen -- to share the vision and let it form a community that can put flesh on it.

I've been following the conversation around the new administration's choices for key players in Agriculture and related departments. The buzz from the sustainable food community is definitely mixed, with general disappointment at the appointment of friends of big Ag companies (Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsak is cozy with Monsanto, for instance). The surprising news is that Laura Bush insisted on having organic, local food served at the White House -- all while her husband's policies were stacking the deck against those sustainable, organic growers putting the food on their table! Let's hope the Obamas can show a bit more teamwork!

7 Quick Takes Friday - Again

2009-01-16T08:39:00.000-08:00

So at least this way I post once a week, which is probably better than my average for the past year. There's a lot brewing inside, but most of it is fairly inarticulate mishmash right now, so I'll spare you that. It's been in the 80's here this week (apologies to those of you who are freezing to death and/or buried under feet of snow), so the new season that's beginning to emerge in my heart is feeling a lot like spring. A lot of people look to the fall as the time to launch new things, but I find the fall is usually a season of burnout (tried to launch too many things, usually), and January can often be a time of new beginnings for me. It's looking like one of those years.

My kids had their annual Winter Sing at school this week (which I kept calling Spring Sing). In honor of Martin Luther King, they sang a bunch of songs I would have sung at their age -- "If I had a hammer" and "This land is your land." I suppose elementary school programs don't change that much over time. A couple of 6th graders read the "I have a dream" speech between the different grades. (Sadly, the kids were out of the room during the reading -- though I can understand why having 70 first graders squirming through a 5-minute reading might not be good thing.) It struck me how those songs must have had a different ring in my school days, so much closer to MLK's original proclamation. I'm reminded of how far we've come as a society to be standing on the eve of inaugurating the first African-American president, and yet how far we still have to go to see "justice roll down like waters."

Now that we're back in the routine of picking up veggies at the farm every week, I'm remembering just how many leafy greens can be in one CSA share! Seriously, this week we got bok choy, napa cabbage (most of those went into a big stir fry last night), collard greens (always a challenge for this Yankee girl -- but they were great with the two big leeks in our share), and spinach. And I left the turnip greens for the compost pile there.

I remember doing a cooking badge in Girl Scouts. At the end of the session we had to put together a whole meal. The Girl Scout book called for a leafy green vegetable, but the Mom who was teaching us substituted broccoli or something else because, as she explained it, "The only leafy green vegetable I could think of was spinach, and I figured most kids wouldn't like it." Much later in life I did discover that spinach and my digestive system do not get along, so I do avoid the stuff. Still, how did we survive a childhood of frozen green beens and canned corn?

Speaking of seasons, Christine Sine is already thinking ahead toward Lent and Easter (Easter as a season goes all the way to Pentecost). She's putting together a Lenten guide with suggested activities for making the season more meaningful than simply giving up chocolate.

So here is where I would like your help. I would like to conduct a synchroblog during Lent and Easter to focus on the meaning of Lent and the celebration of Easter in this practical way. Would you consider being a part of this? I realize that it involves far more than a simple blog post as each person involved would need to engage in at least one of the activities listed. You may like to just use the guide for a single week. The most popular activity last time was the Mutunga $2 Challenge to restrict one’s food budget to $2 per person per day for a week.

Let Christine know if you'd like to be involved, and check out her post today on What is Lent Anyway?

Six-year-old Doe has a metabolism much like mine, which is to say that once her blood sugar level hits a certain low point, she melts down into a whining mess. We went exploring in the butterfly preserve the other day, and predictably, Doe lost it on the way home. We were driving past a lemon orchard near our house when she started asking whether people could pick the lemons. No, the trees belong to someone, I explained. Why can't we have an orchard? I want a big orchard. On it went, with the pitch and intensity of the whining escalating.

She kept on in this vein for what seemed like hours, despite my efforts to either get some food into her or talk her down from the edge of insanity. Amazingly, her vision of her future (or imminent) agricultural career evolved from moment to moment. I want to be a farmer. I want to have a big farm. I kept proposing reasonable alternative -- we have friends who manage orchards, our CSA farm has summer camp programs for kids. No! I want a big farm now. With animals. I want to take care of the animals -- and not just chickens and goats; I want horses and cows. I want a horse.

So is my budding astronaut/vulcanologist going to trade it in for overalls and a straw hat? Who knows. From what I've been learning about our food system, I'm beginning to understand the need for some smart young people to dedicate themselves to the hard work of feeding us in healthy, sustainable ways. I'm grateful that she's growing up 1) knowing what a leafy green vegetable is (and eating them!) and 2) having the chance to see something of farm life up close.

Meanwhile, I'm overwhelmed by the thought of planning our garden/landscape. It's the right time to be planting fruit trees and roses, and there are certainly early crops that could go in any time now. I can't seem to get one foot in front of the other to designate a spot for the compost pile!

Finally, I'd like to ask for your prayers for my father-in-law. He's facing surgery on Tuesday morning to clear a blocked carotid artery. It's a delicate job, and his overall health isn't very good.

7 Quick Takes Friday

2009-01-09T08:29:00.001-08:00

For most of the day yesterday, I shared my office with some of the local wildlife -- a mouse. Much as I promote sharing among my children, when it comes to sharing my living space with rodents -- not so much. Mom-in-law came in while it was peeking out from behind my desk, and commented, "Gee, she looks pregnant." Great. What I need is a family of mice living behind this heavy roll-top desk! I turned on iTunes to cover the sound of scrabbling behind the desk while I worked. Then she started making strange noises. "Don't you go into labor back there!" I yelled at the wall.

The critter was trapped and dispatched by the end of the day. Meanwhile, the cat is fired.

It's been one of those weeks. After two weeks of vacation, both kids decided to turn up sick on Monday (and one into Tuesday). There oughta be a law or something. Actually, I think there is one along the lines of Murphy's -- kids will always try to extend vacations, no matter how desperate Mom is for them to go back to school.

We've been scootering to school, though I've been finding excuses to drive the car down and pick them up at the end of the day! There's a whole set of muscles that haven't been exercised in my body for quite some time -- try standing on one leg for a couple of minutes and you'll get the idea.

Progress report on my first New Year's Resolution -- I visited the Episcopal church nearby last Sunday. Yes, there's definitely something there that my soul is craving. I'm not sure I'm ready to define just what that is, though the liturgy feels substantive and thoughtful in a way that praise songs don't. Now to work out the logistics of splitting time between two places on Sunday morning.

A strange memory about cravings: Several years ago, shortly after the birth of Ray if I remember correctly, I found myself at the grocery checkout with a cart full of red and purple produce. I had red grapes, red cabbage, beets, strawberries, eggplant, and probably a handful of others. A dietician friend of mine always used to say, "Eat what sounds good to you," on the theory that your body would tell you what it needed. I guess I needed something red that day. What does it mean if your body tells you it needs chocolate?

I've been spending a bit of time checking out the new Missional Tribe site since its launch on Tuesday. Many of the instigators behind it are people I've been reading for the past few years, so I haven't figured out quite what's new for me there. It's a social network space, but I have to say, I haven't quite figured out the benefits of that concept, either. My facebook account sits unnoticed for months at a time, too. Maybe there will be more call to connect around the content at MT.

Believe it or not, our CSA starts next week. I know most of the country is buried right now, but our little farm is producing away. I'm going for the small share this year in hopes that we'll start growing some food here. The weeds are thriving after the rain we've had, but we haven't had a chance to sit down and plan where things will go in the yard. Soon, I hope.

Just for fun -- Blogapalooza

2009-01-08T15:00:00.000-08:00

Robert over at Middle Zone Musings (one of the Higher Calling Blogs) invited folks to share "What I learned from 2008" -- or their selection of the best posts from the past year. He's posting several each day during January. Spiritual Birdwatching is up today. It's always fun to look for an interesting new voice or perspective, so take a moment to check out Robert's blog.

7 Quick Takes Friday

2009-01-02T07:45:00.000-08:00

I've been enjoying Jennifer's 7 Quick takes each week; thought I'd take the plunge since it's a new year and all...

In case you haven't noticed, I freshened up the look of my blog. So click through and take a peek. I'm not sure I love the new template, but I don't have the time or inclination to do much customizing.

The new year started off with a surprise (sort of) visit from hubby's sister, along with her husband, two grown daughters and one granddaughter. It felt good to have the house full of people, even briefly. Since we've decided to put off finishing the "cosmetic" part of the remodel for a bit (minor things like painting the living room and replacing 30-year-old carpet), I'm getting to the point where I'm ready to take a deep breath and go ahead with inviting people over. Don't like the look of raw drywall? Tough.

Highlight of Christmas: Santa decided that Mommy needed a scooter to keep up with kids who now will be riding scooters to school every day. The girls have been out riding most days since Christmas, and I've discovered entire muscle groups I didn't know I had.

My girls have decided that watching the Rose Parade (on TV) is their New Year's tradition. Two years ago, a friend of a friend who happens to be a city councilman in Pasadena got us tickets to the VIP grandstand. If you're going to get up at o-dark-hundred to watch a parade, that's definitely the way to go. Needless to say, my kids are now entirely spoiled for any sort of stand-on-the-sidewalk-craning-your-neck viewing of parades.

Are you officially old when you're in bed by 9 p.m. on New Year's Eve? Or just a parent?

My big project for the vacation: moving offices. Over the past year or so, my work space has shifted a few times as construction encroached. I've been working out of a small bedroom since the spring, and my approach to temporary quarters is to let them look very temporary -- and messy. So now I've negotiated for the new office (since hubby isn't working from home right now), and it's time to start moving stuff around. I even tackled the filing that's been accumulating for about a year! If only I can keep it clean.

I haven't finished watching this, but had to mention it now: The World According to Monsanto, a documentary produced for French TV that you won't see in the U.S. Do you want your food supply controlled by the company that brought us PCBs and Agent Orange? HT: Civil Eats blog.

New Year's Resolution: Escape from worship I-land

2008-12-29T06:35:00.000-08:00

I hate New Year's resolutions. Why promise yourself some major improvement in your life that you aren't likely to remember having committed to by President's day? But this year I'm about to make one.

Here it is: I need to find a place where I can worship God with other people. I'm thinking a church, but I could be wrong.

I've been turning this idea over in my mind vigorously since yesterday morning, when it took all my effort not to just run screaming from the building. This morning, I ran across this quote that Beth posted. Chesterton just says it better than I ever could:

People are losing the power to enjoy Christmas through identifying it with enjoyment. When once they lose sight of the old suggestion that it is all about something, they naturally fall into blank pauses of wondering what it is all about. To be told to rejoice on Christmas Day is reasonable and intelligible, if you understand the name, or even look at the word. To be told to rejoice on the 25th of December is like being told to rejoice at quarter-past eleven on Thursday week. You cannot suddenly be frivolous unless you believe there is a serious reason for being frivolous.
--GK Chesterton

To paraphrase GK, I have lost the power to enjoy "worship" because it has been so identified with enjoyment. I have lost the ability to sing "worship" songs that are primarily about how I feel about God, or how God makes me feel, or how it feels to sing about God. Or something like that. Mostly I find the songs just don't make sense, or to the extent that they make sense, I just can't say them. I'm having trouble remembering the lyrics from yesterday, but one line stands out: "No one sees the way he looks at me." A song that starts that way should be a makeout track, not a worship song. Even a song entitled "My Confession" started out with a verse of all-about-me-and-how-I-feel.

What ever happened to singing songs about God or to God that are actually about God, not me? I seem to remember songs that talked about God's love or faithfulness or grace, that retold the story of the cross, or longed for God's reign in the world. Didn't we used to worship God, instead of our feelings? Here it is, five minutes after Christmas, and we've put aside the carols (which have quite a bit of substance to them, along with the silliness of "no crying he makes") for the feeling-good-today drivel.

So, in one of those "blank pauses of wondering what it is all about," I find myself longing for a different kind of worship and googling Episcopal churches in the neighborhood. There's one right down the street from the community center where the church we attend meets -- with a quiet communion service at 8:30 am.

I've resisted this move for a year now. One the one hand, I think the way forward for us will eventually be something more like a house church, so investing in institutional church of any form seems like a step backwards. As a practical matter, hubby and the kids like this church. Hubby is invested in the children's ministry, which has the double advantage of using his gifts (leading singing for the kids) and getting him out of the service. I thought I could quietly sit through an hour and a half of a service I really don't like without any harm, but I'm not so sure now.

So here's my resolution for the New Year: I'm going to go to church with the intention of worshipping God. I'm going to stick it out long enough that the liturgy doesn't seem strange. I'm going to let the narratives of salvation form my heart and mind. I'm going to sing songs about God, not my emotional states. I'm going to learn to worship again.

I feel better now...

2008-12-22T13:48:00.000-08:00

In light of my last post, it's comforting to know that even the economists don't know what they're talking about -- or at least, can't agree on what the facts are or what the theories mean. Check out this from Peter B. Meyer on The Gristmill blog:

And you wondered why you couldn't understand economics? You thought it was your problem. But what if the problem lies in the economics?

Don't worry if two analyses don't seem to be consistent. Accept that they are not, and look for the assumptions that lead them in different directions.

(The devil is not in the details, but in the assumptions ... but finding those devils requires digging into the details.)

When we make policy decisions without looking at which economics is guiding us, we have a problem. We make inconsistent decisions, we make foolish decisions, and, perhaps worst, we defer decisions because the results confuse us so much we can't decide which way to turn.

Meyer promises to continue posting on this theme of examining different schools of economics -- so maybe I get my wish after all. Meanwhile, I can't help but think of a title from one of my favorite philosophers: Whose Justice? Which Rationality? MacIntyre's writing is a fair slog, but the point is that when competing systems of rationality (Meyer's assumptions) come into conflict, there are actually ways of sorting them out -- one generally does a better job of accounting for the problems of justice in the real world. Which in the end isn't too far away from what economics is supposed to be about.

Is it too late to change my major?

2008-12-16T20:57:00.000-08:00

Every so often I find myself wishing I’d been a bit less of a purist in college and had taken an economics course or two. As it was, many of my college peers were econ majors, heading straight to places like Goldman Sachs after college. I had no idea what an investment banker might actually do (still really don’t), and no interest in finding out. I was a true liberal arts die-hard. I put together my own major studying the history of ideas and the interplay of ideas (and ideologies) and culture.

The irony today, a quarter century later, is that the ideas I find myself wishing I better understood are not existentialism and Marxism and the other “isms” I got into back then, but the ideas that must have shined with the promise of a brave new world to my economics-major classmates: supply side, free trade, trickle-down, deregulation, the power of markets to make the world a better place. Because from where I sit now, it seems that the ideology that dominates our world didn’t come from European philosophy but from the University of Chicago. And the cultures that ideology impacts are not the literary and artistic museum culture I was drawn to in college, but the lives of farmers and small business owners around the world.

If it were only about stock market meltdowns and global recession, I probably still would give economics a passing yawn. But I’ve spent that past week or so working my way through Stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel, and my desire to discuss the utter moral bankruptcy of this economic ideology is matched only by my outrage at the way agribusiness, in the pursuit of free trade and free markets, has increased hunger, malnutrition, diet-related illness, injustice, ecological disaster, even an epidemic of farmer suicides – and not just in our country, but around the world. It’s one thing to be on this little pilgrimage I’ve been on to buy local produce in the interests of feeding my family fresher, more nutritious food while also reducing our carbon footprint. It’s quite another to have the global implications of that industrial food system that I’m trying to escape thrown in my face for 300 pages.

This is what I’m talking about: Patel, in his discussion of NAFTA and its aftermath, points out that the main beneficiaries of the free trade agreement in Mexico are large landowners situated close the border. They can produce the fresh fruits and vegetables we’ve come to expect to see in the grocery regardless of the season. The fact that most Mexicans living on the land grow corn, which they can no longer sell since the market is flooded with cheap (heavily taxpayer-subsidized) corn from the U.S., means that basic staples like tortillas cost a lot more than they used to, and the poorest Mexicans are more vulnerable than ever.

But look again at those relative winners—those growing tomatoes a few miles south of the border. Yes, the landowner is making a profit. But who actually grows the tomatoes? A few years ago, I had the opportunity to spend a few days at a ministry in Baja California that our church had been involved in supporting. It’s a well-developed outreach, with an orphanage, medical clinic, food distribution and other ministries. Then there was the evening we went out to the “camps” with a meal, a program for kids and an evangelistic film. The camps, it turns out, are migrant worker camps set up for the people who grow those tomatoes. The workers come mostly from Oaxaca, and live in what could only be described as deplorable conditions.

Anyone who has read this blog at all knows I don’t buy those tomatoes. Simply opting out of the food system isn’t going to change the fact that there’s a market for slightly-pink tomatoes 365 days a year in the U.S., and that the people growing them are going to be squeezed for the lowest return on their labor. There are bigger forces at work here than can be dealt with by signing up with a CSA and recruiting my middle-class neighbors to do the same. It doesn’t change the fact that inner-city neighborhoods have been targeted by fast food joints and liquor stores, but redlined by the big grocery chains. Buying fair-trade coffee won’t change the fact that most growers receive pennies out of the $4.00 latte at Starbucks. The question is how to leverage a system that is controlled by huge corporations that don’t answer to governments – they tend to force governments to make the rules that suit them. I have no idea what the answer is, but it seems that there are no answers without understanding the nature of the problem. So if anyone has some old economics textbooks they want to get rid of…

In the meanwhile, I'll leave you with the sentiments of Bruce Cockburn: "Kick against the darkness till it bleeds daylight" (HT Bill Kinnon)

N.T. Wright on the economic crisis

2008-12-10T10:06:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to post something about third-world debt relief for some time, ever since I read N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope earlier this year, and was struck by the way he highlights debt relief as an issue that those who hope for and work for the Kingdom of God should be focused on. I'm not sure I have much to say about it right now ... but here are a few of the good bishop's words in the House of Lords yesterday, courtesy of Empire Remixed (HT Beth and Mike):

Now, my Lords, whenever I, and others, have spoken about these things in the past, we have faced a chorus of excuses telling us that we don’t understand how the world works, that people who borrow money must learn that they have to pay it back, that the borrowers were wicked or irresponsible or incompetent, and that any debt relief will only be siphoned off to fund yet more extravagance on the part of the few. But recent events have blown this excuse clean out of the water. Governments, including our own, are bailing out banks, and at least one bank is being refloated in such a way as to continue unchecked with large bonuses and shareholder payouts. ... The very rich are doing for the very rich what they have refused to do for the very poor....
My Lords, we should not try to return to ‘business as usual’. It is business as usual which has got us into the mess. What we need is a paradigm shift. ... Behind the sudden new squeals for help from the very rich we must listen to the long-term cries from the very poor.

I like his parting shot:

My Lords, I hope in years to come we will look back to this moment not as a disaster followed by a muddle, but as a time of fresh vision and bold action which made a real, lasting difference both globally and locally.

I'm not sure how much confidence I have in governments not to follow the disaster with a muddle, but I do think having the failures of the economic doctrines pursued over the past few decade splashed across the headlines day after day offers the opportunity to rethink some of our basic assumptions about money, wealth and how we manage that business of living "in the world but not of the world."

Things I've Done

2008-12-09T08:44:00.001-08:00

I saw this meme at Julie's blog today ... thought it would be quick and fun. If you want to play, just copy the list and bold the items you've actually done.

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band (jr. high orchestra)
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain (Mt. Monadnoch in NH – very small mountain!)
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped (I’m with Julie here -- never, ever ever…. )
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse (of the moon)
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors (Gaeta, Italy)
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied.
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke.
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa (vicariously as hubby climbed Mt. Kilamanjaro)
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling (and learned I’m a bit claustrophobic)
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class.
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving (never, not ever, never… see #11)
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone.
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book (as a ghost writer)
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating.
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life.
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake (saw it in December … didn’t bring my suit that day!)
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a mobile phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Read an entire book in one day

Michael Pollan interview

2008-11-17T15:50:00.000-08:00

OK, I'm officially a Michael Pollan groupie. I've even signed the petition to nominate him for Agriculture secretary in the new administration, which may be more silly than anything else. But here's a 20-or-so minute radio interview that sums up the problem with our food system today. Well worth a listen, and then zip over to your local library and check out The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. (My favorite concept from the latter book: don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. My grandmother came from Italy and always cooked like she was feeding an army, but she definitely would recognize a chicken nugget as something that should be ingested!)

If you want to read something on the relationship of food policy to our current state of over/undernutrition, check out this post that I've had saved in my reader for most of the year.

UPDATE: Pollan wrote an open letter to the next president a few weeks ago in the NYTimes Magazine. Among other things he suggests the position of "Farmer in Chief" and turning the White House lawn into a Victory Garden. Yeah!

Tomato

2008-11-10T21:14:00.001-08:00

Last summer a few of us attempted a synchroblog on "Tomato Theology." Apparently Rob Bell got inspired. Well, maybe not by us, but definitely inspired. I can't figure out how to point you directly to the new Nooma video on Facebook (for a week or so), so here's Mike's link to it.

All Saints Revisited

2008-11-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

So it's fallow time... so I'm going to repost something from last year. Ben's prayer for All Saints day reminded me of this conversation...

We were trick-or-treating through the neighborhood last night with our next-door neighbors and their threesome, when Doe said something about the next day being a holiday, too. I told her it's a kind of holiday that some churches celebrate called All Saints Day (I do remember enough of my Catholic upbringing for that). She continued, "My teacher told me it's a day to celebrate being afraid." Really?? A couple of minutes to think about that one. "No, it's a day to celebrate not being afraid." Hmmm...

The kids raced off to the next house for another handful of loot.

As we were tucking them into bed someone said something about tomorrow being a holiday. "It's All Saint's Day. It's a day we remember all the saints. Do you know what a saint is? A saint is someone who loves Jesus."

"Like you, Mommy and Daddy?"

"Yes."

"And like me and Ray?"

"Yes, that's right."

I'm not sure where the celebrating not being afraid came from (a kindergarten teacher's attempt to lessen the spooky factor of Halloween?), but it's not a bad way to think about All Saint's Day. So for all the saints reading this(HT Christine).

Thought for the day

2008-10-30T18:42:00.000-07:00

This one comes from the Civil Eats blog, where someone actually took up KFC on their family meal for under $10 challenge:

In America, if we are what we eat, most of us are fast, cheap, and easy.

Fallow

2008-10-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

I can't remember when I've gone a month without posting on this blog, but I just did it, and may do it again next month. I am alive and well, if anyone's wondering, and not drifting around the world like a piece of lost luggage.

But it feels like a fallow time for me as far as writing goes. Probably as far as most of the interior quiet parts of my life go, too. I find myself sitting with a certain kind of peace and patience in a place where I never imagined I could rest -- the things I've struggled with God about over the past year or so haven't resolved, but I'm simply not struggling at the moment. I'm waiting. Sometimes I wonder whether I've just given up or should be trying harder to get something kick-started in my spiritual life, but that thought doesn't seem to carry any life in it, so I just let it go.

