Blanket in the Grove

Our Olympic Games - Hear that, Felix?

2008-08-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

So we're fixin' to watch the Olympics tonight (over take-out Chinese food).

We just love watching the Olympics around here. One of our very favorite things about the Olympics is our own silly game that we invented back in 1992 when the Winter Olympics were in Lillehammer.

We thought Lillehammer was such a funny city name, that every time someone said it on TV, D. or I would say, "Beg your pardon?" It only took a few times of calling out the phrase before we turned it into a competition to see who could remember to say it first.

And then we have done it every single Olympics ever since! Only we change the phrase for each Olympics. For the most part, we try to keep it in the vein of "Beg you pardon?" So, for instance, Atlanta was "Huh?" And Kyoto, when I was pregnant with Monk was "Hear that, Baby?"

Oh, and Athens was "It's Greek to me." (Of course.)

And so this year, we're looping back to Kyoto's phrase, only modified a bit. (No worries!!!) Whenever they say Beijing, we'll call out: "Hear that, Felix?" [Felix is our cat.] Poor Felix! Because we get to shouting the phrase when it really gets going!

But, in addition to calling out the phrase for Beijing, whenever the announcers say any of the city's names, going back to 1992 when the game started, we also have to call out the old phrases. So, Athens' "It's Greek to me," will still be very much in play this year.

The Torino Olympics, two years ago, were Monk's first entry into our Olympic Games. And he so totally rocked it! D. and I didn't know what had hit us! So I think this year we're really hoping to at least have a respectable showing! We've all been in training for weeks now, during all the Olympics trials.

Hey, if you decide to try the game out youselves, let me know here. [Make up your own phrase that works for you.] We get such a hoot out of doing it ourselves, we'd love to know if it catches on with anyone else.

PS If anyone visits our house during the Olympics, we rope them into the game, too.

What's the Point of Balancing on a 4-inch Beam?

2008-07-08T17:05:00.001-07:00

This is the question my brother asked in a recent Twitter and Blog Entry. I started to leave a comment on his blog just now, responding to his entry, but decided my comment was getting too long. So I figured I'd post it here instead. I invite you to read his entry first: Board Balancer.

I don't really have a clear articulation about the relationship between art and sports, but I do think there is one. And I'm not sure that "producing" a "product" of some kind is necessarily the dividing line. There are too many arts where nothing remains after it is performed.

I'm aware, in particular, of the sand mandala in the Buddhist tradition in which an artist creates a most beautiful work of art with sand--and then destroys it.

The thing is, I really do relate to Cyen's rant--what's it all for, basically? But I feel really hesitant to go with it all the way. Maybe especially because he mentions an Olympic sport which is different in my opinion from professional sports (a bloated business for sure!).

But I see the Olympics and gymnastics in particular, say, as a celebration of what the human body is capable of doing. More than that, though, it's also a celebration of the human imagination caught up with the human body. A gymnast on the balance beam doesn't merely stand on a four-inch beam, but she also bends, and leaps, and flips, and gracefully traverses that beam in every way she can imagine.

Most people trudge through life never imagining anything can be different than it already is. But a gymnast takes the same human body and puts it in astounding positions on the thinnest slip of wood.

That makes me want to ask: what else is possible?

Back in the 80s, Joseph Campbell urged folks to follow their bliss. I imagine, for whatever reason, that a gymnast's bliss is balancing on a four-inch beam. It's not my bliss, but I celebrate that it is her's. I'm hopeful that if we were all given the chance to follow our bliss, then the world would be a more beautiful place.

It's a totally non-utilitarian view of things, I admit, dear Brother of mine. :)

The United States Post Office is a Joy to Work With

2008-07-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

(1) The hold on our mail delivery for vacation was supposed to end as of yesterday, but no mail was delivered. (Including an express package for D's work.)

(2) I call 1-800-ASK-USPS this morning to inquire. First time I call, I receive an automated message that the phone number is invalid. I double check the number I dialed and it is accurate.

(3) I call 1-800-ASK-USPS again and I am connected this time. After speaking various commands into the phone, I am connected to a human. (I think.) She tells me that if the mail wasn't delivered yesterday, it would not automatically come today. I can pick up my mail, with a photo ID at my local post office, or schedule a new delivery for this Saturday. We are waiting on bills that must be paid, so would like to pick up the mail today. We live in a fairly Big City, so I ask her which post office would be holding my mail. She types something into her computer, but does not come up with any answer. Instead she gives me the phone number for our Main Post Office.

(4) I call the Main City Post Office. The phone rings at least 40 times before someone answers. I explain the situation to the person who answers the phone. She asks for my zip code, then tells me my mail will be at Neighboring City Post Office. This seems very odd to me. (Would it seem odd to you?) So I clarify (politely): "Even though we're located in fairly Big City, our mail is delivered to Neighboring City?" She answers in the affirmative with as much impatience and exasperation as she can muster. She does not give me a phone number to connect with Neighboring City Post Office.

(5) I go back to usps.com to find phone number for Neighboring City Post Office. They list only 1-800-ASK-USPS.

(6) I call 1-800-ASK-USPS again. It rings twice then goes into a black hole of nothingness.

(7) I call 1-800-ASK-USPS again. I answer various voice commands, and realize there is one that will tell me which local post office is mine. I speak the magic words just to see if it matches what the woman just told me. It doesn't. I cajole the automated system to tell me the phone number of this post office.

(8) I check the usps.com website and notice that this latest post office is not even listed on their site. I decide to go back to Neighboring City suggestion. I notice that if you click on one more link ("more info") then rather than listing 1-800-ASK-USPS as the contact phone number, you are given the local post office phone number. WHY?!

(9) I call Neighboring City Post Office. The belligerence of this Customer Service Representative far outpaces the last human I spoke with. Without getting any address information from me, this person gives me a phone number for my Postal Supervisor and tells me to contact him to have my mail delivered. I tell her we would like to pick up the mail at this point, and can she tell if our mail is being held there. She spews, "This post office has nothing to do with delivering mail." I have no clue what that means. I pause a moment, trying to take in what seemed like a nonsense statement. "Hello?!" She says in a bitter tone. I say, in mock sweetness, "Thank you so much for your wonderful help." And hang up.

(10) I call the Postal Supervisor number. He puts me on hold. Several minutes later he comes back and says, "We don't have any mail here for you at all. I guess the Postal Carrier has it with him already." I clarify, "So the mail ought to be delivered to us today?" He answers, "I guess so."

Ah, the joys of a Bureaucratic Monopoly. I hate the United States Post Office.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

2008-06-13T08:50:00.000-07:00

After a month or so of daily countdowns, today we reached it: the last day of fourth grade for the Monk. How can this be so? And will we ever stop asking that?

Monk has had a great year this year. He seemed to fall into his groove with making new friends, taking things in stride, doing his homework without much complaint, growing more responsible. He had a couple projects in school that he really poured his heart into. Especially he worked hard on his Mission Project, in which he made the case that the California Mission system was largely responsible for the destruction of Native American cultures. He made a very sophisticated argument in his essay where he was able to recognize that although some of the intentions behind the Missions were good, in fact they had some very negative, unintentional consequences for Native Americans. For a fourth grader to be able to realize such complexity is pretty remarkable, in my (humble mom) opinion!

This was the year that Monk's parents saw way, way more closed bedroom doors than ever before. It used to be we couldn't get Monk to play in his room for anything: toys were always strewn around the living room floor when he was small! Now it seems we can't ever get him to come out of his room for more than an hour at a time. Of course, given that our apartment is roughly the size of a shoebox, we're never really far apart. :)

I have always seen the end of school years as opportunities to re-evaluate things. And I've been doing that these past couple weeks. Some of that I've been blogging about here and there--about looking for ways to live more faithfully in a broken world. But I'm also seeking ways, living as an academic, to be more embodied. Or, maybe put better, to pay attention to the fact that I am a body.

Having gotten sick at the end of May with a pretty serious (and painful) staph infection, I realized just how much the stress of these past few months had affected my immune system. And I saw that my ability to keep pushing on, no matter how stressful things are, while good for the short-term, is not a long-term, sustainable lifestyle.

This past week, inspired by PeripateticPolarBear, I decided that I wanted to start walking to work this summer. (I would have started earlier, but needed to recover my health first.) Although I haven't exercised for ages upon ages, I jumped right in this week and started walking the three miles to my office and back.

I made it a day and a half (9 miles in 24 hours) before I realized something pretty important. That is this: not exercising for twenty years is rooted in the same disrespect for one's body as jumping in and walking nine miles in 24 hours. I wanted to be able to do it all, every day, rather than understanding that I needed to gradually ramp up my expectations. It's a humbling thought, to be honest, that I can't just immediately begin walking 6 miles a day.

But realizing that I can't do it all, well, that seems to be the thing I must be working on these days.

I took a day off from walking on Wednesday, to let my aching muscles get their rest. And then yesterday, rather than walking to work, I went to the Bay and walked briskly for thirty minutes. And that felt great.

Gradual change feels so much more, what? tenuous? vulnerable? less likely to succeed? not dramatic enough? But I have an inkling that it is sustainable change in a way that drastic change is not.

Yes, this is what I want to try and pay attention to right now. Small things I can do, not trying to change everything all at once, looking for ways to live sustainably.

Oh, and as of 2:30 today, I am the Mom of a fifth grader.

Lord have mercy.

P.S. Oh! Speaking of changes! Much thanks to Mrs M for generously posting code for how to use a photo as a backdrop on blogger! And also thanks to my Brother, who edited the photo so that the sailboat could be seen in the left margin of the page, rather than in the center. He's so cool.

P.P.S. The picture here is the view I have when I take my half-hour walk. Yeah. Kinda nice.

I Will Never Be Able to Do Enough...Even So... Part 2

2008-06-08T12:40:00.000-07:00

Jesus started a global movement by paying attention to one person at a time.

Visit www.girleffect.org

I Will Never Be Able to Do Enough...Even So

2008-06-05T17:11:00.001-07:00

...I can do something.

These past few months I have been profoundly grieved at the worsening global food crisis which has emerged as a result of a perfect storm of global events. In recent days the the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has been holding an emergency summit in Rome to address the current food crisis. Today they announced a significant increase in funding which will allow the hardest hit countries "to grow enough food for themselves in the coming planting seasons, as well as [help] them to achieve continuing food security through investment in agriculture and research."

Earlier today BBC News reported significant resistance to this plan at the Rome Summit from Latin American countries as they are apparently benefiting too much from the cultivation of crops for biofuel (not the sole cause of the global food crisis, but undoubtedly one element of the perfect storm).

I have felt overwhelmed by this global food crisis, especially once the catastrophes hit in Burma/Myanmar and China last month. All of these have been spinning around in my mind particularly in relation to the scripture from several Sundays ago in which we are reminded that God's eye is on the sparrow. It is so difficult for me, as a person of privilege who wants for nothing, to read that scripture of God's loving care for human beings even while unfathomable numbers of people are dying daily from hunger, catastrophically in natural disasters, and horrifically as a result of corrupt government practices.

In their 11th Hour Preacher Party for the Birds & Lilies week over at the RevGal's site, many of the preachers were focusing on the command Jesus issued for people not to worry. This was also what my own pastor focused on that Sunday in worship. I know it is a hugely important focus for our 21st century, North American context. But I found myself struggling with it in light of everything I've already mentioned here.

"I am wondering," I wrote in a comment on the RevGal site that day, "how I can better incarnate God's eyes and hands to help provide for others in an aching, suffering, starving world? I do worry: that I'm not doing enough and never can do enough."

Since articulating those words for the first time a few weeks ago, they have stayed with me like some kind of irritant, like sand in an oyster. I am letting it work on me and in me. It is variously confrontational to my spirit and my living; it is upsetting; unsettling; and it is asking of me to do something.

Even in the midst of this ever-present irritant, I have found myself, well, hungering for hope. If I cannot do enough, if I cannot fathom these many unrelenting deaths, if governments and corporations are just so corrupt--then what? How do I have hope in the face of these realities? In the face of death?

I have glimpsed hope in two people over the past couple weeks, two witnesses to hope: Howard Zinn and Dorothee Solle.

In his article "The Optimism of Uncertainty" published in The Nation on September 2, 2004, Howard Zinn writes:

"If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

I absolutely love this image of the future being an infinite succession of presents. And the notion that by acting even in the smallest ways, we contribute to the shaping of that future in significant ways.

The other witness to hope came to me this morning as I was re-reading Dorothee Solle's fantastic book Thinking About God. She writes:

"In a conversation about the situation of the peoples oppressed by Western countries, a young Swiss teacher recently asked me from where I could derive my hope. At first I wanted to reply to him, 'From my faith in God, who once rescued an oppressed people from slavery under a great military power.' But then it struck me that it is not 'my' faith which bears me up. It is really the faith and the hope of the poor who do not give up. As long as they do not despair and give up, as long as they go on, we do not have the least right, whining and resigned in an analysis which counts money and weapons but does not see the pride and the combativeness of the violated, to say, 'There is nothing one can do'" (20).

Despair, Solle seems to be suggesting, is an emotion of the privileged. Tossing up my hands, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of this aching world, is a privileged choice. I will never be able to do enough...even so...I can do something today.

For about ten days now I have started my morning by visiting The Hunger Site. I click through each tab on the site, which manages to bend even our consumerism toward justice. It is, in the spirit of Zinn's reminder, a very small action. But I am hoping that by making this small action a part of my morning spiritual discipline, it will be a part of that infinite succession of presents that contribute to the future.

Even as I click on each tab, the irritant troubles me again and again. It is not enough! And I must not be fooled into thinking it is. But it is an action which, done prayerfully, roots me in the world's need, enacts a small contribution toward justice, and troubles my spirit to continue to look to do something more.

His Eye is On the Sparrow

2008-05-22T21:15:00.000-07:00

I was hoping my brother would blog about this experience--and he did! So I'm posting this video in honor of him. I'm convinced my dear brother incarnated God's eyes and hands the other day and through him, God's eye was on the sparrow. I give you Mahalia Jackson...

We Have What We Need

2008-05-12T22:14:00.000-07:00

This month I have been preaching at a small congregation in The City, filling in for a friend who is on sabbatical. All last week I planned to rework a sermon for yesterday that I'd preached some years ago that reflected on the same text from the gospel of John that was one of the alternate readings suggested for Pentecost.

I had a very restless night sleeping on Saturday night. I felt like God was working on me. (Though I've never actually been to a chiropractor, I imagine it would feel quite a bit like that kind of work out--a realignment that's not particularly comfortable in the moment, but feels oh so better afterwards.)

I woke up at 6:00 a.m. Sunday and looked at the sermon I thought I was going to preach. All wrong. Instead, I preached the one that follows here. Whatever it's worth, it was the one I felt I was given.

Scripture:
John 20:18-23 and
Acts 2:1-21

Last Sunday, we read the texts in Scripture that were preparing Jesus’ followers for the time when they were no longer going to be able to enjoy Jesus’ physical presence with them anymore. In our readings last week, we got the sense that Jesus’ followers were gripped by fear; fear of the unknown, of the threat, maybe, of violence, fear of loss.

“How can we go on?” the disciples seem to ask, “Without the one that we love?”

But Jesus replies, in some ways to their unvoiced questions more than the ones they actually ask, that the Spirit will come and give them power so that they might become his witnesses on earth.

It is the coming of this Spirit that we read about in this morning’s scripture. The story we might be most familiar with is the one that appears in Luke’s account, in the books of Acts. The Sprit comes upon the gathered followers with the sound of a loud wind rushing over them. It is an overwhelming presence, even described by Luke as a violent one.

There is no mistaking that something has happened to the gathered followers: they have experienced the radical freedom of the presence of the Spirit in their midst, which has loosened their tongues, broken down barriers, set them apart from those who would scoff at them, and truly empowered them to go out, as Jesus had assured them they would, to become witnesses of Jesus’ on earth. This is the more familiar of the Pentecost stories—often referred to as the birthday of the church, when the Spirit that had once hovered over the waters before creation, now sweeps over a bedraggled group of followers and brings something yet again into being: this time an empowered community of witnesses of God’s astounding love.

But the text I felt more drawn to this morning is a much quieter Pentecost. This one happens so gently, comes to Jesus’ frightened disciples so peacefully, that it can almost be missed entirely. This is the Pentecost of the Gospel of John.

Once again, we encounter Jesus’ followers huddled together with their seemingly ever-present companion: Fear. This scene takes place in the upper room, on the evening of the resurrection. And the disciples have locked themselves in their room in fear. Their beloved leader had been killed only days before. And though Mary had come to the disciples that very morning to tell them she had seen the Risen Christ, still they sought out the comfort of close quarters, and the reassurance of locked doors.

One of the most astounding things about Scripture, I believe, is the extent to which it invites us into a profound confrontation with our own selves. It is so often the case, with Scripture, that when we’re able to hoist ourselves over all the centuries that have passed between these ancient texts and our contemporary lives—we are brought into an encounter with our own soul’s condition. There is no other place that this seems more evident than in the reactions and questions posed by the disciples. While we might find it easy, at first, to laugh at all of their blunderings and missteps, when we are truly honest with ourselves, we have to admit that their mistakes graciously illuminate our own.We know fear. We know the tendency to lock ourselves away from those who wish to do us harm. We know self-protection. We know how to close ourselves off from experiencing the presence of God’s extravagant love. We know how to shut out the world with all it’s horrors, brokenness, despair, and disappointments.

There is only so much we can take. This past week, as the horrors have unfolded in Burma, it is more than we can take in. How can we, really? The loss of life from natural disaster alone is unfathomable. But it is compounded unbearably by the inexplicable, inhumanity of corrupt government officials who leave people to die even as they seize the humanitarian aid sent by outsiders.

In the face of such overwhelming grief and horrific brokenness, if we’re honest, I think there is at least some part of ourselves that wants to lock ourselves away: protect ourselves from feeling the pain that is surrounding us.

Many of our churches will gather for worship this morning in just this way, don’t you think? Cloistered from the pain of this past week (whether in a global sense or in a personal sense), sometimes our worship takes place in rooms that are securely locked away from the reality of our lives for fear of the pain we all too often encounter there.

But here is the good news: We cannot lock away the Spirit of God. Because it is through our most hidden-away, locked-up places that the Spirit desires to move. It is to the most broken, horrific, grief-filled moments that the Spirit is drawn. The Spirit does not know separation or boundaries, but moves freely into them, always with the desire to reconcile, to draw out our wholeness for the healing of the world.

The followers of Christ locked themselves away in fear, but the Risen One entered the room. It is a divine breaking-and-entering, if you will. And, unlike the violent coming of the Spirit as we read about it in Acts this morning, in this account the Risen One stands in their midst and reassures the fearful ones: “Peace be with you.”

Then he shows them his wounds. And the disciples, John tells us, rejoice as they recognize Jesus for who he is. They rejoice when they see the evidence of his wounds. Why do they rejoice?

Well, maybe it is this: when we see the Wounded/Risen One, we see a few things:

First, we see the worst that can be done to any human being by other human beings. Second, we see the Divine One who did not self-protect, but willingly entered into the brokenness of the world. And finally, we see that brokenness is not the final word. Despair, abandonment, military might, betrayal, even death: none of these is the final word.

Again, Jesus says to his followers, “Peace be with you.” And I like to think that just as God spoke the world into being with commands as simple as “Let there be light,” so in the same way, Jesus spoke Peace into being with this simple phrase: "Peace be with you.”

And in doing so, the room that had once been close and humid with fear is now flooded with peace. It is in the reality of that saturating peacefulness that Jesus, the Wounded/Risen One, tells his followers what is expected of them: he sends his followers out of the room and into the world in the same way that he had himself been sent. In the same way, we must be reminded,
that wounded him so.

And it is at this point that we come to John’s depiction of the Pentecost—of the gifting of the Spirit to the bedraggled, beleaguered community of followers.

Jesus breathes on the disciples and says to them: Receive the Holy Spirit.

No tongues of fire. No violent wind. Just a breath.

John writes this as if it were a single moment, but I can't help but wonder if it actually happened over and over again. Jesus breathing on each disciple one by one. Much in the same way that we passed the peace this morning: a singular encounter, each one of us with another, coming in close enough to each other that we can feel each other’s breath.

In the same way, I imagine Jesus drawing each one of his followers close to him, in a warm embrace, close enough that they can feel the gentle breath of the Spirit move across their faces:

Receive the Holy Spirit.
Receive the Holy Spirit.
Receive the Holy Spirit.

Again
and again
and again.

Receive the Holy Spirit.

The first step in opening ourselves to the pain in the world and in our own lives is to open ourselves to God’s love for us.

That love comes in many forms—sometimes in dramatic, unmistakable ways. And sometimes in the most intimate, gentle, and almost miss-able ways: a breath.

Despair, fear, abandonment and betrayal are not the final words. But what are the final words? In John’s Pentecost, they are these: Peace; I send you; Receive the Holy Spirt; And, finally, forgive.

This is the message of Pentecost. This is the message that birthed the church. This is the mission at our center. No matter how many times we forget it or how many times our sisters and brothers in faith forget it, it doesn’t essentially change: Peace, Go, Receive, Forgive. The outpouring of God’s love for God’s broken creation never ceases, never stops pouring itself out. Never stops breathing into the hidden-away, locked-up, broken places. Never stops inviting us out into a world we think we can’t face.

We can face it because we have received all that we need. When we look at one another in love
even in all our Wounded/Wholeness we know this to be true: We have all that we need.

Peace.
Go.
Receive.
Forgive.

Amen.

Be With Us, God-With-Us

2008-05-07T12:35:00.000-07:00

Over the past several years I have been teaching worship to seminarians. And part of teaching worship includes working with seminarians as they think about and begin to prepare prayers for Sunday morning worship experiences. Of the many things I love about the work that I get to do, this is one of my favorites. I consider it one of the most incredible privileges to be able to accompany people into the deepest waters of their faith. And the space of prayer will often plunge us into the deep-end of faith fairly quickly.

But over these past few years, I have noticed a pattern that has consistently emerged in the prayers I encountered from my students. And it is this: the most commonly repeated phrase, in all the prayers I read, is this one: “God, be with us.”

Actually, it was so often repeated by so many people that my first inclination was to treat it as a cliché: as a phrase that was written or spoken more out of habit than because it was particularly meaningful. Or maybe that it was not much more than a nervous tic in our prayer-speaking, much in the same way we might say “um”—as a way of buying time until we figured out what it was we really wanted to ask of God.

So I started out by circling the phrase and asking the students to reflect on what it was they were really asking of God, when they asked for God to be with us. This was for maybe the first year or so. But as the years went on, and the phrase “God, be with us,” continued to appear time and again, my attention was drawn back to it in new ways. Something about the request – and the number of times I was encountering it – suggested to me that something more was going on than was at first apparent.

This time, I noticed that there was a certain strangeness about the phrase, especially when we realize that we are praying to Emmanuel, the title or name that appears in Isaiah and shows up most often during the seasons of Advent & Christmas. Emmanuel means, translated, “God-With-Us.” So the strangeness of the prayer request is highlighted when we place the phrases next to each other: “Emmanuel, be with us,” or, literally: “God-with-Us, be with us.”

There is something about putting the prayer that way which reminds me of one of the greatest statements of faith recorded in the gospels: when the Roman centurion responds to Jesus: “I believe; help my unbelief.”

“God-with-Us, be with us.”

The thing is, if we are to take these prayer requests seriously, not as clichés, or as means of buying time, but rather as true cries from the hearts of those praying, then we start to wade into the deeper waters of faith. And it often seems that it’s in the deepest waters that two things can be true at once: I believe; help my unbelief. God-with-us, be with us.

So the question becomes this: If we begin our prayers by asking for God to be with us, what does this request say about our experience of God’s presence? Or, maybe more precisely, what does it suggest about our experience of God’s absence?
In this morning’s scripture readings we have two different moments in time folded in next to one another (like the back cover of an old issue of Mad Magazine), which, when taken together, form a distinctively new picture for us.

The earlier moment is recorded in John’s gospel and takes place shortly before Jesus and his disciples head to the Garden of Gethsemane where he will be turned over to the Roman authorities and eventually crucified. In this account, Jesus has just finished giving what is commonly referred to now as his Farewell Discourse—a long, looping, poetic, evocative plea and promise to his followers just prior to his being violently taken from them. In this morning’s text, Jesus has just stopped addressing the disciples directly and has, instead, started to pray for them (and by extension, most commentators point out, for the earliest Christian communities and for us)—all in anticipation of his leaving them.

In the Acts reading, we find ourselves on the other side of the cross post-resurrection, at the end of the forty days that the Risen Christ had to remain with his beleaguered followers (according to Luke, the author of Acts). This time it is the Wounded and Risen Christ who is addressing his disciples as he prepares to leave them one more time.

In both instances, Jesus the Christ is preparing his followers for the experience of his absence. These two liminal, or in-between, threshold moments fold in on each other and we find that we are facing a community of people who were themselves facing the loss of their most beloved one: Lost once to the violent convergence of religious fear and imperial oppression. And lost a second time to a cloud of unknowing, when the physical presence of God could no longer be grasped or, perhaps more importantly, clung to, possessed, or owned.

As strange and alien as some passages in scripture might strike us at times--and it is a strange thing to imagine Jesus slowly being lifted up from the midst of the disciples and taken into the clouds—one image I encountered when looking for a bulletin cover looked for all the world like Jesus was doing his best David Blaine impression and was levitating in front of a gawking crowd of frightened spectators—But as strange as scripture can sometimes be we can also almost always find something within that opens us to something true about ourselves and about God.

And the truth is many of us have experienced the loss of someone who was our most beloved. And many of us have experienced, maybe at that same time, but not necessarily, a sense of God’s absence in our lives or in our world.

And, no less jarring, many of us have experienced moments in our faith journeys when something we once understood, had a firm grasp on, has started to slip from our hands. It was true for a time, yes; but in order to continue to grow we find we need to let go of what was certainly true and open ourselves to not-knowing for a little while:

God, I believe; help my unbelief.

God-with-us, we pray, be with us.

The liturgical theologian, Don Saliers, writes: “Praying begins not so much with a sense of presence, but with some intuitive or even painfully concrete sense of God’s not being immediately present.” It is for this reason that prayer, according to Saliers, is always “a profound act of hope.” In fact, he pushes us even a little farther, and suggests that we do well to recognize our insecurity around God’s presence, because otherwise we begin to assume that “God is at our beck and call.” [See Worship as Theology: Foretaste of Glory Divine (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 108, 109, 111.]

How to say it? God’s presence is always a gift. But the certainty of God’s presence with us is not necessarily a gift. And perhaps most especially in North American, dominant culture where everything imaginable can be turned into a commodity. You know, last Sunday in church, my congregation sang the beautiful hymn, We Cannot Own the Sunlit Sky as the closing song for our Earth Day celebration. And as we were singing, my ten-year-old son glanced up at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, “Yeah, we can’t own the sunlit sky, but we can digitize it and then sell it.” We even talk about time as a commodity: time can be spent, wasted, borrowed, shared, stolen, or lost. I have tried for years to divest myself of economic ways of talking about time, but I’ve found it’s nearly impossible to do so completely. Because I am, we are steeped in a culture that commodifies everything it possibly can.

It is in this sense that our experience of God’s absence becomes as much a gift as God’s presence is a gift. Even when our experience of the absence of God is, as Saliers says, painfully concrete.

When the disciples watched as the Risen Christ disappeared into the cloud, don’t you think they experienced that rising absence with great dread? And yet, as they stood there gazing into the now-empty sky, they were called back to the present: Do not look for what used to be; Do not cling to the understanding of the Divine that you once held so dear; Do not seek to possess God. Rather, go and be the community that never stops seeking God.

In a little while, we will gather together around the table to break bread and share the cup in remembrance of the Risen One. And as we do so, I invite you to notice that the bread is always broken and given away; the cup is always poured out and given away.

The presence of God is only momentary before it becomes us as we eat it together. The presence of God is only ever a gift, given to us, given away by us, so that we might never stop seeking God, our beloved one.

Memory & Identity: I Am Who I Am Remembering Myself to Be

2008-04-26T16:37:00.000-07:00

So two of the main themes in my dissertation are memory and identity--two things that fascinate and confound me. Both are fluid, contested, constantly being shaped and re-shaped, negotiated, constructed, forgotten, and re-constructed.

There have been several seasons as I've been working on my PhD that I've had to burrow deeply into a cave in order to concentrate fully on my work. I'm just now emerging from one of those caves, after having the proposal approved by my Area a little over a week ago. I come out, stretch, blink, and re-acquaint myself with my surroundings.

Part of that re-acquaintance, this past week, included locating a dear friend of mine from college. He met a French woman our junior year and married her a few months later. As soon as he graduated, he moved to France and has never lived in the States again. We remained close for several years, back in the dark ages before Al Gore invented the internet. We wrote long letters on actual paper. Some of the letters I wrote, I actually sent. (Which is saying something. Most letters I wrote to folks usually languished on my desk for months until I finally gave up and threw them away. Apparently the post office confounds me as well.)

The two of us lost contact, though, after I moved out West. But this past week we were finally able to reconnect. When I opened his reply to my email, I could immediately hear his voice coming through. There are some friends where it doesn't seem to matter how many years intervene, you can always pick up exactly where you left off.

Then, strangely, the very same day that I reconnected with S, another old friend contacted me. This friend goes back even farther than college and is someone I grew up with in church. We went through confirmation together, and youth group, and also attended the same camp for a couple years.

The confluence of these re-acquaintances was disorienting to me at first. I talked about it a bit with my spiritual director yesterday. I told her that I feel like there is an invitation in this to pay attention to the threads that have made up my life over the years. Even as I work on this project that centers around memory and identity, I am being invited to deepen my own experience of those themes in my life.

Last July 1, I officially started my position as a professor. It turned out, though, that I was still back on the East Coast for a previously planned, annual trip. Coincidentally (if coincidences happen at all), that particular day we happened to drive over to my old neighborhood where I lived until I was 18. It was the first time Monk had seen my house. We walked around the neighborhood and I told D and Monk many, many stories of the things I'd done as a kid--most of them involved mischief making of some kind, to Monk's great delight.

In fact, the picture to the right on this page was taken that day, as I stood by the old creek (now very overgrown) and held onto the rope we used to swing across until some kid broke his ankle and we weren't allowed to do it anymore. (And, yes, I did swing across the creek one more time that day, as did Monk!)

When we pulled up in front of my old house, (sold hastily after my parents' divorce), we saw there was someone out tending the lawn. He was gracious enough to let us go inside the house and look around a bit. It was a powerful experience for me to be able to show Monk at least a little of the house that I'd grown up in--to see his nine-year-old self moving through the same space that had held my own nine-year-old self, once upon a time. Of course, it wasn't the same anymore. The kitchen cabinets my grandfather had made weren't there, for one. Even now, sometimes when I can't get to sleep at night, I imagine walking through that house as it used to be, trying to remember every thing I possibly can about what used to be there.

But there was something significant in that experience for me. As I began my new identity as professor, I walked in the house and along the streets (and by the creek) that had helped make me who I was still becoming.

The year has continued to be full of such things: I've reconnected with my best friend who grew up a few doors down from me as well as with my best friend from high school. My high school class had it's twentieth reunion, and though I wasn't able to attend, I suddenly had a flood of names and memories come back into my life that I'd thought I had long forgotten.

All of these people and places--and so many more--have woven into me somehow, made me who I am, or who I am becoming. I do think the invitation, these days, is to re-member just how much this is so.

I think I'll try to write about it here some more over time.

New Heater Dance

2008-04-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in the living room at the moment while someone is dismantling our heater in the hallway.

Our landlord called a bit ago to confirm that we would be around for the appointment. I was glad that I thought to ask him what he expected to be done--would they repair it? clean it? replace it? He said that the plan was to repair it or that it would be replaced if they determined that was necessary.

So when the workmen came in, I immediately said: "We'd love it if you erred on the side of caution and determined we needed a new heater."

Well, it turns out he didn't need a moment to decide. He took out a flashlight and looked in there and said, "Oh, yeah, you need a new heater alright."

Joy! I didn't realize I had a new heater dance until the occasion arose, but when he went back outside to collect his tools, I was dancing away in the kitchen: "We're gettin' a new heatah! We're gettin' a new heatah!" Much to D's delight, as you can imagine.

I am glad for the news, though. Last week's events put a bit of the fear of God in me. And I don't think I ever would have trusted that the repairs had entirely fixed the problem. So this will be a relief to me.

He showed me where the damage was--there was a piece that had broken off. Who knows how long ago? I can tell you we never found it laying around, though. And then he also showed me where the residue had built up. I actually took pictures of it and can post 'em for the curious.

Follow Your Nose

2008-04-18T15:12:00.000-07:00

Thank you, God, for tragedy averted!

This morning we went to hear Monk give an oral presentation on his Mission Report at school. (He did a wonderful job!) When we got home and opened the door, D & I both immediately noticed the smell of gas.

Actually, a few weeks ago we thought we smelled it, too. But couldn't quite convince ourselves that it wasn't our imagination. The thing is, we have a gas heater in the wall of our hallway--common in temperate climates like we live in, I think. And the smell of gas seemed to be present while the heat was running. This didn't make any sense to me, because it means the pilot obviously was lit. And I think that was what led me to think it might just be my imagination.

But this time we decided to call the gas company and ask them to check it out. I'm so glad we did!

The man just left a bit a go. After inspecting the heater, he told us that it seems to have been malfunctioning for some time. Soot had backed up inside so that it wasn't exhausting properly. This was preventing the gas from being all burned off causing it to recirculate. He said it was also causing carbon monoxide to be released as well!

So he has shut down the heater and filled out forms for our landlord so that the heater can be repaired and cleaned. We've already called our landlord who will follow up on this right away. (He's very good that way.)

D and I just sat down and shook our heads for a while after the man from the gas company left. Wow. That could have been a lot worse.

I am both tremendously grateful, but also annoyed with myself. Just last summer I told a friend that I would buy a carbon monoxide sensor for the apartment, but I never followed up on it. And I've also been ignoring the feeling that I should ask our landlord to clean the heaters (in the whole apartment building) once a year. And, of course, we ignored the smell of gas just a few weeks ago.

I'm glad God doesn't work on the three strikes and you're out principle.

Moments with Monk

2008-04-05T21:00:00.001-07:00

1. Our dear friend SRF sent Monk two volumes of Howard Zinn's A Young People's History of the United States for Monk's tenth birthday. Monk has been devouring the first book. Tonight, as we were eating our Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, Monk remarked: "Howard Zinn is the most skeptical person about American history that I've ever known. He doesn't hold any U.S. document as sacred--not the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Sedition Act. He thinks Christopher Columbus was a dingus. He thinks Andrew Jackson was a major dingus. And he thinks that half the Revolutionary War was just a business plan for the leaders in America." [Edited to add: After reading again for a little while, Monk commented, "This guy actually makes communism sound pretty good compared to us. I mean, he makes communists, socialists, and anarchists sound a heck of a lot better than the way we're running stuff!" Now aren't your proud, SRF?! :D]

2. I've been under Haaa-yooooge stress lately and haven't been sleeping well. I remarked a couple morning's ago that I knew we must have gone to bed early the night before because when I woke up in the middle of the night it was only 12:00! Monk thought for a moment, then commented, "That's weird. When I woke up in the middle of the night it was 3:30."

3. We're still thinking about renting a 3 bedroom house. Tomorrow we may go see one that is available. I read the listing aloud to the family: "3 bedroom, 1 bath small house with living room and large kitchen." Monk remarked, without missing a beat: "What would we need with a kitchen?" Yep. Guess I don't cook that much anymore.

My Life's Soundtrack

2008-03-29T17:10:00.000-07:00

This meme went around ages ago, but I didn't have an ipod to participate. I grabbed the format from Stories from the Red Tent. If your life were a movie, what would the soundtrack be?

So, here's how it works:
1. Open your itunes library
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie (As astoundingly appropriate most of the songs turned out to be, you'll know I didn't lie because you see Enya below. Not once. Not twice. But three times!)
7. I added one more feature, though. I listened to each of the songs (except the first one) that came up then included a line or two from the lyrics which seemed especially fitting.

So then, the soundtrack of my life:

Opening Credits
"Instant Karma" by U2 Instant Karma: Save Darfur album

Waking Up:
"Beloved" by Minnie Driver
You'll be my beloved one...

First Day of School:
"Orinoco Flow" by Enya (oooh, embarrassing that you know Enya is on my ipod!)
Sail away, sail away, sail away

Falling in Love:
"Hey There Delilah" by Plain White T's (okay, this is humiliating.)
Don't you worry about the distance, I'm right there if you listen

Breaking Up
"Choral" by David Darling
Very moody, cello instrumental

Prom
"River" by Joni Mitchell (Blue)
He loved me so naughty made me weak in the knees,
Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on

Life
"Ebudae" by Enya
lyrics are in Gaelic, which is somehow appropriate because I understand life about as well as I understand Gaelic.

Mental Breakdown:
"One Man" by Eulogies
I learned something in the nick of time: I'm only one [wo]man.

Driving:
"Hearts" by Yes
Set your heart sail on the river, look around as you drift downstream (Sheesh, noticing a theme going here about sailing away???)

Flashback:
"Kyrie Eleison" by Taize
Yeah. Lyrics in Latin and French. Flashback to seminary?

Getting Back Together:
"Hard Times Come Again No More" by James Taylor on Appalachian Journey (cool!)
'Tis the song, the sigh of the weary: Hard Times Come Again No More

Wedding:
"Brain Damage" by Pink Floyd. (Oh no! I totally disagree!!!)
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon (so is this, like, for better or for worse?)
You re-arrange me until I'm sane (okay, I can go with that)

Birth of Child:
"Dark I Am Yet Lovely" by Sinead O'Connor (from Song of Songs)
Say I delight in his look, he is the one my soul brought
Rivers can't drown love

Final Battle
"Our Friends Appear Like the Dawn" by Bodies of Water
Water gushed out from the rock; he breathed and the face of the earth was renewed; the depths of the ocean convulsed.

Death Scene:
"The Great Gig in the Sky" by Pink Floyd (ha!)
I am not afraid to die; any time will do, I don't mind. Why should I be afraid to die?

Funeral Song:
"Working Class Hero" by Green Day on Instant Karma: Save Darfur album
A working class hero is something to be

End Credits:
"Hope Has A Place" by Enya
One look at life and you may see it weaves a web over mystery although all the threads can rend apart for hope has a place in a lover's heart.
...Hope is hope and the heart is free...

Small Improvements

2008-03-26T19:31:00.000-07:00

I don't think I could have asked for a better work day - and not just because there was no one working with a jackhammer outside my window. Though I bet that helped. :)

This afternoon we went out and bought Monk new hockey skates for his birthday next week. We got them just a little early for him so he'll be able to wear them for his first-ever tournament this weekend.

We also bought a big ol' mirror (not at the hockey place, ha!) and hung it on the wall across from our large window (the one the cat and I were gazing out yesterday). Some months ago I started to keep an eye out for a mirror because I thought it would help expand the space of our teeny apartment. I also think it will pick up on the light and multiply it. And, okay, truth be told - my spiritual director gave me a complementary Feng Shui consultation for my office a few months ago and she told me that every room is supposed to have a mirror in it. Or something like that. D is tremendously patient with me when it comes to these kinds of things. He couldn't care less if it were just about him. But I am always, always, thinking about how to improve our space. It's unending.

Moment of Contentment

2008-03-25T17:48:00.000-07:00

Just now...

After my hard day's work, I stretch out on the couch just below the giant living room window on the second floor. I break open the binding to start a new Connie Willis book in hand from the Public Library. Out the window, all I see is the sky and the California Bay Tree in full bloom. The fog is pouring in from across the bay and starting to stack up in huge, inviting clouds against the hills. Someone is flying a kite in the park across the street. I watch the green and black kite dancing between the shifting colors in the white and blue background of the sky. All of this is wonderful enough. But it gets even better when the cat jumps into my lap, clearly with a nap in mind, but then spots the same kite I've been watching. I feel his whole body tense up with the eagerness only a cat can express so full-bodied perfectly. He's convinced the kite is a bird. Together we marvel.

How To Know the (Work) Day is Done

2008-03-25T16:11:00.000-07:00

Phew! Intense day of work on the dissertation proposal today and I am fried! I'm continuing to simply shape and refine the proposal, making every sentence as packed full of meaning and intent as I can.

One of my tasks today was to write down each of the major terms or concepts I'm employing in this dissertation and work out a definition for each one--so that I can precisely and concisely talk about them. That felt like pretty important work.

I also wrote a bit of an introduction which I think (I hope!) helps to situate where my project fits in the overall field.

All this while someone worked a jackhammer outside my office window. Can you say headache?

Now my weary brain has turned its attention to Target--where I need to buy some girly-girly hair stuff. No more big words for me today, I'm afraid. Just a vague sense of needing to buy pretty smelling shampoo.

Random Things Entry

2008-03-24T08:26:00.000-07:00

The longer it's been, the harder it is to write anything here at all. Vicious cycle. But my brother sent me an encouraging note this morning that reminded me my blog is only here to serve me--not to be an obligation or to try and craft the most lovely entries I can write. But he also reminded me that the blog helps family on East Coast get a little window into our lives here. So I decided to break the silence (again!) and try to write simply a Random Things Entry.

1. Our seminary is on break right now, so I have the week to concentrate on revising my dissertation proposal which is almost, almost there. I've been more hopeful (which doesn't mean terror-free, of course!) these past couple weeks than maybe ever before. Although doing the revisions will be intensive, difficult work, I woke up this morning very aware of the privilege of getting to work on it full time this week. No chapel to plan for tonight; no faculty meetings; no classes to prepare--just dissertating (my new favorite verb).

2. Yesterday at church we were given the opportunity to call out Signs of Resurrection in our world today. It was a rite paired with one the week before, in which we called out places where crucifixion still occur. I realized, in participating in the rite, how much I thirst to acknowledge resurrection and hope in the world today. I see and feel the painful things about life, the broken places are all too evident. And yet, I know I live in hope. I don't get to name that hope very often, though. Maybe this can be a spiritual discipline for me during this season of Easter.

3. Monk never ceases to astound me, everyday. He has been hilarious lately. He loves to make us laugh; and he feels like he's finally figured out how. The two of us have been playing the card game Spit together lately. And I don't think we could laugh more than we do as we play. I am delighted, here on the eve of his tenth birthday, that he can make just as many jokes when he's losing as when he's winning. We finally seemed to have moved through that stage where losing isn't the end of the world.

4. Sometimes I take Monk's hand into mine and I'm amazed at the substance of it, the boyness of it, the strength I can tell that's in it, the otherness of him from me--how can it be? The umbilical cord still isn't entirely cut, though. The other night he was being very silly, jumping around the living room. And he flung himself into the air and onto the couch across the room from me. But he was just off kilter and landed a little on the edge of couch; I heard him hit the more solid part of it rather than landing square on the cushion. And I'm telling you, I felt it--my hands tingled in response to the sound I heard. He was fine, of course. But I marveled that we aren't entirely separate human beings quite yet.

5. Last night I showed Monk how to lift comic pictures off the page with Silly Putty.

6. We've been keeping an eye out for larger apartments in our area. Actually, we'd love to rent a single-family home with a yard. But I think D and I both have the sense that we ought to try and stick it out in this apartment one more year. But not without some changes around here. So we've set up a consultation with a professional organizer! I'm very excited about this. The appointment is set for April 9. So I'll try and remember to update about the process here.

OK, 6 random things.

In Treatment

2008-02-19T15:37:00.000-08:00

I am totally and completely hooked on this new show on HBO.
See full episodes at HBO.com
or YouTube.

Learning from the Monk

2008-02-12T15:25:00.000-08:00

I walked with Monk over to the protest today, figuring it is an opportunity for him to see a pretty significant event in the life of our country. I had seen, before leaving work, that the riot police had been called in at lunch time today, but it sounded like all was relatively calm again.

The anti-war protesters are set up right in front of City Hall and the counter-protesters are located directly across the street in the park. The road between the two remains open and is not even backed up with traffic. I'm terrible at estimating crowds, but I'd say there were probably about 200 people present. I expect the crowd will grow on both sides as the 7:00 meeting draws near.

As we approached, we heard a speaker on the counter-protesters' side shouting into a PA system. She was maintaining that the anti-war protesters were traitors of the United States. "And what do we do with traitors?" she implored. "We lock them up and throw away the key!" she answered her own question. (I was so thankful she didn't invoke the death penalty as I'd feared when I heard her question!) A sparse cheer went up in response. Huh.

As we walked in among the Code Pink protesters, I tried to place my body in front of the poster-sized photographs of torture victims from Abu-Ghraib on display so I could hide them from Monk's view. I think I succeeded. We stood for a little while and listened as the women from Code Pink sang We Shall Not Be Moved. There were maybe a dozen women, arm and arm, dressed in pink, swaying and singing the song. Although my first reaction was disappointment at hearing another one of the old sixties protest songs being dragged out of the dusty past, I noticed, as we listened to them, that because they were singing, they couldn't hear the hurtful things being shouted about them from across the way. I noticed, too, that it was only women's voices that I was hearing on both sides of the street. That intrigues me no end.

We didn't stay long. As we walked away, Monk began to speak angrily about the counter-protesters calling folks traitors. He was upset by the rhetoric. You know, he probably talked for about 45 minutes nonstop after that. He is at an age where things are very black and white, right or wrong. Clear moral principles and clear ways to live them out.