Meanwhile life is full of busy things. Both kids are in school, and I'm learning the life of a mother of school-aged kids, complete with PTA meetings and chaperoning field trips. Our remodeling project is nearing its end -- we should have a real, live kitchen within a week or two!

There are weeds in the field right now, but I'm choosing to look at them as a cover crop waiting to be turned over when it's time to sow something more fruitful.

Sleepless ... but not in Soho yet

2008-09-16T08:22:00.001-07:00

OK, I just have to get this rant off my chest, because, well, I'm stuck here in an airport for another six or eight hours, and I paid $8 to have wifi access.

One would think (or at least up till yesterday, I thought) that in the 21st century, getting from California to London would be no big deal. I had a wide assortment of itineraries to choose from when I went online to buy a ticket a few weeks ago, so I picked the one that looked most convenient: fly out of the little airport that's five minutes from my house, pick up the big jet in LA and 10 or so hours later, boom, you're at Heathrow. Yeah, that was the theory.

Turns out all the aircraft flying out of Our Fair City come from somewhere else -- in this case, foggy old San Francisco. So no little plane to take me to LAX, no big jet to Heathrow. After some wrangling with the ticket agent(s), including a tantalizing moment when she thought she could get me on first class on a flight later in the afternoon, I was rerouted "the hard way." As in, OFC to LAX to Ohare to Dulles to London. Call it my little tour of the biggest and busiest airports in America.

So I come back to the little airport yesterday evening, kiss the kids goodbye again. Had a minor heart attack when the board showed my flight leaving at about the same time as the flight I was supposed to connect to. Turns out the board was cranky and the flight was only a few minutes delayed. Had a nice walk from one terminal to another in LA to stretch my legs before the red-eye to Chicago. Slept fitfully and woke up with a stiff neck at what felt like 3 a.m. to find that I had 20 minutes to get off the plane and make it over to the next terminal for the next leg of the adventure. Which I did, OJ-style. Well, I didn't exactly jump over anything, but I did make this rather out-of-shape carcass move a bit faster than it's used to. I was still trying to catch my breath on the plane when the pilot announces that there's some minor mechanical malfunction that must be investigated, replaced, etc. This flight has the same number as the eventual flight to London, but it turns out different aircraft are involved and the "company" decides it isn't worth holding the London flight for 20 minutes so that three of us can make the connection.

So here I sit, at Dulles airport, looking at an overcast sky and bemoaning my fate. I know the airline industry is hurting these days, but from where I sit, so are it's customers.

OK, I'm done with the gripe session. Next time a customer insists on hands-on assistance, I'm going to really make them justify it!

Still Here...

2008-09-10T20:14:00.000-07:00

I know it's been ridiculously long since I posted, even for me. I have a couple of things brewing, but I can't seem to get them mental energy together to write them.

We had a great trip, then flew home less than 48 hours before the start of a new school year. Seems like we hit the ground running and haven't quite caught our breath. The kids are struggling to get used to the schedule, and meanwhile hubby started a new job that takes him to Los Angeles for 3 days a week, and I'm getting ready for a business trip to London next week. Yikes!

If I find myself sleepless in Soho, maybe I'll blog next week, but don't count on it.

Off for vacation

2008-08-15T09:23:00.000-07:00

I know I'm hardly a regular enough poster for anyone to miss me, but we're heading off on vacation next week. It's our annual family get-together at the beach with my siblings, parents and altogether 9 (yes, nine!) children aged from one to six. Since I live on the opposite side of the country from the rest of them, it's always a delight to have time to catch up. The first 4 grandkids (including my two) tend to run in a pack, so there's a good chance of being able to have a coherent conversation or two with someone.

I'm looking forward to a change of scenery at least. The past two weeks have been a grind. Ray and I turned up sick last Monday, the day the workers came to jack-hammer through the slab to lay new pipes in the kitchen. Thankfully, the addition has a pretty good sound wall and solid door, which cut most of the noise, but it's been a couple of weeks I would not want to repeat. Hopefully we'll come back to see the walls drywalled and painted, and be ready for the cabinets to go in. The end is in sight ... just about!

Summer Synchroblog: What I've Learned from Tomatoes

2008-08-07T06:59:00.000-07:00

(Thanks to those of you participating in the synchroblog... let me know when you've posted, and I'll put up a link here.)

Once I put this nutty idea up here, and started asking a few friends to participate, I got to thinking about how I got here -- thinking that there might indeed be a connection between the journey I've been on towards eating fresher, mostly locally grown produce and the strange spiritual meanderings of the past few years. The first journey is a bit easier to plot out.

Our old house sat on a tiny lot with a backyard dominated (and nearly completely shaded) by two large trees. I tried planting tomatoes on the tiny strip of dirt beside the kitchen door, but they were cramped and caterpillars got more out of them than I did. The next year I tried to opposite side of the house, which got a bit more sun. The tomatoes thrived for several years. I loved having a bounty to share with neighbors and people who came to our house for kinship. One year I had a yellow plum tomato bush that got away from me and started crawling up the neighbor's house!

Then I had babies two summers in a row. Somehow the tomatoes got planted, and sometimes watered. Neither one of my kids eats tomatoes now, though they both went through phases of picking and munching on all the green ones they could lay their pudgy hands on. The last few years my tomatoes languished in soil that was becoming depleted from growing the same crop every year and under my more and more distracted attempts to care for them.

But somewhere along the way, I was converted. I still plunked down my cash for the occasional Roma from the grocery, but only for a specific purpose. Tomatoes slipped off my list of "staples," though there were plenty of other out of season items I bought regularly. Once you've enjoyed a summer of fresh, flavorful goodness, there is no going back.

I didn't think I was doing anything radical, just using common sense and the taste buds God gave me. Coincidentally, we joined a nutrition company and started learning a bit about more about our industrialized food supply. There are well-documented studies around that show the nutritional content of fruits and vegetables sold in the U.S. has decreased dramatically in the past few decades. No wonder. The phytochemicals that give the tomato its flavor (and nutritional value) develop during the last few days on the vine. Yes, you can pick the tomato green and gas it to make it turn red, but that will not make it produce those valuable nutrients. It's rather appalling to think about: we have a food industry in this country that is dedicated to producing food that is cheap, easy to harvest and transport, pretty to look at, but nutritionally depleted. (It's worse than that when you think that people in the poorest areas have little access to fresh produce of any kind, and the cheapest calories in the grocery store are in the junk food aisles.)

There was a grocery store strike in Los Angeles a number of years ago. All the major chains were affected, and my grandfather didn't struggle to unionize a meat packing plant to have me cross picket lines at a grocery. I found alternatives, and the farmer's market became a regular stop on my Sunday morning routine.) Except for the occasional "necessity" like real mayonnaise (has to be Best Foods/Hellman's), I've hardly been back to the regular grocery stores. Before we moved last year, I had already scoped out the two closest farmer's markets, and was looking forward to joining the CSA at a farm near us.

A bit more than a year ago, I ran across a book called the Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. His exploration of the industrial food system and various alternatives opened my eyes to a picture bigger than the fact that fresh produce tastes better and is probably better for you. The way our food is grown, transported and sold to us impacts the environment, issues of fairness and justice (farmers get precious few pennies out of the dollar you spend at the store), and food safety (did you notice tomatoes disappear from your local restaurants this summer?), just to mention a few. It's like pulling the thread hanging from the sleeve of your sweater: quit eating store-bought tomatoes and your willingness to participate in the whole agribusiness system may just unravel. Think a bit more careful about what's "good" for you (and the land and the people who grow it), and you change the way you live.

Which brings me back to that other journey I've been on. That other journey is hard to map out: it's about dislocation and disorientation and I don't think I've glimpsed where it comes out on the other side yet. As best I can tell, it's been about getting my faith out of my head and out of a special realm of privileged emotional experience and into the rest of life. I used to be pretty good at spiritual disciplines. When I first came to faith in college, I was taught to have a daily quiet time, study some Scripture and pray every day. I made myself do it for years. I have notebooks filled with my impressions of verses day after day. Then I encountered the Holy Spirit in a new way and found myself drawn into prayer and intercession. I longed for the hours of solitude and listening and meditation. And then I had kids and all of that pretty much went out the window.

In my dislocation and distress, I found the best place to connect with God was at a little oasis in the midst of the San Fernando Valley, where I could try to spot a few birds and then just soak in the beauty of creation. I've struggled to have those times the past year, in a new place abounding in natural beauty, to find that place of peace and inner quiet. I've wrestled with what this season is about -- is God leading me through this dryness or am I just wandering off by myself? I come back to two things: sureness that God led us here, and hope that some of these changes have to do with preparing me for the season ahead.

So I find myself focusing on trying to be faithful in the little things, especially the things I put in my mouth. Committing to buying (and someday growing) local food is a discipline. It has a lot to do with waiting. Watermelons aren't ready in June. The season for asparagus goes by in a flash and then you wait till next spring. It has to do with gratitude for the gifts of today. I never would have tried my hand at fava beans if they hadn't been in my CSA share, but what an amazing shade of green and taste of spring when you finally pop them out of their skins! It has to do with seeking justice: knowing that I'm putting my dollars directly into the hands of the people who do the hard work of growing my food. It has to do with letting myself be planted in this particular soil and seeing what will grow.

I was only looking for a nice red splash on my salad when I planted those first tomatoes, but tomatoes have been teaching me about living a life of faithfulness.

Summer Synchroblog Participants:

Christine Sine - Godspace
Stephen - Where there are gardens and bicycles
- with part 2 here

Summer Synchroblog: Tomato Theology

2008-07-25T20:00:00.000-07:00

It’s high summer, and if you don’t have tomatoes ripening in your own garden, please beg some from a neighbor or go buy some from a local farmer! We all know the difference between the real thing (ripe, juicy, bursting with flavor) and those plastic red things you find year round in the grocery store. Then, wipe the juice off your fingers, and write something about church, following Jesus, the mystery of the Trinity – you know, theology.

If you need some inspiration, check out Stephen’s post here, and my response here. And remember, it’s summer, so feel free to broaden the theme to any aspect of gardening/real food, etc.

Post your contribution on or about August 8, drop me a comment or email (riaslibrary AT hotmail DOT com) and I’ll put up a link to your post.

UPDATE:
Christine Sine (Godspace) has her post up already.

(Fresh) Tomato Church

2008-07-22T10:11:00.001-07:00

Today is pick-up day at our local CSA. I know from the "sneak peek" email that arrived last night that there will be tomatoes and zucchini and plums among the bounty. But it wasn't so long ago that my produce basket was full of chard and collard greens and beets – our mild climate means the CSA can run from mid-March into November, but nothing is going to make real tomatoes show up before July, even around here. There is a certain discipline that takes root when you decide to eat this way. A watermelon that shows up in the frig in April suddenly looks like a visitor from an alien world – who bought the contraband produce?

So my eye was caught by Stephen Cochenour's reflections on the season's produce:

I was very perplexed when I passed by a gas station that cart outside that had I sign boasting "FRESH TOMATOES $.25." It was early June. I didn't have time to stop and look but as I drove by I knew two things. 1) There is no way those tomatoes are fresh, and 2) people are being deceived by that sign. The next time I drove by that gas station I made sure I stopped. On the cart were small wicker baskets with five or six perfectly shaped, red fruits. I got back into my car pretty frustrated. I was right. The description of fresh was merely a cheap marketing ploy. How could I tell? The fruit. It was uniform in size, shape and color. These are telling marks of food that is grown in factory-like conditions where every aspect of the "production" of food is streamlined into whatever is most efficient. Food is developed for the look rather than the taste. Think about it, when you are standing at the grocery store in the produce section, you reach for the tomato with the reddest skin and the perfectly round shape. What's interesting about this is that we are buying produce like we are buying art-as something to look at (no offense to my wife or other artists who value art as more than 'something to look at). Isn't this odd? We buy our food in a way that says we enjoy looking at the food siting on our counter more than we enjoy the taste of it. For those grow produce, or those who strive to purchase it from small scale, organic farms the values are reversed. We seek out the produce that will have the right taste regardless of the shape or color. This isn't to say that we would deliberately grab a squash that has boring beetle hole all through it, but a scar on the outside doesn't scare us away.

A few weeks ago, as I drove by the same gas station with the produce cart I had a new thought, "It seems like people approach finding a church the same way they might approach that produce cart. Whether we (Westerners) want to be or not are fueled by consumerism. I believe that this is a part of who we are because of the culture that shapes us. The church is no different. Church culture has shape us to approach church as consumers.

A few post ago I wrote that "I want to be involved in a group of people who struggle their way through living out what Jesus taught. I want to be steeped in "deep church" that sinks into the core of my being." To me, looking for this type of church is like selecting produce because of its flavor and simply because of the bright color. I believe that when we find a church (the people) we should be able to see it's scars and bug bites.

I think someday I could write a whole systematic theology based on tomatoes (or maybe just a good spaghetti sauce). It's such a symbol of our culture that we prefer the tasteless, but perfectly formed chip found in the grocery store to the real thing grown in our own gardens or purchased from some local grower. Even if we don't prefer it, we settle. Somehow we've become convinced that we need to have "fresh" tomatoes on our salad in January, even though they don't taste like anything. Buying, preparing and eating food has become divorced from tasting, sharing and being nourished by food. If there is a better definition of being "lost" I can't think of it right now. Our God-given daily point of contact with the goodness of creation has been thoroughly severed. What's the point of praying for "our daily bread" when our food comes from a factory rather than out of the ground, subject to the vicissitudes of weather and season?

Stephen's connection of our formation as consumers of perfect-looking produce to our formation as consumers of the perfect-looking church resonated with me. Even when we change our definition of the ideal church – "deep church that sinks into the core of my being" hardly describes the average megachurch --we're stuck in that way of thinking. It's still all about me and whatever I feel is missing in my current experience of church. I have to admit, I'm still looking for those few like-minded people who want to strike out into deeper waters. And every so often I have a passing fancy to check out a liturgical church setting (check out this video of N.T. Wright on liturgy as "freedom from spontaneity"). But then I have to think, what's local, what's seasonal? Right now it is a little church that we've been connected to for more than a decade, though we've only attended regularly this past year. There is a given-ness about the people God puts in your life (and those subjected to having me around, as well) that is very like eating local. I may be sick to death of zucchini and yearning for asparagus, but what we've got right now is squash in abundance. I'd better make the best of it.

What do we do with our dreams of something deeper, something more connected to the community around us? There may be a place for growing your own experience of church, but if it's going to be healthy, it will be connected to the local soil from which it grows. Just taking yourself and your two best buddies off to start something new is hardly going to yield a rooted, organic church. All the same, there is work to be done. If you're going to convert your garden to organic, the first thing to work on is the compost pile. Somewhere in the middle of that mess is the place to unlearn the habits of consumerism, to lay down expectations and exalted visions of what I can accomplish. It may be in sticking it out in the little church that often bugs me I learn something about faithfulness and fruitfulness.

Thinking out loud

2008-07-12T19:52:00.000-07:00

I had an unusual moment of peace this afternoon, sitting by the lake across the street, contemplating our charred hillsides. Some things have been churning around in my head and heart, and for just a second, they started to settle into something promising order, possibly even direction. It's probably more than one post, but here's the first chunk:

I've been pondering (at some subconscious level while driving kids to swim lessons and the like) these excerpts from an interview with Eugene Peterson.

Many people assume that spirituality is about becoming emotionally intimate with God.

That’s a naive view of spirituality. What we’re talking about is the Christian life. It’s following Jesus. Spirituality is no different from what we’ve been doing for two thousand years just by going to church and receiving the sacraments, being baptized, learning to pray, and reading Scriptures rightly. It’s just ordinary stuff.

This promise of intimacy is both right and wrong. There is an intimacy with God, but it’s like any other intimacy; it’s part of the fabric of your life. In marriage you don’t feel intimate most of the time. Nor with a friend. Intimacy isn’t primarily a mystical emotion. It’s a way of life, a life of openness, honesty, a certain transparency.
Yet evangelicals rightly tell people they can have a “personal relationship with God.” That suggests a certain type of spiritual intimacy.

All these words get so screwed up in our society. If intimacy means being open and honest and authentic, so I don’t have veils, or I don’t have to be defensive or in denial of who I am, that’s wonderful. But in our culture, intimacy usually has sexual connotations, with some kind of completion. So I want intimacy because I want more out of life. Very seldom does it have the sense of sacrifice or giving or being vulnerable. Those are two different ways of being intimate. And in our American vocabulary intimacy usually has to do with getting something from the other. That just screws the whole thing up.

At one level, this reaffirms the conclusions I've been coming to for some time about the whole business of seeking after "experiences" of God. Yes, I want to be more grounded in the ordinary dimensions of spiritual life. At another level, I find myself resisting -- fighting tooth and nail.

One of my pet peeves with standard evangelical fare is a common illustration meant to assure people that their salvation is secure regardless of their emotional state at the moment. "Facts" are supposed to power the train; if you try to run it backwards derailment is inevitable.

There are so many things that bug me about this that it's hard to know where to start. The very people who tell you not to trust personal experiences also demand that you provide a testimony proving that you have indeed signed up for your fire insurance. And the assumption that emotions are fallen and fallible, but the intellect isn't -- well, there isn't a lot of common sense in that position, either.

Above all, I resent this illustration because it typifies the kind of thinking that kept me in a straightjacket for years. I tend to over-trust my intellect and under-appreciate my emotions, so telling me to ignore feelings made perfect sense in a dysfunctional sort of way. I had enough faith to fuel the engine of fact right into the ground, ignoring the very emotions that were telling me this approach to life was killing me. Only after I gave up driving the train by head alone did I experience life-giving love and grace. So I am loathe to reject the emotional side of spirituality altogether, much as I love and respect Peterson.

On careful rereading, though, that isn't what he's saying. He's saying that an emotional approach to spiritual intimacy that is all about me getting "more out of life" is what is naive and distorted. I have had some experiences of God's grace that I wouldn't trade for anything. There have been seasons of regular encounters with the Holy Spirit goosebumps. On the other hand, to make that the standard by which I judge my relationship with God does seem naive and self-absorbed. Does discipleship mean becoming someone who glories in their visions of the third heaven or someone who goes out and washes some feet? It took painful experiences of burnout in my 20s and 30s to convince me that God wanted to relate to me as a whole person -- mind, body and emotions. Should it surprise me that the process of being weaned away from spiritual experiences that were healing but still all about me would be any less painful?

The Big Read

2008-07-11T07:08:00.000-07:00

This comes from Sonja at Ravine of Light...

This is from something called “The Big Read” from the NEA. They came up with a list of their top 100 books, and they estimate that the average adult has only read 6 of these books. I will highlight the ones I’ve read. Cut and paste into your blog and let us know which you’ve read. Just for kicks … also mark the three you’d most like to read next. Mine are in italics. ~~And then maybe hop over to Amazon or take a trip to Barnes and Noble for some summer reading material.~~

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (note - 3 big fat books!)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (note 7 big fat books!)--3 or 4 of them
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks1
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (and it’s sequel)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (all 5 books in the series)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (read all of the Dune books …)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So, there big NEA people, I beat your system. Hah! Here’s my recommendation. Don’t go to B&N or Amazon … go to your local library. Get a library card. Borrow the book(s) from your library. Read them and return them. It’s reduce, reuse and recycle at it’s finest!!

Well, we knew Sonja was way more literate than the average American! I have to admit most of the books I highlighted were read more than a decade or two ago... I'm not a big fiction reader. But I did notice a few books I'd love to re-read -- just as soon as I get to the library!

Small world for not-so-small people

2008-07-08T06:52:00.001-07:00

I was sitting by a pool yesterday with a couple of friends, watching our kids splash around. Both had recently been to Disneyland, and one mentioned that the "It's a Small World" ride was closed. My other friend had an explanation (the Disney website only says "Closed for refurbishment"): Americans have gotten so fat that the boats were scraping bottom. Apparently the Imagineers of the 1950s did not imagine the obesity epidemic of our day.

We took the kids to see Wall-E this weekend (proving that it's hard to avoid Disney-branded entertainment of one sort or another). The image of overly round humans-of-the-future floating around in their personal transport devices popped into my head as we were talking about the Small World ride. Science fiction is really a commentary on the present state of reality, and the two things we learn about the human race from Wall-E is that we're fat and like to produce unending amounts of garbage. Hard to argue with those facts. Perhaps we could add a few other things, like complacent, numbed by entertainment and consumption, etc. Oh, and too dim to see the irony of the Disney corporation pointing out these tidbits to us as we sit in a darkened theater stuffing our faces with popcorn.

The whole world-overrun-with-garbage theme struck me first as I watched. Instead of running the cute Pixar short about a magician and his rabbit before the film, perhaps theaters should run The Story of Stuff. (It's about 20 minutes, but well worth it.) And of course, the food-in-a-cup lifestyle, where futuristic humans apparently have lost the will to chew, makes me want to run for some real, slow food.

LL posted an interesting reflection on a recent study about the fatigue that comes from too much task-focused attention.

The studies compare other types of relaxation like taking walks in urban areas, sitting quietly or listening to music to spending time in natural settings. The natural settings produce greater focus, more positive emotions and reduction of anger.

This result resonates with my own experience -- there's nothing like getting out into a natural setting for an hour or so to restore my sense of mental well being. It also resonates with another thought that's been rattling around my head since seeing the movie. There is something about our connection with earth that goes deep to the heart of what it means to be human. In some ways, the little robot Wall-E is far more human than the tubbos floating around their deep space cruise ship. The earth he lives on is degraded almost past recognition, but he lives with gravity connecting him to the ground, scooping up his little piles of garbage and valiantly trying to dispose of them, keeping an eye out for changes in the weather. It is well outside of his "directive" to recognize life, but he knows when he had found a special treasure in a little sprig of green.

I don't know whether this means humans never could or should live in space on a long-term basis, but we would need to retain some practices that connect us to earth (gardening, for instance) in order to stay human. Perhaps recovering those practices -- taking a walk in the woods, eating something fresh from the garden -- could keep us from ending up with the dystopian earth of Wall-E.

Fire Watch Update

2008-07-07T07:59:00.000-07:00

Monday morning, and the news the past day or two has been encouraging. The fire is contained on its southern border, which is where we sit. The weekend provided cooler weather, and onshore breezes, which seems to have improved our air quality a bit. They're hoping to get the upper hand on the rest of it before the temperatures go up midweek.

The girls and I tried to go to the YMCA to swim yesterday afternoon, but the power was out there, as it was at our house. So we ended up down at the waterfront, eating ice cream and visiting the Natural History Museum's Sea Center. As we drove home, we could see a handful of hotspots near the ridge and a big plume of smoke well to the west of us. It's hard to tell what the burned area above us looks like, with the smoke and haze in the air, but it's clear that most of the fuel directly above the populated areas has been consumed. We'll be looking at charred ground until next spring.

Thanks to those who prayed.

Fire Watch II

2008-07-03T21:56:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: It's midday Friday. Wind continues to blow upslope, which is good for us, not so good for the scattered communities in the mountains and the overall prospects of containing the fire. We're dealing with a lot of ash on everything and really bad air quality due to the smoke -- even when it seems to be blowing the other way, it's enough to make your lungs hurt after a short exposure. Thanks to everyone who's praying -- especially for the firefighters working up there, and many of our neighbors who are displaced.

The power is on again, so I'd thought I'd post a quick update... The fire continues to burn in the hills above our house. We're on the flat area, with almost a half-mile of houses between us and the main road that is the border of the evacuation warning area.

Well, the news just came on. The Gap Fire is the number one priority in California. There's some comfort in knowing all possible resources are being applied.

Meanwhile, the power was off most of last evening, and again tonight for a couple of hours. Something about sitting in candle light, listening to a transistor radio that makes the situation even more unnerving.

The landscape is eerie. It was twilight much of the day, and oddly cool when I went out late in the afternoon. The air quality is horrible, with ash falling like snow flakes throughout the day.

It's stressful, to say the least. Hubby and I celebrated our anniversary the other day -- over dinner we agreed that the past year has been the most stressful of our 22 years of marriage. I think this week might be right up there.

We survived the Northridge Earthquake, but I think there's something about watching a disaster creep towards us that’s even harder. Part of it is trying to maintain the semblance of normalcy for the girls. And frankly it’s weird to have people working on the house as we’re waiting to see what this fire will do.

Well, it's late, and I'm going to post this before the current goes out again. More later...

Fire Watch

2008-07-02T08:24:00.000-07:00

We noticed a puff of smoke on the hills behind us last night at sunset. Helicopters were picking up water from the lake across the street and dropping it. Kind of a restless night, and a smoky morning here.

UPDATE: It's late afternoon, and a big cloud of smoke overhead is turning the sunlight orange. Bits of ash are raining down, but so far the fire is staying up in the hills. That area hasn't burned for decades, so there's plenty of fuel, which means this won't be over any time soon. Pray the winds stay calm and humidity up.

Reality Check: The World's Women Need Our Help

2008-06-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

Christine Sine has written a powerful overview of the status of women around the world:

"The church’s challenge for the 20th century was the equality of women,” proclaimed the speaker at a conference I attended recently. “Now that this battle has been won, we need to move on to new issues facing the church in the 21st century.” I was stunned as I thought of my many women friends around the world who still struggle to find acceptance and feel valued within their society and their churches. This statement has revolved in my mind ever since. What have women gained in the last few decades, and as we look to the future what are they still seeking? Read the rest here...

Yes, we've had a credible woman presidential candidate, and I can honestly tell my daughters they can be or do anything they want to -- but there are so many millions of women who need those of us with voices to stand with them in their struggles to survive and make a future for themselves and their families.

Taken, Broken ...

2008-06-25T20:18:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite Henri Nouwen books is Life of the Beloved, which he structures as a meditation on communion -- the elements taken, blessed, broken and given. Nouwen points out how our lives are similarly taken, blessed, broken and given. The last time I read it, I was in the midst of post-partum blues, and I remember being encouraged by his admonition not to treat our blessings as curses. Perhaps it's time to pick it up again (assuming I can find it).

Nouwen came to mind after reading a wonderful meditation today on communion, from Glenn at Crooked Shore, who will soon be undergoing heart surgery:

this is my body broken
his body broken in the garden, where he sweated great drops of blood and wished that his fate could have been other. When he wished his father could take it all away and some alternative way to healing might be found.

this is my body broken
when complex machinery reveals the inevitable, and the gentle-faced doctor breaks the news. When the surgeon with the soft hands and the busy voice declared the incompetence and his intention to make it good.

He goes on to conclude:

This is a truth that the world hides, that salvation lies not in an intact body, but in one that is broken.

Today I need to be reminded that salvation doesn't lie in wholeness of any sort -- physical, emotional, spiritual -- but rather in our brokenness. Blessed are the poor, the poor in spirit. As much as I struggle to achieve wholeness, or more often, maintain the illusion of wholeness and competence, the ground just slips away under my feet. There is more than a little in me that resonates with Rhymes With Kerouac's post about spiritual angst at 3 a.m.:

There is no ritual to rescue me from the existential emptiness that yawns like a cavern in the middle of this night, no incantation, no prayer that will suffice. I am Jonah in the belly of the whale, Jeremiah weeping at the bottom of the well, Saul searching for a boy David to sing a lullaby. I am a valley of dry bones.

I told a friend recently that I have no idea where I'll wash ashore after this season of exile, but I'll have been weaned off a lot of church structures and the familiar territory of "Churchianity." That may be true, but it struck me today that what is being stripped away is far deeper than that. I'm being weaned away from familiar forms of spirituality, from certain experiences from which I drew assurance of God's presence, God's voice, God's love. I'm still pretty sure God was in (most of) those experiences, but every attempt to get back to that place is blocked. I find myself hemmed in, forced down a different path.

At some very basic level this feels like a setup: God, you made me the kind of person who meets you in quiet, contemplative settings, but you have me in a place where there is no quiet, no space, no mental peace in my life. I want to scream, It's not fair! I try harder to carve out a few hours here and there, and end up frustrated and depressed. I quit trying at all and wonder guiltily if I still belong to God if I can't remember the last time I prayed.

Under it all, a voice whispers -- let go, leave the past behind and discover the new thing that lays ahead. To choose that path I have to embrace the brokenness of this moment, the emptiness of what seems a dead end. Yesterdays certainties and answers; the person I was when those familiar practices fit me -- all of that I leave behind. In some ways, it's like facing something as drastic and potentially life-changing as heart surgery. There is really no other way, much as we might be led kicking and screaming into the operating room. Healing, if it is to be found at all, is on the other side, not in denial or avoidance or pretending that all is well.

What is missional?

2008-06-23T21:23:00.000-07:00

Call me a wannabe, but I can't resist putting my two cents in on Rick Meig's What is Missional? synchroblog. I haven't read all the posts (around 50!) but I have perused a few.

My vote for wrench-your-heart-out-with-the-truth award goes to Erika Haub at The Margins:

The consequence of the incarnation is the crucifixion.

A few months ago, my three-year old daughter was painting and as I walked by her easel I exclaimed happily: “Mercy, you painted a cross!” She stepped back from her paper in horror, and looked at me with confusion and even fear. For her, the cross is something terrifying; gruesome. And here I was praising her like she had painted a pretty rainbow or a happy butterfly. Mercy understands the scandal of Jesus’ death, and I hope that those of us seeking to imitate an incarnate God really understand that that means following a crucified One.

Dan argued that missional starts with friendship:

...friendship is where Jesus started with his missional focus and missional presence. ... In the end, missional churches will not make a long lasting impact if they don't understand friendship, deep friendship is at the heart of what it means to be missional.

I've resisted writing my own piece, not only because I don't have time or mental energy, but because I feel I'm still on the steep part of the learning curve. But Dan's comments struck me because the one thing I feel like I am learning -- sometimes by success and sometimes by failure -- is something about friendship.

Saturday was Doe's birthday party, and she had about 10 friends, along with most of their mothers, gathered at the park down the street (our house being a place you do not want a dozen 6-year-olds wandering around at the moment). One of my dearest friends and Doe's godmother, also came up from LA. It was almost unbearably hot all weekend, but for much of the afternoon, there was a little breeze and our spot under two big oak trees was about as comfortable a place as any. The kids glued and stickered little visors, ate pizza and cake, ran around, whacked a pinata, etc. (Pinatas are mandatory at birthday parties in the state of California; parents take a training class to avoid "Funniest Home Video" moments.) The grownups hung around and chatted. Most of Doe's friends were there; so were most of mine. They are women I've gotten to know through various kindergarten activities -- Daisys, Thursday afternoons at the school library, occasional play dates with our kids. Some are believers, some are not. I don't think I've had a conversation with any of them that focused on God or religion all year. We're just becoming friends.

At the end of the day, I had dinner with my friend from LA. She said the most amazing thing to me, something to the effect that my husband and I don't realize the pastoral role we have and the community that's forming around us. Huh? I'd been so focused on gift bags and organizing a party that I hadn't noticed what a great group of friends I'd become a part of. It's true, though I'm not sure I can take credit for it. I can be thankful, and expectant about what God might be doing in drawing us into friendships with people he loves.

Audrey

2008-06-17T20:50:00.000-07:00

Early this year, it was obvious to me that this was not the year for having any ambitions about gardening. We managed to stick a few tomatoes in pots by the first week of June, and my mother-in-law planted some beans along the fence, out of the way of the construction mess. We've splashed enough water around the backyard that a little bit of grass is filling in the general theme of dirt and mud. And we have a volunteer that's threating to take over ... I like to call her Audrey (as in "feed me, Seymour!").

We're scratching our heads about her origins -- early on I thought she was a random seed left over from a zucchini plant, but then she started putting out fruit that was too round for zucchini. They don't seem to like being in the sun, but these two are about six inches across, and growing day by day. Are they pumpkins? Watermelons? Aliens from outer space? Any clues would be gratefully received.

Decisions, Decisions

2008-06-16T20:50:00.000-07:00

Quick personal update: In case any of my three readers are wondering when I'll get around to writing something of substance, don't hold your breath! School is out for the summer, and we're grinding into the last few months (God willing!) of our remodel project. Hopefully my brain will be back in the fall sometime... meanwhile, you can enjoy cute kid stories as the inspiration strikes.

There must be an unwritten fourth law of thermodynamics (how many did Newton write?) that states that kids' party invitations come in bunches. So far this year the invitations have come at the same time, but the parties managed to be a few days apart. Until this week. Doe had a long-standing invite to a swim party at her Daisy group leader's house, and then a friend from church invited both girls to a birthday party -- on the same day.

I had thought it would work out fine to drop Ray at the birthday party and take Doe to the swim party, but I hadn't discussed it with them. So we were out the other day running errands, including picking up a present, when I mentioned to Doe that she had to chose one or the other.

"But I want to do both."

"They're at the same time, honey. You can't be in two places at once."

Doe's a smart kid; she tried to negotiate for splitting the time between the two events. I argued this would be rude to the kid whose birthday she left in the middle. Besides, I didn't want to spend the afternoon shuttling kids around town.

"But Ray will get more candy than me. It's not fair."

Yeah, life's not fair. The angst and whining continued as Ray chose a present and we drove home. Finally, it occurred to me that I've had 40 more years of deciding between various ways of spending a Saturday afternoon than she has, and maybe she needs a bit of help. So I grabbed a pad of paper and we started making two lists: good things about the pool party on one side; good things about the birthday party on the other. We came up with three items on each side, and it seemed like we weren't any closer to a decision. Then I asked her to decide between the things on each side: showing off your new tricks on the pool vs. getting candy, etc. At last, it became clear that swimming really would be more fun. From that moment on, Doe was completely excited about the pool party and never did express another regret about the path not taken.

Oh, to be almost six and faced with such simple choices between good fun and better fun!

Me, I have about sixteen swatches of paint color on the walls, along with various carpet, vinyl and tile samples floating around. Those are the kinds of decisions that rear up and demand to be settled -- especially when the painter is due to arrive in a couple of days. They are urgent, yet trivial, when all is said and done. Then there are the important decisions -- how to find some alone time for mental health (and possible spiritual refreshment) as the kids and adjust to our summer schedule. How to keep perspective in the midst of chaos while trusting that life will swing back to some semblance of normal once the remodel is finished (are remodels ever finished or will I have contractors swarming around the house for next twenty years?).

Maybe I should make a list or two: good things about losing your mind early on in the process; good things about trying to endure with grace and patience! Or can I just have a meltdown in the parking lot?

Favorite Book Meme...

2008-06-06T21:26:00.000-07:00

Sonja tagged me with a meme that's been going around -- tell us about your favorite book of the Bible.

I'd have to say Nehemiah. Yes, a rather strange choice -- the book you only hear sermons from when a church is about to launch a building campaign. But I had an experience with old Nehemiah a few years ago that was positively life-changing, based on a nudge from the Spirit to follow Nehemiah's example of identificational repentence (John Dawson's term, not mine -- I had no idea what I was doing at the time!). God used the process to remove a few logs from my eye as I prayed for our former church, its former (abusive) pastor, etc. I'd argue that the first chapter of Nehemiah presents a picture of Jesus as intercessor that is hard to match.

Through an extended season reading and praying through Nehemiah, I became fascinated with the way Nehemiah worked to restore the identity and mission of the people of God after the exile. Building walls was only the beginning; he called them back to observing the law, enforcing the Sabbath, etc. The walls and gates of the city came to symbolize for me the kind of healthy boundaries that could protect God's people from losing their characteristics of salt and light in the world. (And yes, there is that business of sending away all the foreign wives and their children -- not quite sure what to make of that one!)

It's been a while since I've read or thought about Nehemiah's story -- my own experience of "exile" doesn't seem to have an end in sight, let alone a clear path "home." But Nehemiah demonstrates that restoration at the end of exile isn't a simple matter of gathering people and material and heading home. There was a long process of struggling to reestablish Israel in the land that went on for generations. There was disappointment, opposition, and never the unambiguous victory that the people must have longed for. But the territory was reclaimed, a way of life ordered by God's word was reestablished. The stage was set for a Messiah who would completely redefine the place and purpose of God's people in the world, who would send his Spirit to scatter them to every corner of the earth while at the same time embedding the DNA of identity and mission into every heart and every gathering of believers.

Let's see... I'll tag Erin, Dan and Mak.

Angel Baby

2008-05-31T17:05:00.000-07:00

I came home from Bible study with my in-laws the other night to find Ray still awake and wanting to chat. First she had a big secret to tell me, that I wasn't to share with Daddy or Doe -- they stayed up really late. Yeah, no one else figured that out, including Mommy, who didn't have to wonder why 4-year-old was awake at 9:30.

We went through our usual extended night time routine, and just as I was making my escape, Ray sat up in bed to tell me, "There are some bad people called dodgers and the angels killed them."

Huh? Who?

"But some people at my school say, 'Go Dodgers!'" she continued.

Dodgers, Angels? Light bulb goes on in sleepy Mom's head. "They're just talking about a game called baseball." I try to explain that the fact that the Angels killed the Dodgers doesn't really make them dead. And they weren't (that) bad to begin with.

A few minutes later, Hubby is eager to tell me about the great conversation he had with the girls about angels and demons. Yeah, OK. "It was all prompted by Ray's questions," he insists. Yes, of course, after you prayed for their bad dreams the other night and mentioned "the Enemy." You didn't think that was getting past them, did you?

Now, I'm not too sure I can recall anything from seminary about the theology of Angels and Dodgers. I'm a Boston girl originally, and Red Sox vs. Yankees perfectly frames the reality of cosmic struggle, a liturgical cycle played out year after year, complete with curse and redemption, promise and postponement, and always a longing for the final consummation of October. But leave it to my little Ms. Imagination to morph Daddy's words about spiritual warfare into some half-understood playground conversation.

After all, an angel is and Angel, isn't it?

Puppy Wuv

2008-05-19T21:06:00.000-07:00

I've been following a bit of discussion lately about modesty and other such issues faced by parents of teens (especially girls)... it all seemed rather academic to me for another decade, until I went to pick up Ray at preschool the other day. It was snack time and the kids were sitting along a low brick wall waiting to be called up by the teacher to get their snack. As usual, she was wearing a dress, some hand-me-down dressy shoes and a string of red and green plastic beads. All quite the little lady, sitting with one leg crossed over the other.

"Hi Mommy! Can I have a sleepover at Caleb's house?"

"Um, gee, I guess I'd have to talk that over with Caleb's mother." A sleepover -- she's not even five. It seems like a big deal when they have a sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa's apartment.

The director of the preschool shoots me a look and adds, sotto voce,"We've been getting very friendly with Caleb lately."

First I've heard of it, but then Moms are the last to know. I gather up her backpack while the kids are finishing their snack. The request for a sleepover somehow shifts to a play date, much to my relief.

The kicker came as we're walking out of the school. Ray, the bold extrovert of the family who will walk right up to anyone, mumbles something with her head down, cocked demurely to one side. I have to lean in to hear her: "Caleb says I'm his lovey." His what?

No doubt about it, Ray is going to be a heart-breaker. She cute and charming and has miles of personality. But for right now she's my lovey, and any snot-nosed five-year-old who thinks otherwise better think again!

OK. I feel better now. Back under the rock for another few years.

It's the economy, stupid

2008-05-05T12:39:00.000-07:00

Grace linked to a couple of economics-related posts yesterday, and before I knew it, I had a rant bubbling up in me.

First, Randy claims that the current economic slowdown (recession if you prefer) is a good thing, because it will force those of us who have overindulged in the days of easy consumer credit to buckled down and pay up.

During the bubble, many people bought stuff they could not really afford. They bought houses far out of their means to pay for, and cars and televisions and computers and Wiis and boats and vacations and clothes and toys. They had to borrow heavily — too heavily — to do it.
The bubble was caused mostly by envy. The have nots want what the haves have. Who can blame them? But when the covetousness is fueled by consumerism and becomes powerful enough and is enabled by easy credit, acquisition takes the place of dreaming of acquisition.

So far, so good. But then Randy goes on to explain why the real problem is that the government is going to have to bail out some or all of the foolish people who got into this situation, and that will keep the economy from self-correcting. I'm glad that Randy has been a wise steward, and doesn't face the $9,000 in credit card debt that the average American carries; but in my humble opinion, he misses the whole point, which Mike Todd gets a lot closer to, commenting on the latest reports on consumer spending:

Trust me, I understand economics... as much as any of us actually understand economics, that is. This kind of information is not new to me; it used to be my daily bread. But these days I'm learning to see differently, and what I see here is yet another example of how this consumer-driven culture keeps us in its clutches, and resists any attempt to think differently - to think "kingdomly", as it were.

A number of years ago, I was in a preaching class and was assigned a text from Jeremiah 2 -- essentially, a rant against idolatry -- where the prophet says to Israel, you've exchanged the source of living water for cracked cisterns. What I remember about preparing that sermon (and the comments that I received from the class and instructors) was struggling to find an example of idolatry that wasn't a cliche -- addiction to some substance, being a workaholic, etc. It's a pretty sad day when a dozen seminary students and two professors know that they're batting around cliches, but can't see the primary idol that the god of this age has set up in the midst of our culture. Because I don't think it occurred to any of us that what that text really had to say to us was about the economy, stupid.

The economy is the idol we all worship. We listen to news of its ups and downs like we'd wait for vital signs from a family member in the ICU. The economy is healthy if it's growing, so we all do our part of acquiring more stuff in order to make it grow. The President tells us it's our patriotic duty to go to the mall. We don't wonder if it's a good thing that there are so many oversized SUV's in the church parking lot. Stewardship is what you do with 10 percent of your income, and perhaps avoiding getting into too much debt. The one thing we are not allowed to question is the gospel of economic growth -- a rising tide lifts all boats, we're told; wealth will trickle down to everyone. We are not allowed to wonder if we really need the bigger and better, new and improved whatever it is. We are not allowed to ask whether always wanting something else is good for our souls, let alone for our overworked, over-stressed bodies.

I am no economist (despite the fact that econ was the most popular major when I was in college, I refused to take a single course), but I'm here to say it's all a lie. The planet we live on cannot possibly sustain even the population of the United States living an ever-expanding consumption-based lifestyle, let alone all the billions of the rest of the world who are trying desperately to catch up to us. The price of gas should be enough to convince us that this is true.

What I see in the current economic crisis is opportunity. Opportunity to ask those questions. Do I need to make more and more money in order to get more and more stuff that I will have to store, maintain and eventually dispose of when the new and improved model comes along? Is it good for our communities to have most parents making long commutes to a job, while kids spend long hours in day care or after-school care or worse yet, simply unsupervised? Is it good for our families to move every few years in pursuit of the better job, house, neighborhood? Is bigger better?

And what would an alternative look like? What would it look like to know where our food comes from and to know the people who grow it? What would it look like to spend our money in ways that enriches the local economy instead of huge multinational corporations? What would it look like to slow down and spend time together as a family? What would it look like to be free from the mandate of the bigger, better, newer, faster whatever-it-is?

You know an idea has gone mainstream when ...

2008-05-02T06:40:00.000-07:00

... it shows up on a crime drama. Check this out clip from Law and Order -- Robin Williams didn't do the crime at a fast food joint because he's a locavore! (via Eat Local Challenge -- You have to click through to see the clip).

Meanwhile, our venture into getting rooted locally is paying off in unexpected ways. When we went to pick up our CSA share on Tuesday, the kids and I found out that baby goats had been born. An hour before, as it turns out.

You can even see the "spark plug," as the girls called it.

Birds make it better

2008-04-24T20:29:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned lately that we're living in the midst of a major construction project at our house? There are days, rarely, when things are relatively peaceful, and there are one or two people hammering on some other part of the house. Then there are the days when someone decides it's time to break up a slab and go on an archeological trek for some bit of plumbing. Those are the days I pack up my computer and find somewhere quiet to hide out.

Today was one of those days. The girls and I came home just before five to find that hubby had endured a full day of trying to work through jack hammers and various contractors asking questions. I started pulling things out of the fridge for dinner. Our CSA share this week had mustard greens (a bit tangy for the kids' taste) and shell peas, so I got to work, figuring I'd pull some frozen fish out of the garage freezer at the last minute. Unfortunately, when I got there, the freezer was lukewarm. Apparently one of the guys cutting concrete for our new laundry room sink drain had unplugged it a day or two ago. Which reminds me -- I've still got to go out there and toss a bunch of defrosted items. Somehow dinner got finished (when all else fails, there's pasta).

We were just finishing dinner at about 6:30 when I started noticing the activity out in the backyard. The loquat tree is loaded with fruit, and the birds in the neighborhood have put out the word. "Let's go outside and look at the birds after everyone is finished," I announced. Doe ran for her kiddie binoculars. I had to dig mine out of the chaos in our bedroom, which is part of the work-in-progress at the moment.

I stood with the girls on the patio pointing out western tanagers and helping Ray find them with my binoculars safely leashed around both our necks. "Can I borrow those for a minute?" I asked -- hoping to clear up the mystery of whether the bird I saw last week was a spotted towhee or black-headed grosbeak. Definitely a grosbeak, female this time. The birds were colorful -- bright yellow and orange on the tanager and rusty for the grosbeak -- but spotting them among yellow-orange fruit and the occasional yellow leaf was challenging for the junior birders. They did well, though.

"I see it," cried Ray. "What a beautiful sight!" She has a flair for the dramatic -- when she saw the birthday cake Grandma bought for the oldest grandkid's 30th birthday, she blurted, "How romantic!" Where on earth did you hear that, I thought? Oh yeah, that would be the Barbie movies they've been watching.

After a few minutes, Doe decided it was time to serve us all dessert, so she went over to pick some fruit. She didn't discourage the birds much; it's a tall tree, and there's plenty of fruit well out of reach of a kindergartner. Somewhere in the process of picking loquats for us and the neighbors and Doe's teacher, we discovered a bird on the ground. She was alive, but not moving, at least until I tried to pick her up to give her a better place to rest. She flew a few feet to the patio, and we decided to leave her be.