I found myself wanting to temper his comments, to try and lift up the subtleties at work on both sides of the street. But he was frustrated by that. He was angry that the "other side" (the counter-protesters, from his perspective) were resorting to weak arguments that were off-issue, basically. They were not arguing their perspective from its own merit, but using inflammatory and distracting language instead.

Eventually, it brought him to theological questions. He wanted to know why Christians are not all committed to nonviolence when that was everything Jesus was about. He wanted to know if President Bush even went to a church. (I assured him he did, though I marvel at it as well.) Ultimately, he wanted to know how God could love people who said hurtful things and deliberately mislead people. I told him that God surely loves everyone. And Monk said he imagines God pulling his hair out at night, fretting like a sixth grader with a big project due the next day.

When I tried to offer my understanding of why some Christians (most?) are not nonviolent, Monk was not satisfied. He shook his head: "Love is always stronger than death!" He asserted strongly. Then he offered an unlikely analogy: "It's like a Great White Shark and a hunk of raw steak. The Great White Shark would totally destroy the steak! The Great White Shark is love!"

"But," I suggested, "a lot of people might have to die before love defeats an oppressive government."

He was quiet for a moment. "True," he said, feeling some of the weight of it. "But violence, killing someone, never leads to a better situation. It never accomplishes anything."

"It is a statement of faith," I said, "to say that love is stronger than death."

"Yeah," he responded. "It is."

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

Six Republican Senators Attack Those Most Vulnerable in Berkeley

2008-02-07T20:24:00.001-08:00

This news story makes me absolutely furious. It points to the abusive employment of power and the moral vacuity of six Republican Senators with Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina at the lead.

Whether or not one agrees with Berkeley City Council's decision to oust a U.S. Marine Corps recruiting station from the city limits, the punitive legislation introduced in response is sickening.

Senator Jim DeMint introduced legislation that would transfer federal monies totaling $2.3 million from Berkeley institutions to the U.S. Marine Corps. $243,000 would be stripped from the Chez Panisse Foundation, which provides 10,000 daily school lunches for Berkeley public schools. An additional $243,000 would be robbed from the Ed Roberts Campus whose mission is to ensure that people with disabilities can live independently and without discrimination. And $94,000 would be ripped away from police and fire emergency communications systems. The remaining money would be taken from water ferry service planned from Berkeley to San Francisco and nearly a million dollars from U.C. Berkeley - a university with an active ROTC service and that allows military recruiting on campus.

How do these men sleep at night, knowing that they are taking food out of children's mouths and denying services to those living with disabilities and those in need of police and fire services? How do any of the programs they have targeted relate one bit to city government? There is no relationship, no correlation! It is a mean-spirited and spiteful action that attacks the most vulnerable citizens of the City of Berkeley--people who had nothing to do with the decisions of Berkeley's City Council.

The senate bill was introduced by DeMint, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.; Senator Tom Coburn, R-Okla.; Sen. John Cornyn, R.-Texas; Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.; and Sen David Vitter, R-La. Rep. John Campbell, R-Newport Beach, introduced the companion bill in the House.

If you live in any of these states, please contact your senator and express your outrage at the hateful and harmful way they chose to respond to this situation. The children in Berkeley, many of whom come from poor families and rely on the healthy meals they receive at school, will be profoundly grateful.

Yes, We Can

2008-02-05T08:41:00.000-08:00

Hope
Vote
Today...

15 Years Ago Today...

2008-01-30T14:35:00.000-08:00

D and I were married. Well, as the pastor who performed the ceremony told us, we held our wedding. We had already made our decision to be married before that and were going to live into being married for the rest of our lives. "A wedding," he told us, "is simply making public our decision to be married."

Implicit in making public that decision was the an invitation extended to our community to become actively involved in our marriage. I don't think we ever understood marriage to be a private thing, but something that was only ever possible when it was rooted in community. We needed to know that our friends and families were a part of our decision to live together in partnership, to travel this life's journey together as best we could.

Rather than having my father "give me away" (although he did joyfully walk me down the aisle), and rather than asking the congregation if anyone "protested the union," instead we wrote our own litany of promises that extended the words of support out in concentric circles--from our four parents, to our closest friends who were standing with us as members of the wedding party, and finally to the gathered community.

These were the words we composed for that day, the words promised by our loved ones:

Pastor: The marriage of J & D unites two families and creates a new one. Will you, their parents, support D & J's decision to enter into this covenant?

Parents: We will honor their commitment to one another and encourage their love. We offer them our love, our experience, our wisdom, and our prayers.

Pastor: For D & J's marriage to stay strong they will need friends who will rejoice and mourn with them, listen to and guide them. Will you, who stand with J & D today, support their decision to enter into this covenant?

Wedding Party: We will honor their commitment to one another and encourage their love. We affirm them as individuals and as a new union. We offer them our love, fellowship, and a hopeful word.

Pastor: Because D & J will grow in their marriage through interactions with this community, will you, as people of God, support D & J's decision to enter into this covenant?

People: We will honor their commitment to one another and encourage their love. We will be mindful of their need to be nurtured beyond the context of their marriage. We offer them our prayers, our concern, and our help in the future.

Tonight we celebrate quite far away from everyone who attended our wedding. And we are both quite mindful of that reality. If we could, I think we would gather a good number of those who were closest to us, and celebrate the years that have passed since this marriage was made public.

But even with that distance, I'm aware that our parents, our friends, and our community has remained faithful to the promises they made on that day. And I celebrate the ways this partnership has been made stronger because of that.

We will celebrate with someone who wasn't present that day fifteen years ago. In fact, he'll be treating us to dinner tonight, dipping deep into his allowance to do so. Even with the distance from loved ones on the East Coast, I don't think D & I could imagine a better person to celebrate with today!

These Days

2008-01-11T21:33:00.001-08:00

God is breaking my heart at every turn.

1. On Monday night at 9:00 I went to Target to get some food options in for Monk's lunches. While there, I encountered a mother, her friend, and a baby girl--hardly a toddler, just big enough to stand in the cart and cry. Which she did. Wail. Not a temper tantrum cry, but a heart-wrenching, hold-me-Mama, grief-stricken, lonely cry. Her mother was utterly, viciously indifferent, even cruel. At times screaming back at her daughter (as the adult friend laughed) in mimic of the baby's cry. Around the store I caught the eyes of other women (all women) who were as bewildered, horrified, helpless as I felt. There was nothing I could do, I was convinced, that wouldn't further endanger this child. A confrontation of the mother, I feared, would only be taken out on the baby before the end of the night. I came home and wept myself--for all the unloved, inconvenient babies.

2. The next morning I parked in my spot at the seminary. There was a small basket of brilliant yellow tiny narcissus flowers on the ground just beside my car. I park right next the dumpster and wondered if they'd meant to be thrown away but missed the mark. I got out of my car and picked them up. It was drizzling rain, getting ready for another rainy season, January drenching just as we'd suffered last Friday. As I picked up the flowers (turns out they weren't real, but still lovely in their own right), I saw something stir in the dumpster beside me. I looked over and there was a man sitting in our dumpster. He was rolling what I can only hope was a joint and not something worse. "Are you okay?" I asked him. "Yeah," he said, hardly looking up. "Are you sure?" I asked. "Yeah," he said, not looking up from his rolling papers, "I'm alright." I took the flowers into my office and set them on my windowsill beside my Julian of Norwich icon. Now whenever I notice the flowers I pray for the man in the dumpster and the baby in the cart. It doesn't seem like enough.

3. The past 24 hours at the seminary we hosted a conference on Restorative Justice. The hopefulness of the gospel message was muted by the whiteness of the presentation, making the gospel ultimately unhearable. As much hope as was instilled in me was matched by the hopelessness of unreflective whiteness.

4. Soon after the conference, a psychotic homeless woman was forcibly taken into custody from in front of the seminary where she had been raging all day.

4. Came home to burgeoning gang members hanging out in the park across the street.

And that is why I say: God is breaking my heart at every turn.

Things to Remember

2008-01-10T10:10:00.001-08:00

Sometimes I like to use this space to quickly write a couple things that I simply don't want to forget as time goes by. Here are two of those things:

Monk always gives me handmade cards for holidays and birthdays. I love them. This year, this is what he wrote on the inside of my birthday card.

Dear Mom,

I could not love you more. Every day you greet me with a warm smile. Every night you hug and kiss me goodnight. That is what makes a good mom. Not being a celebrity or really rich. You are the Best Mom Ever, hands down.

Love,
Monk

P.S. I love you. XxXOOoX (repeat)

And here is the other thing. Over the holidays I baked and baked and baked. I was inspired to open the old recipe box I inherited from my grandmother and make all the cookies she used to make at Christmas time: peanut butter, chocolate chip, thimble, molasses crinkle, Russian Tea cookies and on and on.

Although I mailed many dozens away to loved ones on the East Coast, I still had a bunch here. And I've been giving a few to Monk in his lunch every day. (In our Progressive City, we're not supposed to send any sweets in lunches--but I thought that I could defy that rule as long as the cookies were homemade.)

Turns out Monk has been sharing his cookies every day. He eats one, then gives the others away. First it was to one friend (I'd only sent two cookies). Monk came home and said that Friend #1 declared my cookies the best in the world.

Yesterday I sent four cookies--so Monk and Friend #1 could each have two. Instead, Monk gave away a third cookie to Friend #2, and then they tried to divide the fourth cookie into thirds. Monk said that three cookies is ideal.

Friend #2 declared that my cookies "are like little charms from heaven."

Now that makes my day.

I Believe, Too

2007-12-26T11:33:00.000-08:00

So we think this was probably the last Christmas with Santa in our household. In the weeks leading up to Christmas this year, we were trying to get a sense from Monk if he really, truly believed in Santa anymore. We would bring it up every now and then, and try to read his responses--which were often rather cryptic themselves.

About a week or so ago, we brought it up again, a little more determined to root out the truth. And the conversation was really very dear--and left me feeling very confused about how we ought to proceed as parents.

Monk admitted that most of the kids in his fourth-grade class do not believe in Santa anymore. He said that most of the kids think their parents just get up in the middle of the night and sneak the presents under the tree from Santa. "What do you think?" we asked him.

He said that he thought that would be like the parents were lying. And if they are, then it's up to them to tell the kids that that's what they're doing. In other words, he felt that it's not up to the kids to doubt their parents or accuse them of lying. But its up to the parents to come clean.

At the same time, he said, he still wants to believe. He told us that he just doesn't feel ready to give up on that amazing feeling of waking up on Christmas morning to a tree that has magically been surrounded by presents from a stranger, someone who doesn't even know Monk personally. "It just won't be the same," he said, "if the presents appear from you."

The conversation we had seemed to be on several levels at once. About Santa, yes. But also about growing up. About believing in magic and letting magic go. About being in that really precarious place, where you're on the edge of growing up, on the edge of leaving boyhood behind, but you can still choose--for only a little bit longer--not to.

I feel like I remember that moment in my own life. And it was about this time of year, although it wasn't related to Santa for me. I think it was the year I was in sixth grade. It was over winter break. And I was still playing with my dolls and Barbies. I remember being achingly aware that winter break that it was the last time I would play with my dolls. That I'd held on to them for just a little bit longer than I should have, because I could still, just barely, choose it. But my childhood was slipping, and I could feel it going. I still played with dolls with all my heart for those two weeks. But I don't think I ever did again after that. As soon as the break was over, I put them away. And that summer, at our yard sale, I sold nearly every one of them.

But in our conversation with Monk, I was also moved, and worried, about his label of "lying" about Santa. D has always told me about his parents' approach to Santa. He has always maintained that they had managed to do Santa without every lying about it to him. In a very similar way, that night, D had Monk come up and sit on the couch between us. He said to him, "You know, I know exactly who Santa is. And all you have to do is ask me, and I will tell you everything I know about Santa."

Monk kind of squirmed and laughed, sitting there between us as Doug went on: "You've never asked me directly who Santa is, so I've never told you. But I'll tell you right now if you really want to know." We paused for a while. "Do you want to know?"

Monk shook his head. "No. Not yet. Maybe in a couple years."

A couple nights later, after I'd spent the day making Christmas cookies from my grandmother's recipe box, the three of sat down and watched A Miracle on 34th Street for the first time. It couldn't have been better timed for us as a family. The complicated layers of believing, or choosing to believe, are all there. But also, a sense of mystery. It's never entirely clear what we are to believe.

I've started to wonder, in recent days, if a more developed understanding of possession could help our post-enlightenment minds grasp the concept of Santa better than "true or false" ever does. There is a sense in which I do believe in Santa because I have been Santa. The spirit of one who gives generously has been alive and well in our household for these past ten years. As Susan says in A Miracle on 34th Street: "I believe, I believe...It's silly, but I believe."

Is He? Or Isn't He? Yes? No? I Think, No... Oh, I Don't Know!

2007-11-08T08:19:00.000-08:00

Kind of a stressful morning with Monk as he complained about an upset stomach and a sore throat. He actually woke up at 2:30 last night and called me in because he was afraid he was about to throw up. I've learned to get the bucket first and ask diagnostic questions later! But he didn't get sick last night and fell asleep again with the bucket on a chair beside his bed.

This morning it was more of the same, but my gut instinct kept telling me he wasn't really sick. (Even so, my gut has told me that before and the consequences have been dire!)

I've been kicking myself ever since our conference with his teacher on Tuesday afternoon. I told his teacher (in front of Monk) that this is the first year that Monk hasn't had any absences yet and hasn't fussed at going to school in the morning. It was as if I planted a seed that was bursting to sprout.

The past two mornings have brought back the old struggles in full force.

We ended up sending him to school today. The thing is, he has tomorrow and Monday off. And then he heads off for his first-ever overnight field trip on Tuesday morning! So today felt like a really important day for him to go in and get any of the last minute instructions that he'll need--and so that we'll feel like we know what's going on when we drop him off Tuesday morning. (For some reason his teacher embedded the permission slip for this trip deep in the packet of information about it. When we turned it in, we neglected to pull it out of the packet. So now all we know about the trip is what we feel like we might, kinda, sorta remember from going through the packet once. Not enough, in other words.)

I think we made the right decision. We heard him singing in the shower for heaven's sake. You don't sing in the shower when you feel like you might hurl, do you?

But I hate this feeling of not being sure. I wish there were some sensor on my kid where we could touch it and feel and know exactly what he's feeling--rather than having to sift through a bunch statements that always seem either just vague enough or just dramatic enough that I have no idea what's really going on.

Another Step in the Right Direction

2007-11-07T21:39:00.000-08:00

So here's something I am very excited about lately. At the end of last week, we had a huge, green bin delivered to our apartment building. It resides out back, next to the dumpster. But it doesn't collect trash--it collects food scraps! And paper towels, paper plates, paper take-out containers, pizza boxes, ice cream containers, napkins! And the food scraps don't have to be only vegetables, but can include meat, cheese, and other food things that can't normally be composted. I . AM . SO. HAPPY !

In the week that we've had this new bin, we have yet to fill the trash can under our sink. I think it is going to make a HUGE difference in the amount of trash we contribute to landfills.

Plus, the ability to recycle to this extent makes the now few things we can't recycle really stand out like a sore thumb! Extra packaging seems more obscene than ever in comparison.

What makes me not excited? The yahoos in our apartment complex who have already put plastic bags in the green bin (which D, bless his heart, fished out). Unbelievable.

In other news, I haven't talked about it since I started, but the vegetarian life is greatly agreeing with me.

Small steps that my family and I are able to take to live more gently on this planet.

PS I've already pointed out to D that this means we absolutely must eat more ice cream--so we have an easy way to collect the food scraps. Don't you agree? :)

Mass Hysteria

2007-10-31T21:12:00.000-07:00

I just wrote this story to a friend in an email, and decided to tell it here, too. It has been a strange, strange Halloween.

When Monk announced that he wanted to dress up as President Bush this year, we laughed and thought it was a natural progression given his costumes over the past several years: Darth Maul, Darth Vader, the Devil, and President Bush.

But what we never expected was the way his costume would tap into some deep wells of hatred! Not only that, but it created what D referred to as the Mascot Effect. It was as if people immediately forgot that he was a human underneath the puffy coat and the big mask. As soon as the mask would go on, and this is no exaggeration, swarms of kids would immediately be drawn to him and start poking him, hitting him, pulling at him. I've never seen anything like it.

But there was definitely also a Burn-Him-in-Effigy Effect as well. One kid walked over and said, "Some night you're going to wake up and find me standing over your bed with a knife." But even adults (parents, not the teachers thank goodness) would come over to him and say things like, "Watch out! I'm going to punch you!" We had some deep-seated hatred going on.

I was glad that both D and I went to Monk's school parade. We flanked him and kept having to fend kids (and adults) off. Finally, Doug turned to me and said: "Now I know what we should have dressed as...secret service agents!"

There was a very sweet moment, though, when a little girl--not more that 2 1/2 I'm sure, was utterly enthralled with Monk. It was the positive mascot effect, as if he were a Disney character or something. Monk shook her hand, as if he were one of those characters. She was smitten! I caught the moment below:

Bringing the Outside In

2007-10-30T09:40:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was a frustrating one for me, for various reasons. Within about an hour of chapel beginning, I was probably at my most cranky point. But I headed over to chapel (later than I've done all semester), in order to prepare the space for our worship service.

After setting out the hymnals and preparing the communion table with the green cloth I use each week (never the same way twice, though), I felt overwhelmingly that I wanted to bring something in from the outside.

I walked out the door of the chapel and looked about me. I thought of maybe some branches off a tree, or some flowers I might find... then I saw a charlie-brown ginkgo tree just off to the side of the chapel. It had shed a number of its bright, gold leaves and they had blanketed the ground around it. I collected a good handful and put them by the bulletins (which I always set on a table at the entryway). I also put some more on the communion table on top of the green cloth and under the candle, already burning. But then I turned around and saw this long stretch of bright red carpet along the the aisle...

I went back out with a student. I took off my jacket and we started to fill my jacket with gold leaves. As we reentered the chapel, the president of the seminary looked at me curiously: "I saw you out there loading leaves in your jacket..."

I laughed. "Wait til you see what we do with them!"

Then we proceeded to strew them all along the aisle - from back to front. The bright gold against that deep red was something!

It was fun, then, to watch people come in and blink! The prayer of invocation we prayed together ended up asking God to help us see God in unexpected ways: in the strange and familiar. Then the sermon was on the feeling of "in-betweeness."

I thought about how the leaves made our space an in-between space: not outside, not inside. And Autumn being an in-between season: not Summer, not Winter but carrying us between the two. For me, the leaves began to generate meaning.

My favorite part was directly after the service, first the two of us who had brought in the leaves (and made the mess in the first place!) started collecting them into baskets. Then, little by little, more and more people--from the students to the dean--were down on our hands and knees collecting leaves! There was so much laughter and marveling going on down there on the floor of the chapel that it was certainly a continuation of the worship service from my perspective.

Part of my role as the director of chapel is to use the chapel experience to teach students. I've been trying to do this subtly, by showing the kinds of things that are possible in worship. At our community dinner afterwards, one of our students asked me about the leaves. She is Korean and still struggles to express herself in English, which made our conversation all the more beautiful to me. She asked me about the meaning of the leaves. I talked about the meaning I had found in them, but suggested that others might have made different meanings. She smiled, and said: "I liked it. They were beautiful!"

Another student admitted that she hadn't noticed the leaves at all until partway through the service. And she said she couldn't figure out then if they'd been there when she had walked in, or if someone had walked through as part of the service and scattered them, or if they'd been there every week and she simply had never noticed before! She was one of the ones who got down on the floor to pick up the leaves, laughing delightedly. It occurred to me that the leaves had called her into presence in worship in a way she had not expected. They were familiar things in an unfamiliar place--and they had caused her to notice. There is gift in that.

By the time the service was over, the frustrations of my day had melted away. My spirit had been able to come to a resting point. And I'd been reminded of the joy that can be found in community, especially a community that dares to worship together.

Giving Thanks for Simple Things

2007-10-24T08:10:00.000-07:00

First, with prayers for all those who have been displaced from their homes due to fires, for those who are facing danger by seeking to contain the fires, for those who are grieving loss in its many forms.

Thanks to all who have encouraged us to go ahead and take this cruise. I think we're gonna do it! Looks like we'll be heading out in the spring, shortly after Easter. We'll celebrate Monk's 10th birthday in Ensenada, Mexico. Now, really, how cool is that? We're very excited about this grand adventure ahead.

More immediately, I'm scheduled to head back to the dentist today for (possibly) some major work to be done on my tooth that broke a few weeks ago. I say possibly because I got a letter from my insurance company which suggests this particular procedure may not be covered. Either that, or there was simply a technicality with the way the claim was filed. At any rate, it means a day chock full of some of the most unpleasant things I can imagine doing: dealing with an insurance company and going to the dentist. Nice.

In other news, I finally gave in on Monday and paid for Amazon Prime so that I can get "free" two-day shipping on my orders. The trick is whether or not it truly will be free; that is, if we buy enough books from Amazon (and Barnes & Noble, I guess) that we would have spent the $79 over a year anyway. Even I, as terrible with numbers as I am, have that much figured out.

Truth is, though, it's not so much about saving $$$ as it is about getting the books immediately. And I have found that often, once I am online looking for a title, it's because I need the book yesterday.

Speaking of which, my books did arrive yesterday (one day sooner, even, than expected). The first is for my dissertation. A book by Jurgen Habermas called (tantalizingly) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Say wha? Even so, I remain hopeful that by the time I get to the end of the book, I'll have some glimpse of what the heck that title means. :)

The second book is equally for my own prayer life as it is for work. (How joyous that the two can be that closely intertwined!) It's by Nan C. Merrill called Psalms for Praying: An Invitation for Wholeness. Merrill's project is a lovely one (although I freely recognize the dangers in it). She offers a translation of the Psalms that does not "other" enemies or nations, but draws them in and identifies them as internal enemies, whether fear, doubt, despair, lack of self worth, and so on. She also translates images of God primarily in terms of Love--calling God Love, Beloved, Compassionate One, Blessed Healer, Blees One, Listening Heart, etc.

One of the dangers, of course, is that a translation like this over-psychologizes the imagery in the Psalms. In some ways, the Psalms are transformed into nothing more than a sort of Jungian prayerbook. Another danger is that it clearly de-historicizes the Psalms, which commits a certain violence to the Hebrew/Christian texts--faiths that are deeply rooted in historical events.

But here's the thing: Merrill is not proposing her translation as a replacement of the more literal translations. And in that sense, I feel like the prayer book's dangers are mitigated considerably. And the benefits of these contemporary, accessible, and poetic images outweigh the dangers as I see them. I can't help but wonder what it might be like to grow up knowing God's name as Love, Beloved, and Compassionate One. I mean, really, what might the world look like if we knew this as God's name? Truth is, I open this book of Psalms and immediately experience it as a prayer book in a way I've never quite been able do with the traditional translations.

Anyway, enough talk about this, let me leave you with one of the Psalms. Here is Merrill's translation of Psalm 54.

Awaken me, O Blessed Healer with
your holy mercy,
that I might be free of fear.
Hear my prayer, O Holy One;
give ear to the words of
my mouth.

For nagging doubts assail me,
bringing loneliness and pain;
I remember not the Beloved, so
overwhelming are my fears.

Yet behold, You are my helper,
the upholder of my life.
With You I have the strength to
face my fears;
Your faithfulness will help me
transform them into love.

With boundless confidence, I
abandon myself into your Heart;
I give praise to your holy Name,
O Beloved,
with gratitude and joy.
For You deliver me from my illusions,
and, through Love, my heart
opens to Wisdom.

Crazy Ideas are Afloat

2007-10-16T19:29:00.000-07:00

So here's the thing. The wonderful and amazing RevGalBlogPals sent out word a few weeks ago that arrangements were being made for our first-ever RevGal Big Event. The matriarchs/board recommended the wildly unorthodox notion of taking a cruise together in the Spring! It was a creative way of gathering women from all over the world to a central location that was accessible by a major airport. And it was surprisingly affordable.

I have to say I never once imagined going on a cruise before, but when I checked into the details of the RevGals Big Event, I actually found it looked like a lot of fun. Unfortunately (though understandably), the RevGals decided that partners and kids wouldn't be invited to this particular event. So after giving it quite a bit of thought, I decided I just couldn't leave my guys at home while I went sailing off to Mexico. Most especially because it would be over Monk's tenth birthday. (That's double digits, baby!)

But a seed was planted. A bee was put in my bonnet. My imagination started running wild. And next thing I knew, I was sending away for cruise information for the three of us. Lately we've started to talk about taking a four-day (or so) cruise to Mexico during Monk's spring break (which is also, coincidentally, his birthday week). We'd leave from a Southern California port (not the RevGal New Orleans port).

I'm a little embarrassed by how fun I suddenly think this all sounds. It's not at all, not even remotely, connected to our simple lifestyle commitments of yesteryear. We don't live extravagantly by any means. Even so, despite our tiny apartment, we manage to pack in quite a few extras here and there. Still, a cruise?

But here's what appeals to me about it: being on the ocean (wow!), going to Mexico for the first time, traveling even while getting to stay in the same room each night (magic), meals included with the price (affordable), and doing something utterly different from what we've ever done before.

No decision has been made yet. I still need to research it all. :) But we'll see. Maybe...

Finding Perspective

2007-10-16T08:19:00.001-07:00

On Saturday I went to watch Monk's hockey practice. Each week at practice they do a horrendous drill where they skate the length of the rink (back and forth) while the coach shouts, "Down!" then "Up!" With each command they drop to the ice then clamber back up again as quickly as possible. I guess it's supposed to help them learn how to get on their feet again if they take a spill during a game.

Granted, all exercise strikes me as dreadful, but this one in particular looks like utter punishment. I couldn't help but smile as I sat on the bleachers this Saturday. It occurred to me, no matter how bad a day I may have on occasion, I never have to do that. It was such beautiful little moment of perspective. I feel like now I always have something to be thankful for. :)

Yesterday wasn't a bad day, but it was a long one. Mondays always are: I get in to work by 9:30 a.m. and stay 'til 10 p.m. (Though last night it was closer to 10:30 before I headed out.) I spend the day preparing both for the Seminary chapel service at 6:00 as well as preparing to teach immediately after chapel from 7:00 to 9:30. The amount of energy that goes into each experience is tremendous--both draw on wells of spiritual intuition and empathy, not to mention intellectual challenge.

For the most part, I find that worship and teaching gift back energy more than they take, but on occasion they really zap me out of it. And last night was one of those. Even so, it is such a privilege to get to do this. The tired that hits me is a well-earned tired. And the thing is, I never have to do that drill.

Extreme Home Makeover

2007-10-15T08:06:00.000-07:00

We live in a small, I mean, tiny apartment. And every now and then it becomes terribly evident that our stuff has surpassed our apartment's capacity to hold it. In a way it's a good thing to live in a place that has this sort of built-in alarm system that lets us know when we've accumulated too many things. But it also wears on us, I think. There is not much forgiveness to the space: everything is either picked up or it's a mess. No in-between.

Yesterday we couldn't take it anymore. And our efforts became concentrated in Monk's room. He's now 9 1/2 years old. And he had a lot of toys in his room that he has simply outgrown. Most of his playtime now is dedicated almost entirely to playing sports: hockey, football, and baseball. He plays a lot of these by himself in the afternoons. But he also throws a ball with his Dad every afternoon in the park across the street. (If you live in a tiny apartment, it always helps to have a park across the street!)

The three of us ruthlessly filled trash and recycling bags yesterday afternoon. I even cleared out old schoolwork he'd accumulated over the years, showing my anti-math bias by only keeping creative writing assignments. :) I went through Monk's dresser drawers and took out the clothes that no longer fit--a chore also long overdue. Included in that pile was an old Eagles jersey my brother gave Monk when he was only two years old. It was huge on him at the time, and somehow we managed to squeeze five years out of that jersey! But there is no way Monk would fit in it now. (That jersey isn't representative of the other clothes in his drawer, by the way. Everything else was sized between 6 and 8. I'm not that far behind.)

At the end of the day, I vacuumed in there. Including getting down on my hands and knees and using the attachment to vacuum along the edges of the room, floorboards we haven't seen in over a year! A deeply satisfying project.

The end result is that the room is cleaner, neater and better put together than I think it's ever been, even since we moved in. We've little-by-little divested of the excess toys (an embarrassment of riches for our only child). It's now a room that is pleasant to be in, a haven and a sanctuary.

Now if only the rest of the apartment felt that way, too!

Random Thoughts on a Monday Morning

2007-10-01T08:07:00.000-07:00

(1) There was much celebrating when the Phillies clinched the NL East championship yesterday afternoon for the first time since the magical 1993 season. That was the year D and I were married and we had bought each other partial season tickets (a set of four seats so we'd always go with friends). If you remember what the '92 Phillies were like, you'd know it was a giant leap of faith. If I'm not mistaken, they had finished in last place that year. But 1993 brought a new ragamuffin team out onto the field and we, along with the rest of the city, fell in love with them as they made their unbelievable journey to the World Series.

So the last time the Phils won the NL East, D and I made the spur-of-the-moment decision to drive up to Pittsburgh in order to see it happen. There were more Phillies fans there than Pirates fans for that game. And though nothing was guaranteed, they did indeed win the title that evening. It was enough great energy to fuel our eight-hour drive back home so we could go to work that morning. At every rest stop along the PA Turnpike, we would run into the same group of diehard fans who were on the same journey we were.

This time we celebrated the win from afar. But still managed to see it on D's computer. So wonderful to hear Harry Kalas call another championship game.

(2) All things baseball, D's fantasy team won his league's world series championship yesterday. And, in fact, Elliot also won his league's world series as well. So we broke out some champagne and sparkling lemonade and celebrated the boys. :)

(3) I dyed my hair yesterday afternoon for the first time in a while. I was tired of it's plain old browness and wanted a little more spunk to it. But not the spunk that comes from a $100 appointment at my hairdresser. I've been wanting to do this for a while, but have put it off because it meant giving up my gray hairs. I love my gray hair! I don't love the flat brown.

(4) A full day ahead preparing for chapel this evening and then class immediately after that. Most of the service is together, but I still need to fit it into bulletin format and make the copies. We will be celebrating communion for the first time, so new details for me to pay attention to. Still more firsts. A year of firsts, I suspect. At any rate, I need to be finished all that prep no later than noon to give myself a good, solid 4 or 5 hours to finish prepping for my part of the class tonight.

(5) Looks like we're planning a vacation to San Diego for Thanksgiving this year. I'll be down there anyway for the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting. So the guys are going to fly down on the last day of the meetings, we'll stay a few days, then drive back home together. This will be our first real vacation here, other than a couple days "housesitting" in Tahoe. It's been so long, I don't even know how to plan a vacation anymore. So if you live in the SoCal area, let me know if there are any places we ought to stay or visit!

(6) Oh, yeah. One more thing. Right after the Phillies won yesterday afternoon, I happened to cut my thumb on an aluminum foil take-out container. It was a pretty good cut and started bleeding right away. Monk, after making sure I was okay, joked: "Hey, Mom, you bleed red." Yes, indeed, I do. :)

A Fine Day

2007-09-29T19:41:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I decided to be more respectable in my free-time reading choices, so picked up Middlemarch. But as I got further along, I started losing steam on it, until a couple days ago when Monk assigned me new reading.

Monk had read Eragon, the first book in a trilogy--a fantasy boy-and-his-dragon story. As soon as he finished reading it, he immediately passed it on to me: "Mom, you have GOT to read this." I figured there may not be too many more years when he wants me to read the same books he's reading, you know? So I'm making my way through the first book (much more slowly than he did) while he cruises through the second one. My boy.

Today has been astoundingly beautiful here. A wonderful coolness, even crispness in the air. It's simply Autumn, through and through. Honestly, I don't remember it ever feeling so fall-like here. And it makes me wonder if I've finally just gotten used to the subtlety of seasons here. Maybe. There's something wonderful about that. And something a little sad, too.

Miracles Happen

2007-09-28T16:06:00.000-07:00

SFD done and sent to my adviser!

Amazing.

Out of Myself into God

2007-09-28T08:35:00.001-07:00

Well, I guess the good news is, we didn't need any retrofitting to survive this morning's little temblor. :)

Yesterday, I had a very heavy heart. And though I had (and still have) a pressing amount of work to do, I found it was nearly impossible to get the focus I needed to get anything accomplished.

I came home in the afternoon to spend some time with my family before having to head out again for class in the evening. There was a peaceful moment of watching Monk hit baseballs - enjoying the way he is clearly living out great scenarios of world series success with every hit. He throws his arms in the air and begins his trot around the imaginary bases.

Things got a little worse for me when a tooth in the back of my mouth came apart. Or maybe it was the filling that fell out. It's hard to tell because it was one of those composite, tooth-colored fillings. I only had it filled in August, but I don't think it was ever done correctly. It had never stopped hurting since then. Turns out the dentist can't fit me in until Wednesday of next week. A week with a hunk of tooth missing? How is it I never had any teeth trouble until I started to go to the dentist?

So between my heavy heart and my teeth woes, I really had to drag myself off to class in the evening. We had invited a guest speaker, a young Pentecostal pastor, who was there to talk about his theology of and approach to preaching. He did a fantastic job. It was thrilling to hear him. And this was the great thing: midway through the class I realized I hadn't thought about myself since things had started. I had been able to get caught up in the content, engaged with the speaker and the students, and focused again on things that bring me joy.

After the evening was over, I was deeply thankful for the opportunity that I find myself living into: to live out my call in teaching, to participate in something larger than me, that draws me out of myself and into a sense of God's mystery and wonder.

The big task before me today is to finish my first rough draft of my dissertation proposal and send it off to my adviser. What an accomplishment that will be. All the while I'm keeping Anne Lamott's wonderfully liberating writing advice in mind, summed up in three letters: sfd (s#!%&y first draft). Hopefully I can do that much.

Conversations You Wish You Hadn't Overheard

2007-09-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

Our landlord, standing below our living room window, talking with a contractor about retrofitting* our building. I heard two snippets clearly:

Contractor: "If the pressure is on this part then the whole building..."

and a few minutes later,

Landlord: "Well, I think the least expensive option would..."

I didn't hear the completion of either sentence. It's left up to my imagination and yours. If you lived here, how would you complete the sentences?

*Retrofitting, for those of you who live on solid ground, means to make a building more stable in the event of an earthquake.

Seeing Ghosts

2007-09-25T17:04:00.000-07:00

A couple years ago I was hanging out with some girlfriends for Happy Hour when out of the blue it occurred to me what I could say at Thanksgiving when we had to go around the table and announce what we're thankful for: I am thankful that, other than a couple dear friends, I have never, ever run into anyone from my high school since I graduated.

It was such a brilliant absence in my life! I was delighted that I could be aware of it and celebrate it.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I started to receive invitations to my (gulp) 20th High School Reunion and found (gulp again) that I really wanted to go! Wha?!

The notes have been coming in by email for maybe two weeks now. And with them, names of people who used to be a part of my life--but who I'd nearly completely forgotten about--have been floating back into view for me. It was a little like confronting ghosts. A bunch of these kids I went to school with from kindergarten all the way through graduation. And nearly all of them I'd known since the fifth grade.

I think I had the impression that I could float free of that group of people, as if it were only circumstance that tied us together. But I can't float free, untethered to such a large part of my past.

At the end of the list of names being sent around is a smaller list, though not nearly small enough, of the classmates who have died since graduation. (Actually one of them died our senior year from alcohol poisoning.) I felt awash in grief as I read through those names - and again a day or two later when one more name from the "unknown whereabouts" was moved to the list of deceased. After all these years, I can still see their faces plain as day.

I don't know that I'll actually be able to attend the reunion: it's the Friday after Thanksgiving on the opposite coast from me. But I haven't yet ruled out the possibility.

In the meantime, it prompted me to get in touch with my best friend from high school (and Maid of Honor in my wedding almost fifteen years ago now). So parts of my soul are feeling restored.

My Little Boy Growing Up

2007-09-15T20:51:00.000-07:00

Last night it happened for the first time ever. Monk brushed his teeth, put on his pj's and came out to the living room to kiss me goodnight. "You want me to tuck you in?" I asked.

"No. I'm good," he responded.

He didn't see, but he made his Mama cry with that one. I knew the day would come. My little boy is growing up.

Things that Give Me Hope

2007-09-14T19:00:00.000-07:00

This picture and its accompanying story simply brings tears to my eyes.

I came across it via Bible Versus when the picture was displayed on Blogger Play, which I discovered via my big brother's blog, Thoughts of Cyen.

Okay, so now you know how I spend my Friday evenings...

Growing Pains

2007-09-04T08:07:00.000-07:00

My Mom says that when she was little, she knew she would finally be grown-up when she no longer had scabs on her knees. I think she used to tell me this because I always had scabs on my knees as a kid. But I've been surprised, over these past nine years, that Monk has not had the same experience. In fact, he had one really bad fall when he was about three-years-old that he still talked about for years afterward. He was at daycare, standing on a bench, and he tried to grab a rope and swing on it. But he missed and fell--pretty much breaking his fall with his face, leaving a large abrasion. For a while we thought it would leave a scar. And for a while after it was clear it hadn't, Monk was convinced it had. :) He sort of clung to that injury as a badge of honor of some kind. Or, in his more dramatic moments, as evidence of his tragedy-filled existence.

But in recent months, he's finally started to get the abrasions and scabs I remember as being a daily part of growing up. Maybe two weeks of hockey camp had something to do with that. :) But I also think it has to do with a little more boldness on his part--a willingness to throw himself into things (literally?) with abandon. I think it's wonderful. And I can't help but beam at him when he comes home with the latest scrape. "Aw man, I'm proud of you!" I hear myself declaring.

Yesterday he went with a friend and his family to the beach for the day. Because Monk is an only child, I know there are ways we overprotect him more than other families. (Uh, hence the lack of scrapes...) So this trip was a big deal for us, well, especially me. DRD, who has always seen when Monk is ready to do things before I seem to see it, didn't worry nearly as much as I did. I always hope I keep my worrying out of sight of the boy, but judging by my Mom's lack of success in that area when I was a kid, I probably don't hide it near as well as I think I do.

Anyway, Monk came home with bruised and scraped up shins. Apparently he was running through the water with the other boys and slammed into a rock covered in barnacles. ("Covered in barnacles" seemed to be an essential part of the story whenever he told it.) I glowed at him when he showed me his scrapes. They match his currently scabbed elbow quite well. We're finally starting to go through Band-Aids around here!

This morning, he came out of the shower complaining that his foot hurt. Turns out he also managed to get a splinter yesterday. We dug at it for a little bit with the tweezers, but it wouldn't budge. "I wish I had Deshler's Salve!" I said.

My Mom had an ancient jar of Deshler's Salve that she would always take out when one of us got a splinter. It would draw the splinter out after a day or so, requiring no digging with pins or tweezers. It was a goopy, sticky, brownish salve with an oily smell to it. I had the feeling it had come from my grandmother's medicine cabinet.

After excavating in Monk's foot unsuccessfully for a while, I turned to Wiki-How. They suggested that you make a paste of baking soda and water, put it on the splinter, cover it with a Band-Aid and wait 24 hours. After that, the splinter ought to be drawn out enough to grab easily with tweezers. So we're giving that a try today.

In the meantime, I looked up Deshler's Salve and discovered that it hailed from Germantown / Mt Airy in Philadelphia--our old stomping grounds! Mrs. Deshler (who was related to the Wisters, in case any of you locals are reading this) purchased the salve from her butcher. (It was called butcher's salve for awhile.) But over the years, it came to be known as Deshler's Salve. Looks like its ingredients are quite odd. According to the website HerbData New Zealand, here's the recipe for Deshler's: Resin 23, yellow wax 22, prepared suet 30, turpentine oleoresin 12, linseed oil 13. Melt together the resin, wax, and suet, and add the turpentine oleoresin and linseed oil ; continue the heat, if necessary, until the mixture is liquefied, strain and stir until it congeals.

Turpentine?! Suet?! Linseed oil?!

And here's where I discovered the history of the salve: Excerpt from the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography.

Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution

2007-08-28T22:48:00.000-07:00

A guest blogspot by my partner, DRD

Monk is a lot like his dad in that one of his “guilty pleasures” is listening to heavy metal--particularly bands whose lyrics are not always entirely edifying. Monk’s current favorite album to listen to on the way to his hockey games is AC/DC’s Back in Black. He thinks of the title track as his team’s theme song, because they often wear black jerseys, and he like to imagine them blasting the song through the rink’s sound system during pre-game warm-ups. But he told me today that his favorite AC/DC song, which he’s had running through his head for the last couple of weeks, is “Hells Bells.”

I’m not entirely comfortable with this. I’m sure Monk likes the song partly because he thinks of hell as a curse word. I don’t think he gives much thought to the concept of hell, and AC/DC’s comically absurd glorification of it—which always put me off as a churchgoing teen. And I know he likes the ominous feel of the guitar part. He’s joked more than once about how his teacher last year always invited the kids to bring their favorite music in to be played at school, and he likes to imagine how she’d react if he’d brought “Hell’s Bells” in to be played for his third-grade class. But he thinks she probably wouldn’t do it because of the curse words.

When he mentioned that today, I seized upon the “teaching moment” as an opportunity to undo some of the damage I’ve done in introducing his nine-year-old mind to these songs. I said something like “Well, I’m sure your teacher doesn’t want to play music in class that some of the kids or their parents would find offensive. You know some of those songs really don’t have a very good message about how to live—like where ‘Hells Bells’ says, ‘If you’re into evil, you’re a friend of mine.’ ”

He says, “Yeah, I know, sometimes their lyrics aren’t so good--other than that one.”

I was a little baffled, and asked him what he meant.

He says, “Well, that song basically says what God says--that no matter what somebody’s done, even if they’ve done some really bad stuff, you should still be their friend, still love them, still stick with them.”

You gotta love a boy who hears the gospel in his AC/DC album.

N'est Pas Fumer

2007-08-16T21:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I took Monk to a doctor's appointment. The nurse was running through the routine beginning: measuring his height, weight, taking his temperature. She turned to me and asked a couple usual questions, finishing up with: "Does anyone smoke at home?"

"No," I answered.

"Only when she cooks," Monk quipped.

Tooth Telling

2007-08-07T18:30:00.000-07:00

I spent a bit of time in the dentist's chair this afternoon getting my first-ever cavities filled. (I'm 38, in case you're wondering.) I always prided myself as a kid on never getting a bad report from the dentist. Although, having no cavities growing up certainly didn't spare me from the misery of being in the dentist's chair.

I come from a Welsh heritage (among other things--a real mutt am I). And I'm convinced a trait of being Welsh (besides being tremendously supersititous) is big ol' teeth. My dentist decided when I was little that my mouth was too small to hold all my teeth. So every time I went to see him, he would shoot me up with Novocaine and yank out a couple teeth. Let's see, over my lifetime I've had at least 14 teeth pulled, eight of those were adult teeth. (This doesn't include my wisdom teeth.)

The last time my dentist pulled my teeth (two on the top) he didn't wait long enough for the Novocaine to work. Because I was still just a kid, he didn't believe me when I told him I could still feel what he was doing. What a miserable, miserable experience.

The cumulative effect of all this was a bit of trauma related to the dentist--keeping me from setting foot into a dentists office for much, much too long.

But with the new job came dental insurance and my excuses ran out. Last week I went for the first time and got my first bad report. And today I went to get a couple teeth drilled and filled.

Because of my fears, especially in connection to the needle, I paid extra out of pocket for the joy of Nitrous Oxide. What a beautiful thing. After several minutes, I was able to relax and let everything go on around me without getting stressed out about it.

A bit of irony for the whole experience? There was construction going on right outside the window. They were using a jackhammer out there. Kind of put the sound of the drill in perspective. :)

The fat lip feeling has finally just worn off. So I'm ready to consider eating a little something for dinner.

I'm very proud of myself today. I did it. I really did.

Why Can't Anything Be Simple?

2007-07-12T20:18:00.001-07:00

In the words of my two-year-old nephew: "Oh, man!"

Today my brother left a comment here with a link to this article about The Dark Side of Soy.

I'm so bummed! Just when I thought I'd found a clear cut answer to eating more responsibly and healthfully.

-sigh-

Grilling in the 21st Century & Moving In

2007-07-11T17:52:00.001-07:00

I bought a hibachi on July 4th this year. A cheap little $3 one. The bag of charcoal actually cost more than the grill itself! But I had a hankering for a cookout on the Fourth of July and figured, just because we're 3000 miles away from family doesn't mean we can't have our own little cookout for the holiday.

It took D and I about ten tries to get the charcoal lit. And we grilled up our own little feast that day, in the driveway of our little apartment. :)

Tonight I'm giving it another try and am pleased to say it only took me three tries to get the coals going strong. And now, here I sit, waiting for them to get good and hot--with my laptop on my knees, blogging. Yep. That's grilling in the 21st century for ya. :)

I've kept a nearly vegan diet since July 8. That's only four days, but it's something. Tonight I'll be grilling chicken for the guys. And I'll be having tofu sausages or something of the sort. Grocery shopping yesterday was a challenge as I tried to come up with veggie alternatives that wouldn't mean cooking several different dinners each night. We shall see how this goes.