It's so interesting to see the kids' compassionate instincts come out in different ways. Doe was pleading with me to help her -- this is the kid who startled me with a snail when I went to unbuckle her seat belt, and threw a fit when I told her to go put it on the grass (in the neighbor's yard, we don't have any right now). Much as I would have liked to help, I really didn't see how I could. Trying to pick her up only frightened her and likely there wasn't much we could do for her in any case. Ray went over near her spot on the patio and sang her a lullaby. "I stopped in the middle of the lullaby and told her I love you," she whispered to me later.

I guess we'll see in the morning whether Mrs. Tanager makes it or not. I suppose part of living closer to the beautiful creatures is seeing them in sickness and vulnerability as well as their glorious spring-time life. All I can say is that after a day of feeling a bit harassed and put upon, the birds made it all better.

Earth Day

2008-04-22T20:34:00.000-07:00

I ran across two posts about Earth Day that caught my eye. I have to say, Earth Day is one of those things that sneaks up on me, and while it would be nice to do something special in observance, I tend to forget.

Crooked Shore has been blogging through Genesis, and had this today on the Ark:

But what is often missed, in this picture of exclusion, is that Noah and his family are shut in with the animals. In a sense the people are shut in with and for the created order. There is no salvation other than with the rest of creation.

In these days of global environmental crisis this story has much to teach us. We have a responsibility as stewards of God’s good creation and we will live and die with it. The salvation God has worked in Christ is not some exclusive thing for ‘whosoever will’; there is a cosmic dimension to what God has done. I believe Paul knows this in Romans 8:22ff when he says that the whole created order groans as in the pains of childbirth, as we ourselves do also, as we wait for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

So we need to remember that when the scriptures record that,

Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark
gen 7:23

The ‘those’ referred to also includes a whole zoo of animals.

Mak brought it down to everyday reality with this reflection on her daughter's approach to Earth Day:

Her view as a 6 year old is what I wish Earth Day would be about. We are people, we can and should respect all life, all creation. As people we have the ability to fix our mistakes, to clean up what we have messed up, to care for what we have neglected and to restore what we have abused. It’s obvious to her that it’s not a big thing to sacrifice some of our own desires, time, stuff for the benefit of our fellow created beings.
She has been singing made up songs about how beautiful the earth is, how the wind blows and how we are cared for by the Earth. To her, it’s oh so very simple.

My own almost-6-year-old woke up this morning insisting that I turn off the night light in her room and asking if she could use the bathroom and not flush, in order to conserve water. "It all depends, honey..." was my response. Yes, it is simple, isn't it?

Breathe in, breathe out

2008-04-13T19:15:00.000-07:00

We're a couple of months into our major remodel project, and so far I haven't lost my mind, though it feels like I've come close a few times. Nevertheless, it has been hard to do any kind of coherent thinking or writing lately. Yes, my blog suffers, but only a handful of people are likely to notice that. More importantly (to me at least), I suffer -- as an introvert who needs a substantial dose of quiet on a regular basis to maintain some kind of inner balance, it's been a challenge, to say the least. At the same time, I've felt more and more restless with my chosen state of disengagement from the church we've been attending and resulting lack of fellowship there. So I've been feeling a bit torn between the need to go sit quietly by myself and the desire to have a long heart-to-heart with a friend.

A couple of quotes I ran across in my blog reading this weekend have been percolating through my head as I've wrestled with this question and tried to figure out what to do about it. First, Dan quoted this from Person, Grace, and God by Philip Rolnick, a very profound reflection on the nature of friendship as a gift of ourselves to another.

Friendship is never simply a matter of who. The what (what is said, what is done, what is shared) is highly relevant to the realization of relationship because it can foster the mutual realization of the true, good, and beautiful, the correlate of persons. The what makes the who more robust. Maritain could rightly exhort us to 'feed upon the transcendentals because they are the stuff, the essence, of the gift. Those nourished upon these transcendentals, and on this side of God this nourishment is always a question of degree, are thus prepared to give and receive friendship. Friendship, the gift sustained as relationship, is possible because persons are capable of ever greater participation in the true, good, and beautiful....The very dynamism of human life is established because we are in relation with God who is infinite truth, goodness, and beauty. We can never incorporate enough of these transcendentals, not can we exhaust their potential. The very purpose of humanity is thus caught up in the quest for more than. Greater depth of friendship (philia) becomes possible as friends progress in the good, and this happy phenomenon is another indication that person is the correlate of the true, good, and beautiful...Friendships that do not remain dynamic tend to wither. The friendship must go forward in pursuit of more truth, beauty, and goodness so that ever greater gifts of self can be given and received. Personal participation in the transcendentals keeps friendship fresh.

I love the phrase "nourished upon the transcendentals" -- so much more poetic than the pop-psychological "self-care" and its cognates. There is no gift in friendship if we don't have those transcendentals pouring in and through us. It reminds me of the importance of being nourished in the true, good and beautiful, in short, in the presence of God and the glory of what God has made.

The second comes via Paul at Prodigal Kiwis, from Cynthia Bourgeault's Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening:

…Thomas Keating[OCSO] advises people over and over again not to look for the fruits of this prayer [Centering Prayer] in their subjective experience of it. Centering Prayer is not about accessing sublime states of consciousness or having mystical experiences [or emptying ourselves SO we can get a message from God]. The fruits of this prayer are first seen in daily life. They express themselves in your ability to be more present in your life, more flexible and forgiving with those you live and work with, more honest and comfortable in your own being. These are real signs that the inner depths [of your life] have been touched and have begun to set in motion their transformative work...

Which is a good reminder that nurturing the transcendentals is a bit like growing potatoes or carrots. You don't want to keep yanking them out of the ground in order to figure out whether they're growing or not. Just leave them there till its the season to harvest, and then you'll have to see what you get in the proper time.

I spent some time nourishing myself on the transcendentals this morning sitting by the lake across the street. The winter rains have raised the water levels, and the perfect blue sky was reflected in a deep, clear blue. From where I was sitting, I could look across the lake, past trees and low hills covered with lemon and avocado groves to grassy foothills and the coastal mountains. Around the lake, poplars and willows were sporting new leaves, that bright yellowy green that carries in its hue all the longings of spring. A Coopers hawk rode the thermals behind me, screeching its springtime song. Sparrows dove for lake's surface, while a chorus of "da-doing, da-doing" rose from the red winged blackbirds in the reeds. There was a moment of peace, even joy, resting in the goodness of creation. And even a hint of enthusiasm for finding a friend to share some of that grace with.

Cindy hits a home run!

2008-04-08T19:55:00.001-07:00

My friend Cindy got a big, fat pitch right across the plate when a leader at her church asked her what she thought about the future of the church ... and she hit it right out of the ball park. (Hey, it's April, and the Red Sox won their home opener today, what can I say?):

I think the church-centered christian life (as opposed to a Christ centered christian life) that american protestantism has created in the last few generations is what is killing the church in america. and the new generations see it for what it is- empty activity that does little besides sustain itself for more empty activity. not that nothing good happens in local churches; far from it. but the abiding culture of complacency we've allowed to take over so overshadows the true mission of God's people that we risk losing it all.

we need corporate worship, we need corporate teaching, we need fellowship. But, we also need to get the heck out of the church building and live lives that show we care about somebody in addition to the people we worship with. we must address this corporate addiction to church that we ourselves have created. call it a church intervention, maybe. and if we succeed, the withdrawals will be ugly, angry, and very messy. If we don't succeed, thousands of local churches just like ours will be gone in 20 years or less. I'm not even sure if that isn't what should happen.

I've seen some pretty erudite attempts to define terms like "missional" and "emergent," but I think Cindy's few words capture the heartbeat behind all the theorizing.

If you needed another reason to buy local/organic ...

2008-03-31T18:42:00.000-07:00

This just in (HT: Cindy): Did your shopping list kill a songbird?

Migratory birds, modern-day canaries in the coal mine, reveal an environmental problem hidden to consumers. Testing by the United States Food and Drug Administration shows that fruits and vegetables imported from Latin America are three times as likely to violate Environmental Protection Agency standards for pesticide residues as the same foods grown in the United States. Some but not all pesticide residues can be removed by washing or peeling produce, but tests by the Centers for Disease Control show that most Americans carry traces of pesticides in their blood. American consumers can discourage this poisoning by avoiding foods that are bad for the environment, bad for farmers in Latin America and, in the worst cases, bad for their own families.

I spent five minutes the other day in Trader Joe's sorting the organic apples with "produce of Chile" labels from the ones with "produce of California" ones... and still had an import in my bag when I got home! It's not necessarily easy, but the reasons stack up ... Do I want that big a carbon footprint on the apple in my kid's lunch? Or to see another species of bird go extinct?

Later, Doe asked if we could buy peaches. "No, honey, those peaches come from Chile. Do you have any idea how far away Chile is? They were picked green, will never get ripe and won't actually taste like a peach. You can wait till July and have the real thing." I give that speech nearly every trip to the market ... nice and loud. Call it my community service to my fellow shoppers.

On a happier note, our local CSA just started a few weeks ago. I'm having a bit of trouble keeping up with the intake of fresh veggies -- between the disruptions of construction and hubby being out of town for a week. But it's all yummy, safe, healthy and very local -- and I'm getting an education in new ingredients! I've been reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and I'm trying to figure out if I can get some semblance of a garden in this year with all the construction going on. Probably not ... but perhaps a few tomato plants in containers.

Mars and Venus ARE just planets, aren't they?

2008-03-30T13:31:00.000-07:00

I've noticed a burst of blogging about gender equality lately -- primarily a series (which I haven't had time to read in detail) defending egalitarianism vs. complementarianism at Christian Feminism. My gut reaction at this point is that I'm bored with the whole conversation. It's one of those issues which, as far as I can tell, generates very little interest except within the church. In our society at large, the question (as a matter of principle, not necessarily as it works out in reality) of whether women are of equal worth and should have equal opportunity has pretty well been answered by now.

Then today, I came across this post from Jenny Baker (HT Grace), in which she reviews The Myth of Mars and Venus by Deborah Cameron. (There's also reference to a very good article by Jenny on the supposed feminization of the church, which is worth a read.) The book apparently unmasks a number of myths about male and female communication popularized by John Gray, and then taken up by Christian writers such as John and Stasi Eldridge. Most of these myths have little or no scientific evidence to back them up, but they persist nonetheless because we tend to see what we expect to see -- chatty women; stoic, gadget-obsessed men. Jenny concludes her review:

One of the things that concerns me in this whole debate is that Christian writers, such as John and Stasi Eldredge and those writing about the feminisation of the church, have latched onto these communication myths with little critical analysis and use them to uphold equally pernicious, but now Christianised, myths about men and women that maintain the competitive and divisive status quo and ignore the real issue of power. There’s a need for deep thinking, solid research and informed critique that recognises what we have in common, celebrates our diversity and honours the image of God in women and men.

This issue struck a nerve today because of a conversation I had the other day with my business partner, a man who is about to plunge into matrimonial waters quite late in life. His fiancee desires to feather the nest (a condo my friend has owned for over 20 years) in her particular style, and since we're in the midst of a remodel ourselves, he asked me how hubby and I decide about things like paint and carpet colors. At the moment, such decisions seem a very long way off, and I don't think either of us have given them one bit of attention. But I gamely offered that hubby doesn't seem to care much; so far the decisions along those lines that have had to be made (exterior stucco and roof colors) have been left to me and my mother-in-law. I pointed out that while I have never invested much of my sense of well-being in home decor, it is obviously an important issue to the woman he's about to marry.

That's when he came back with something along the lines of, "Well, we know you aren't a typical woman because you're a programmer and are analytical and logical and not simply ruled by emotions. Not that you aren't a real woman, just not a typical women-are-from-Venus one."

If I had been in the mood to be prickly about it, I could have pointed out the rather backhanded nature of that complement, but I let it pass. Instead, I reminded my friend that there are no hard-and-fast rules in marriage, no stone tablet that says she should cook dinner and you wash dishes. If the color of your walls and carpets are important to her feeling happy and at home in the place, maybe you should pay attention to that. Not because women always get to decide such things, or because they are by nature more emotional, but because you love this particular woman and she cares about it.

But the comment lingers like a pebble in my shoe, just irritating enough. I tried reading the Eldrige's Captivating after an acquaintance raved about it. I couldn't get past the notion that every woman wants to be a princess in some man's heroic fairy tale adventure -- well, that's a bit of a crass summary, but it's what lingers in my memory. I also got the impression that although both John and Stasi have their names on the cover, John was doing most of the talking (and I thought women were the verbal ones). Needless to say, I was pretty much annoyed to the throwing the book across the room level.

In truth, there's a part of me that wonders if my friend's words contain an underlying truth -- if I use the left side of my brain, I'm not a real woman. Well that's a bit of a crass summary, too, but you get the point. It's always been hard for me to articulate emotions; I don't cry on a dime. On the other hand, if you asked me to describe my approach to programming, I'd say it's very intuitive and holistic. I don't generally sit down and break down the pieces logically (just ask my husband, who started out working in software QA and shakes his head at my hacker ways) -- I get a picture of how the problem can be solved and sketch out the overall flow.

The point is, I am a woman who like every other woman on the planet exhibits complexities in real life that defy all stereotypes. I agree with Jenny Baker that the Eldridge's and company perpetuate myths about men and women that are pernicious because they perpetuate the exclusion of half the church from exercising leadership. I think they are pernicious, too, at the level of simple human relationships, because they blind us to the person in front of us because we're so busy fitting them into the stereotype of how males or females are supposed to operate. My friend was so busy casting about for a rule to guide his negotiations with his fiancee that he couldn't see the flesh and blood woman in front of him or hear her tell him, "This is important to me."

Follow the dancing feet

2008-03-24T20:44:00.000-07:00

The almost-familiar sounds of an Israeli folk tune filled the room as we walked in, kicked off our shoes and attempted to pick up the dance in progress -- it was a worship dance workshop a friend had invited me to. My eyes were focused at ground level, trying to catch the steps. As I struggled to regain long-lost muscle memory of yemenis and grapevines, I was transported a dozen years back to Sunday nights Israeli folk dancing at Cal-Tech with a former roommate. Before I knew it, I had locked on to one pair of feet lightly and confidently stepping through the dance. Wait, I thought, there's something familiar about those feet. Sure enough, I raised my eyes to see Nancy. I tapped her shoulder, and after exchanging quick greetings and what-are-you-doing-here's, I continued to follow Nancy's feet the rest of the evening.

That picture came back to me yesterday in church, as I sobbed my way through "It is well with my soul." The last time I sang that song was a couple of years ago at Nancy's memorial service. We sang it that day knowing that Nancy had stood in that sanctuary a few weeks earlier and declared that it was indeed well with her soul, despite the fact that she was about to lose her battle with ovarian cancer.

Yesterday, I found myself longing for that kind of faith and peace, for someone whose feet I could follow long enough to pick up forgotten steps of the dance. It was hard to celebrate Easter having let Lent slip by pretty much unnoticed. It was harder knowing that the season of disconnect from everything that roots me spiritually and emotionally was only deepening under the assault of hammers and saws as construction continues on all sides. Can I surrender my need for solitude and silence, my desire to meet God in quiet and rest? Can I trust that God is still there amid the noise and confusion, the constant shuffling of stuff in and out of rooms, the piles of dust and debris? I find myself resisting the very idea -- like letting go of a life raft in wild seas. It feels like dying to release the part of myself I most value, not sure whether it will find new life on the other side of this trial.

Following someone's feet seems an apt metaphor for discipleship. Watching and doing are closely intertwined. It was easy to follow Nancy's feet that evening, trusting the quiet confidence of long years of practice. Much as I appreciate the words of fellow bloggers and other friends, there is something about watching and following the embodied faith of brothers and sisters that I most long for in this moment -- a pair of feet to focus on as I try to learn some new steps in the dance of faith.

Nature: Pastoral or Wild Kingdom?

2008-03-06T22:14:00.000-08:00

Warning: this post is not for the squeamish...

The other day, I grabbed a few minutes to go check out my newly discovered place -- a giant live oak tree in the open space across the street. It's a bit off the beaten path, though two different people walked by in the few minutes I was sitting there, something I discovered by accident a few weeks ago and have wanted to return to. The main trunk of the tree must be six or eight feet across, and then there are branches wider than telephone poles that arc out from about 10 feet up, reaching back toward the ground 20 or 30 feet away from the trunk. Part of the tree does grow up, but there is a great space, and lots of convenient places to sit in those low branches.

I sat there for a while the other day, watching the sunlight filter through pale spring leaves outside the perimeter, listening to the calls of red-winged blackbirds from the pond nearby. It was a great, green cathedral -- one that offered the sensory overload of multiple stories told in stained glass and statuary. There wasn't a straight line anywhere on that tree; everything was gnarled and twisted, every branch had a story to tell, yet it was all strangely quiet and peaceful.

It's a tree that people can't help but comment on. One walker told me he calls it the "Winnie-the-Pooh" tree. An older man came by a few minutes later, reached overhead to touch an overhanging branch, "Give me energy, Mother Tree." We chatted for a minute about how old the tree must be. I figure the Chumash were gathering its acorns long before Fr. Serra showed up on the scene.

I don't know what kind of an invitation is offered by this unconventional retreat space. I found myself wordless, prayerless even, but happy to be there.

Then it was time to go home, get back to work. I was walking along a main path way when I was startled at the sight of a great blue heron stalking something so intently that my rather noisy approach didn't phase it at all. Waiting to see what it was after, I snuck around behind it. Soon enough its head darted down into the grass, and it came up with a gopher in its beak -- quite a large gopher from where I stood. The heron wasted no time, taking it down to a puddle of standing water just below where it made the catch, and started dunking its unfortunate prey. I was still having a hard time believing the bird would be able to swallow its catch, but after some patient effort at drowning it and wetting all the fur down, the rodent went down in one big gulp.

I have no idea what the moral of this story is. I walked home feeling that blend of fascination and revulsion that makes us look at car wrecks on the other side of the freeway. Most birds make their living at the expense of other creatures; come to think of it, a fair amount of animal flesh passes my lips in a given day or week. Mine comes packaged at the grocery store and cooked into something less reminiscent of the creature it once was. It's a dog-eat-dog, heron-eat-gopher, human-eat-chicken world out there, and no one complains about being higher up the food chain rather than lower. It was a bit of a shock for my pastoral reflections to be brought up short by the grisly realities of predation, and at the same time there was something oddly intimate about watching the scene unfold at a distance I really didn't need binoculars to see. The heron surely didn't give a rip whether I was standing there or not -- it was seeing to breakfast, thank you very much.

I'm tempted to ask all sorts of theological questions about lions and lambs and what redemption might really mean for predators and prey, but what strikes me is the simple givenness of the created world around us: the heron eats a gopher -- if you're squeamish, look away. The natural world doesn't consist of the neat stories (often staged, apparently) you see on TV documentaries. It doesn't exist for our entertainment or edification, much as we might seek to find some meaning there. Certainly the created world declares the glories of God; sometimes it reminds us simply that God is -- not confined to our conceptual boxes, not existing for the sake of our needs or wants -- God just is. Sometimes I have to be brought up short to remember the God I worship is that God, not the one I can come to on my own terms.

Lessons from Geese

2008-03-04T08:21:00.001-08:00

Thinking about mission in suburbia

2008-03-02T12:15:00.000-08:00

A couple of the posts mentioned in Grace's weekly roundup, "Sunday Revival" struck me this morning. First, Jonathan at Missio Dei wrote about the spiritual poverty of the suburbs, and the possibilities of being missional in that context.

And this brings me to my real point. It’s actually quite easy to go down and serve the homeless or at a soup kitchen. We can arrive with our lattes and leave when we want to. We’re in control and can look like a hero. But loving our neighbor next door, when every time he looks at us with an angry stare, is another matter. Our neighbor isn’t likely to leave tomorrow, meaning we have to love over a long period of time. Our flaws are likely to show and then we’re no longer the hero. We’re simply human called to love. And the question isn’t which is better. The question is, where God is calling us to? And what if God is calling us right back to the space we find ourselves in? What if God is calling us to address the poor right next door?

Scott offered a challenge to the idea of churches reaching out to their communities, contending that most of the time we don't succeed in getting out the door of our own subculture to really connect with people around us.

The solution, it seemed at the time, was for the church to finally come to grips with the brutal and almost ugly reality of incarnational living. Jesus Christ was far less mainstream and far more controversial than Christians are willing to be. His lifestyle was well beyond the acceptable range for behaviour in your average Baptist or Free Methodist Church. He was accused, apparently in light of some supposed evidence, of living flagrantly and with moral license.

The question may be, what would ‘touching your community’ look like without an agenda, without intended results? What if we left our comfortable pews behind permanently and asked to be let back on the playing field?

So what would it look like to get back on the playing field, in the suburbs, in the midst of the messiness of people's lives? Honestly, I have no idea. Could it be as simple as getting to know the neighbors, looking for opportunities to build relationships? Could it be a simple as being who we are, warts and all, with the families we meet through school?

I'll admit that I'm frustrated with the amount of time it takes to build real relationships out here in the real world (and even with my suspicion that it takes even longer to build real relationships inside the church). But then I remind myself that we're here for the duration, and we're going to be involved in the elementary school down the street for the next seven years. In the meanwhile, I'm looking for ways to serve. I recently was introduced to a group that is working to introduce fresh, local-grown food into the school lunch program in the hopes of teaching children to make good eating choices and head off the epidemic of juvenile obesity, diabetes, etc. There are planter boxes full of weeds scattered around the campus of Doe's (and soon Ray's) -- do I have the energy to try to revive the school garden program there? I have no idea. The basics of daily life seem to be more than I can handle some days. But I believe one of the levels of spiritual poverty in the suburbs is the lack of purpose beyond accumulating stuff; the idea of getting kids and parents together to create something that enhances health, environment and community appeals to me at so many levels I probably won't be able to say no to the idea.

Twilight Zone ... or Lunar Eclipse?

2008-02-21T08:45:00.001-08:00

Rain is one of those things you want to see in the winter in California, despite promises made to visiting relatives escaping Eastern cold -- otherwise you'll be hearing about water rationing by spring time. We've been fortunate this year, with plenty of rain so far, and a nice 15-day window of clear skies to get the foundation for our addition poured. Last night we even got a break in the clouds to peek at the lunar eclipse. We stood out on the slab and put the girls up on a step stool so they could glimpse the rising moon shrinking before our very eyes. Doe was her usual excited scientist self -- squinting through my birding binoculars -- "I can see the craters! I can't wait for the next eclipse!"

We didn't watch the entire disappearing act, though; hubby had talked me into visiting a group from church he'd been talking about for some time. "It's not so much a Bible study, they worship and wait to see what the Lord is doing." "Um... OK," I agreed.

Grace wrote about a Twilight Zone experience that happened recently in her living room. Some old friends came and prayed for something so out of line with where Grace and her husband are heading that it was surreal. It was surreal to read about it, and I only know Grace from her blog!