The big celebration for today, however, was taking over my first loads of books to my new office! I don't know what we'll do in an apartment that isn't crammed with books. But how I love filling those shelves in the office. How immediately the walls spring to life with the things I love. Like filling the office with old friends right at the beginning. It's a beautiful thing.

If I keep up a good pace tomorrow, I should be able to bring over the rest of the books. Little by little, step by step I'm moving into this new life. Amazing.

Going Veg?

2007-07-09T15:36:00.000-07:00

On the evening of July 7, I watched the Live Earth concert coverage with my family. I appreciated the concert, even given the self-contradictions it seemed to embody. (My brother offered some apt critiques here.) I think I appreciated the extent to which the concerts must have served to raise awareness, especially among young people. I think to whatever extent we can get the concepts of global warming and environmental responsibility to be familiar concepts, then change will happen more broadly and effectively. When Gore was interviewed on the night of the concert, he talked about Live Earth being only a beginning, a launch event for a global movement. The excitement generated by the concerts may raise hope and motivation for that movement. And if that's the case, then I'm grateful for it.

Near the end of the evening, I logged onto the Live Earth website and spent a good bit of time clicking through their lists of suggestions. (You can find them listed in the box titled "even more suggestions" on this page.) Their suggestion No. 31 is "Eat your Veggies" and includes this startling paragraph:

"The gases coming from cow's rears are even worse, greenhouse-warming-wise, than ol' CO2. Enteric fermentation--the ruminants' digestive process--produces flatulence, a.k.a. methane, while manure releases nitrous oxide. Even more emissions come from collateral effects: deforestation for pasture, fertilizers for feed crops, and energy to run meatpacking plants."

This made me more curious, so I visited the PETA-sponsored website www.goveg.com (linked from the Live Earth site). I eventually viewed this video. WARNING: This video contains graphic images of animals being abused and slaughtered. Not suitable for children. And may be more than you can stomach.

Watch more videos at PETA.org

I've flirted with vegetarianism a few times in my life. The only time I made a strong commitment to it was the semester I lived in Oregon, almost twenty years ago now. (My gosh, is that true?!) At the time, I had a problem keeping weight on. And there were fewer alternatives available for vegetarians. So once I returned to the East Coast, my commitment eventually waned.

I think I've always thought of vegetarianism as a matter of personal preference. But I'm beginning to think of it differently now: as a matter of justice, a way of right-living, a commitment to walking lightly on the earth. It seems, in fact, that becoming vegetarian can be one of the single-most effective ways to make a tangible, positive difference on this planet. Such opportunities are so rare that I feel as though I ought to pay attention to it.

The struggle, for me, would be how to live this out while being the food-preparer for my family. I don't feel right making this decision for my partner and my son: it seems like a choice they would have to come to for themselves. D is --as always-- very supportive of whatever decision I make with this. So I guess together we would need to figure it out.

I'll keep you posted.

To the Beach!

2007-06-18T17:46:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm closing up shop here today and will be off on vacation for a couple weeks. Feel free to peruse the archives while I'm at the beach. Maybe send some good vibes to our cat, Felix. He has a dear friend staying with him while we're gone, but he sure will miss us terribly. And, boy, will we ever miss him, too.

Random Ramblings - 8 Things Meme

2007-06-14T11:42:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Diane, I was tagged for the Eight Random Facts meme that's been going around like the common cold at a preschool. First I have to post the rules, then dig right in to eight things you never wanted to know about good ol' me. :)

1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

2. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

3.At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Here goes:

1. I lived in the same house until I graduated college. Shortly after I was married, my parents divorced and consequently sold the house. One Saturday, Dad told me I had to go up to the attic and sort through the relics of my entire childhood: children's books, my schoolwork through the years, stuffed animals, pictures, old projects, toys, clothing, you name it. I got up there and felt totally overwhelmed. I selected a Rubics Cube (which I think technically was my brother's) and Monopoly. I gave up everything else that was there. Stupid. Every now and then, before drifting off to sleep, I walk through the entire house again in my imagination, trying to remember as many details as I possibly can.

2. I was in San Francisco for the very first time one week after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. While there, I bought a copy of Martin Buber's I and Thou in a used book store on Haight Street.

3. I took the train across country when I was a junior in college. Jim got on the train in Minneapolis/St Paul and sat next to me. He was fifty years old and had been riding his bicycle across country. He was on his return trip when he got word that a friend had died, so he cut his trip short and was taking the train the rest of the way back to Sacramento, California. In Portland, Oregon, we had a five-hour layover. He bought me lunch and we spent a couple hours in Powells, a massive used bookstore in the years before Borders or Barnes and Noble. He lit my cigarette with a Zippo lighter despite the blustery wind as we walked back to the train station. I got off the train at Klamath Falls, Oregon. I turned and waved. I never saw him again. I guess if he's still alive now, he would be over 70 years old. Wow. That just occurred to me at this moment.

4. At the end of fourth grade we picked the instruments we wanted to learn to play the following year in band. I chose the tuba. My parents didn't let me play it because, they said, "Only boys play tubas." So I ended up playing the clarinet which was, I suppose, sufficiently girly. The other day Monk came home and told me he chose the instrument he wants to learn to play next year: the flute. I was astounded to find myself thinking: "Only girls play flute." I can't believe I thought it. Awful. I promise I'll never say it to him. Truth is, now that I'm an adult, I think my parents weren't so concerned about me playing the tuba because I was a girl as they were worried that the tuba was so very big, and I was so very small--it surely would have crushed me!

5. I lived at the beach with some girlfriends for a summer in college. Every morning my best friend and I would eat Cheerios and drink orange juice for breakfast. No matter what brand of orange juice we would get, I would have a complaint: "This orange juice is too sweet," or "This orange juice is too tart," or even something as vague as "This orange juice just doesn't taste right." Around the beginning of August, my friend turned to me and said very gently and lovingly, "I don't think you like orange juice." We laughed until our bellies hurt. She was absolutely right.

6. In high school I was enthralled with Shirley MacLaine and Richard Bach. After giving things some serious thought, I decided at the time that in a previous life I had been Lady Jane Grey, the nine-day queen.

7. When my hair is long, I dance like Snoopy. I don't know how to dance when my hair is short.

8. My parents bought a piano for us when I was little. I think it was a square grand piano--very, very old. And extremely rare. An ancient man used to come and tune it once a year. When the house was sold, the piano went with it. The picture below is the closest one I could find that looked like our old piano.

Wow. Funny how many of these random things are from a long time ago. Let's see. I tag: my brother, Amy, SpiritMist, Canticles, RevEm, RevMaria, and you if you want to play!

Friday Five - Hit the Road, Jack(ie)

2007-06-08T09:04:00.000-07:00

Time to do a little dreaming. This week's Rev Gal Friday Five has us taking a little trip:

Suppose you were told to pack some essentials for a trip to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

Describe your location, in general or specific terms
I would love to go away to a little cabin, nestled in the midst of some very tall trees. Somewhere where it will get hot enough for a swim during the day. But cool enough for a fire at night. A place where you can smell the pine trees. Drink coffee out on the porch in the morning. No other human-made discernible sounds--just the sounds of birds, wind, insects, maybe the lap of the water if it's close enough. -sigh-

and....

1) What book(s) will you bring?
California
A White Teacher Talks About Race
Weavings

2) What music accompanies you?
I hear only one song in my head at the moment, as I imagine sitting in the cabin: Norah Jones' singing Come Away with Me.

3) What essentials of everyday living must you take (as in the health and beauty aids aisle variety)?
Other than toothpaste, toothbrush, and other basic hygiene items? Nothing. Okay, maybe mascara.

4) What technological gadgets if any, will you take with you or do you leave it all behind?
I'd leave 'em all behind except my cell phone. If I have my laptop with me it will be open in front of me. Gotta leave it behind if I'm really going to get away from it all. Otherwise, it all comes with me.

5) What culinary delights will you partake in while there?
Oh, what a lovely question. How about some wine. Maybe even a bottle of champagne for one night. And maybe make some pasta with shrimp, garlic, olive oil, and hot pepper for dinner one night. Maybe make a pot of chili one day. Let's see. Fresh strawberries. Peaches. Granola in the morning. Coffee, of course. I wouldn't mind picking up hoagies from a deli one day for lunch. Some pretzels for snacking. Maytag blue cheese, pears, and french bread one evening while dinner cooks. How about some s'mores over the coals at night? Mint juleps. Or mojito. French toast one morning. We could make salmon one night, wrapped in foil with some asparagus spears, maybe some dill, lemon, and butter, all cooked together in the coals. Oh, life is so good. Ain't it?

As a bonus question, what makes for a perfect day on vacation for you?
Waking up whenever we wake up--no alarm. Reading. Going for a hike. Canoeing. Conversation. Writing. Cooking a simple meal. Quiet.

A Question of Anonymity, Part 2

2007-06-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

I am very appreciative of all of you who generously responded to my question about how you feel about writing a blog under your own name or anonymously or pseudonymously. (Thanks, Songbird, for that word! I couldn't come up with it no matter how I wracked my brain when writing the original entry!) :)

I'm also thankful for my conspiracy-theory-prone brother's long and stern email to me on the subject as well. :) He is a very good big brother to me. (When I wrote him an anxious note, hoping he didn't take offense at the way I described him in my blog entry, he wrote back that, far from offensive, he took it as a compliment! He's so great!)

I think what most impressed me as I read through your reflections is that writing under your real name does not expand the subjects you're able to address; rather, it more likely restricts them even more. As I sat with your responses, I realized that the question may be less about anonymity than it is about the genre of blogging itself. It is a wonderful place to do some reflection, but not the place to do all reflection, by any means.

I definitely resonated with Tripp Hudgins's comment: "Blogs are public. Ministry is public." On some level, the degree to which I have chosen a public living out of my faith journey makes my pseudonymity on this blog seem almost self-contradictory.

Nonetheless, I suppose that for now maintaining this thin veil of disguise (however penetrable it ultimately is if one is determined enough to find out), seems like the wiser choice. Perhaps, like Rev. Dr. Mom eventually I may decide to start a second blog (disconnected from this one) in which I write under my professional (and therefore already public) identity.

So, thanks again to all of you for helping me think this through!

A Question of Anonymity

2007-06-06T16:07:00.001-07:00

I am thinking about 'coming out' on my blog--that is, deciding to stop being anonymous and go ahead and write with my name attributed to the words here. It's only a recent consideration, so I don't know yet what I'll decide. (And I know my conspiracy-theory-prone brother will not be pleased that I'm even thinking about this!)

I noticed, however, that it was very difficult for me to write anything on my blog over this past year as I got deeper and deeper into my professional roles as an associate minister and as a teacher. I found that much of what was consuming my thoughts and energies had to be off-limits from blogging. Mostly because I wanted to continue to protect my anonymity--not because anything I wanted to write would reveal something about my students or congregation.

I'm wondering if I went public, if I would find it easier to write? Or more difficult?

I'd be interested to know what others' experiences with this has been. Especially if you've made the transition from anonymity to public identity.

Faith Guiding Our Votes

2007-06-04T16:17:00.000-07:00

I was sadly disappointed, for the most part, in the Sojourners sponsored CNN event Faith Guiding Our Votes, broadcast on a special edition of The Situation Room last evening. I can't imagine Sojourners was that pleased with it either.

For the most part, the questions asked by Soledad O'Brien, the moderator of the event, still represented a narrow-minded, deeply personal understanding of what it means to be a person of faith. I was astounded to see her lead off the event with a question posed to John Edwards: "Do you believe in creationism or evolutionism?" When Edwards answered immediately: "I believe in evolutionism," O'Brien followed up by asking: "So does that mean everyone who believes the world was created in six days is wrong? And their pastors are wrong?"

O'Brien's closing question for Edwards was downright salacious: "What is the greatest sin you ever committed?"

Barack Obama was offered the most relevant questions--in terms of faith and politics--when O'Brien asked about the war on terror and Israel/Palestine. Even there, however, the trajectory of her questions were sensationalist rather than searching: "Does God take a side on the War on Terror? In other words," O'Brien follows up, "Is God on the side of the U.S. troops?"

Obama raised the level of the evening's discussion by drawing on communal understandings of faith and responsibility, quoting from Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Lincoln several times.

When Hillary Clinton took the seat, O'Brien sank to an all time low. Without hesitating, O'Brien immediately asked Clinton "Did your faith help you through the difficult time of your husband's infidelity?" Soon after, O'Brien giggles after asking Clinton an equally personal question: "It's just us girls talking." What?!

These questions have absolutely no bearing on Hillary Clinton's campaign for the presidency. And, like Edwards' "worst sin" question, they were questions borne out of an utter lack of sophistication on issues of faith. I couldn't help but think of Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter in each of these instances--the public shaming of individuals in the name of religion.

What was most discouraging about it, I think, is the overprivatized notion of faith--that matters of faith are only deeply personal and have no public purpose. To my great disappointment, questions of faith were not expanded in last night's forum, despite Jim Wallis's persistent effort to reintroduce the issue of poverty each time the microphone was handed to him.

I had expected that Sojourners would have had more say over the entire selection of questions posed to each candidate--especially when each person was only given a total of fifteen minutes to speak. Unfortunately, they didn't. And in my view, the intersection of faith and politics was muddied all the more.

Here is CNN's summary of the event.

Ordinary Time

2007-05-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

Sunday was the last worship service I had responsibility for planning as the Minister of Worship and Spiritual Growth at our congregation. As of the end of May, my position is coming to a close. Between this ending and the end of the semester, the month of June opens up for me to be able to pay attention as I move into my new position as Assistant Professor of Worship at the beginning of July.

I stand in awe at this transition time--and desire to engage it with great intention. Noticing the endings, anticipating the beginning, living in to this time of change.

The paintings I did this past weekend, what I ended up calling my Pentecost Trees, must have something to do with this. Some release of creative energies. Some openness to Spirit moving. On Wednesday of last week, my spiritual director asked me what I most felt I needed to do in the weeks ahead. I settled into God's leading after she asked the question, turned the question over for the Spirit to do her work on it. My sense was this: "Be open to receiving. Do not try to shape too much." I don't know what all that means quite yet. But I hope to live into it.

There is something truly lovely about beginning this new season of my life with the long, verdant season of Ordinary Time in the liturgical year. Festivals like Pentecost command our attention--with all their reds, and flames, and stormy winds. But Ordinary Time asks for a quieter reception--none of that bluster of birthing Spirit, just the gentle invitation of everyday moments of being.

My season of Ordinary Time begins with making lunch and breakfast for Monk this morning. Some time of reading and prayer. A trip to the bank to deposit checks. And then some work--reading, and writing comments on final projects. Nothing more ordinary than these things. And yet, all of it shimmering with God.

My Pentecost Triptych

2007-05-27T19:02:00.001-07:00

I did it!

The Pentecost Tree

2007-05-26T17:05:00.000-07:00

Here is my final draft on canvas this time.

My First Attempt

2007-05-26T15:48:00.000-07:00

Here is my first, practice attempt at painting (see my entry below). I decided to call it Pentecost Tree. I'm working on the canvas one now. I think I'll make the tree less thick. This is so fun!

How to Tell the Semester is Over

2007-05-26T11:21:00.000-07:00

I'm Cooking Again
After not cooking a single meal--lunch or dinner--for about a month, (including, to my great shame, not cooking a single meal for my dear brother when he was visiting last week!), yesterday I grocery shopped and then prepared 21 meals!

I got the menus, recipes, instructions, and assembly guidelines for the meals from the website Saving Dinner. Some time ago, I blogged about this great place not far from us called The Full Plate--a place where you can go to prepare 7-12 meals with fresh ingredients that then get frozen. (You don't cook the meals ahead of time, so that everything would end up tasting like leftovers. You simply assemble the fresh ingredients, place the prepared meal in a ziploc freezer bag and put it in your freezer until you're ready to defrost and cook it.) The cost of preparing 8 meals is about $150 through the Full Plate (as I recall). That averages to a little over $6 per person, per meal.

Well, these dinner kits I prepared yesterday are the same exact idea except that you do it all yourself--shop the ingredients, prep them, then assemble the meals. It was a huge project--I probably spent a good eight or nine hours between grocery shopping and making the meals. But now my freezer is full of a month's worth of weekday meals! The cost of preparing these meals was probably about $250. That comes to about $4 per person, per meal. Astounding.

I Want to Start an Art Project
When my brother was in town, we all went to the astonishing Maker Faire. This is truly an eschatological event to me. When I go to the Maker Faire I cannot help but celebrate the creativity of the human spirit. So many of the folks who have booths at the Faire are able to imagine things different from the way they already are. And not only are they able to imagine it, they know how to make different things happen. There is also a great joy about the faire and the people there. Many of the projects are full of whimsy--something that seems too often missing from a lot of adult lives. For instance, one of my favorite displays was a guy who had designed a system, called botanicalls, where you put a sensor in the soil of a houseplant. When the plant's soil gets dry, the sensor sends a signal to your phone. The plant telephones you to tell you it needs water! Then when it senses the moisture in the soil, it phones again to thank you for your loving and kind attention!

While we were at the Maker Faire, we saw a booth with folks from the website Etsy. I visited the site for the first time the other night and totally fell in love with it. Etsy provides a webspace for artists and craftspeople to display and sell their work. Most of what I looked at was at truly reasonable prices. And, like the Maker Faire, fills me with hope that the creative spirit in North Americans has not been ultimately destroyed by the forces of mass production and consumerism. There is hope yet! Do visit the site and see what kinds of things are there. And if you are an artist or craftsperson, why not sign up to display and sell your stuff, too! Let me know in the comments what you think of the site!

I sent my brother a link to a triptych painting I liked a lot. He wrote back and told me he thought I could try and make a similar series of paintings myself. I've never painted anything, but I'm thinking today we may walk down to Blick's Art Supplies and maybe give it a try. Why not? It truly must be the end of the school year.

Oh, one last thing: If you like to make stuff or craft stuff, I highly recommend the magazine's my brother subscribes to--and the mags behind the Maker Faire: Make and Craft. Believe me, they're not your usual DIY.

Why Nothing Ever Gets Done

2007-05-21T11:40:00.000-07:00

10:00 a.m. - Sitting at computer working. I think: "I'm hungry. I wonder if we have anything to eat?" I go to the refrigerator to look for a snack.

10:05 a.m. - Staring in the refrigerator I realize how many science projects and petri dishes I have going in there. I decide to clean out the refrigerator.

10:15 a.m. - Finish cleaning out the refrigerator and take out the trash. I notice the recycling bins overflowing with non-recyclables yet again. I remember D stewing last night because he is always the one who goes out every week and sorts through the bins for the entire apartment building (8 units) so that the City collectors will accept them. Almost a year ago, we secured recycling bins for our apartment, but our good deed has left us with a weekly hassle.

10:20 a.m. - I announce to D that, because we were the ones responsible for obtaining the bins in the first place, I think we should take them and stick them under our sink for our own use. Let each unit make their own arrangements or hassle the landlord if they want to recycle. D agrees.

10:25 a.m. - I dump the bins out into the trash (most of it was trash anyway). Then realize the bins are covered in gunk, ants, spiders, and goo. I run them under the outdoor spigot (the hose disappeared last week).

10:30 a.m. - I realize the bins will need a good scrubbing. I go in and get our scrub brush and soap. I start scrubbing away.

10:50 a.m. - I finally finish scrubbing out the bins and take them upstairs. Both bins won't fit under the sink--and there's no where else to put them. So I take one bin back outside and figure someone else can be responsible for maintaining it from here on in. Not my problem anymore.

10:55 a.m. - I realize one bin also won't quite fit under the sink because of the vases I've stored at the very back. I remove the vases to the kitchen table, get the bin under the sink, and empty our recyclables into it. I call out to D, "How on earth did I get involved in this project?!"

11:00 a.m. - I line the vases up on top of the refrigerator, with images of the next earthquake dancing ominously in my head. But where else can I put them?

11:05 a.m. - I take our old container for collecting recyclables out to the trash. I wash my hands.

11:10 a.m. - I sit back down at my computer and start to respond to an email. I think: "I'm hungry. I wonder if we have anything to eat?" It dawns on my how I got involved in the project in the first place.

11:40 a.m. - I finish writing my blog about this very thing. I'm still hungry. May as well wait 'til lunch now.

11:47 a.m. - I correct the typos in this entry and republish it.

Welcome Baby Luke!

2007-05-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

We joyously celebrate the arrival of our newest nephew at 3:24 a.m. ET weighing in at 10lbs 4 oz and 22" long! Mom, Baby, and Dad are doing well. And 2-year-old Big Brother will get to meet Luke this afternoon. Congratulations! [I hope to post a picture soon.]

My Little Fish

2007-05-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

I was greeted with very bright eyes last night when I came home from an end-of-semester gathering for our Liturgical Studies Area. Monk had his first Swimming Test last night. Not only did he pass the level he was in (Beginner 3) but he also passed the next level as well--skipping right over Beginner 4 and heading into Advanced Beginner.

He was proud as could be. And I am proud of him, too. Truly an accomplishment for him and a great boost of confidence to take him through the next level.

My Mother's Day Poem

2007-05-13T18:24:00.000-07:00

from Monk (a fill-in-the-blank note from school. The words he filled in, I've marked in bold.)

Happy Mother's Day, Mommy!

You're as beautiful as a rose.
I like the way you cook like a chef.
You're as kind as an angel.
With you I feel loved.
You're as sweet as a kitten.
You are special to me because you love me like a lion.
You're as loving as a puppy.

My favorite line? "You love me like a lion." Yes, I do!

Monk's Pursuits

2007-05-13T17:14:00.000-07:00

Monk has been doing a unit on heroes in his third grade class. He was assigned two reports for this unit--to choose one hero he knew personally and one hero he did not know. For the first, he chose his great uncle. For the second, he chose Mahatma Gandhi.

I'm so thrilled for the opportunity to learn more about Gandhi along with Monk. He's already read a rather substantive biography about him and has taught me quite a bit. On Friday afternoon we bought the film Gandhi and will be watching it in installments over the next week or so.

At nine-years-old, Monk is asking large questions lately. And seems to be deeply paying attention to witnesses of faith in his own and others' traditions. Seeing the connections between Jesus and Gandhi is astounding. To get to notice these connections with my little one is a true gift.

Don't worry, Monk's also interested in the typical nine-year-old pursuits. In fact, he's urging me to come in and watch him play Sims even as I write this. :) So I think I shall...Perhaps more later.

The Grapes of Little Miss Sunshine's Wrath

2007-05-12T11:24:00.000-07:00

Caution: This entry includes spoilers for the movie Little Miss Sunshine and the book Grapes of Wrath. You've been warned...

Okay, so we're a little behind in our movie viewing! But we recently restarted our Netflix subscription and are getting caught up on last year's films. First on our queue (so happy to have the word queue come into American parlance!), was the controversial Little Miss Sunshine. I didn't have high hopes for the film--mostly because my brother didn't like it much, and another dear friend thought it was insipid from the first scene on through. Nonetheless, it seemed like a movie you couldn't miss.