Somehow that picture came to my head over and over last night. It wasn't my living room, and it wasn't that anyone said anything particularly unexpected. If anything it was a rather predictable experience for that sort of group. What was strange was that I hadn't been in such an environment for I don't know how long, and it felt a bit like landing in the middle of a prayer meeting on the moon -- only the moon wasn't there anymore. For one thing, I knew our host (the pastor) and recognized two or three others, but at least half of the people there I don't remember ever seeing before. There were a few cursory introductions when we walked in, but no real attempt to introduce us to everyone. Hubby admitted on the way home that he knew even fewer of the people there than I did.

There was a kind of break towards the end when people started to talk to each other. The pastor made a point of asking us how the kids were doing, and something about the construction. Hubby started describing the general disarray -- the front yard is dirt covered with plastic right now after replacing the sewer line, and there's a port-a-potty in the driveway. That was the moment I felt most comfortable the whole evening -- as we joked about the advantages of that particular home accessory. The moment passed, and the group moved on to praying for someone on one side of the room and singing on the other.

Am I nuts, or have church people forgotten how to just be with other people? In what other social setting would you be in someone's house with 15 people and not at least make sure everyone knows each others' names? It was Sunday morning in miniature, with a tad more participation, but not much more relationship. I suppose after a few months of sitting with those people I'd feel comfortable sharing something of myself, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to stick around to make that investment.

The revelation I received, among the various "words," was a simple clarification of my deepest desire -- simple, human contact. A friend, a conversation. Nothing elaborate, just someone to hang out with and talk to. I've been offered a number of things in the past six months by people in that church -- come to our group, our Bible study, our women's lunch -- but not someone who looks you in the eye and says, I want to get to know you (or let's have coffee and decide if we want to get to know each other). And at the end of a long day, all the "words" or prayers or songs in the world can't make up for the feeling of fading away, like the moon engulfed in shadow.

Shaking it up some more

2008-02-18T19:06:00.000-08:00

I've had this quote marked for some future comment I saw it at Jamie's blog (and elsewhere, too, but I can't quite remember where):

Over at one of my favourite blogger's sites, Erika Haub, posted a provocative quote by Dr. Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary form his latest book, "Culture Shift: Engaging Current Issues with Timeless Truth". She found the quote at the Out of Ur blog. Some interesting discussion ensued. Inspire, another stellar blogger, Scot McKnight picked up the topic, with comment discussions sky rocketing. Here was the quote that Erika posted (but I suggest you read the larger article for context):

"I am convinced that the time has come for Christians to develop an exit strategy from the public schools. Some parents made this decision long ago. The Christian school and home school movements are among the most significant cultural developments of the last thirty years. Other parents are not there yet. In any event, an exit strategy should be in place." ~ A. Mohler

While I find the question of where and how to educate one's children complex and in the end best left up to the discernment of parents, I have to say I'm pretty much appalled at the idea of Christian leaders advocating an "exit strategy" from the public schools. Not that Christians (or middle class white families in general) haven't already implemented an exit strategy decades ago in many cities. I remember my teen years in the (lily white) suburbs of Boston in the 70s watching the city tear itself apart over forced segregation of the schools. So it wasn't easy to watch the reality of this issue bearing down on us this past summer as Doe was getting ready for kindergarten, and we weren't sure where we would be come September. There was nothing appealing about the public schools around us -- in most of them more than 90 percent of the students were attempting to learn English; what would our precocious future astronaut/ volcanologist get out of a class like that?

The issue was resolved by our move. The elementary school two blocks down the street might be the lowest rated in our little (9 school) district, but it far outshines anything in our old neighborhood. Doe's kindergarten teacher has two master's degrees, including a background in volcanology! (I was about to make a wild claim about the astronomical odds against that, but now I remember asking Doe what her favorite book was when we went to register her -- and she told me "Earthquakes and Volcanoes," so that at least explains how she got into Mrs. W's class.) One of the parents takes charge of organizing a science night every fall, bringing in all sorts of resources from the university "Physics Circus" to local conservation groups and astronomy buffs. The school also had the foresight a few decades ago, as California taxpayers were deciding they no longer wanted to invest in education, to raise an endowment, which helps to fund music and arts teachers and other such programs that have gone the way of the dinosaur in a lot of public schools. In short, we're the beneficiaries of the inequities of the public education system in this country -- we just happen to live in a place that gets the long end of the stick rather than the short one.

No longer tempted to exit the system because of question about educational quality, does it make sense to stay in? Our next door neighbors have their kindergartener in a Christian school nearby, primarily they say, so that the people influencing his young life will be believers. A legitimate concern, I'm sure, but I have yet to observe an influence from Doe's teachers that is anything but positive and affirming of her talents and interests.

Here's the thing that bugs me about the idea of an "exit strategy": the claim that Christians need to raise their children in an alternative culture -- defined primarily by things like not teaching evolution. And honestly, I'd rather have my children in the public school learning actual science. Maybe it's because I was raised Catholic, and Catholic theologians for at least a century have wrestled with the implications of evolution without having to throw away the baby with the bathwater, or create some alternative version of science in order to reconcile their belief in God. Maybe it's my generally skeptical nature, that those who try to make a case for God from within science seem to be trying too hard, or leaving us with a "God of the gaps" who shrinks as the gaps in our understanding of the world shrink. I see no conflict with understanding creation as a process (which is what Genesis describes, by the way), and seeing it originating and orchestrated by God.

One of my favorite writers is John McPhee, who wrote a three or four volume exploration of the geology of plate tectonics. This quote from Assemblying California captures the amazing intricacies and glorious grandeur of the way God has chosen to craft our planet:

While India was closing with Tibet, it buckled the intervening shelf, raising from the sea a slab of rock more than a mile thick which consisted almost entirely of the disintegrated shells of marine creatures. From the depths of lithification to the rock’s present loft, it has been driven upward at least fifty thousand feet. This one fact ... is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: "The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone."

I have no problem putting that paragraph alongside Psalm 8 as a meditation on the wonders of God's creativity. I have no problem explaining to my five-year-old that God created a world where plates shift and heave, and as a result, earthquakes rumble (she'll get to experience that sooner or later out here on the Pacific plate) and volcanoes gush, and somehow living things evolved. So I was encouraged today to discover a new blogger (HT: Dan), Kevin Corcoran, who has been described as a "postmodern analytic ecclesiological philosopher." He had a great post today, which started with his admission that he had misunderstood the serious philosophical discussion waged through bumper stickers:

You know the Ichthus, the ancient symbol of the Christian faith that is a simple line drawing of a fish and that scores of very rude and bad drivers affix to their bumpers? Well, I always thought the Ichthus with legs and the word “Darwin” emblazoned inside it was a statement by those Christians who accept both the Christian faith and evolutionary creation. Since I have been such a person for quite a long time I just assumed that there were lots of us and some of us—those into bumper stickers—decided we’d announce it to the world just to let the world know that the two—Christian faith and evolutionary creation—are not at odds. I was wrong, of course.

You've got to love a philosopher who isn't cynical, don't you? I almost want to get one of those "Darwin" stickers for myself. I'm glad to know there are others who accept the Christian faith and evolutionary creation -- perhaps some of them are even homeschoolers! Maybe Kevin will share the secret handshake so that we can identify each other on the church patio. In the meanwhile, I am resolved to live by faith and not fear. I'm believing that God has a purpose (even a mission) for our family in our getting to know our neighbors and the community through our local school, that our daughters can use their heads as well as their hearts to get to know God and God's world, that all truth really is God's truth, and none of our theories surprises God. I'm convinced that there is a culture war to be waged in the name of God's kingdom, but it isn't against people who claim there is no God; it's against the idols of stuff and comfort and entertainment that find a place in our homes and churches.

What is the Gospel?

2008-02-17T20:22:00.000-08:00

Kind of an odd question to pop into my mind in the middle of a sermon, but then again maybe not.

I still remember the day we decided, more or less out of the blue, to visit this church. It was Easter, 1995. We were spending the weekend here with hubby's parents, and in the midst of a season of renewal in both of our lives, it really seemed appropriate to -- yes, wait for it -- go to church on Easter! The church hubby grew up in here (as a teen and young adult) had no real appeal to either of us, neither did the mainline denomination we belonged to at home, and somehow the local Vineyard church popped out from the religion page of the Saturday paper. So there we were, feeling slightly over-dressed, and wondering what we would encounter.

Two things stand out in my mind about that morning: First, the conversation we had with the associate pastor, in which we found out that our paths had crossed at key institutions, though mostly at different times -- hubby's alma mater, our church at the time, the seminary I was attending. We sensed a connection that morning that has deepened into a real friendship over the years. Second, was the pastor's sermon, which basically told the Gospel in terms of a process of inner healing from the effects of our own sin and the wrongs done by others. I had been struggling to work through some issues from my own family history at that time, and felt a significant level of healing that morning.

The sermon this morning went over some of that same ground -- I'd say most of the time I've heard this pastor preach at least some portion of the sermon reiterates the Gospel in terms of individual lives broken by disagreement with God's purposes (our own and others') and restored through submission, healing and agreement. There is much to be said for this summary of the Good News -- it presents a powerful explanation of what went wrong and how it can be set right again, at least in terms of an individual's history and personality. It's a bit light on actual atonement theology, but strong in terms of offering a narrative of hope for healing and restoration.

But what I started to wonder this morning was what does this summary, this shorthand for the multi-faceted work of redemption that is the Christian story, what does it leave out? What is left out of our lives as a community if we are shaped by this particular version of the story? More to the point, what does this story of individuals being delivered and healed from bondage and brokenness have to say to us as a community, as the people of God? Does it do justice to the Gospel story found in the New Testament? Does it speak with integrity to a generation that is wary of hyper-individualism and is longing for true community? Or is it, as Scot McKnight says in his Community Called Atonement, playing the whole course with one club? (Perhaps I should go back and finish that book -- it might have some clues.)

I don't have much in the way of answers, just an observation. One strength that I've seen in this church is compassion. It seems a natural outworking of this understanding of the Gospel to scoop up the hurting from the margins of society, and love them into the Kingdom. But is there also a place for transforming society, addressing issues of justice, etc.? The title of a Bonhoeffer biography comes to mind -- A Spoke in the Wheel. There's a quote in the beginning of the book to the effect that it's fine to rescue those who are being crushed under the wheel of oppression, but at some point, someone has to put a spoke in the wheel and stop it. (Sorry, most of my library is still in storage.) It's the big picture of what redemption means and how the people of God have a role to play in it that gets lost for me in this Gospel of inner healing. What do you think?

Kiva Milestone

2008-02-16T13:16:00.000-08:00

Today I got an email telling me that my first Kiva loan had been repaid in full, and I now had $25 in my account to relend (or pull out if I wanted to). Back in October, two dozen of us put in less than $1,000 to help a woman in Peru expand her chicken-raising business. Apparently, things have gone well enough that she has repaid her loan. And my $25 will soon be put to work by a group of women in Tanzania.

Want to make a difference in the world? Take your Starbuck's budget for this month (or the loose change lying around the house) and invest it with an entrepreneur in the third world. Kiva.org

Does God Still Love Me?

2008-02-13T20:06:00.000-08:00

The girls in our house got hit with a nasty flu bug the past week or so. Pretty much coincidentally with the arrival of the flu came the first of the contractors. We're putting an addition on to my in-laws' house to accommodate the six of us as a multi-generational family. Let me tell you that having someone drilling into the slab under your feet when your head is already about to explode and you're running a temperature of 102 or so (which we all did for five or six days) -- well, let's just say it's not exactly helpful.

Somewhere last weekend, when Doe had already missed six days of school and was feeling well enough to start climbing the walls, Ray got a nosebleed. I know a bloody nose is no big deal, and a respiratory infection is enough to set one off -- but I can't recall either of my kids ever having one. So the poor kid is sitting there watching yet another Dora the Explorer video, when all of a sudden, her nose starts gushing. It took a couple of minutes, but it was under control soon enough.

A bit later, she decides she wanted to take a bath. Good idea, I realize when I take off her pajama top and there is a line of dried blood down her chest. So she splashes away, and even lets me wipe the rest of the crusties off her face. Just as I pull her out and wrap her in a towel, she looks at me plaintively: "Mommy, does God still love me?"

"Of course he does, honey." I rush to assure her. "Did you think because you had a bloody nose that God didn't love you anymore? He loves you no matter what." I went on in that vein for some time.

After a bit, she comes back with "You mean God is always with me, no matter where I go?"

"Yes, dear." Crisis of four-year-old faith averted.

It's hard to tell exactly where a question like that comes from. I really doubt it's juvenile theodicy -- why is God allowing me to feel so bad? (That might have been the question I was asking by that point in the week.) As I've reflected on what might have been going on in her mind, it seems more like this is the first time Ray has experienced her body doing something out of the range of "normal" -- indeed something rather alarming. There was a definite sense of "not right" about the experience, and of course, the wariness of wondering what might set it off again. If I'm not all right within myself, am I still all right with God? It seems like a natural question for a child who has always been cherished and safe to ask.

Ray's question forces me to wonder how often my faith -- the actual, lived experience of faith, not what I say I believe -- boils down to a very similar question. Does God still love me when I don't seem to love myself much, or live up to any of my expectations, or find it hard to follow through in any area of my life? Does God really love me when I'm depressed? There is some place inside that knows God is with me, no matter the wilderness I'm traveling through. But closer to the surface, where I decide how to answer those "how are you doing?" questions or what to risk with new friends, a different set of beliefs takes over -- the ones that say it's important to be competent and successful and not show weakness. The ones that say God won't love me if I'm not all right.

A few weeks ago I found myself walking along the beach on a Sunday morning. The sense of being in a place of spiritual exile was overwhelming. I picked up a couple of stones -- just random beach rocks that caught my eye. At the end of the beach I wandered out among the low tide puddles and pitched them into the surf. A dozen years ago, I stood on a rocky beach on Catalina Island and threw stones into the same Pacific Ocean -- one for each of the children whose death I had attended during a chaplaincy internship at Children's Hospital. It was a way of naming and grieving and letting go of the tragedy and senselessness of each loss. This time, the rocks stood for dead ends, for roads in the life of faith that I'd come to the end of, and needed to acknowledge, abandon and move on from.

It's hard to give those dead ends simple names -- maybe they all boil down to the same thing in the end -- but they had to do with feeling like my own spiritual growth is up to me and my efforts, the false promise that going through the motions of a daily devotional will bear fruit even though I know my head and heart take an hour or two to quiet down these days, and the guilt that comes from deciding not to bother after decades of indoctrination.

I've been rereading a book I first encountered a decade ago, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes by Belden C. Lane. I remember being slightly disappointed the first time I read it. What struck me the second time around was how completely I had missed his point of exploring the apophatic tradition. In the first chapter, he describes his experience not only of studying the writers in the tradition of desert spirituality, but of practicing some of their wisdom through encounters with wild landscapes.

One might imagine that in pretending to be a desert monk in the city my goal is to achieve particular states of desert consciousness. But the long-standing insistence of the tradition is that there is no "experience," no achievement of "consciousness" be to sought in any of this. The desert practice of contemplative prayer abandons, on principle, all experiences of God or the self. It simply insists that being present before God, in a silence beyond words, is an end in itself.

That's something I would have skimmed over and not even noticed misunderstanding on first reading. The experience of God with all the thrills and chills of charismatic practice was still too fresh to even acknowledge that there could be a place on the roadmap of faith that would voluntarily set those aside for mere silence. I considered myself a contemplative, but somewhere I read of Thomas Merton chiding his fellow monks, telling them they weren't contemplatives, but merely introverts. I dabbled with lectio, but only so long as I got a "word" every time.

Now, having come to the end of the road in terms of working it up, or beating myself up for not working it up, having encountered a wilderness that is genuinely dark and threatening, the idea of something beyond experience begins to make sense. There is precious little silence in my immediate environment right now, but I can at least picture a place of silence. My first question might just be little Ray's question: Does God still love me? To seek out that silence, to sit there exposed and empty, is to answer at least with a mustard seed of faith, yes.

1-2-3 Book Meme

2008-02-03T08:47:00.000-08:00

Grace tagged me with this meme that's going around.

Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
Open the book to page 123.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the next three sentences.
Tag five people.

I recently cleared my desk of the miscellaneous books that have been cluttering my workspace, but somehow Scot McKnight's A Community Called Atonement is still here. There are a stack of books on my nightstand that I've at least cracked, but I haven't gotten very far in this one.

And interestingly enough, page 123 is the end of a chapter, with exactly five sentences on it. So I give you the first three sentences on 124:

Before we look at atonement as the work of God that creates a pervasively just society, let me clarify the expression "social justice." We make a serious mistake when we write with adjectives: "social" before "justice" limits justice and moves justice from the church into the government. I propose that we drop the word "social" in the term "social justice."

Sounds intriguing, though surely he didn't mean to ban writing with adjectives in general!

Let's see -- I'll tag a few people:

Milton at Don't Eat Alone
Dan at Faith Dance
Lori at Vikingfru's Place
L.L. at Seedlings in Stone
Mak at Swinging from the Vine

Another reason for reading glasses at the grocery....

2008-01-31T20:36:00.001-08:00

Check this out (HT Sustainable Table) -- those little stickers on the produce aren't just there to annoy you or peel the skin off the fruit. They can actually tell you what you're about to buy, and how to avoid the genetically modified Frankenfood:

A four-digit number means it's conventionally grown.
A five-digit number beginning with 9 means it's organic.
A five-digit number beginning with 8 means it's GM.

The only problem is I can't read those little numbers without my reading glasses!

Now why they can't have the same neat little system for cloned meat and hormone treated dairy products?

Through (Not So) Jaded Eyes

2008-01-30T20:30:00.000-08:00

I had an interesting moment of epiphany last night. I've been dragging myself (quite literally) to a women's group sponsored by the church we've been attending ... do you hear my reluctance? Yes, well. I'm trying to make some level of connection with believers in our new town. Really what I'd love is to invite a couple of women to meet for coffee every week or so, and let's get real and share our stories and struggles. I've pretty much had it with standard small groups for the time being, and this one is no exception to the rule, except that in order to know which one or two I'd like to get to know better, it appears I'll have to pay my dues ...

At one point in the evening the discussion got on to Our Fair City (OFC), and as one person put it, the "love-hate relationship" many have with it. I have to note that in this discussion, the Fair City named was the larger (though still quite a small town) one whose name graces the entire area. The municipality we've been dealing with for building permits, for example, is a "suburb" a quarter of the size of OFC, but pretty much joined at the hip with big sis for most purposes.

OFC is a beach town, probably the number one tourist draw on the central coast, home to any number of the beautiful people who made it big in the megalopolis of (shattered) dreams south of us. It's the kind of place anyone would want to live, until you move in and discover the cost of living in the shadow of the beautiful people's mansions on the hills. Let's just say, it's a place that tends to wear its class distinctions on its sleeves.

So it was interesting to hear these women speak of their very real struggles to survive economically in the rich's playground, where everything is more expensive, but wages are mostly suppressed. Too many of the people who live here made their money elsewhere to worry about those kind of issues. In a sense we're part of that picture, too, with both of us working businesses that don't depend on where we are located. We're also sheltered from some of the harsh economic realities. We didn't have to buy a house in this area -- no way we could have afforded it, even when hubby was working at the big bucks job that ended this past summer.

I know that many people in the church, especially single women, work several jobs just to make ends meet. They're lucky to have one of those jobs pay benefits. But it was an eye-opener to hear the undercurrents of resentment -- the result of daily confrontation with wealth when you're just getting by.

I've seen a different face of OFC, mostly by spending my time in the neighborhood here in our little burb. Downtown is maybe 10 miles away, but I can count on one hand the times I've been there (except for passing through on the way to the zoo!). The moms I've met through school and at the park are far from pretentious (I suppose the snobs don't frequent the public schools and parks). They mostly seem a lot like me -- most are working at least part-time, with a working husband in the picture, many are in the community because of family ties and history here, probably many with help from those families to establish themselves here. There's a raggedy edge that shows from time to time; not everything is in our reach all the time.

I wanted to say something last night -- that I hadn't sensed that rejection from the larger community, that I see open doors all around us, at least, for relationships with other families. That may not apply to people in other ages and stages of life, I realize. It hasn't been easy, as I was sharing with one friend today, to uproot and find myself at this stage of life having to build new relationships from the ground up. My kids go to the playground and expect to make a new friend with any kid that shows up; in my mid-40s it takes a bit more intention and effort. Call me naive, but I'm hopeful about this community. I'm here for the long-haul, and I want my life to be anchored here, not down the freeway somewhere.

The comments last night revealed a kind of fault line that separates the church from the community. Clearly there are "faults" on both sides, and wounds that nurture defensiveness. Can I opt out of choosing sides?

My thoughts keep going back to the recent book based on Mother Teresa's private letters, and how she came to understand the redemptive nature of her very personal suffering. She endured many years of spiritual darkness, and eventually came to see that darkness as integral to her call to "come be my light" in the darkest places of poverty and despair. She lived by faith and on the strength of early experiences of intimacy with God and a strong sense of calling in a way that few human beings ever have. In her faithfulness, she models an approach to incarnational living that is utterly radical. In some way, the darkness of poverty becomes her darkness, and by embracing that pain as somehow fulfilling Christ's suffering, she is able to bring light and hope into those dark places. It's a path that make no sense to results-oriented churchianity, but the world stops in awe at a simple woman who loves so powerfully. In the end, her life speaks to rich as well as to poor; she bridges the fault lines of rejection and judgment with a call to simple deeds done with great love.

I don't know what Mother Teresa would have said to OFC or the church here. But the lesson I take from her life is that our suffering -- be it rejection or loneliness; the pain of poverty or the burdens of wealth -- can become a source of blessing.

Going Local

2008-01-29T21:24:00.000-08:00

I came home tonight from a women's Bible study (yeah, more on that later), and saw my library copy of Deep Economy on the nightstand. It has to go back to the public library tomorrow -- it's one of those new book drop-dead 7-day loans. So much for my commitment to 1) not buying so many new books, 2) supporting local civic institutions. So tonight I blog...

There's almost too much to say. This is a book that brings together threads that have been weaving and tangling in my head and heart for the past few years. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Bill McKibben is one of the foremost writers on the environment; his The End of Nature is widely credited with bringing global warming to public attention back in the late 80's. In Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, he argues that our contemporary obsession with endless economic growth (promoted equally by both the left and the right in U.S. politics) is ineffective, unsustainable, and in the end doesn't do what it promises -- it doesn't make us any happier. In short, more is no longer better.

More does seem to be better in the developing world, up until people reach incomes of around $10,000 per year. Once basic needs are provided for, increasing income doesn't seem to do much for happiness. I have to say, I bridled a bit at the idea of happiness as the be-all and end-all of human existence, but McKibben is writing mainly from the framework of economics and it's philosopical undergirding of utilitarianism.