Now maybe it depends on your mood when you start the film, but D and I thought this movie was a hoot. I don't know what it is about wildly dysfunctional families that crack us up, but this one did. In some ways the movie seemed to be in the vein of a Douglas Coupland book--especially All Families are Psychotic. But even more than the quintessential Gen-X author Coupland, Little Miss Sunshine reminded me of another American author, the great John Steinbeck--especially his book The Grapes of Wrath. So much so, that I am made to wonder if the film was an intentional homage to that classic story in American literature.

Like Grapes, the characters of Little Miss Sunshine embark on a road trip to the "promised land" of California, in order to cash in on the great prize of the American dream--in this case embodied in Olive's dream to win the beauty pageant after which the film is named. In Grapes the characters carry around a flier that announces plenty of jobs for those who are willing to work in the fields of California. The flier is a scam; ultimately, meant to flood the market with labor so the migrant workers can be hired at well below living-wage. Similarly, the beauty pageant is another form of scam--building off the great American dream of working hard, applying yourself, never giving up, pull-yourself-up-by-the-boot-straps-and-you'll-succeed. An ideology that the father in Sunshine completely buys into and even markets in his "Nine Steps to Success."

Grapes begins with an older brother who is released from prison just before the family leaves for California. Sunshine begins with an uncle who is released from the psychiatric ward of a hospital after a suicide attempt. Grapes has a surly grandfather and a grandmother who both die along the way. The grandmother's body has to be smuggled across state lines because of corrupt funeral directors who are out to make a buck on the miseries of others. Sunshine combines the characters into one, with the same need to smuggle the body wrapped in a sheet-made shroud in the trunk of the car. Grapes has an odd brother who doesn't speak much and eventually leaves the family part way through the journey, walking off to follow a river, never to see his family again. Sunshine likewise has a brother who has taken a vow of silence, and nearly leaves the family as well.

The similarities are too present for me to ignore--and they make me take the movie a bit more seriously than just the offbeat, grotesque comedy it seems to be at face-value. It seems to unmask something about contemporary North American culture today: the state of the family, the absurdity of the American dream...

There is without doubt a stark ugliness to the movie. And the characters are certainly involved in insipid pursuits. But something deeper is definitely going on. As in Grapes, none of their dreams are realized. But they do discover their love for one another in the midst of their defeats. "There are two kinds of people in the world," the father pontificates, "winners and losers." Well, this family is a family of losers, alright. Certainly by the standards of the American Dream. And yet, despite their losses, they do seem to come away with something more.

Friday Five: Potato, Po-tah-to Edition

2007-05-11T08:14:00.000-07:00

from the RevGalBlogPals
There are two types of people in the world, morning people and night owls. Or Red Sox fans and Yankees fans. Or boxers and briefs. Or people who divide the world into two types of people and those who don't. Let your preferences be known here. And if you're feeling verbose, defend your choices!

1. Mac? (woo-hoo!) or PC? (boo!)
To my Big Brother's delight, we finally became a Mac family in March--and we love them! Our old PC's (beloved for a time) had slowed to a snail's pace. And I hate to admit it, but I'm sure we were marketed right into the decision by those wonderful Mac/PC ads. Ultimately, though, the new computers (a MacBook for me and an iMac for my editing partner) were a celebration of my new appointment to Assistant Professor--why, an Apple for the Teacher, of course! By the way, have you ever seen the spoof of the Mac/PC ads with the Christ-Follower/Christian ads? They're pretty clever.

2. Pizza: Chicago style luscious hearty goodness, or New York floppy and flaccid?
Chicago style takes an hour to cook! If I wanted to wait that long to eat, do you think I'd settle for pizza? I like a pizza that requires two hands to eat. World's best pizza? Mack & Manco's in Ocean City, NJ. (It was my son's first solid food, he'll be more than proud to tell you.) But one requirement for floppy pizza--it's wrong to eat it folded in half! If you want to eat your pizza that way, order a stromboli.

3. Brownies/fudge containing nuts:
a) Good. I like the variation in texture.
b) An abomination unto the Lord. The nuts take up valuable chocolate space.
Depends on my mood. Uninterrupted gooey chocolate brownies fill my heart with a deep contentment. Such a wonderful comfort food. But when I'm feeling engaged, thoughtful, and open to a challenge? Well, then I like the sharp contrast of a brownie with nuts. In this case, the nuts seem like the conductor of the symphony--somehow guiding the taste of the brownie, but ultimately deflecting the applause to the delicious yumminess of the chocolate. I think I need a brownie for breakfast...

4. Do you hang your toilet paper so that the "tail" hangs flush with the wall, or over the top of the roll like normal people do?
Like most things in life, I'm over the top on this one. And since it seems I'm always the one who has to change the role, I usually get my way. Last December, D changed the role right before he left for a trip back East. But he changed it "wrong" so the tail hung flush against the wall. For three days I made myself live with it that way, telling myself I should be thankful that he changed it and not be such a control freak about it. After the third day, I couldn't take it any longer. In a spirit of defeat, I flipped the role around.

5. Toothpaste: Do you squeeze the tube wantonly in the middle, or squeeze from the bottom and flatten as you go just like the tube instructs?
The tube has instructions on it? Who knew? I'm a middle-squeezer. Truth is, the times I have tried to be a bottom flattener, I've found it's a Sisyphean task--inevitably the very next time you go in the bathroom, someone else in the family has already squashed it all out again from the middle.

No One Warned Me About These Things!

2007-05-09T14:17:00.000-07:00

I think I've reached another adolescence of some kind. Another bodily adolescence. It occurred to me a couple weeks ago when I made a joking comment to D that when I look in the mirror, I don't recognize the middle-aged woman looking back at me. I thought I was completely kidding--but as soon as I said it I knew it was true.

The change sneaked up on me. I swear it was only a year ago that I was lamenting still getting carded when buying wine at the grocery store! And I don't mean that as in "It seems like just yesterday..." I really was getting carded last year!

Maybe it's the short hair now. Or getting a little rounder in recent months. Or the strands of gray which seem to be proliferating. Or the laugh lines that are crinkling around my eyes. I guess it's all of those put together.

But the result is a sort of strange unfamiliarity with myself. Clothes which seemed to fit--not only size-wise, but personality-wise, too--now seem strange on me. But when I shop for new clothes, nothing hangs on me the way I expect it to. I pick up things I like on the hanger, but once I try them on...they're just not right. Who is that gazing back at me?

We recently discovered some outlets near us which have some cool clothing. Beginning my new job this July, I truly am in dire need of professional looking clothing. I'm well aware, too, that I'm in the midst of crafting my image as "professor": I don't want stodgy, or frilly, or conservative, or plain. I want something that seems to flow on me, that has flair, something that I can move comfortably in, but also something that's clearly dressed up--not casual.

Eventually I found a lovely, simple linen dress in a coral color. And another linen skirt and blouse in light blue. But my favorite purchase of the day was my hippie shirt. Here's a shot of it from the website of the store. I'm not sure it's something I could wear teaching, but it will make me happy to wear it on my days off.

In my early twenties, shortly after I got married, I was astounded to discover my body changing in ways I'd not expected. I remember commenting on it to a friend of mine who was about ten years older than me. "It's your second puberty," she told me. "No one ever talks about it. No one warns you it's going to happen. But it does!" Well, now I realize that a third one happens in your late thirties, too! Who knew?

The trick is to try and befriend this new body--even, hopefully, with more kindness than I've managed toward myself in a long time. It is truly a wonder and a mystery--living into this life and this self. I so much want to live into it with grace: roundness and wrinkles and all.

Simple Pleasures

2007-05-02T16:57:00.000-07:00

The other day I had the pleasure of a phone conversation with my Mom. She happened to mention that she had walked a total of 60 miles in the month of April. It was just the thing I needed to light a bit of a fire under this lazy butt. Not to mention that my father-in-law, who had major back surgery just before Christmas, is also putting up phenomenal numbers of miles walking each day. I decided it was time to stop thinking about walking for exercise and to start doing it.

So on Monday, and again today, I headed to the Bay to take a nice walk. The first day Monk volunteered to go with me. And today, I managed to rally both my guys to go with me. And, boy, is it good for the soul. There is something truly amazing about the opportunity to walk by the water, only a half mile or so from our home. Today the wind was really strong coming off the water--so that my ear ached after a while. The wind was causing little white caps and waves--and at one point I felt the spray of a bay-sized wave as it crashed against the rocks. We also spotted a small family of geese--a few adults and maybe ten goslings! All floating in a nice row, heading out for their own little exercise session.

The great thing about having a nine-year-old along for a walk is that it's never really about the walking. On Monday he had the two of us doing skipping and galloping races. And today he interspersed short jogging sessions on the return trip--certainly enough to get the heart rate up there! And something I don't think I'd ever make myself do on my own!

Now for a quick dinner. Then off soon to Monk's fourth swimming lesson. He's doing just great with it. His face just lights up when he's in the water. I think this is really, truly going to be the summer he finally learns. Our boy.

Today we also are celebrating Felix's fourth birthday! (Felix is our wonderful cat.) Last night about midnight he started meowing like crazy, desperately wanting to be let out for the night. He had completely stopped going outside at night almost eight months ago! But last night he was absolutely insistent. I finally gave in, and regretfully watched him as he disappeared into the cloak of darkness.

This morning about 5:30, I woke up a minute or two before a huge downpour started! Felix is one of those crazy cats who adores the rain. Sure enough, not long after the rain stopped, I heard his loud meow at the front door. He was sopped through. I grabbed a towel and dried him off while he purred away contentedly.

Later, when we remembered it was his birthday, we joked that he'd insisted on going out because the cats in the neighborhood had planned a party for him. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if this were somehow true. I've never known a cat to make as many cat-friends as Felix has.

Swimming Lessons

2007-04-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

When Monk first started talking about having a desire to be baptized, last January, he was curious about the process. And he wanted to know how D and I were each baptized. I was baptized (the first time, I admit with some chagrin) in a Methodist church when I was twelve years old. My brother and I were baptized on the same day; he needed to be "done" so he could get confirmed later in the same service. (Clearly our Methodist church hadn't engaged with the liturgical renewal movement yet and didn't know that one does not need to be "confirmed" if you're baptized as a believer. But that's another point altogether.)

So because we were Methodist at the time, I was baptized by pouring--a small amount of water dribbled carefully on my head. I remember my hair was pulled up and back into a bun that morning. And I feel like I can still go back to that moment, the gentle graciousness, almost caress of the water as it trickled through my hair and down along my neck. Ever play the game where someone pretends to break an egg on your head and they run their fingers gently over your head and onto your neck before you squirm away?

When I told Monk about this, he immediately exclaimed: "Can we become Methodists? Can't we get a Methodist pastor to baptize me?" The idea of being dunked under water in our big baptistery felt pretty overwhelming to him. And, in fact, with good reason. It's one sign the Baptists definitely get right.

But we wanted to pay attention to his fear, too. Not just dismiss it or try to simply talk him out of it. There is something to fear in our baptism, I think. Our participation in the death and resurrection of Christ is overwhelming. Even God's grace is overwhelming. If we cozy up to these kinds of things too much, then we have lost something of their meaning.

We knew that the greater part of Monk's fear, though, lay in his increasing discomfort at not being able to swim yet. Although he's had lessons each year since Kindergarten through his public school, they have never been sustained enough to get him comfortable in the water. Last summer would have been the ideal time for us to get him swimming lessons, but we were at a loss about how to do it. We don't have a pool, of course. And we don't belong to a swim club. And, frankly, it's pretty darn cold in this part of the country in July and August.

But sometime over the past year, swimming morphed from a fun thing that he wanted to learn to a frightening thing that felt just plain dangerous. And this danger, it was clear, was represented by the baptismal waters as well.

I shared some of this with my students a month or two ago in our class on baptism. Afterwards, one of my students came up and suggested that we intentionally tie the two together: Give him swimming lessons as his baptism gift. She said that for her, learning to swim was the most empowering thing she felt she'd ever learned to do. Why not link the empowerment of learning to swim with the powerful moment of baptism? The idea seemed brilliant to me.

So classes start tonight. In fact, in a few minutes--so I have to run. But I'll try and write some more later...

Interiors

2007-04-21T11:46:00.000-07:00

D and Monk left a little while ago to go to Monk's hockey practice. D is officially one of the Assistant Coaches for this next round--last time I think he was just skating with the kids and helping out to be nice. But the organizers of the league have turned it into a more official role. It's a neat thing, really--he's great with the kids and able to help the ones who seem the most uncertain with the whole thing. And I think Monk loves having him out there.

I'm taking the opportunity to have some quiet time on my own at home. Living in such a teeny-tiny apartment makes it quite difficult to ever really be alone and home at the same time! I love my guys dearly. But sometimes it's also nice to be alone, too.

I hope to get some reading done for Tuesday night's class. I can't believe we only have about four sessions left! This semester has flown by and been truly wonderful. And I can't believe that I'll get to do this now for the rest of my life. How I love teaching!

But before I do the reading, I think I'm going to spend some time cleaning up around the apartment. I just wrote to a friend of mine that my least favorite rhythm in life is the Neat-to-Messy-to-Neat rhythm. There seems like there's got to be a way to end the vicious cycle! It is a daily rhythm (messy by the end of the day), the weekly rhythm (a mess by Saturday), the monthly rhythm (too much junk mail and other papers on every surface), and for us a semester rhythm (the later in the semester it is, the more of a wreck the house is in)!

Over the years I have become increasingly convinced that being able to create a comfortable, neat, and beautiful space inside our apartment lends to a sense of peacefulness and creativity that is otherwise squelched in a messy home. In fact, a messy home I think is one of those, as I call them, white-noise stress inducers--like white-noise, below the surface but keeping a low-grade level of stress constantly present.

Lately I have been considering painting one of our walls in the apartment a rich, dark color--something other than the glaring white of apartment living that has been our constant environment for, well, most of our adult lives! I'm tired of white walls! Technically we're not permitted to paint the walls, but I think as long as we're willing to repaint it white again when we move out then we could get away with it. Any advice?

Yesterday I met with my spiritual director and talked about a growing desire to deepen my spiritual "disciplines"--such a strict word for such a gentle practice! As we talked about it, I became aware that I think of four tiers of spiritual practices that seem to be intertwined: daily prayer, spiritual reading (non-academic, inspirational reading such as writings of the mystics, for instance), writing, and making retreats. As I prepare to begin my teaching position this July, I'd like to have all four of these in place--so that I begin in balance. Patterns started early tend to carry through. So it's best to begin the patterns intentionally.

So I suppose I am working on interior spaces right now: the one I live in and the ones within me. I guess that makes sense at a time of major transition such as this. Like "nesting" as a pregnancy nears it's birthing.

Some Good News to Share!

2007-03-23T19:57:00.000-07:00

I am truly thrilled to share some very exciting news with you. As of Wednesday afternoon I accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in my field at By the Bay Seminary. (Trying to announce this exciting news while not revealing exact details!) :)

This has developed quite quickly over the past month and a half or so. And although we all thought we would be heading back home this summer, we are really very, very happy.

I have been on a long journey since I started seminary in the fall of 2000. I have tried to follow a sense of where I was being led, but it honestly never made any practical sense. My denomination historically has downplayed the importance of studying worship on the seminary level (though we've certainly emphasized preaching!) And it was truly a leap of faith to go ahead with my oddball degree in Liturgical Studies, despite every sign that it would only leave me unemployed at the end of all these difficult years.

Now I am in awe of how quickly this position came about. And that my destination has finally become clear. I am so thankful.

A really wonderful benefit of these past couple days has been getting to share this news with loved ones who have been such an important part of my journey all these years. As notes have poured back, I've been more aware than ever of how many mentors I've had along the way. What a joy to hear back from quite a few people who feel at least in part responsible for this success--and rightly so! I'm more aware than ever of the reality that I did not accomplish any of this alone, but only together with family, friends, teachers, spiritual guides, and loved ones.

Today D and I "celebrated" by taking the day off from work and overhauling our apartment! After years of being prejudiced against renting storage space (it's always felt like a uniquely North American "problem" of excess), we decided that our teensy tiny apartment just could not be comfortably home with every nook and cranny filled with boxes. We realized that our frustration was going to ultimately resolve itself by having us decide it was impossible to live in such a small place (and thereby increasing our rent by several hundred dollars a month) or by renting a little extra space for a fraction of that cost.

After doing some online research, we headed over to a place that's only a couple blocks from here, and rented a small unit immediately. We proceeded to take over three loads (in our little Nissan). Then spent the rest of the day really cleaning and re-organizing the space.

The decision felt great. It was a sense of settling in on a deeper level than I think we'd allowed ourselves to do before.

Now I'm a good, bone-weary tired. The cat has curled up across my legs. (It's warm enough this evening that we have all our windows and the front door wide open and I'm still wearing shorts!) The coffee table in front of me is completely cleared off (for the first time in over a month) except for a lovely candle with a sturdy flame. I can hear a soccer game being vigorously played in the park across the street. It is a good night.

Preparing for Baptism

2007-03-16T16:53:00.000-07:00

Last evening we had a long conversation with Monk about his desire to be baptized. We're still trying to get a sense of his desire, wanting to make sure that he is not asking to be baptized simply because he senses it would please us or make us proud. Monk is going to be turning nine years old in just a couple weeks. So he's really at about the youngest I would think he ought to be baptized. That is, speaking from my Baptist perspective. If I switch theological hats, back to my Lutheran one (where I went to seminary), I'm perfectly fine with infant baptism. But we are Baptists--so I feel it's important to be respectful of that tradition in this case.

Several of Monk's thoughtful responses were very beautiful to me and I decided I wanted to share them here. As much to have some friends and family aware of how he's feeling about things these days as to have me remember these "thick" days myself someday.

When D asked why he was feeling he wanted to be baptized, Monk responded: "I feel as though Jesus was a really important person who made very good decisions in life. And I want to live my life in a way that follows Jesus' example. And I figure baptism is the place to begin."

Monk also said that he wanted to be able to tell kids that he was a Christian and not to be embarrassed about that, but to simply be able to tell them that that was a part of who he is.

When we asked what he thought it meant to follow Jesus' example, he answered: "To live in a way that is kind to other people, to be thoughtful, and generous, and loving. To help people. And if I get signed someday as a hockey player for millions of dollars that I would give away half of it to help other people. Because it's not right that I would have so much when other people don't have enough food to eat every day."

Then D asked Monk: "A lot of people talk about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins. What do you think that means? Is that something you believe?"

"Not really," Monk answered. "I think Jesus was killed because the Roman government thought he was a real threat to their power. And that worried them a lot. When he wouldn't back down, then they killed him to set an example for all the other people in case they were thinking of resisting the government, too. The Romans thought they had won, but then God proved to them that love is stronger than death."

Because we're reading the Bridge to Terebithia right now, we had just the night before encountered the scene where May Belle is worried that if Leslie doesn't believe in Jesus that "God would damn her to hell." Monk giggled every time I'd read the line, because all he heard in it were the curse words. But last night I explained to him more about why May Belle would say that. "Some people are taught a theology that if someone doesn't believe in Jesus then God will send them to Hell."

"Do you have that theology?" he asked.

I told him I did not. D admitted that when he was baptized, he did believe that. But that he didn't believe it anymore.

"Well, I think that's a pretty dumb theology," Monk said. "I mean, God created different genders, right? And God created different species. And different continents. And different vegetables. And different kinds of people. Why wouldn't God also create different faiths? Doesn't that just make sense?"

So that's where our boy is right now.

Watcha Doin'?

2007-03-16T12:31:00.000-07:00

It's been ages since I've participated in a RevGal Friday Five! But I'm delighted to take on this easy assignment of listing five things on my To Do List for today! :) How 'bout you?

1. Go watch Monk play recorder with The City Symphony at his school! :)
The kids (K-5) have been practicing on their instruments for months now for this special concert. Now how cool is that?

2. Finish planning Sunday's worship service and put together the bulletin.

3. Read for pleasure not for work!
I'm in the midst of Barbara Brown Taylor's Leaving Church. An enjoyable read, especially as one who straddles the church v. academic world.

4. Go buy a sack of sand!
I think I want to do a "station" at church on Sunday where people can come forward and place long taper candles in a big box of sand--in prayer for those at war in the desert regions of our world. (Gifts in the Wilderness and Rivers in the Desert is our theme for Lent this year. Given that this weekend we commemorate the start of the war, it seems important to be especially aware of not over-romanticizing the desert experience. I've got the candles. Now I just need the sand...

5. Go to a Sake Tasting session at our sake museum right down the street from us!
Yummmm.

Random Entry

2007-03-15T09:11:00.000-07:00

1. We are loving our new Mac computers! The latest hit in our house has been creating songs on Mac's Garageband--a program that comes already installed which allows you to compose songs using either original creations or by putting together a series of loops in fun and interesting ways. Monk has lately been composing a song a day--starting out with some moody, new-agey sounding songs, moving to the genre of Techno (calling his first creation in that genre "TechnoMonk"), then to world music with my current favorite of his "World Fusion" where he combines Congo beats, Nordic flutes, Indian tablas, orchestra strings, tambourines and more into a truly fun song. He's also written one song called "Stick It (to the Man)" which cracks me up, coming from our dear, almost-nine-year-old, boy. Yesterday we burned our first cd with all his creations and listened to them on our way to church. Now, how cool is that?

2. I preached on Sunday. I had gone into my weekend thinking it would be no problem to churn out a sermon given that I've been preparing weekly lectures for the class I'm teaching this semester. Well, I came to find out the Holy Spirit does not appreciate such arrogance when it comes to sermon preparation. Preparing last Sunday's sermon just kicked my butt! Eventually, the words and focus came, but not after hours and hours of struggle. My favorite part of Sunday's service was when we invited folks to come forward and receive figs! (One of the texts was from Luke 13, where a gardener manages to buy another year for an as yet unproductive fig tree to put forth its fruit.) We had both dried figs (couldn't find fresh ones at this time of year) and fig newtons. Four of the kids in our congregation stood up front and said, "Taste and see the goodness of the Lord" as people took one of the treats to eat. It was cool. A couple weeks ago we did something similar, with the people receiving apples and dipping them in honey. (That was the week we read about the promised land flowing with milk and honey.) I'm trying now to think of a way to end this week's service. Food again? The Prodigal Son story certainly ends on a big feast--though I'm not planning on roasting a calf for church this week!

3. Our son continues to want to be baptized this Easter. I'm so happy about this. But I'm also concerned that we do it "right"--whatever that means. How do we prepare him for the day in an adequate way? And I also feel very sad that he won't be baptized with his extended family there as well as his church being present. When he was dedicated as an infant, Monk filled two very long pews with friends and family members! I wish that could be the case for this big moment, too--the 'first fruits' of the catachesis he has received since he was dedicated at 8 months old.