Traditionally, ideas like happiness and satisfaction are the sorts of notions that economists wave aside as poetic irrelevancies, questions that occupy people with no head for humbers who have to major in something else at collete. An orthodox economist can tell what makes someone happy by what they do. If they buy a Ford Expedition, the ipso facto a Ford Expedition is what makes them happy. That's all you need to know (30).

McKibben goes on to explain how economic research over the past few decades had opened up the door to those dismal scientists believing that when people say they're happy, well, they're happy. Some of this was done by interviewing patients undergoing colonoscopies -- you'll have to read the book for the fascinating details! The result of this earth-shattering breakthrough is this:

The idea that there is a state called happiness, and that we can dependably figure out what it feels like and how to measure it, is extremely subversive. It would allow economists to start thinking about life in far richer terms, allow them to stop asking "What did you buy?" and to start asking "Is your life good?"

It won't happen overnight, but it will happen eventually. Because if you can ask someone "Is your life good?" and count on the answer to mean something, then you'll be able to move to the real heart of the matter, the question haunting our moment on earth: Is more better? (34)

There's a lot of great material on how more, if it involves bringing the rest of humankind up to the level of consumption practiced by the average American, is simply not possible on this planet. The fossil fuels will not hold up; the levels of resource depletion, pollution and especially the carbon load on the atmosphere cannot be sustained. Most of this is not news, but McKibben puts it together in an engaging way.

His answer to which way better may lie is fascinating. It's all about living locally, investing ourselves in the communities in which we live. He has a great chapter on the issue of local food, including his family's experiment with eating locally through a Vermont winter. Boy do I feel like a wimp, with three or four farmers markets in striking distance of me in January! You have to be impressed by someone who can commit to subsist mainly on mass quantities of root vegetables (with a bit of locally brewed beer thrown in for good measure). I've read various surveys that people, depending on their cultural situation, need to hear a Gospel presentation of some sort something like seven to 20 times before they believe. This is probably my 7th hearing of the case for eating local, and I'm about ready to pray the prayer.

But it's more than just a matter of being ecologically correct in what we eat; McKibben envisions a shift to economies that are more local in scale, economies that connect us to the people who actually live around us.

A tomato from the small farmer at the end of your suburban road takes less fuel to transport, and a tomato from the small farmer at the end of your suburban road tastes better. But it's more than that -- it's better because it comes from a ... farmer at the end of your suburban road. Getting that tomato -- from his farmstand, from a farmers' market, from your CSA share, even from a bin at an enlightened supermarket -- requires you to live with a stronger sense of community in mind. Requires that you reorient your personal compass a little bit. Requires that you shed a certain amount of your hyper-individualism and replace it with a certain amount of neighborliness. It doesn't require that you join a commune or become a socialist. If we let go of a little bit of our individualism (at the moment, we have plenty to spare), we may recover something we've been missing (105).

It turns out, according to McKibben's research, that small, diversified farms are more productive that huge agribusiness monocultures. They actually produce more food, and take less water, energy and other resources to do it. A lot has been sacrificed in the name of efficiency, including a lot of farmers around the world. Restoring local economies, including local farming, means restoring communities.

The implications for the church are enormous: Here's a breadcrumb on the trail back out of individualized, consumer-driven Churchianty. It's a simple as reinvesting in the local community -- investing ourselves, our time and effort in getting to know neighbors, but with a practical focus on living more justly, more equitably and more sustainably. It's a vision that is far from simple-minded -- there are complex issues involved, and smart solutions that use technology to good effect. But what speaks to me is the hope of making a stand against the culture that reduces us to consumers, force-feeds us "entertainment" in isolation chambers, provokes unlimited acquisitiveness then enslaves us to work harder and longer to get more stuff... etc. To speak the simple truth -- the stuff won't satisfy -- and offer a way to get off the treadmill seems a high calling indeed. I believe one of the things that is going on in all those "conversations" and people drifting out of institutional church into simpler, smaller fellowships is a rediscovery of what the church is meant to be: the community of those who about serving, loving and redeeming the communities around them.

Getting to Know the Neighborhood

2008-01-26T08:03:00.000-08:00

Mak posted a reference to this neat little tool the other day. Getting to know the neighborhood is what we're all about here, so I did a little poking around.

One interesting feature is that you can compare several zips, which got me thinking about the differences between our old neighborhood -- in the middle of Los Angeles's urban/suburban San Fernando Valley -- and our new neighborhood, 90 miles up the coast. Here's a few fun facts I learned:

Both zips have around 50,000 residents and nearly the same number of households (the post office arranges it this way, I'm sure). However, the old neighborhood contained those people in 3.4 square miles, while the new zip covers 180 square miles. We live in the "city" part, so the density is probably about half what we were used to.

There are quite a few stats that are obviously skewed by the fact that our new zip includes a university campus with 20,000 students: Education levels here are 84% high school and above vs. 57% in the Valley. We have a big bubble in the 20-29 demographic, too. No mystery there. Even though the median income is more than $10,000 higher here (it's an expensive area), there are more people below the poverty line here, too. I'd guess students account for a good chunk of that, too.

The most obvious difference is that I'm no longer a minority in my neighborhood -- in the Valley 60% of my neighbors were hispanic, now about the same percent are white.

Statistics are interesting, in you happen to like numbers. But I find myself frustrated that I can't drill down a bit further. What if you took all those students out, what are the "regular" people like? But then, the university is probably one of the biggest employers in the area, so a lot of those "regular" people are involved with students or with the kind of technology companies that spin off around the university. What does it say that the place God has planted us for the forseeable is a college town?

Getting to know the neighborhood means getting to know the neighbors, and for that you have to unplug from the computer and get out the door! Simon Holt's article about exegeting your neighborhood looks like a good way to start.

Blogging as spiritual discipline

2008-01-17T20:10:00.000-08:00

Erin posted today on this meme, so I thought I'd take a shot at it, too:

"In what ways can you use blogging as a spiritual discipline?"

I've been on something of a mission to deconstruct/rediscover spiritual disciplines in my life, and I think on some level, blogging has become as much a spiritual discipline for me as spiritual birdwatching. In either case, the emphasis certainly hasn't been on discipline -- I'm as haphazard at the one as the other. But there is something about continuing with a practice. Now, isn't practice a much nicer word than discipline? "You're just practicing, it's OK," I tell my 5-year-old as she mangles her letters. So, I've been practicing blogging for nearly three years. Sporadic at times, passionately in short bursts. Lots of erasing and muttered comments under the breath.

I started my blog as an online journal, a place to remember what life is like in this particular moment, and hopefully to reflect long enough to see some evidence of grace in the everyday realities of motherhood. It was a place to keep the part of me that is a writer alive. I hoped it might also sustain the part of me that is a believer and disciple.

For me blogging has been a way of reaching out for community and connection in a season of isolation and alienation. It started out with the common desire to have a "grown up" conversation after babbling with toddlers all day, and then evolved into the need to connect with someone else who was disconnecting from traditional church as I found myself doing. There has been something wonderfully freeing in finding a place to articulate the struggle, and even more in discovering people who had the words to put around my experiences, brothers and sisters who have been down this path before me.

One thing that I've learned through this experience of on-line community is that God is bigger than I ever imagined. God's grace is evident in the lives of people wrestling out loud with hurt and betrayal, even with those who declare they have no faith. I am continually challenged by people who seek to live out their faith in difficult places, who have given up the comfort of having all the answers, but still press in to discover what faithfulness looks like in their particular neighborhood. I am blessed by those who find themselves outside church communities they used to lead, discovering what it means to be the church. Sharing in this conversation has birthed new dreams in me, rekindled hope that there is meaning in the chaos and confusion of my life right now. I'm grateful for every one of you that dares to put your thoughts out there; your honestly, wisdom, humor and tears are gifts to me every day.

Getting out of a (mental) rut

2008-01-13T07:49:00.001-08:00

I haven't read the book, and I'm only marginally interested in the controversy swirling around the Viola/Barna re-release of Pagan Christianity, but this quote from Viola, defending the "overstatements" in the book, caught my eye (via Alan Hirsch):

The traditional understanding of church is so entrenched in our thinking that it’s very difficult for us to analyze our current practices critically. What we’re up against is a mindset. All of the solutions that Christian leaders have given — more prayer, more preaching, more Bible reading, more good works, etc — all assume that the present-day ecclesial mindset is correct and shouldn’t be tampered with. At bottom, we are really dealing with a problem of how we think and conceptualize.

Let me see if I can illustrate this. I was in a conversation not too long ago with someone who argued that they understood the church to be God’s people, a face-to-face community, the very Bride of Christ in a locality, and not a building, a denomination, or a religious service. Minutes later this person began saying to someone else, “So which church do you go to?” This is one example of how deep the mindset runs. It’s burned into the circuitry of our brains. (If you didn’t catch that, read the book and learn where the idea of “going to church” came from. And how it’s at odds with the NT understanding of church.)

I read this and thought immediately of the play date my daughter set up for herself this afternoon (we ran into one of her classmates at the park yesterday). It will be sometime "after church," which will no doubt raise the "which church" question. Part of me wants to give a non-answer, only partly because of the ambiguity of my feelings about "going to church" at all.

I'm waiting to discover church -- in the sense of "face-to-face community, the very Bride of Christ in a locality" -- in this place. At a deeper level, there's at least a part of me that would like to have a break from church in the religious service sense in order to rediscover what it means to be a follower of Jesus in this place and time.

So what will I answer? Somehow saying "I'm looking for the very Bride of Christ in our town" sounds way more religious than "I go to the Vineyard." I suppose the truth is closer to -- My family attends a local gathering, but at heart, I'm looking to connect with a few people who want to live the kind of life Jesus came to give us, and see what happens when we do that. Now if you could have seen how long it took to compose that last sentence, you'd know how much my thinking is still stuck in the conceptual rut of churchianity!

Another Take on Missional Posters

2008-01-05T13:41:00.000-08:00

Len picked up the thread of Grace's missional posters today ... he offered his own take on "Leadership."

I love this image -- perhaps because I find myself in the position of offering a steadying hand quite often at this season of my life. Len had the idea of a child leading when he picked this picture. To me it says as much about leadership as a supporting role, balancing and encouraging the gifts and calling of others, helping them to walk in the way.

Len wondered about some other concepts that might be missing -- which sent me back to Grace's original post, and the fun tools she used to put her amazing images together (posters generated through despair.com; images from stock.xchng). So I messed around in the virtual sandbox for a bit and came up with these:

The "Good" Church

2008-01-03T08:03:00.000-08:00

Hamo blogs on the question of choosing a church, interacting with a fellow blogger:

The group of people we choose to align ourselves with will give form to our identity and when it comes to a faith context the church we choose to be a part of will play a significant influence in our own formation. This is not rocket science of course, but it does have significant implications for how we choose which ‘church’ to a part of.
James writes:”I believe at a very deep level that I need church if I want to be a faithful follower of Jesus. But I do not think it is wise to participate in a community of faith that simply reinforces the scripts of the dominant culture.”

He goes on to discuss the typical question -- do you know a "good" church?

I had to reply “that depends on what you mean by ‘good’”
If ‘good’ = catering to your personal wish list then that is very different to where ‘good’ = a community that will call me and challenge me to live in a Christlike way.

This conversation caught my eye this morning. I'd fallen down the rabbit hole last night trying to talk to hubby about my desire to connect with a few believers here in our new town, without necessarily getting sucked into the all-consuming relational network of church. It started with a conversation he had with one of the pastors -- "Oh, by the way, E (the associate pastor's wife) was wondering if she could invite you to a group she's starting ..." Now, I happen to know E well enough to know that she's a perfectly competent person, a smart business woman who knows how to operate a telephone. Why doesn't she just call me? Do I have a sign on me that says "Don't bug her?" Does everyone have to approach me through hubby?

The whole thing rankled. I know there's some effort not to overload us behind that question, but last time I checked, I was an adult well past 40 and capable of making my own excuses. Honestly, I'm not sure I want to join the typical small group, woman's or other, right now. But that reluctance has more to do with what Hamo was talking about than anything else.

I have held myself back from this church community for the past months, sometimes intentionally, sometimes by default. I did have in mind when we moved that I wanted to build relationships primarily in the community. I know how to "join" a church to the point that I'm so busy with my church friends that I have no relational space for neighbors or others. So I didn't--on purpose. The disconnect I felt in our last church continues -- there is something in me that craves something other than the overwrought "intimacy" of contemporary worship songs. Silence might be a nice start. The band actually played a hymn last Sunday -- I can't even remember which one, maybe Great is Thy Faithfulness -- and I was in tears singing it.

All that to say, I'm willing to own my part of the disconnect. I believe at some level that at least part of it really is God's work in me -- pulling me out of a comfortable place in order to force some kind of growth. More than a small part of it has to do with being an introvert by nature and not really being in the mood (given the general level of stress and disruption in my life right now) to make the effort to pretend to be something other than that for the sake of making other people more comfortable. The interesting thing is, that I've had no trouble connecting to a number of parents at Doe's school, for example. These aren't deep friendships, but they are people I feel free to have a normal conversation with from time to time. So I'm not a complete social retard. There is something informative about observing a church from a bit of a distance ... but perhaps that's another post.

In the meanwhile, I do find myself wanting to connect with some kind of Christian community that will reinforce the journey I'm on. Reading and interacting with bloggers who have that concern has been wonderfully life-giving, but at some point, we need face-to-face community as well. And so I find myself wondering where that "good" community is -- not the one that will meet my needs, but the one that will challenge me to keep following Jesus through this uncharted territory. What was really frustrating me last night, though I couldn't quite articulate it at 11 p.m., was that I felt like I was asking the second question, but it kept coming out sounding like the first. It's hard to ask, where are the people who want to explore missional, incarnational, justice-seeking, Christ-following life in the midst of suburbia without it somehow sounding like -- why isn't this church meeting my needs? Truth be told, there's a part of me that's content to pout about the lack of friends. It's like gravity; I've been raised in the consumer church, so it's really hard to look at the church as something other than a provider of goods and services designed to meet my needs, and in those moments of loneliness and sadness my thoughts easily fall back into that rut. As hard as it is to resist that self-centered pull, I'm aware of another force -- the one that hints at a life centered on Kingdom priorities lived with others who share that journey.

2007: Personal Favorites

2008-01-01T20:05:00.000-08:00

Tis the season for making lists, and this concept seems to be going around ... so here are my favorite posts for the year:

January: White Tailed Kite Lectio
February: File under "E"
March: An-ti-ci-pa-tion
April: Wilderness Revisited: Losing the Frame
May: Tomato Theology
June: Unchurching Kids
July: The God Box
August: Exit Papers
September: Food Dilemma: Winners and Losers
October: Where do we go from here?
November: Joggers, Bloggers, Locavores and others
December: Sustainability

Happy New Year to all!

Sustainability

2007-12-22T19:04:00.000-08:00

Michael Pollan, author of the Omnivore's Dilemma, in the NY Times (HT Sustainable Table blog), writes about the meaning of sustainability, and the limits of factory farming.

We’re asking a lot of our bees. We’re asking a lot of our pigs too. That seems to be a hallmark of industrial agriculture: to maximize production and keep food as cheap as possible, it pushes natural systems and organisms to their limit, asking them to function as efficiently as machines. When the inevitable problems crop up — when bees or pigs remind us they are not machines — the system can be ingenious in finding “solutions,” whether in the form of antibiotics to keep pigs healthy or foreign bees to help pollinate the almonds. But this year’s solutions have a way of becoming next year’s problems. That is to say, they aren’t “sustainable.”
From this perspective, the story of Colony Collapse Disorder and the story of drug-resistant staph are the same story. Both are parables about the precariousness of monocultures. Whenever we try to rearrange natural systems along the lines of a machine or a factory, whether by raising too many pigs in one place or too many almond trees, whatever we may gain in industrial efficiency, we sacrifice in biological resilience. The question is not whether systems this brittle will break down, but when and how, and whether when they do, we’ll be prepared to treat the whole idea of sustainability as something more than a nice word.

We've had a recent episode of MRSA in our extended family, probably hospital-acquired, since my sister-in-law is an RN, so the idea that farming pigs is actually contributing to the spread of a very dangerous disease caught my eye. And makes me want to redouble my efforts to eat thoughtfully, locally and if possible sustainably.

Here's another nugget from Pollan:

Confucius advised that if we hoped to repair what was wrong in the world, we had best start with the “rectification of the names.” The corruption of society begins with the failure to call things by their proper names, he maintained, and its renovation begins with the reattachment of words to real things and precise concepts.

He goes on to point out the real meaning of "unsustainable" -- that the seeds of demise are embedded in the very practice itself. No matter how the system keeps trying to correct and overcome the problems that arise, it is simply on a march to its own extinction.

Something about that concept rang some bells for me. Dan at Faith Dance has been blogging about a book called, "The End of Religion." He asked a provocative question --

Evangelicals distance themselves from "religion" but nevertheless find themselves in an evangelical religion of their own making?

As I commented on Dan's post, that statement reminded me of a conversation around our dining table last week -- that distinction of "we're not talking about religion, it's a relationship" was emphasized as several family members jumped in to encourage the tentative faith of one of our nieces. I felt like I was listening to the conversation as an outsider -- certainly I recognized the stories and arguments put forward, but I could identify with the 20-something who probably regretted whatever she had said that started the conversation down that path.

What struck me was that the whole claim "not a religion, a relationship" must have sounded utterly nonsensical in the ears of the outsider. Everything they were talking about reeked of religion -- church activities, meetings, mission trips, certain experiences in prayer or ministry. Just that fact that there was obviously insider and outsider in the conversation, and a certain "piling on" dynamic, where one believer added his or her insight or testimony or stock answer to questions not yet asked, evidenced the "religious" nature of what they were representing.

I found myself pondering that conversation hours later, wondering how family members could forget how to talk to each other the minute "God" entered the conversation. I wanted to take my niece's side and give her space to ask the questions that were really on her mind, to offer her opinions or reactions to what she was hearing. I wished in fact that we had a modicum of faith that perhaps God had entered the conversation -- that if the Holy Spirit was at work in her and us, we could trust that her side of the conversation was worth listening to, that we weren't the sole possessors of truth in the exchange. I wished she hadn't left the house feeling put on the spot by a lot of people talking at her.

So what does that have to do with the price of spare ribs? Just this -- that "rectifying the names" -- admitting that most of what we evangelicals do in the name of "relationship" is in fact "religion" -- might be the first step toward discovering a practice of faithful kingdom living that is sustainable in our changing culture. I don't know what that practice looks like, but I suspect at least for me it has something in common with the virtues and values of spiritual direction -- hospitality, listening, openness, waiting.

Advent Birding Update

2007-12-05T21:42:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I posted about the heart of spiritual birdwatching, which is, surprisingly enough, practiced with binoculars in hand. To tell the truth, it's been a hit and miss discipline this fall, despite the fact that there are acres and acres of trees, lake and grass right across the street from our house. Yeah, I know. Pathetic.

The birds of the season seems to be the acorn woodpeckers, which are noisily stashing their harvest of acorns in holes drilled into just about any tree standing. The park down the street where the kids like to play is littered with acorns and the woodpeckers are everywhere. Today, Ray and I watched one hammering away at the trunk of a juniper, about six feet off the ground where even a 4-year-old could get a good view.

I did get out the other day for a bit of quiet wandering. It seemed to take forever to see anything interesting. I got a good peek at a ruby crowned kinglet, right down to his tiny red cap. It's a common bird, but fun to watch flitting from branch to branch. It was warm and sunny, with no breeze; the hawks and vultures were out of sight. Across the big field of dried grasses, nothing but sparrows. Down through the eucalyptus grove, another kinglet, a warbler up high. I could hear plenty of birds all around me, but I couldn't seem to tune in to see them.

I kept turning over an idea I'd read last week -- reflections on the difference between expectation and expectancy. (This comes from Tall Monastic Guy via Mak).

Expectancy carries with it a wide-eyed unassuming sense of hope. With expectancy, you put your agenda aside and you pray against faulty presumptions that will taint your experience of reality. Expectancy is what the prophet Isaiah was asking of Israel when he said, "prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God." (Isaiah 40:3) Expectancy carries a sense that everything belongs in the picture and even the most frustrating of circumstances have a chance at redemption.

And expectation?
Expectation is a pungent belief that something will occur in a specific way. Expectation is the seemingly unstoppable undertow of a culture consumed by its ideas of consumerism and coming out on top. Expectation occurs when I compare my unique story with that of someone else. Expectation will inevitably disappoint, leave one frustrated, and miserably anxious.

I realized somewhere along the way, I was suffering from expectation in my birding walk. I had a list in my head of birds I'd expect -- some from my old birding hangout, some I'd seen right here in the past weeks. I wanted to chase a hawk around, or at least spot one on the wing. I'm used to flocks of egrets and herons at the edge of the water, but here it's rare to see more than a couple at a time. Not to mention the legions of white pelicans that winter in my old haunts.

No, here's what I saw: the kinglet and his ilk all over the place; robins (if you were wondering where your robins go in the winter, apparently some of them head for my neighborhood); a belted kingfisher; red-winged blackbirds; some wintering ducks -- Northern shovelers and redheads, mostly. The highlight of the day was a quick peek at a sora as it disappeared among the reeds at the edge of the lake -- a shy bird I've only seen once before.

Expectation has its head in the past, in comparisons -- will this Christmas be better than last year? Will I get what I want, not get stressed like I usually do? I had to admit the other morning that I don't respond to the beauty of this setting and its birds the way I used to respond to my little oasis in the San Fernando Valley. The views there always included a freeway, the parking lot of the local Target or some other obstacle; here the orchards on the low foothills fade into wilderness on the higher slopes. But there is something missing for me -- something I'm missing. There was something in that happened in my heart after walking and looking for half and hour or so, a lightness and joy that would refresh me and remind me that God is good; his care for the created world concrete evidence of his care for me. Perhaps it was a learned response, the way a familiar liturgy can lead us into a place of worship. That was my sanctuary, and now that I've joined a new "church," I'm having to adjust to a different order of worship.

That's where expectancy comes into play. Letting go of expectations -- my all-too-specific ideas of how it should be when I go out to look at birds and spend some time with God -- opens the door to hope. Part of the beauty of knowing a place well through the seasons is understanding which birds are likely to show up when; but a birder always has an eye out for the rare bird that isn't supposed to be there at all. There's an odd balance of looking in familiar places for the expected bird while still being open to the surprise visitor. When the balance swings too far towards "surprise me," I find my heart striving after an experience for the sake of having an experience -- that touch of the Lord that thrills and quickens. In that state of mind, I'm dissatisfied with routine and the simple faithfulness of pursuing spiritual disciplines. They don't seem to produce much, so why bother? On the other end of the spectrum, the routine is security enough and I don't want to be shaken out of my comfort.

Expectancy provides the missing ingredient: hope. I can go back across the street next week expecting to be thrilled or braced for disappointment; how much better to walk out excited about seeing whatever is out there today, familiar friends or rare visitors both received with gratitude and wonder at the beauty of creation and the Creator. I can open my Celtic prayer book and pray through the office tomorrow morning just reading the words, hoping to finish before the kids get up; or I can wait for those words to expose some "faulty presumptions" or remind me that "even the most frustrating of circumstances have a chance at redemption."

Not gonna practice war no more ...

2007-11-28T08:42:00.001-08:00

A theme is developing in my blog reading this morning ... don't have time to comment much on it, but I leave these links for your consideration.

First, Julie comments on Those pesky Calvinists, reflecting on a conversation over at Jesus Creed about those who have to be right in their arguments about the faith.

Here's the rub. Not everyone is up for arguing, not everyone feels compelled to win all points of view to one point of view. Moreover, some people have legitimately rejected the reformed point of view and aren't open to being shown its truth-value any more.

The justification that we all believe we are right therefore our conversations will be hostile, intractable, painful and at times downright unfriendly is a fallacy though. There is a way to interact over difference that allows dignity to all parties and leaves open the possibility of learning.

Then, the Watchman continues his riff on the use of warfare imagery in contemporary Christianity, wondering how mobsters get to sleep at night...

Our freedom handed to us by Jesus means that we have a choice of how to live and how to die. I have to accept others liberty to live by the war metaphor. If you believe we are at war against the ACLU, that’s your prerogative. You will have to die by the same weapons you wield.

If I’m an asshole, it shouldn’t surprise me when I get treated like one.

Finally, Hamo writes about how he thought himself an evangelist when he was a pastor influencing others toward faith from a position of power.

However in recent years I haven’t been able to do that. Minus the position and status accorded to me as a pastor, I don’t seem to have the same influence among my friends who are not Christians. To my friends I am… a friend… Hamo… just that.

They tend not to be ‘impressed’ with me nor want to be like me. Nor are they likely to defer to my superior knowledge of all things spiritual, because they have their own view on these issues, some of them strong and well constructed and my view is not considered at all ’superior’.

His reflections from the position of someone who has given up the trappings of the institutional church to walk alongside his neighbors as a "backyard missionary" provide a poignant answer to the first two posts. What irritates us (ok, let me say me) about the people who have to be right in every argument, is the implicit power struggle involved. And the crusaders against cultural decline are obviously grasping for Constantinian power that has slipped out of their fingers.

I found Hamo's post challenging, because he honestly looks at the cost of choosing the road of powerlessness. It's the path Jesus took in emptying himself and becoming a servant. The argument could be made it's the way Jesus always intended his followers to pursue the Kingdom in this world; at the very least, it's the way that many of will find ourselves forced to walk as we seek to be faithful in a post-Christian, postmodern world.

Joggers, Bloggers, Locavores and Other Revolutionaries

2007-11-24T07:28:00.000-08:00

I'm just catching up with Mark Roberts's posts on Blogging Like Jogging (HT Dan).

A couple of years ago everybody was predicting that blogging would take over the media world. Bloggers had toppled Dan Rather. Soon they would replace the New York Times and CBS Evening News.

Now it’s chic to proclaim the death of blogging. Critics, often from the mainstream media, celebrate the fact that millions of bloggers have quit. “The end of blogging is near,” pronounce the pundits, with undisguised glee.

The initial “blogging is the world” bandwagon was silly and naïve. The new “blogging is dead” repeats the silliness and naïveté in the opposite direction.

Blogging isn’t the world. And blogging isn’t dead, either. Rather, blogging is like jogging.

If you’re as old as I am, you might remember the jogging rage. Near as I can remember, it came in the late 60s and early 70s. Everybody bought jogging shoes and little nylon shorts, and then set out to get healthy and lose weight through jogging. Many wanna-be joggers had visions of their svelte bodies winning marathons, even as the waddled along in their Adidas Viennas.

Roberts goes on to explain how blogging, like jogging, is not for everyone, and suggests what kind of person might persist at it. Personally, I never got jogging, though I grew up in the era when Jim Fixx had everyone dreaming of winning the Boston Marathon. As a teen, I did a fair amount of running on crisp fall afternoons in pursuit of a small ball, but since then my idea of running is strictly reserved for occasions when something big and scary is chasing you. Perhaps I'll show more commitment to blogging...

I like the jogging analogy on a different level: jogging changed our culture in some very significant ways. Just try buying a pair of what we used to call "sneakers" -- you can buy walkers or runners, cross-trainers or tennis shoes, but where is the generic kick-around-the-neighborhood shoe of my youth? The jogging craze made us consumers of exercise -- from shoes and shorts to gym memberships, fitness became an industry. All quite predictable in the land of consumption.

On a positive note, jogging provided a first exposure to the notion that individuals needed to take responsibility for their own wellness. People jogged to get fit, lose weight. Out of that initial impulse grew an awareness of the role of diet and exercise in promoting health and preventing disease. Predictably, wellness is now a consumer industry: our mini-malls are littered with fitness clubs and workout joints, grocery store shelves are filled with products promising healthy choices; nutritional supplements and protein shakes are ubiquitous; New Age gurus fill the airwaves with their latest method for meditating your way to health.

There is a superficial trendiness to all this: studies (and a stroll around the local mall) show that Americans are fatter than ever. Surely many a gym survives on the dues paid by people making New Year's resolutions, without ever darkening the doors of that establishment. But one way to see the effect of the revolution is to see where the envelope is still being pushed.

Take the word of the year (HT: Len) -- Locavore:

The “locavore” movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for transportation.

When organic products can be found in the big chain supermarkets, no longer relegated to the realm of aging hippies and health food stores, those who are serious about what they put in their mouths take it to a new level. You can see this as a new level of food snobbery to be practiced by the wealthy, but I see it as a continuation of the trend of standing against the forces that reduce me to mere consumer of the output of a global industrial complex. It's about taking responsibility for the nutritional content of what goes on my table as well as the ecological impact of how it got there. I can fill up (likely overfill) on the convenient and cheap processed stuff available at the local big box store, but I'm ingesting dozens of ingredients I can't even pronounce added to food to keep it fresh and add back some of the nutrition that was processed out. Or I can go to the farmer's market for fresh produce that was grown a few miles away and is handed to me by someone who had something to do with growing it, food unsullied by chemical assault and picked when it's actually ripe and has some nutritional content. Gee, which do I prefer? Well, since I would rather not be a consumer of the ever-expanding "health care" industry, I opt for the latter. (I'm hardly a purist on this, but eating local is the direction I want to be heading in.)

All this to say that jogging started a kind of revolution in the way we think about health and wellness. I wonder what revolutions might start with blogging (and other social media). Changing attitudes towards the news we get from traditional media seems like the tip of the iceberg. The generation that grows up connected to friends near and far through Facebook or MySpace, texting and the like will have an understanding of relationships, community and institutions that I can only imagine. Will the internet give us yet another way to be consumers or will it in the end empower us to build alternative ways of living and relating?

Happy Advent

2007-11-16T20:20:00.000-08:00

Today is the first day of Advent, according to the Celtic calendar, anyway. At least that's what my Celtic Prayer book says... As it happens, today is also my birthday.

Cindy writes of her conviction to "about the way my purchases affect people around the world." It's a conviction I share -- the thought of my girls playing with Barbies made by young women in sweatshops or wearing Gap clothes sewn by child slaves turns my stomach. There is also that part of me that would like to teach my children that Advent is a liturgical season centered around Jesus, not making a list for Santa Claus.

I spent a little time today thinking about it, seeing as Advent is upon us, and the holiday blitz is on in the stores. Much as I would like to boycott Christmas-as-we-know-it (bah, humbug to you too!), incremental change is probably more realistic. I'm also thinking that any change we implement has to be explained to four- and five-year-olds.

Here are some ideas I've come up with so far:

1) Simplify the shopping. OK, I basically hate Christmas shopping anyway, so I'm all for this one. Doe's school had a book fair this week, and I bought a bunch of very reasonably-priced books for some of her cousins. There are some things I know I won't be buying; I'd like to focus on one significant gift (a bike or doll house) for each girl. For me staying out of the malls and big-box stores helps. The abundance of cheap junk (made at what cost to some poor person halfway around the world?) is a real temptation, and it spurs my own acquisitiveness. Online is good; fair-trade online is better. I plan to check out some of the resources Cindy lists in her post.

2) Make some gifts -- or at least get the girls to add their artwork and creative touches to the gifts we give. I tend not to have the time, energy or patience for crafts, but maybe we can get some help from Grandma. Or take up some of the Advent Conspiracy's suggestions for relational gifts. If everyone gives one do-it-yourself gift, that's a few less presents to buy.

3) Give beyond our boundaries. The perfect gift for that person on your list who has everything? -- a gift in their honor to someone in real need. By now the adults in my family know to expect they're getting a llama for some family in Peru. This year I'm thinking Kiva gift certificates...

4) Get out and serve somebody. I'm thinking of how my kids can help with the big Thanksgiving dinner our church puts on every year. They're really too small to be involved with serving food, but we could set tables or greet the guests. Maybe we can get in a visit to a nursing home before Christmas.

5) Celebrate the real Christmas story. More important than the things we won't be doing or buying are the reason for doing it differently. We need to tell the story of Jesus' birth, and the story of how he changes us from people focused on our needs and wants to servants who delight in helping others. I'd like to start a family tradition of a brief devotional, possibly using an Advent wreath, to reinforce the story we want to tell. Along the way, I'd hope to incorporate discussions about why we're attempting to do things differently this year. I'd love to hear suggestions of resources you've used along these lines.

UPDATE: If you want to do some Christmas shopping that will do good in the world, check out CauseDepot (HT Tod).

UPDATE: Cindy shared an Advent calendar resource her family has used. Check it out here.

UPDATE: Sonja recommends this catalog: Heartbeats: Networking Women, Developing World and Minority Artists.

Do not become distressed...

2007-11-13T21:37:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Hamo for introducing a new blogger, Harry. Harry writes at Fruitful Conversations, which he describes as "Theological musings in the fertile spaces between economics, sectarian community, anarchism, permaculture, communalism and agrarianism." If all that sounds a bit heady, considern this reflection on a few lines from the Rule of Benedict in which Benedict warns his monks not to be distressed if circumstances force them to have to do the work of harvesting themselves:

I suspect that the distress spoken of here is born of two things. On the one hand there is distress at the nature of the work itself; harvesting is hard work, that's why we get others to do it! This is a distress at what is being asked of us in the present. On the other hand, there is the distress of becoming aware of how complex and difficult is the task ahead of us. Harvesting is hard work and yet it forms only the beginning of a fuller work for which we are ill prepared. This is the distress at what might be asked of us in the future. Like us, Benedict and the monks of Cassino were facing a transitional time in which tasks foreign to them may have been becoming more necessary. ...
That monasteries were able somehow to be 'centres of light and life' is a testimony to the obedience of the brothers but was apparently not an easy thing. The picture given by

“They must not become distressed if local conditions or their poverty should force them to do the harvesting themselves.”

is not one of ease which suddenly encounters a nasty reality from which it will soon retreat again. It is one more like our own, in which the disciplines required to approach a different time are yet ill-formed in us, inclining us towards becoming distressed. Distress keeps us from our present and future work. Distress signifies an imagination which has not yet been fully formed by a God which 'brings us out', through the desert, into the land which has been promised. In Christ are the desert and the land brought together in one person. In Christ death is made merely a step in a life which bears no suppression. Death is no longer to be feared. We might be tempted to say with the Israelites:

“If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

only to be find ourselves caught up in God's glory:

“In the evening you shall know that it was the LORD who brought you out of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the LORD, because he has heard your complaining against the LORD ... At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.” Exodus 16:6-7;21

If we keep from imagining our life only in slavery, that is, if we keep from becoming distressed and so grasping for comfort, then we shall discover that there is sustenance given for our freedom, that our life will not be stopped as we look to the One who is crucified-and-risen.

Benedict's council, seated in a circumstance in which monks are dependent, like us, on unjust economic patters and systems, is one which would open us to a patient hope. There is work to be done in the present which will form the possibility of an imaginative work in the future. Benedict and his monks were in a similar struggle to us, that of extricating themselves from complicity in dehumanising ways; indeed, as with us, it seemed impossible. Obedience to Benedict's word that 'they must not become distressed' allowed them to be opened to becoming 'centres of light and life.' There is in this statement at once an empathy for our natural fear of 'harvesting ourselves', of the desert, of death, indeed of life which seems like death, and a gentle yet insistent call that we allow ourselves to be formed by the One who is crucified-and-risen and who provides for our life in the desert, leading us into life, lest we settle for our present slavery.

There's lots more ... it's a rather long post, but worth taking the time over. The call to not become distressed in the transition resonates with me today. I have to admit I find myself distressed at all sorts of transitions that are going on right now -- whether it's moving into a new city; navigating new relationships or the lack of; being part of church while sensing the call or need to do church differently; longing for a way of life that is more rooted, more just, more compassionate, yet aware of my bondage to "the fleshpots of Egypt."

These are wise words -- "Distress keeps us from our present and future work. ... There is work to be done in the present which will form the possibility of an imaginative work in the future." Much as I'm willing to describe my present as life in the desert, I rebel at the true work of the desert -- waiting, following, letting go of what is past. I appreciate Harry's suggestion that there is creative work to be done here -- shaping new ways of thinking and acting that give rise to the possibilities that still lay out in the future. The temptation of the desert is getting stuck there, wallowing in distress and loss. The work of the present moment might be simple, hard labor; it might be faithfully showing up to work that is less than inspirational; even the dailiness of household work offers opportunities to be opened up as a "center of light and life."

Happiness is...

2007-11-07T07:40:00.001-08:00

Thanks to Hamo (and Vodafone), we now have an answer. Of course we have Jesus' answer to that, too, as Hamo points out.

I've been tagged!

2007-11-03T21:22:00.001-07:00

Lori tagged me with the 10-20-30 meme that's been going around. I posted on this one a couple of weeks ago here, in case you missed it.

UPDATE: I almost forgot to pass on the tag! Let's see -- I 'll tag

Dan at Faith Dance
Kevin, A Watchman's View from the Wall
Lisa at Chance of Kingfishers

All Saints Day

2007-11-01T10:25:00.000-07:00

We were trick-or-treating through the neighborhood last night with our next-door neighbors and their threesome, when Doe said something about the next day being a holiday, too. I told her it's a kind of holiday that some churches celebrate called All Saints Day (I do remember enough of my Catholic upbringing for that). She continued, "My teacher told me it's a day to celebrate being afraid." Really?? A couple of minutes to think about that one. "No, it's a day to celebrate not being afraid." Hmmm...

The kids raced off to the next house for another handful of loot.

As we were tucking them into bed someone said something about tomorrow being a holiday. "It's All Saint's Day. It's a day we remember all the saints. Do you know what a saint is? A saint is someone who loves Jesus."

"Like you, Mommy and Daddy?"

"Yes."

"And like me and Ray?"

"Yes, that's right."

I'm not sure where the celebrating not being afraid came from (a kindergarten teacher's attempt to lessen the spooky factor of Halloween?), but it's not a bad way to think about All Saint's Day. So for all the saints reading this(HT Christine).

One Hit Wonder

2007-10-31T20:58:00.000-07:00

Here's one of those great what if? ideas made possible by the internet -- HT Alan of The Forgotten Ways.

We hope to gather 7.29 million dollars, one-dollar at a time, then give it all away to those who need it most. Here’s how we seek to do it.

What if everyone in the world gave you one dollar? Have you wondered what you’d do with it? We have, & we’d like to see how many people across the planet will give a dollar & then give it away to the poorest communities in the world. Currently 729 million people have internet access. Imagine if just 1% of these people were willing to get involved & give one dollar. That would amount to over 7 million dollars to give away. Not bad for a measly dollar!

On December 25, 2008 we’ll begin to give away every dollar-90% to the poorest communities in developing countries, & 10% (plus interest) will be utilised locally. The money will be given through registered well-known organisations across the globe covering many regions & needs. Not one dollar will be used for administration or any other associated expense. These costs will be covered by us & our partners. For those concerned this is a scam we’ve asked Deloitte, one of the world’s leading accounting firms to audit onehitwonder.

In the interests of full disclosure, it cost me something like $1.07 (converting from US to Australian dollars, plus pay pal's processing fee). Go do it. Why should the Bill Gates of the world have all the fun?

Don't go Christmas shopping before you read this...

2007-10-31T11:25:00.000-07:00

Julie Clawson posts a report of the gory details coming out of China's sweatshops (HT Cindy).

What I find most interesting in this whole thing is Mattel's behavior. This is the Mattel that recently apologized to China for the "excessive" recall of so many lead tainted toys. So if they are apologizing for attempting to make toys safe, then I don't have much confidence in their treatment of workers. This is also the company that sues someone on average once a month for Barbie copyright infringement. Apparently Barbie has more rights than the 14 year old girl who made her in a sweatshop. This is the Mattel that "sought and won special “waivers” from the government of China to pay below the legal minimum wage in its factories. Mattel also received waivers to unilaterally extend allowable working hours to seventy-two hours per week, which exceeds China’s legal limit on overtime by 295 percent." Oh and this is also the Mattel whose CEO paid himself $7,278,178 last year in wages and other compensation—which is 6,533 times what he pays his toy workers in China.

Personally, given the growing population of Barbies in our household, I find this appalling. I can't quite figure out what is worse: knowing that I've funded this exploitation of young women half a world away, or trying to explain to my kids why I don't want to keep doing it. Lord have mercy!

If you want to think about something even scarier, which we've started to see in the industry I'm involved in, is companies moving their production from China to Vietnam! Now, I don't have any evidence of sweatshop conditions in the window coverings industry, but how different can it be?

The World is Flat -- or at least really, really small

2007-10-27T22:31:00.001-07:00

How's this for a series of "coincidences":

The other day, hubby decided on the spur of the moment to drop by is alma mater, which happens to be down the road a ways, and ran into two couples we know from entirely different circles, on campus for a board meeting.

We arranged to meet one of the couples tonight for dinner -- they wanted to meet our kids. We had a nice time catching up. They have a real estate company that among other things owns a very nice hotel in Hawaii. We confessed that we had wandered onto the hotel grounds the last time we were there and finagled our way into the swimming pool. We also told them about our friend Judy who is a long-time (50 plus years and counting) missionary in Japan, who often spends part of her furlough times in that part of Hawaii.

We had a lovely evening, and as we were putting the kids to bed, the phone rang. It was Judy, calling from Japan. Turns out Judy knew of our friends, had heard they were Christians. "I've been praying for that hotel and the staff for 35 years," she told us. We're going to try to get them together on the phone soon.

Judy also mentioned that she'd met their daughter the last time she was in that area. Our friends had given me Rachel's blog address, so I checked it out. She's currently in India researching the issue of human trafficking. The first video in this entry certain brought me right back to my time in India 20 years ago! But seriously, check out her blog and the Elpis Project website.

Oh, and the Red Sox are up 3-0 in the World Series. Altogether a good evening, I'd say! (Sorry, Mak!)

GO RED SOX!

2007-10-25T10:55:00.001-07:00

Nothing like a blowout to start off the World Series. Hope the Red Sox can keep it up, and the Rockies can wake up from their long autumn nap and make it interesting for us!

Good News for All Creation?

2007-10-24T07:12:00.001-07:00

Hamo invites guest blogger Jarrod McKenna to share his insights from Gandhi on Wednesdays. Today (or is it yesterday in Aussie?) he takes a shot at the Gnosticism latent in much of what passes for Christian thinking.

It’s always risky to paint with broad brushstrokes but the quote above reveals something Gandhi’s worldview where he viewed the goal of faith being a spiritual salvation (moksha) form the ‘illusion of this world’ while living lives of loving service. This ‘dualism with an activist twist’ is sadly what many Christians think the gospel is about as well. Somehow today Christians often think that right relationship with each other and with the land is a secondary thought to right relationship to God. For the early Christians it was an integral part of the reconciliation of all things which God has started in Jesus.
Somehow today Christians have walked away from our calling to be image bearers and witnesses to the transformation of creation (the coming of the kingdom). Instead we have become religious vendors of ‘spirituality’ to accompany the foolish and
diabolical destruction of creation. Instead of preaching ‘in Jesus the exodus from all domination has started’ we preach a neo-Gnostism of ’in Jesus the exodus from creation has started’.

He includes a nice NT Wright quote, too, so go read the whole post.

I have more than a sneaking suspicion that the dualist way of thinking those pesky Greeks brought into Christianity is at the root of a lot of the problems with church-as-we-know-it. Not only do we divorce spirit and flesh, and vertical from horizontal relationships, but the whole sacred/secular or us/them way of thinking reflects this way of divvying up the world. Make no mistake, there's always an implicit value judgment in dualism: one side is good, the other bad, nuance it however you like. The corrective lies in the Hebrew world view with its holistic approach: "The earth is the Lord's and everything in it."

A Man of Peace

2007-10-22T22:51:00.000-07:00

I went to a lecture last night -- something I haven't done in years. Paul Farmer was in town, speaking on Global Health Equity. I had read Tracy Kidder's Mountains Over Mountains, an account of Farmer's life and work pioneering community-based health care for the poor in Haiti and other places. I had seen a flyer at the library when we first arrived in town, and again when I took the kids to pick out books yesterday afternoon. Farmer comes across as larger than life in Kidder's book -- it would be cool to hear him in person.

I almost missed it. Between chaperoning Doe's field trip this morning, working, dinner prep, modeling solar and lunar eclipses with balls and a light, etc., I almost forgot. The kids were in the tub, and it suddenly occurred to me -- it's Monday night. Paul Farmer. The advantage of a small town is I could get there in 15 minutes, find parking and a seat and have plenty of time to look around.

I was kind of wondering just what had drawn me there. Was it going to be an passionate appeal to strike out for justice? Heart-rending pictures of poor and sick people designed to separate me from some dollars? I've seen and heard all those -- usually in the context of some mission week or other such program. Maybe there's some clue about my call to this particular place, even though I knew the topic would focus mostly on other places.

Farmer is incredibly intelligent, but gentle and funny. He is obviously a man of incredible passion and resolve, but one motivated by great hope as well. What strikes me it that he did show a few pictures: an emaciated Haitian man named Joseph, victim of AIDS and TB, obviously near death as his mother and some neighbors carried him on a stretcher to a clinic. The follow-up picture spoke volumes -- a smiling, healthy-looking young man with a child in his arms. The same man about six months later, thanks to medication. It's a story Farmer and his Partners in Health have seen repeated many times. With all the talk of Haiti, it was hard not to flash back to a popular Christian speaker who has done a lot of good work in Haiti -- but his stories are the heart-wrenching ones of mothers begging him to take their babies back on the plane with him. Guilt is such a weak motivator; how easily we can distract ourselves away from those images. But hope sticks around and changes how we think about things, about ourselves and what we might be able to accomplish.

The other thing I walked away with was an echo of Luke 10 -- Jesus sends his disciples out to the villages of Judea and instructs them to look for a person of peace, someone who will welcome them. Farmer and his organization, Partners in Health, represent that person of peace for me at some level. They are committed to serving and empowering the poor, or as he put it, "making common cause with the poor to attack poverty." Aren't those Kingdom values? Couldn't I as a follower of Jesus agree that the idea that everyone should have access to health care, education, nutrition, safe water, etc. is one that I can get behind? The fact that it isn't a "Christian" organization doesn't negate the good work they are doing.