4. Last night I led the second of a four-week class called "Beginning to Pray" in which I am introducing folks to the practice of contemplative prayer. I start folks out with a brief time of instruction, then we practice the prayer together. Last week's class focused on praying in silence. Last night I used a more guided method based on Ignatian spirituality-following the form of Sacred Space. As a result, I wasn't really able to participate in the prayer time as much as I had the previous week when we all kept silence together. The meeting time isn't ideal--as lots is going on at the church on Wednesday nights. That's when we have our weekly kids program, as well as a parents' group that meets off the sanctuary. So lots of sounds and distractions. I think I'll try the group again when things quiet down again on the church campus. It feels like such a privilege to lead this experience for folks. Contemplative prayer has a large role in where I am in my life today. It's a joy to see people opening themselves up to trying this out themselves.

5. I am grateful this week for the ways in which my discernment about my life and ministry are coming to great clarity. I hope that by this time next week I will be able to share publicly some very good news that will be an affirmation of all these years of stepping along a dark path-- where there has been no clear destination in view--only a sense that I was supposed to be on the path itself, wherever it was leading.

6. A couple days ago I received an invitation to a twentieth high school reunion! It shocked me to discover that this year I mark twenty years since I graduated high school! Funny thing was, though, that the invitation was from a high school I didn't, in fact, attend! This got D and I to thinking that we ought to attend it anyway. Now, wouldn't that be a hoot?!

Sabbath Stirrings

2007-03-01T08:13:00.000-08:00

Last night I had an evening event which wore me out a bit. I came home feeling tired and cranky--the second night in a row where I was out past 9:30, which means not being home to tuck Monk in at bedtime. (I teach on Tuesday evenings until 9:00 and can sometimes make it home in time to kiss the boy on his head before he's drifted off to sleep.) My day always feels unresolved when I'm not here for Monk's bedtime.

When I got home last night, full of grousing and grumbling, I discovered D looking awfully worn out himself. Turns out the Boy (Monk) had had a pretty hard night, too. He'd broken down into tears several times while at his usual Wednesday night church program (our church has a Wednesday night Logos program for kids). As I heard the report of what all had happened--little things, but with a wallop of a cumulative effect)--I understood how he could have lost it by the end of the night. But I also noticed that woven through the evening, for Monk, was a recurring theme of his growing anxiety that he hadn't yet gotten his homework done (or even started) for the week.

D and I blinked at each other, once we both got done sharing about our evening's stress, both of us a little too worn out to be much help to one another. It was just one of those nights that was better dealt with by ending it--worn out, it was time to turn in for the night and try to get some rest.

This morning I woke up thinking about that need for rest. A friend of mine is leading a Lenten series on Sabbath this year. And this morning it occurred to me that my experience last night points to my own need for sabbath. I've discovered this past year, as I've cobbled together my two "part-time" (in pay, not in hours!) jobs teaching at the seminary and serving in a church, that the week's schedule never allows for natural downtime. Once the academic work slows (on Wednesday morning), then the church work kicks into high gear. When the church work slows (on Sunday evening), then the academic work kicks into high gear.

I think my forbearance was low last night because I was supposed to be taking the day off yesterday, but instead found myself out until 10:30 at night. When we're spread too thin, we lose a generosity of spirit.

I think that was partly, even, what was going on with Monk yesterday. I'm a little ashamed to say that I think we've fallen into the trap of overprogramming him: aiki-jujutsu two to three times a week; Logos at church on Wednesdays; Chess on Fridays; Hockey on Saturdays; Church on Sunday. I've gotten into a habit of letting him put off his homework until the last minute because I can never bear to make him do it during the week in his downtime moments. But his anxiety goes higher and higher, it turns out, as the week goes on. Letting him put off his work is not a favor to him.

I marvel at how easy it is to overprogram our kids. I honestly never thought I'd be the kind of parent to do that--I don't think of myself as the SoccerMom type. But little by little, interest by interest, we've added to his daily schedule enough to keep him going most of the time. Right now it feels like something's gotta give.

This morning all of our spirits were in much better places. Monk and his Dad woke up at 6 and Monk diligently and determinedly knocked out nine of his fourteen pages of homework. He headed off to school feeling much more in control of things, not overwhelmed by them. I was able to laugh at the things that had peeved me last night. And feel restored at least enough to have written this entry here (which is no small thing, to have energy enough to write).

But I want to keep turning over this notion of sabbath--for me, my son, my family. The press and the push to accomplish, perform at our best, stay busy all the time can be a demonic push that keeps us distracted, distressed, and dispersed. To stop, in such a way that we can become open to God's presence in our midst, now that takes a leap of faith.

Edited to Add: Monk came across this blog entry on my computer this afternoon. After reading it he said solemnly: "Mom, something's gotta give." -beat- "And I think it should be school."

Starting Over?

2007-02-25T20:09:00.000-08:00

Well, gee, I feel like I need to practically start over from scratch here on the old blog. I've probably lost nearly all the folks who used to stop by here regularly. And I do apologize for my absence this past little while. Bit of a sabbatical I suppose.

Things are actually going exceptionally well these days. Some exciting possibilities are in the works, which I hope to be able to share here, soon.

One exciting development in recent days has been that D and I invested in a couple new computers. Although the expense was large, it was also a very real necessity for us. The two of us do all our work from home (D is freelance and I, of course, teach and study), so our computers hold our whole lives (and livelihood)!

After much consideration, we decided to make The Switch--and we left our PC lives behind and joined the world of Apple! After a weekend of trying to familiarize ourselves with the new operating system, I'd say we're doing pretty well. And we love the machines. They sure are beautiful.

This week has been consumed by Lent preparations. We doing a very unique, celebratory Lenten series this year drawing out all the beautiful (mostly Hebrew scripture) passages of promise that fill our lectionary texts these season. One of my favorite things that we've done is moved the large (4-foot) fountain in from the courtyard outside into the sanctuary. The sound of the water burbling throughout the worship service was really beautiful.

Well, I guess that's it for now. I do promise to try and be a bit more consistent here than I have in recent weeks.

Ready or Not!

2007-01-15T21:50:00.000-08:00

On Saturday late afternoon, I received a phone call that the person who would be leading Adult Sunday school had to cancel due to illness. (She actually ended up in the hospital Sunday morning, so keep her in your prayers!) So I had to be sure to prepare the class in addition to making the many last minute arrangements for the rather complicated worship service I had planned.

In the end, the two needs ended up being addressed at the same time. I recruited the extra readers I needed for the service during Sunday school--which felt rather like a brilliant move on my part if I do say so myself. :)

Although our congregation does follow the lectionary, yesterday we departed from it (for the most part) in order to have a service to celebrate the witness of Martin Luther King, Jr. (We kept the Corinthians text, but substituted other texts in for the two other readings.)

However, in Sunday school we were studying together the gospel text (John 2:1-11) of the Wedding at Cana.

I had some great resources to help me prepare for the lessons. Our church uses the Seasons of the Spirit curriculum put out by the United Church of Christ. Their emphasis for the lesson was on the abundance of God's love--reflected in the abundance of wine that Jesus creates out of water. Believe me, I'm all about abundance, especially when it comes to God's love. But something was not satisfying me about this direction. I decided that what I really wanted to do was somehow connect the gospel text to Martin Luther King.

Very early on Sunday morning, I turned to the RevGalBlogPals for inspiration--checking out the comments on the 11th Hour Preacher's Party. There, I came across a comment left by Rev. Maria (who writes on the blog Jubilee). In this particular comment, she wrote that she was planning on drawing a comparison in her sermon on Sunday between Jesus' reluctance to perform his first miracle and King's experience at his kitchen table over a cup of coffee during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Both men were reluctant to take the first (and in some ways final in the sense of irrevocable) steps toward their public ministries. And yet, both men were being called out, in some sense, to begin--despite not yet feeling ready.

The direction resonated with me on so many levels--although I was not yet familiar with King's coffee cup, kitchen table epiphany. I pulled out my old, ginormous copy of Parting the Waters. After much searching (the index didn't include a listing under coffee!), I managed to find an account of the experience. Taylor Branch describes it this way:

The limitless potential of a young King free to think anything, and therefore to be anything was constricted by realities that paralyzed and defined him. King buried his face in his hands at the kitchen table. He admitted to himself that he was afraid, that he had nothing left, that the people would falter if they looked to him for strength. Then he said as much out loud. He spoke the name of no deity, but his doubts spilled out as a prayer, ending, "I've come to the point where I can't face it alone." As he spoke these words, the fears suddenly began to melt away. He became intensely aware of what he called an 'inner voice' telling him to do what he thought was right. Such simplicity worked miracles, bringing a shudder of relief and the courage to face anything. It was for King the first transcendent religious experience of his life.... For King, the moment awakened and confirmed his belief that the essence of religion was not a grand metaphysical idea but something personal, grounded in experience--something that opened up mysteriously beyond the predicaments of human beings in their frailest hopes. (Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, p. 162)

I also found this account from Albert J. Raboteau in an article comparing the spiritualities of Thomas Merton (one of my patron saints) and MLK, published in the Winter 1988 edition of Spirituality Today. You can find the article here. Raboteau relates the moment in King's own words:

"And I discovered then that religion had to become real to me, and I had to know God for myself. And I bowed over that cup of coffee. I never will forget it.... I prayed a prayer, and I prayed out loud that night. I said, "Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's right. I think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now. I'm faltering. I'm losing my courage. And I can't let the people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage they will begin to get weak. And it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, "Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And I will be with you, even until the end of the world." ...I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No never alone. No never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainly disappeared." (See A Hidden Wholeness: Thomas Merton and Martin Luther King, Jr.)

In the story of Jesus changing the water to wine at the Wedding at Cana, I always imagined that Jesus was reluctant to perform the miracle because he knew that it truly wasn't supposed to be the time for his public ministry to begin. He has always seemed terribly irritated in this story when he turns to his mother and snaps: "Woman, what does this have to do with me. Don't you know my time has not yet come?" But Mary doesn't flinch. In fact, she doesn't even respond to Jesus. She merely turns to the servants and instructs them to do whatever Jesus tells them to do. And Jesus follows through--just as she knew he would.

But for the first time, thanks to Rev Maria, I now saw Jesus as reluctant to perform this first miracle because maybe, just maybe, he didn't think he was ready. Maybe he didn't feel like he knew enough to put himself out there. Maybe he was reluctant because he was afraid--not just that he may not be able to do what he wanted to yet, but because if he did accomplish it, there would be no going back.

Raboteau writes as much about King. He says that it was King's epiphany at the kitchen table that caused him to "commit himself to the movement completely despite his growing realization more certain as the years went by -- that it would cost him his life."

I find such hope in these stories of reluctance. Indeed, I take courage in King's "weakness" as he sits at that kitchen table in the middle of the night, in desperate need of hearing God's assurances to him. And I take comfort in the image of a young Jesus who doesn't feel ready quite yet. A Jesus who feels like he needs to maybe read one more book before saying for certain what he thinks. Or needs to take one more retreat. Or simply needs to hang back just a little longer before he takes that first step.

We concluded our Sunday school time relating our own experiences of feeling not quite ready to take on all that we have to in our lives. And yet we find we simply have to step forward, ready or not, and face what we can with what we have. And in every moment, ready or not, we have to open ourselves to God's leading--in hopes of aligning ourselves with the Presence of Love in our midst.

Throughout all of Advent, I emphasized in worship the notion of God With Us, Emmanuel. Far from pretending that the Christ child has yet to be born, our congregation celebrated throughout Advent that God is Already With Us, accompanying us in every time and place.

And now, in this season after the Epiphany, I have encountered God's continuing assurance, through the epiphany of the prophet Martin: "I promise never to leave you, never to leave you alone. No never alone. I promise never to leave you, never to leave you alone."

Ready or not. No never alone.

Why Do Today What You Can Put Off 'Til Tomorrow?

2007-01-13T16:50:00.000-08:00

When I was in the fifth grade, my grades took a nosedive. It was the first year of middle school. I was finding it more difficult than ever to tame what my kindergarten teacher had called my "free spirit." I'd gotten mixed in with the bad kids. I'm pretty sure a couple of them dropped out of school eventually. I didn't get along with my teacher at all. Somewhere along the way, I seemed to stop doing my homework completely. I remember lying in bed at night, dreading the next day.

About the middle of the year, my Mom was called in for a parent-teacher conference. My teacher looked at her gravely and said, "JWD has a real problem with procrastination."

Mom, without missing a beat, said with a twinkle in her eye: "Oh, I'll talk with her about that next week."

Mom never tamed her free spirit either. And my teacher was not amused.

So it made me laugh when I came across CNN's headline yesterday "Procrastination Report Released Five Years Late."

I tested positive for Emergent/Postmodern

2007-01-13T16:31:00.000-08:00

With thanks to RevEm, who also happens to be Emergent/Postmodern.

You scored as Emergent/Postmodern. You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.

Emergent/Postmodern

75%

Neo orthodox

68%

Roman Catholic

61%

Classical Liberal

50%

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

50%

Modern Liberal

36%

Charismatic/Pentecostal

36%

Reformed Evangelical

11%

Fundamentalist

What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

Keeping Time

2007-01-11T17:47:00.000-08:00

I turned 38 a week ago. A delightfully curvaceous pair of numbers, wouldn't you say? I never mind, at least so far, turning a year older. It's better than the alternative, as my grandmother would say. But more than that, I like its reminder that time is passing.

I like the way age is phrased in French. J'ai trent-huit ans. I have 38 years in my life. In some ways, the English phrasing is accurate--but it's a bit presumptuous: I am 38 as if 38 sums me up.

I received a wonderful gift from my friend, srf, for my birthday. It's called the ECOlogical Calendar: A New Way to Experience Time, created by Antenna (a theater company) and published by Pomegranate. The ECOlogical Calendar emerged from a project by Antenna called AllTime in which they try to refocus our attention on the age of the universe rather than our usually constricted notion of time as counted out by the Gregorian Calendar. If you want to know what time it is, click here.

The ECOlogical Calendar incorporates many different ways that we experience the passing of time on earth: changing seasons, phases of the moon, changing tides, shifts in weather or winds, shifting biological behavior of plants and animals, seasonal stars, visible planets, and more. The calendar seeks to release us from our constricted, industrialized notion of time. In the introduction to the calendar they write: "As societies grew increasingly urbanized and diversified through industrial and technological progress, the calendar became more like a clock: a continuous, never-ending march of numbers, a business machine telling us when to be where, with appointments to keep and obligations to be met."

Aside:
As for me, I've never primarily experienced time in terms of numbers. I never experience anything in terms of numbers, not even math! Which is why I suck at math! :) When we did word problems in the sixth grade, I was always much more interested in the stories behind the problems. "Ann and David are traveling on two trains to Washington DC. Ann's train is going sixty miles per hour and her destination is 120 miles away. David's train is traveling 90 miles per hour and his destination is 240 miles away. Who will arrive at their destination first?"

That was the least interesting question to ask, as far as I was concerned. Why are Ann and David traveling on two different trains? Do they know each other? If not, will they meet? Why are they going to Washington DC? Who are their seat mates? How early did they each have to get up to catch their trains? Are they being reunited after being apart for a long time? Are they going home? Or leaving home? When Ann looks out the window, does she catch the reflection of someone else (a man? or a woman?) who is gazing at her? Is David reading a book on the train? Does he fall asleep and miss his stop? How would this affect who gets there first?

Needless to say, I had to go to the math tutor for extra help with word problems...

So one way the ECOlogical calendar undoes the sense of time as an endless progression of numbers is that they rename every day of the week to be something different--all 365 days! The names are lovely, whimsical, and rooted in the seasons (at least on the northern hemisphere). As you gaze across the week, a poem of sorts begins to emerge. So, for instance, this week, beginning on Saturday, the names of the week are:

FrozenSeas
DistantSilent
BarrenTrees
AlpineLake
HowlGale
WindBreak
SquirrelTail

That just makes me smile. And it's such a pleasure to check the calendar every day to find out the day's name. (Now to get these names embroidered on my days-of-the-week undies!) :)

Thing is, I constantly notice many of the things around me all the time. When I walk outside at night, for instance, the first thing I do is look at the sky to check for stars, the moon, clouds, or the silhouette of trees against the sky. But what this calendar has helped me realize is that in noticing these things, I am keeping time.

Because my calendar is an engagement calendar, each day has a few blank lines next to it. I've taken to writing brief notes on each page of something I happened to notice that day. I'll leave you with a few of my entries. I'll use the Gregorian date as well as the new day name.

Jan 3, LusterNight: beautiful moon!
Jan 4, Snow: Windy day, D arrives home
Jan 5, EarthGlow: Monk writes his first page of cursive for homework
Jan 7, SleetGlint: birds singing outside the Safeway
Jan 8, FrozenSeas: Spying constellations with Monk and D (Orion, Bootes, Gemini, Cassiopeia) Beautiful, half moon (lying on her back) at the horizon. HUGE!

Worship Celebrating the Witness of Martin Luther King, Jr

2007-01-10T09:51:00.000-08:00

I'm working on planning worship this morning and am considering setting the day's service aside to remember the witness of Martin Luther King, Jr. In my travels on the web, I've come across an excellent online source for King's speeches--which I thought I'd share in case anyone out there is also looking for texts for this week. You can find it at MLKOnline.Net.

Even if you're not planning Sunday's worship, why not stop by the site and read the inspirational and challenging words of one of our most recent prophets.

Coaxing the Light

2007-01-08T10:10:00.000-08:00

We celebrated Epiphany at church yesterday--a day late, I suppose. But Baptists have great leeway when celebrating any festival of the liturgical year. You're lucky we celebrated it at all, quite frankly.

For the first time, as I prepared the service, I was impressed with how expansive epiphany really is. The readings for the day all celebrate the expansive grace of God which pours out beyond any barriers we might have set up over time. God's grace is for all people. And God's love will not rest until all are brought into God's embrace. (Indeed, nothing is beyond God's embrace!)

The magi who came to meet the Child of Grace were among the first to recognize this expansive salvation. (The Hebrew word for salvation also means spacious, by the way!) Anna and Simeon, in Luke 2, also recognize it when they encounter the Little One on his eighth day.

I was aware of these things as I prepared the service earlier in the week. But by the time I'd gotten to Sunday morning, my own heart was heavy from a week's worth of accumulated burdens. I was cranky yesterday morning. My son was sick. I didn't have everything done that I needed to be done. I was running late. My computer was giving me troubles. I left the house already worn out and not the least enthused about going to--much less leading--worship.

Thing is, I needed worship. But what I need is rarely what I want. Besides which, I'm still getting used to the idea of needing worship as a worship leader. Precisely because I don't feel centered yet. I feel like I'm in the shallow end. Or up in the high gales. I'm not deep in the calm waters, or far below the bending branches in the quiet beneath. I guess somewhere I'd gotten it into my head that to lead worship with integrity, one needed to start from a place of wholeness. I'm starting now to think the opposite may be true.

My worship started in an unexpected way, though. It began when I was readying the sanctuary before the service started. I decided to take down the Advent Wreath. Though we could have justified using it through the season of Epiphany, in fact the blue candles were becoming mere stubs--and folks would be so distracted wondering if the wreath would go up in flames at any moment that the symbol wouldn't be able to function effectively anymore!

So I moved the wreath into the closet and picked up our nearly brand new Christ candle (lit only twice) to find a new, prominent position for it. As I did so, I noticed that the last time I'd snuffed the candle out, the wax had managed to completely seal over the wick--so that it could hardly be perceived at all!

Well, our Epiphany service was sopped through with Light imagery. And if there was ever a day we needed the Christ candle lit, this was it!

So for the next ten or more minutes, I gently, carefully, and diligently eased the wick from the candle. First using match after match, I would slowly melt the wax around the wick, then gently try and press it away. I was always aware of how delicate a wick can be. The slightest tug can rip off it's tip--resulting in a pathetic, tentative flame. After a while I abandoned the individual matches for the larger candle-lighter--those huge brass things you only ever see in churches. I could hold the flame to the wax a bit longer that way. Then I could set my finger into the hot wax and gently shape it away from the wick.

It was only after I'd been at it for quite some time that I started to become aware of the gift and privilege in this task. Coaxing the light on Epiphany.

The buried wick wasn't so different from my experience that morning. (Or last month, in my state of exhaustion for that matter!) Nothing could be forced in that time. But the gentle coaxing with the warmth of a flame reminded me of what I most want, to burn bright. There was something truly beautiful, in those moments of preparing the space for worship, as I slowed my pace to the attention of one detail. It was in that moment that my worship began--when I attended to my own need for the light of Christ.

Things That Are Bringing Me Joy These Days

2007-01-05T16:33:00.000-08:00

1. Reading the Bible with Monk every morning
Just before Christmas, my parents-in-law sent Monk a cool new Bible published by Zondervan. It's called a Sports Devotional Bible. It's includes daily Bible readings and devotionals that always use a sports metaphor to explore biblical themes. Now you may feel sports metaphors are overdone, but for our eight-year-old they're exactly the thing to get him engaged with these ancient texts and to help him feel like they matter. Maybe as a result of reading the Bible together, Monk has started talking this week about wanting to get baptized. I truly celebrate his growing relationship with the Holy, Compassionate One.

2. Doing my own Bible reading again
Last Spring I started trying to Read the Bible in 90 Days. You can see the beginnings of the effort at my Travelers Together blog. I managed to make it just over half way through when I gave up the effort. With the start of the new year, and inspired by my son's enthusiasm, I've picked up with my reading again and hope to finish it out. So, reading the Bible in two sets of 45 days, I suppose. This time I used some birthday money from my Mom to buy the Bible that divides things up for you in easy twelve-page installments. Last time I did a lot of my reading online, which ultimately made me feel like I wasn't really making any progress. Call me a sucker, but the marketing of the Bible specifically for this use worked for me.

3. Lest you think I'm too holy for my own good--Watching Battlestar Galactica!
I started watching BSG at the start of the third season this past fall. I absolutely loved it, but felt completely lost. In December, a friend (SpiritMist) lent me season 1 on dvd. To his credit, D started watching the show with me--SciFi is not his usual cup o'tea--and now we're both totally hooked! He gave me season 2.0 and 2.5 for Christmas and my birthday. And I have been self-indulgently and joyously watching at least one episode every night since. In fact, I'm so hooked on the show that I used my Amazon gift certificate from my brother to purchase the cd of the soundtrack of BSG from Season 2. O happy, happy me!

4. Reading Thunderstruck by Erik Larson.
A fascinating tale about the beginnings of wireless communications (wireless telegraphy and I think, ultimately, the radio) overlapping with a murder mystery--all of it nonfiction.