There was a day when I would have said, that's great. Let me find a mission organization that's doing something similar and support them. Today I find myself wondering where are the people here in my community that I can "make common cause" with in pursuit of justice. Do you think the disciples learned something about hospitality from the people who took them in and fed them? Did they learn about faith from those who brought their sick and afflicted for prayer? Were they just a bit surprised to see the Kingdom break in all around them?

Are we still having this conversation?

2007-10-20T18:24:00.001-07:00

Sonja over at Calacirian has sparked a bit of discussion by pointing out the fact that were only a handful of women in attendance at the Missional Order Gathering sponsored by Allelon, and what might be done about that.

I think that the men who are in and of the emerging conversation have an important job to do now. Many of them have said that they value women more than their counterparts in the institutional church. But it is becoming imperative that they guard and protect those women. By this I mean that those men need to not just say the words that women are their equal, but they need to create space for women to flourish and grow. This is going to mean looking at the conferences that are planned and thinking about things such as childcare both at the conference and back at home, and when the conference is planned, where it’s planned, how much it costs … per person, and per couple, and per family, what are travel costs, etc. How many women leaders vs. men leaders are involved? It might also mean stepping back to allow a woman to take the stage or the spotlight.

More important than any of the above questions it will mean looking at women culturally to see how to include them. Women *are* different from men. We have been socialized differently. We respond to “open invitations” differently. It was pointed out in the conversation over at Rick’s blog that the Allelon conference was open to anyone who wanted to come. Yet as I reflect on the literature that was available for that conference and how women respond to those and how men do … it is very different. Women do need more of an invitation, especially in the church, they need to feel that they are indeed included and welcomed. For a woman to just “invite herself” to such an event goes against all the social norms we have been taught about being a “good girl.” Or to invite herself to participate in many of the group efforts going on is simply not done. It’s very, very difficult to overcome those social rules taught when we’re very young.

Maybe a younger generation of women will get over these rules -- maybe we can try not to teach them to our daughters-- but I certainly resonate with Sonja's points. I've been keeping my ears and eyes out for an opportunity to connect with people who are doing house church or organic church planting. Every time I see a conference within striking distance, the organizers very politely reply, no we don't have facilities for child care. The last one I tried had just added a track on children in the context of house church, but we couldn't go because we had no where to leave our kids.

Part of the very fabric of the church as we've known it is that it was expected that leadership came from men, generally ordained ones. There's a tendency simply not to see those who don't fit the mold, or to overlook the needs of families, as Sonja points out. Yes, there are exceptions, and churches that ordain women. I was part of one of those, and came as close as you can get to joining their ranks. What I discovered at the end of following all the rules is that I didn't have the relational network of mentors and people who open the doors to actually get there. I'm not blaming men for that, I just think it's the way things are. Certainly some women are better at finding ways to create opportunities, and I believe God had a lot to do with steering me in a different direction. (I've learned to appreciate closed doors as the mercy of God.)

So I really appreciate Sonja's notion of men creating some space for women to grow into the kind of roles that would give them a place to stand and become part of the conversation.

As I read the comments on Sonja's post, my mind wandered back to a conversation I had this summer with my sister. She was expressing all her skepticism about church, her suspicion that church, and by extension, Christianity itself, is forever tainted by patriarchy and hierarchy. That Christianity isn't a good or safe place for women, at least women who want to fully express their God-given gifts and personality. I wasn't saying much in the conversation -- partly because hubby had gotten into his need-to-witness mode and had to get a few points in, after which I really didn't want to say much. But at least in part because I agreed with her.

Maybe we're still having this conversation about the role of women and how to protect or enhance it, or whether we're being fair, because some of us are still carrying around the baggage of having been set aside in various ways in the church as we've known it. It's funny, but I don't hear the same conversation happening in the world around us -- you have to be pretty retro to question Hillary Clinton's right to run for president simply on the basis of her being a woman. At some level, it's disappointing to realize that the emergent segment of the church is still struggling to find a way to model the simple goodness of creation -- male and female, together, in the image of God.

I'm willing to own that I can be passive when it comes to walking out some of the things God puts on my heart. Yes, I am waiting to be invited. I don't like sticking my neck out to try something that no one around me has the least idea what I'm talking about. I've appreciated the sense of community that comes from reading and dialoging on various blogs; for the most part I've found it very supportive. Those of us who are feeling our way along to whatever the future holds need that support, whether we're men or women. I guess I want to respond to Sonja and those who agree or disagree with her by saying that we need to help each other along in this journey -- whatever form that help might take. Some of us surely would appreciate the kind of help Sonja requests; some might be able to provide it. I hope I can help encourage some of my fellow travelers.

10-20-30 Virus

2007-10-14T18:44:00.000-07:00

I saw this on Erin's blog and decided to join in the fun. I'm supposed to tell you about my life 10, 20, and 30, years ago.

10 years ago: Oct, 1997. I'd been married 11 years, no kids yet, trying to ignore my biological clock clanging away. We were living in the house in the San Fernando Valley that we recently sold. I was a recent seminary graduate, looking for a call to a Presbyterian church so I could be ordained. I'd jumped through all the "hoops" of the ordination process, and at that point I think I wanted to be done with it more than I really could see myself in any of the job/church descriptions I was reading. The picture I had of that season was that I'd been travelling along a set of train tracks with well mapped progress points defined by school and "the process"; I was being led away from that onto a windy forest path with few markers of any sort. Around that time I got involved helping a friend convert a little application he had written from DOS to Windows. What was supposed to be a three-month project has turned into a decade-plus career. Who knew that our targeted industry (window shutter manufacturers) were the crankiest, most "we have to do it this way or we'll go out of business" people we could have chosen to work with!

20 years ago: Oct, 1987. A relative newly wed couple, we'd finally decided to join the church where I'd been working. That fall we got involved for the first time in the college ministry, which was far and away the best thing we ever did in that church, working with kids from UCLA, USC and other schools. By October, I must have known that my friend who had invited me to work with him as his assistant would be leaving for a new position; I couldn't have known how the chips would settle or that I'd end up at that job for another two years, working with an amazingly driven man in a completely dysfunctional organization. It was a season that ended only when I woke up one day with the realization that my view of God had shrunk to an army commander with little concern for the troops who couldn't keep up. The decision faced me: forget about being a Christian or find out who God really is. By God's grace, I opted for the latter.

30 years ago: Oct, 1977. I was starting my senior year of high school, playing Varsity field hockey, working the odd babysitting job around the neighborhood, for a dollar an hour (don't I wish that were the rate now!). I had already picked a college and opted for early admission; I remember how I just couldn't wait to be on my own. My adolescent rebellion was mostly of the intellectual kind; I was still attending Mass with my parent, but I'd decided that Jesus was just a nice guy who had a lot of strange mythology attached to him. My social world was pretty much limited to a couple of close girl friends, and our lunch table gang of fellow nerds.

And now -- Still married, with 4- and 5-year old girls. Recently moved to a quiet beach town to share a home with my in-laws. We're working on plans for a build-out/remodel. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to be when I grow up, and how that fits with the sense of calling in my life.

Rules and Practices

2007-10-12T15:13:00.000-07:00

I've been pondering the "10 ways to live intentionally" list over the past few days, and find myself challenged to think in a slightly different direction by David Fitch's call for a new missional order, and Len's post with links to several attempts at missional rules and practices.

Here's a summary of David's proposed rule (St. Fiacre was a Celtic saint, patron saint of gardeners):

The Rule of St Fiacre Missional Order of Pastor-Servants: Sent Out to Cultivate Christian Communities as Gardens Midst the Cities, Neighborhoods, Towns and Villages of N. America

Committed to Plant Christian Communities as Gardens, not Grocery Stores...

Committed to a lifestyle of simplicity, frugality and bi-ministerial/bi-vocationalism...

Committed to put down roots, take up jobs, and live in this neighborhood, to love, live and walk with lost people in the rhythms of everyday life...

Committed to ministering the gospel to those in pain, in desperation, depression, darkness and poverty...

Committed to foster resistance to a.) consumerist structures b.) materialist behavior and c.,) secular practices...

Committed to, whether commissioned as ordained pastor or minister, take up life together and ministry as an everyday vocation as part of everyday life.

Committed to get to know the community contextually, to know its needs, to minister to its hurts, to fight/resist its social sins, to incarnate Christ amidst the everyday rhythms and life of your community.

Committed to seeing secular vocation, the making a living, the amount of money one makes, and career as secondary to call of God on your life for His Mission.

Committed to regular practices of spiritual formation that center one's life in Christ and in His Mission. This includes a proposed Rule of St Fiacre...

Committed to banding together with no less than 8 other St Fiacre Ministers to go where God calls to inhabit space for the presence of Christ in Mission.

Committed to a living a life of hospitality, opening up our homes and lives for those who are hurting, alone, depressed, and without the gospel.

I'm not sure I'm quite ready to sign up, but there is a definite appeal to the idea of sharing those kinds of commitments with some others in a specific geographical area (David's church is in Chicago, so I assume most of his order will center there anyway). As I read through the other rules Len links to, it occurred to me that the list of 10 ways to live intentionally really are doable without reference to God. They're good things, but they don't answer the question why? Likewise there were some very simple rules -- the Northumbrian community boils theirs down to availability and vulnerability -- and some that read more like a list of practices to be done daily, weekly or monthly. Perhaps this is obvious, but it struck me that a rule has a general, overarching quality, that speaks to worldview and sense of calling or commitment. Any number of practices could be brought into play to help fulfill that calling.

To borrow a concept from Dallas Willard that's been drilled into my head repeatedly (Dallas is a member of our old church, and our pastor liked this particular concept a lot): Change or growth comes from Vision (what I want to see happen), Intention (the determination to pay the price and make the change), and Means (what I actually have to do to make it happen). Too often we focus on the means end of the equation without really considering the vision and intention. We latch on to the three easy steps or seven keys or 10 ways to live better and hope that by cranking that engine over and over, we'll accomplish the radical transformation of our hearts and souls. Inevitably, we get tired, burned out, don't see change quickly enough, or hear yet another sermon promising six steps to a better life and go chasing after another set of practices.
Real change happens when we grasp the vision at such a level that we truly have the intention to make it real. Dallas insists that the means will fall into place if the first two elements are dealt with properly. In fact, the nature of spiritual growth is that direct action rarely works. Think of any bad habit you've tried to give up -- the more you try to attack it directly, the more you're fighting a losing battle. Dallas suggests in one of his books that the indirect approach, pursuing a spiritual discipline like fasting if your problem is anger actually works better.

So, much as I like the idea of living intentionally, and appreciate some very good suggestions on how to do that, I find myself wondering what my vision is -- or better, what vision does God have in placing us in this community for this season?

More Thoughts on 10 ways to live intentionally

2007-10-09T16:58:00.000-07:00

This is such a great list - I just want to reflect on each item and how it might apply.

1) Live with others from your church community

We're living with extended family now (my in-laws). One thing I've noticed is that some of the household tasks are so much easier when shared -- shopping, cooking, cleaning. One night I'll take the lead on dinner, another night my mother-in-law will. We moved here to help support our aging parents, but at least so far, it's been a pretty even sharing.

The point it -- it's a lot of work to maintain the suburban home, and not that much more work if a few more people are sharing the living space.

2) Work Less!

This is definitely a goal of mine. My paying job (a business that I co-own) requires 15 to 20 hours per week currently, but I'd love to make it 10. Working from home and having somewhat flexible hours also helps free up time for family and other relationships.

3) Throw out the television

Well, there would be a great deal of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth in our house! We try to limit the kids to videos and the occasional PBS cartoon. I did notice that our morning routine goes much smoother since we started enforcing the no-TV-before-school rule. But TV's advertising and all the stuff portrayed in the lives we see on TV and movies feed our hunger for consumption-- and train the kids to want more and more.

4) Drive less

This is one of my favorite things about our new place -- small suburb of a small city. Everything is close (unless it's Target, which is 45 miles away). Doe walks to school. Ray's preschool is a mile and a half, instead of the six or seven we were driving before. Gas costs more here, but it's more than offset by driving less. And you do notice things in the neighborhood when you walk it every day.

5) Have a garden / grow food

On the list -- perhaps we might even manage it this spring, depending on how the remodel goes. In the meanwhile, I'm buying as much as possible at farmers markets and local farm stands. If I can't grow it myself, at least I'd like to know where it's coming from.

6) Get to know your neighbors / listen for their needs

This is happening, slowly but surely. One of our fellow walkers in the morning lives three doors down, in a house occupied for many years by my in-laws' best friends. She stopped me one morning to introduce herself as the resident of the Smith's house. This is the one I need to really focus on, or another week will go by before I introduce myself to the family next door!

7) Be outside as much as possible.

I have no excuse -- it's Southern California, there's the park down the street and the open space/reserve across the street, not to mention the beach, mountains, etc. We do spend a lot of time at the park -- the kids will often want to stop on the way home from school or have some play time on weekends. I'm trying to reestablish my bird walks ... The fog was playing around the eucalyptus grove this morning, but the head cold I've been nursing said not today.

8) Do not fence in your yard

Our fences are in sad shape, does that count? This one is hard when you're in an area where everyone has fences. I think there may be other ways to demonstrate that your home is open to the people around you.

9) Take a stand against the greed of mega-corporations

I try. It's easy to avoid the fast food chains, but is The Coffee Bean really a better choice than Starbucks? From my experience Starbucks at least treats its employees pretty well.

10) Utilize and support non-commercial public spaces (parks, libraries, colleges, etc.)

We had a library card within 48 hours of moving in. Unfortunately, I don't tend to find the books I'm reading about online in their catalog. Maybe I can find a way to finesse a card from the University. On the other hand, there's also a great ballroom dance program through the parks & rec department.

All that to say, I should print the list and tape it next to my monitor!

Living intentionally in the suburbs

2007-10-08T17:47:00.001-07:00

Will Samson posted a list of "Ten Ideas for Living Intentionally in the Suburbs." Check it out. Here are a couple of my faves:

4) Drive less

Suburban culture is also enslaved to the automobile. Find ways to
loosen those bonds (much more difficult in suburbia than in urban
areas). Share a vehicle with others in your church community (much
easier if you are doing #1 above). Invest in a good bicycle. Walk.
There was a segment on "60 minutes" a few weeks ago about how much we
miss when we zip around in automobiles. Walking and/or biking will help
you be more attentive to your surroundings

7) Be outside as much as possible.

Another temptation of suburbia - fueled by individualism - is that
of the house as an impenetrable fortress. Dissolve this temptation by
eating, playing, relaxing outside. This practice is also one avenue to
interact with your neighbors.

The whole list is well worth thinking about. Will and his wife, Lisa, are authors of Justice in the Burbs, which I read a couple of months ago, and really would like to review here -- hopefully before too long!

The Mom Song

2007-10-07T16:48:00.001-07:00

This is required watching for all moms. HT: Erin -- she posted the words in case there's something you hear that hasn't come out of your mouth in the past 24 hours.

Where do we go from here?

2007-10-07T11:16:00.001-07:00

I rarely remember my dreams, but I had one last night. It seems I was being walked around a mega-church (not one I've actually visited, just the generic model), by one of the pastors. He was showing me around, telling me about all the cool things they were doing. The one I remember was that they made lunch for everyone after the service. This struck me as wonderful, a way of breaking down the anonymity and lack of community that I've often experienced in large churches. I got the impression that people didn't go out to lunch after church -- everyone really hung around and ate together. (In the light of day, that strikes me as just a bit creepy, but in my dream I really liked the idea.)

For some reason, I wasn't staying for lunch. In fact, I found myself walking the wrong way through crowds of people lined up for their food. I think I had been exploring on my own for a bit, when I bumped into my guide again. I thanked him for the tour and said, "If I was supposed to be in this kind of church, yours is definitely the one I'd join. But I believe I'm called in a different direction." It wasn't a harsh judgment, just a peaceful realization that this pastor was a nice guy, working hard to create a meaningful community, but it wasn't the community I was called to be part of.

It isn't hard to guess where this dream came from. When we moved to our new town, we knew a handful of people (the number hasn't grown very much): my in-laws, a couple of their neighbors, the pastors and a few members of the church we've visited over the past dozen years. The senior pastor showed up on moving day and helped us put things into a storage unit! Both pastors are dear friends who have stood with us through health crises in the family and various other challenges. How do I tell them I don't really want to be part of their church?

One of my intentions since moving here is to avoid using the church as my primary social network. I want to make friends "out there" in the community. So we have avoided joining a home group, despite a number of invitations. So far, the fact that the kids need to be in bed at 8 p.m. in order to get up for school has been an acceptable excuse. There are a few Moms from Doe's kindergarten class I'm getting to know. Making friends is hard work, especially when everyone is as busy as I am, and many are well-established in the community.

I came across a great post from Kevin Shinn this morning, reflecting on how to make sense of our experiences with churches we've felt compelled to leave behind.

I read a handful of blogs of people who have left the Church As We Know It. Whether their reasons are spiritual abuse or just plain disillusionment, all have a similar theme of looking back and evaluating what in the world they were a part of. They question themselves, often feeling shameful or stupid for being so naïve.

After describing how he's been down that road himself, he offers some profound advice:

The point for me is not to look back and wonder whether or not my life was authentic or not. My past is what it is. Instead I have a present and a future to consider. My previous story helps me make sense of what I see at hand and ahead.

To my friends on this journey toward the Church Of The Future; The watchman says look back as well as beyond. Embrace where you’ve been, but don’t want it back. There is a new place to create and establish. It’s the whole point of your feeling disenchanted. Change can’t occur until we get tired of staying in same place.

The temptation for me is to slide back into what I've known. There's nothing wrong with this church. It's far from being a mega-church; they meet in a community center auditorium, are involved in serving the poor, etc. I can't really say what that new place might look like. I just know in my gut that if I set my roots into that group of people, it will be all the harder to develop the relationships I'd like to have with people outside it.

A picture's worth a thousand words...

2007-10-05T20:28:00.001-07:00

I can't think how many posts I've written trying to say what ASBO Jesus says here. (HT: Bill Kinnon)

Free Burma!

2007-10-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

Did I miss this one in the Fuller Catalog?

2007-10-01T21:09:00.001-07:00

I'm thinking I overlooked this course somehow in my --well let's just say several -- years of seminary training.

Honestly, I don't think I've read a summary of why people leave church behind that I more readily identify with. There are a lot of compelling stories about abuse and betrayal from leaders and various other disappointments with the flawed people of run churches -- been there, done that, got the tee-shirt. But those experiences didn't make me want to find a fundamentally different model of being the church -- they just made me want to find a better one, which I suppose I did for a while. This one does:

A typical day at The Church As We Know It.
You, on the other hand, spend five to six hours on Sundays orchestrating a mass movement of your family to a place for your kids to play with other kids, which is really what much of The Church As We Know It has become. You have to get everyone up, fed, dressed, in the car, buckled in, transported, parked, and delivered or dropped off at the right room. Once in place, you make your way with the crowd into the big room with the band and other visual and auditory presentations. After the information has been dispensed in the prescribed amount of time, you must make your way back through the maze to retrieve your little ones who hand you the coloring sheet of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors, to which you comment, “It’s beautiful.” and you’re stuck wondering what to do with it.

I haven't spent nearly the five to six hours in this process since my days in the church with committees, but I do regularly find myself asking: how does spending Sunday morning this way contribute to the goal of being a follower of Jesus? I listened to a sermon yesterday which was really well done and quite entertaining, to the effect that we should all go out and listen to the people around us, ask them questions, etc. Amen, sister! What are we doing sitting here on our butts talking about "the people out there"? We should be at Starbucks or the golf course or the beach, where we might actually run into one or two of them. Do I need to hear that pep talk every week? Or could I just get on with it?

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Turning Worship on its head

2007-09-26T21:33:00.001-07:00

Here are some honest words from Sally Morgenthaler, discussing how she has moved away from advocating a worship-evangelism model of church (HT House Church Blog).

By 2002 a few pastors of praise and worship churches began admitting to me that they weren't making much of a dent in the surrounding non-Christian population, even though their services were packed and they were known for the best worship production in town. Several asked me to help them crack the unchurched code. One wanted to invest in an expensive VJ machine and target twentysomethings. The others thought a multisensory, ancient-future, or emergent twist might help. However, when I visited their congregations, it wasn't hard to see that the biggest barrier to reaching the unchurched had little to do with worship technique or style. It had to do with isolation and the faux-worship that isolation inevitably creates.

Churches out to impact their communities, or simply to survive the next month's electric bill, were looking for a quick fix -- change the worship service, add some new technology, new songs, whatever. The hard work of getting outside the building and into the lives of the people around them didn't sound like the "right" answer -- at least not the one you pay a consultant to come up with. But I think the idea that isolation creates faux-worship is right on. That has been my experience, that the typical worship service rings hollow. It's out of touch with life, with reality, with truth.

She quotes a journalist's assessment of a mega-church worship service, and concludes:

No sad songs. No angry songs. Songs about desperation, but none about despair. Worship for the perfect. The already arrived. The good-looking, inoffensive, and nice. No wonder the unchurched aren't interested.

Heck, some of the churched aren't interested!

When Sally's website, Sacramentis, was dismantled a year or so ago, they put up the following as explanation of that decision:

But as culture has become incessantly more spiritual and adamantly less religious, we at Sacramentis have become convinced that the primary meeting place with our unchurched friends is now outside the church building. Worship must finally become, as Paul reminds us, more life than event (Romans 12:1-2).

I like that -- worship as life more than event. It's hard to know quite how to pursue that kind of worship. You can't simply show up at a certain place and time and know the band will be playing. I find myself asking really simple questions, like what do we mean by God's presence (which in the church circles I've traveled seems to be the imprimatur of good worship)? Isn't God present everywhere (it's one of those omni's)? Does our singing, swaying, lifting hands, etc. convince him to be more tangibly present here and now? Does it just make us aware that God has been present all along? Or is something a whole lot less spiritual and more religious going on?

Walking around my new birding spot the other day, pondering these questions, I remembered that the Hebrew word translated presence literally means "before the face of." It's a word of relationship, of face-to-face communication. And for someone to really be in my presence, I have to be present to them, turn my face, tune my ears and heart. This is why I hear "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy" repeatedly during the day. Doe and Ray want to be sure I'm listening, present to them, before they share their precious tidbits of "Do you know what?" Often enough I'm doing a number of other things and not tuned in completely. Do I think they don't know the difference?

The inward focus of contemporary worship has a tendency to make us seekers of experience, that special sense of God's presence, the Holy Spirit goosebumps. Interesting that calling that definition of God's presence into question leads right back to real life, to people and my ability to connect with them. If I'm experiencing God's presence anywhere in my life right now, it's in the moments when I am present to my family and friends. Is it worship? I don't know... it doesn't look like Sunday morning. Is it holy? I believe so.