5. Anticipating reading Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird by Andrew D. Blechman. [Link to NPR Story on the Book]
Again, my brother gave me this book for my birthday. It is absolutely perfect for me. He gave it to me because when I was in second grade, my class went on a field trip to the Big City Zoo. We saw everything there was to see: Elephants, Lions, Tigers, Zebras, Giraffes, Snakes, Bats, Giant Turtles, Kangaroos, Polar Bears. Everything! When we got back to the classroom, we were asked to draw a picture of our favorite animal at the zoo. I drew a picture of a pigeon! When asked why pigeons--of all the wonderful animals we saw that day--were my favorite, I answered "Because they were the only ones that weren't in a cage! They could go wherever they pleased!" I've always claimed that story as being one of my self-constitutive stories. And for years, whenever I would visit a city for the first time, I would be sure and take a picture of the first pigeon I saw. I'll never forget my first time in Trafalgar Square when the pigeons flew all around me. I was ecstatic! I'm hoping this book will answer a question my brother raised once and has bothered me ever since: with all the pigeons we see all the time, why have we never seen a baby pigeon?

6. As of today I've updated my CV and sent a letter of introduction to my alma mater in hopes of securing an adjunct position back home as I write my dissertation.
This was harder to do than I anticipated it being. As easy as I find writing to be, I don't like writing letters that sell myself! But now that it's done and on it's way, I'm delighted with it.

7. Getting used to the idea of moving home.
Hard to believe, but I do think we've made up our minds on this one. Now it feels like everything has shifted. Things here are coming to an end. We've moved into a time when we need to savor what's around us, drink it in, experience the things we've put off. And we're dreaming again of life with our longtime friends, companions, and family. Discernment is such a beautiful thing. And when it's right, everything seems to sing. That's how things feel right now.

Becoming Place

2006-12-30T15:18:00.000-08:00

I am feeling life returning again.

Though I've certainly been busy with holiday things, as well as concerns about my father-in-law who had back surgery about a week ago, these past couple weeks have been slowly and gently restorative for me. I came into the month of December physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausted after an all-too-full Autumn.

Little by little, though, because of more moments of quiet and peace woven into my days, I have felt life returning again. This is such a good thing.

Somewhere in the midst of these past couple weeks, we have started to talk about the possibility of moving back home this summer. The more we've talked about it, the more I think we're starting to count on the idea. Though, I guess ultimately it will depend on whether it seems like I will have an equal or better chance of finding a teaching and/or pastoral post back home as here, once my dissertation is complete. (I do like the sounds of that.)

Already, I have felt the bittersweetness of walking through our beautiful city here--feeling that gentle pulling up of roots again from a place we'd started to think of as home. The sights, sounds, the smells here--eucalyptus trees, the hills and water, street performers, the train that rumbles by a few blocks away, rosemary bushes--all of them are part of what makes us up now. They've been shaping us for almost four years.

The other night, though, as a family we went to see Rocky Balboa. (A fantastic movie, by the way!) At one point, Paulie turns Rocky and says: "Once you stay in a place long enough, you start to become it." (Wendell Berry would love it!) Well, for us, seeing the sights of Philadelphia in that film was like reminding us of our place, what we had become over time. Even after these years away, it seems apparent that who we are is not fully here. Who we are is back there.

At least this is how I'm feeling these days. Though nothing is certain, yet. We're beginning once again to live into that in-between space of possibility.

Rockin' Christmas

2006-12-23T10:26:00.000-08:00

Now I know we pray for God to "stir up" during the season of Advent, but this is getting a bit ridiculous around here! We've had four earthquakes rumble our tiny apartment in as many days--one this morning (3.5), two last night (3.7 and 2.2), and one two days ago (3.7)! All of them coming from the same spot on a fault that's about three miles from here (and six miles below the surface).

When we first moved out here I was very anxious about earthquakes. Since then, for the most part, I have loved every single one. I've been amazed at how different each one feels from the other. The first earthquake I ever felt, about two years ago, was as if the earth sighed. Another one felt like a shudder. Another was more of a harumph. And there was one that was just a loud bang and a settle, as if we just dropped a foot in our height above sea level.

The other evening when we felt our first 3.7 quake, Monk and I whooped and hollered and gave each other a high five. It is an amazing thing, a transcendent thing to feel the earth move--this all-too-solid foundation that I grew up thinking we could count on it staying put. The bedrock of the East Coast fills you with false expectations. But the temblors of the West Coast remind you that nothing stays the same!

Our second 3.7, at nearly 11 pm last night, was enough to draw me out of bed. I had to put my hand on Monk's bedroom door to stop it from swaying. That one brought tears to my eyes for the first time--a shock of fear moved through me, maybe because we were in bed and everything is supposed to feel safe then. But also because I experienced last night's quake as being utterly indifferent to us, having nothing at all to do with us. I felt for the first time the dispassionate and fantastically destructive potential pent up in the earth below me. I knew last night that it's release, however violent and life-changing for me personally, would not take me or anyone I loved into account. We don't matter in the least to this earth below me.

This morning the same fault shook itself again, measuring a less vociferous but certainly undeniable 3.5. We were able to take this one in stride again, but I'd be lying if I said we weren't getting a bit anxious about all this earth upset.

So I think I'll hold off on some of these Advent prayers and skip ahead a day or two to the more peaceful, silent night variety. And I admit to wishing for a good old fashioned East Coast White Christmas more than our West Coast rockin' one.

Charlotte's Web Lost its Magic

2006-12-21T21:01:00.000-08:00

Today I went with my son's third-grade class to see the new Charlotte's Web movie. His class had all read the book together and this was their big reward. I love the book. We'd read it a couple times to Monk when he was still three years old. I'm quite fond of the old animated movie version (1973) of the classic story.

After hearing some great reviews of the new movie, I was quite disappointed by it. Overall, I found most of the performances to be cold and disinterested. It was as if the actors themselves never even bought into the story.

In the opening scene when Fern (played by Dakota Fanning) confronts her father who's about to do away with the runt piglet, you never get the feeling that these two characters actually have a relationship with one another. Fanning plays the moment as if she has no doubt that the father will do exactly as she wishes. Though she verbally protests, she seems emotionally unmoved by the prospect of the piglet's death. It's an odd combination--to see an empathetic character being played by a non-empathetic actor.

The quirky animals in the barn never take on dimension. Mostly you get the feeling that it's a poor remake of Babe. The characters' lines fall flat and seem strangely stiff. Maybe a result of updating the film to a contemporary setting without really updating the language. The only character who seemed to show any life was the rat Templeton, played by Steve Buscemi. Though admittedly he would only shine when he seemed to be doing his best impression of Paul Lynde's nasal-toned, self-absorbed ramblings of the same character 33 years ago.

Julia Roberts as Charlotte never seems to add any warmth or depth to her voice. She sounds as if she's reading her part distractedly. I never could shake the feeling that she remained aloof to the whole enterprise--as if she were just putting in time to collect a check at the end of the day.

Sam Shepherd's folksy voice as the narrator had the greatest potential. Ultimately, however, the writing seemed so bent on creating a sense of the "ordinariness" of this town, the animals, and the people that you had the feeling no one behind the film had ever lived a day in an ordinary town. Certainly, no one on the cast seemed capable of imagining--or worse, believing in--the everyday magic of the ordinary. As a result, the whole project fell awfully flat.

If you want to enjoy the story of Charlotte's Web again without reading the book, go back to the older animated version. You'll find a lot more life there then you will in the current release. If you're looking for a fun movie with animals, you'd be better off watching Babe. Or find a copy of the wonderful Adventures of Milo and Otis.

Resources for Church Conversations Around Sexuality Needed

2006-12-21T10:13:00.000-08:00

Our congregation is soon to embark on a time of intentional conversations about human sexuality, eventually with the hopes of being able to have a more definitive statement about our position on inclusiveness.

Ultimately, we will need the conversation to turn toward a discussion of homosexuality. But we are very interested in helping people understand that to talk about homosexuality, we need to understand that this is only part of a broader conversation about sexuality itself.

As one who serves on the pastoral staff of the congregation, I'm trying to find some kind of curriculum or helpful resource that will guide those conversations (both the broader sexuality discussion as well as the more specific homosexuality discussion). And I am surprised at the difficulty we've had in locating something!

We are for the most part a theologically progressive congregation although there is a lot of theological diversity in our church. For this conversation, however, I think we need to plan on finding people all over the map. Therefore a curriculum or resource that doesn't skew too far in either direction or assume an outcome would be most helpful. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

New Blogger

2006-12-20T13:31:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm sorry I haven't written anything here for a while. I'm taking a brief respite while I wait for my tank to refill itself. Everyday I seem to feel more and more myself after having worked myself into the ground this past Fall.

In the meantime, I was quite excited to finally be able to transfer my blog to the the new version of Blogger. Now I can change the overall look of the site without having to put a ton of work into redoing all the extras (like links, etc). So that's what I'll be playing with for now. Fun.

Been Christmas shopping these past couple days, too. Mostly for the boy--because nearly all our other gifts are shipped across country. Things are starting to shape up nicely around here for the holiday.

Will try and get back into the swing of things here very soon.

Receiving the Day

2006-11-30T06:31:00.000-08:00

I've come across these two quotes in my studying for my exam today. I share them with you because they just seemed too overwhelmingly beautiful for me to keep all to myself.

"We do not know that breathing can be communion with God. We do not realize that to eat can be to receive life from God in more than its physical sense. We forget that the world, its air or its food cannot by themselves bring life, but only as they are received and accepted for God's sake, in God and as bearers of the divine gift of life. By themselves they can produce only the appearance of life." -Alexander Schmemann

"This applies to the [gift of the] present time as to manna: one must gather it each day, without ever being able to store it up or to amass it as far as to dispense with receiving as a gift. The manna of time thus becomes daily for us. . . .The Christian names her bread 'daily bread' first because she receives the daily itself as bread, a food whose daily reception -- as a gift -- no reserve will spare." -Jean-Luc Marion

And so, may we experience this day as gift--for God's sake. Amen.

One Foot in Front of the Other

2006-11-29T08:12:00.000-08:00

...and soon you'll be heading out the door!

I'm digging in this morning to a full day and evening of studying as I prepare for the very last step of my Comprehensive Exams--the oral exam. (Every time I use the phrase, I have images of dentists peering into my gaping mouth looking for stray words about Foucault or aesthetics or ritual theory. Creepy.)

The task before me today is to flesh out the parts that I wrote about over the past year. To review my notes, page through the books again, to delve into the "more" of what I've already said. I feel confident that what I wrote is good. What I feel nervous about are questions that will push beyond what I wrote.

But I figure if I jump into the pond today (How many metaphors have I mixed in this one posting? Good grief.) and simply immerse myself in everything again, then I'll have something to say.

The morning here is brisk and spectacularly beautiful. The sun is flooding the living room and kitchen through our big front window. The cat is warming himself in the sun's fullness in the best sphinx pose he can muster. It was 60 degrees in the apartment when I got up this morning, but the heater, along with the sun, have toasted the air comfortably. I've had yummy oatmeal for breakfast and some wonderful Irish Breakfast Tea from Adagio. The Monk left the house singing. All of these suggest that the next 48 hours or so will be possible.

Prayers for focus, calm, memory, and clarity are deeply appreciated.

Been There, Done That

2006-11-28T20:46:00.000-08:00

I'm slowly getting caught up on all the blogs I used to read regularly but had to quit while I finished my exams. I came across this fun meme on Lorna's blog from way back in October. Thought it would be fun to give it a whirl. The things I've done are marked in bold.

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain (Mt McLoughlin in Oregon. Boy, did I regret my smoker's lungs then!)
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula (uhhh, no!)
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you’ and meant it!
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris (well, I saw the sunrise in Paris from the airport window on a brief layover on my way to Italy. But I figure since it was the sunrise it counts...)
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights (in Beach Haven, NJ of all places!!! I had no idea what they were. I thought it was the end of the world. I was 20 years old and I'm ashamed to admit that I immediately repented of all my liberal beliefs in hopes that it would save me in the last minute. Pathetic.)
15. Gone to a huge sports game (World Series Game 4, 1993, Blue Jays v. Phillies in Philadelphia; Phillies lost.)
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa (Okay, didn't walk to the top. They don't let you anymore. But I did stand right next to it.)
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables (Well, I helped plant cucumbers one summer.)
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars (Absolutely! More than once!!!)
20. Changed a baby’s diaper (Absolutely...more than once...)
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Drunk champagne (-sigh-)
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight (and lost.)
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster (hated it!)
35. Scored a winning goal (in, like, air hockey)
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Visited all 5 continents
40. Taken care of someone who was drunk
41. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
42. Watched wild whales
43. Stolen a sign
44. Backpacked
45. Taken a road-trip (our honeymoon was a roadtrip to New Orleans almost fourteen years ago. We went through Nashville, Memphis, and Graceland and stopped at deathrow in Alabama on the way home. Don't ask. We also made a trip across the U.S. in 2003 with five-year-old Monk in tow.)
46. Gone rock climbing
48. Midnight walk on the beach (and skinnydip, of course.)
49. Gone sky diving
50. Taken a train through Europe
51. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
52. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table, and had a meal with them (at every meal on the train across country in 1989)
53. Milked a cow
54. Alphabetized your CDs (what else would you do with them?)
55. Sung karaoke (poorly)
56. Lounged around in bed all day
57. Gone scuba diving
58. Kissed in the rain (and danced)
59. Gone to a drive-in theatre
60. Started a business
61. Taken a martial arts class
62. Been in a movie
63. Crashed a party
64. Gone without food for 5 days
65. Gotten a tattoo
66. Got flowers for no reason
67. Performed on stage (does the fourth-grade play count? I played a stewardess.)
68. Been to Las Vegas (ick)
69. Recorded music (I wrote one song with five chords on the guitar and recorded it on a cassette tape, dreamt of fame and fortune ala Indigo Girls, then promptly gave it all up)
70. Eaten shark
71. Buried one/both of your parents
72. Been on a cruise ship
73. Spoken more than one language fluently (aw man. Why don't they ever ask what languages you can read? Hebrew, Greek, German, and French!!! With dictionaries at hand anyway!)
74. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over (just to start a PhD anyway)
75. Walked a famous bridge (Brooklyn and the Golden Gate)
76. Had plastic surgery
77. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived (Does driving off a mountainside count?)
78. Wrote articles for a large publication
77. Tried to lose weight seriously.
79. Piloted an airplane
80. Petted a stingray
81. Broken someone’s heart
82. Broken a bone
83. Eaten sushi (yum!)
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Parasailed
86. Skipped all your school reunions
87. Shaved your head
88. Caused a car accident (Does backing into a schoolbus in high school count? I was digging around for my cigarettes while backing up. Good grief.)
89. Pretended to be “sick” (-cough- -cough-)
90. Swam in the Pacific Ocean (too cold!)
91. Saved someone’s life
92. Fainted (How Victorian of me.)
93. Been in the room while someone is giving birth (me!)
94. Hitchhiked
95. Adopted a child
96. Been caught daydreaming
97. Been to the Painted Desert
98. Called off a wedding engagement
99. Donated your blood
100. Become a follower of Jesus Christ (still working on this one.)

What's Beginning to Emerge

2006-11-25T08:13:00.000-08:00

I haven't managed to get myself back into West Coast time yet. Last night I (barely) managed to stay up 'til 11. (If you don't count snoozing on the couch for an hour before that.) But still can't seem to sleep past 6 in the morning.

The nice thing about that is two or three hours of a quiet apartment, some "stolen" time to get some work done. It's a beautifully peaceful feeling.

This morning I've been doing some work in preparation for our class this Tuesday. I haven't written much (if at all) about this course I've been co-teaching. I think it's one of those professional/personal boundary things when it comes to blogging, I suppose. But my lack of writing about it here doesn't convey the extent to which teaching this class has been an excellent, wonderful, fantastic experience over these past few months.

The course is focused on Worship in the 21st Century, with a particular eye toward postmodernism. This coming week (our last week of instruction before student presentations on their final projects), we'll be looking at emergent worship. This morning I've been reading through some of the many websites dedicated to the subject. This alone is a fascinating aspect of the emergent movement(s)--how web-based it is!

To be honest, my heartbeat is quickening as I look through all this stuff. Emergent has been a woefully neglected part of my PhD education in liturgical studies. What I am learning about it, I am doing on my own. And what I am feeling, to an increasingly fervent degree, is that it's exactly where I ought to be putting my energies right now. (The parrots are flying by as I write that sentence. I'm starting to trust the parrots' arrival.) :)

On Saturday evening at the AAR I attended an "additional meeting" session that focused on the Emergent Movement. Brian McLaren, Phyllis Tickle, and Peter Rollins were on the panel. Each person spoke for about twenty minutes and each was brilliant. It was thrilling to me to hear intellectually stimulating, grounded (and yet visionary), substantive reflections from these three "movers and shakers" in the Emergent movement. For an mp3 of Peter Rollins's remarks at AAR visit here. (With thanks to pomomusings.) Whereas I went into the session fearing that Emergent is more of a flash-in-the-pan, I left feeling certain that this movement truly holds (lightly and reverently, it seems) the future of the church in its hands. (Not in the hands of those three individuals, but in the hands of all the networks and gathered emergent people across the world.) This is something that can't be ignored. And I feel excited to be on this edge of the movement with my academic career yet in front of me.

If you're interested in knowing what the heck I'm talking about (I barely know myself), take a look at these websites.

Emergent Village
EmergingChuch.Info (interview with Peter Rollins)
Ikon, the emerging "becoming church" community founded by Rollins in Belfast, Ireland
Vintage Faith

The Gift of More

2006-11-24T07:20:00.000-08:00

Last Spring when I wrote my two devotionals for the RevGalBlogPal's book Ordinary Time (advertised at right), November seemed so unimaginably far away. But here we are, about to heft the last days of the month onto our backs and carry them into December. I shamelessly invite you over to Ordinary Time to read the devotionals I wrote for yesterday and today. Both of them are based on the same text--David's last words--which are part of the lectionary readings for this coming Sunday when we celebrate Christ the King.

As I recuperated over the past couple weeks during my blogging hiatus, I sadly missed my first blogiversary. I published my first entry here on the Blanket in the Grove on November 14, 2005. If you're disposed to such things, I invite to you to take a step back for a moment and read my debut here. At that time I had just returned from the East Coast (as I have now, as well!); I was preparing with great (and as it turns out, unnecessary) trepidation to propose my comprehensive exams, (I'm now preparing for my final, oral exam next week); and had just been licensed for ministry in my congregation (where my hours expanded considerably for this current year).

Each of these things continue to be the benchmarks that help me know my place in this world. I had titled that first entry "In Between" and in some ways I wonder if this is always my experience. There is an enduring sense of being on a journey (as I know so many of us feel) and that the in-betweenness of that journey is the gift of it. Every arrival eventually becomes an invitation to set out again toward another unknown.

So I am recently returned from the East Coast again--arrived Tuesday night from Washington DC where I attended my first-ever Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion and Society for Biblical Literature. As D pulled the car up at the airport about 8:00 on the night I arrived, Monk spotted me and opened his door before the car had come to a complete stop--so eager was he to greet his ol' Mom. There was no danger, really, the car was going slow enough by that point and he was well-strapped in. But it did give me a bit of a start!

I want to always remember the moment, though--the prodigal son who looks with overflowing eagerness for the return of his mum. In the car as we drove back home, Monk burst over with stories and laughter. When I would turn and look at him, I was amazed at the light in his eyes. I felt it all as gift.

Going to AAR was everything I needed it to be. I am so glad I was there this year. It got me out of the cozy box I'd had to live in over the past year as I answered the questions for my exams. It reminded me of all the amazing questions being asked by academics all over the world. It demystified some of the Big Names I've been reading all these years--I got to see them as people, laugh at their jokes, appreciate their three-dimensional humanness rather than their two-dimensional texts!

I was also able to reconnect with old friends in a way that simply helps me remember who I am.

I also was able to talk with people fruitfully about the next step in front of me--proposing and writing my dissertation. I won't say much about that now, but imagine it will be a subject which accompanies me in this blog for some time to come now.

One of the highlights of the trip, rather unexpectedly, was the opportunity to go to an exhibit at the Sackler Gallery (one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institute) where they featured Bibles (as in codices, scrolls, papyri, and eventually manuscripts) prior to the year 1000. You can read more about it here. What an awesome experience! With all the talk about fragmentation in postmodernity, it was humbling, indeed, to see the fragments out of which we have pieced together our scriptures. There is something fundamentally deceptive about the neatly contained, uninterrupted solidity of our bibles published by major publishing houses today. It was truly humbling to see the fragments of our scriptural origins, their very physical tentativeness seems to stand as a crying plea to careful, gentle, tentative exegesis--rather than the heavy-handed, confident, and stern certainty that all too often is our approach to biblical texts.

Not only that, but the reverent beauty with which many of these pages were created was awe-inspiring. Though I have to say that it occurred to me at one point that these pages were once somebody's deadline. Perhaps merely what had to get done, somebody's work. My sense is that they were not alienated from their work, as we so often are from our own. But I bet there were at least some moments when the monk working on his page felt the pressure to simply get it done. Perhaps he suffered from a sleepless night on occasion, worrying about the page he had yet to finish. This thought pleases me for some reason. To see the page a thousand years later seems to give those moments simultaneously unbearable weight and unbearable lightness. It matters; it matters not.

Well, there still feels like more to say. And for this, in and of itself, I am grateful. Too many weeks of dry silence in my world. So good to wake up to fresh dew on the grass.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving.

Absenteeism

2006-11-13T19:31:00.000-08:00

I have been in the midst of a rather unplanned blogging hiatus lately. It has everything to do with just finishing my comps. The written ones, anyway. My oral exam still awaits me at the end of this month.

It is a testament to just how insanely I worked over the month of October that in the week after finishing the exams, both my body and my computer decided they could go on no further.

I continued with some pretty fantastic back pain for a week or more after the last exam. The remnants of this pain are still with me. I am not entirely free of it. So I proceed cautiously.

Meanwhile, my computer stopped communicating with its power cord and refused, utterly refused, to believe it was plugged into the socket. After about a week of feeling lost and disenfranchised, I managed to get it back up and running with the simplest and least expensive solution (a new cord was needed, not a new port).

Despite the pain I was experiencing and the loss of my computer for a week, all I could do was thank God that these things happened after the exams were written and not in the midst of them. And as for the pain itself, I felt I had to absorb it, mind it, and apologize to myself for taking such poor care of my body in the midst of my work.

I expect my postings will still be sporadic as I prepare to leave for the American Academy of Religion conference happening in Washington DC at the end of this week. I hope I'll be able to get some blogging done from there, but we'll have to see how the schedule goes.

I do hope, though, to be back up and running consistently very soon. I've missed this space and the relationships I've experienced here.

Peace and love.

Life on the Other Side of Done

2006-10-30T13:36:00.000-08:00

The big news: I have now finished my written exams!!! As of Friday at about 4:30 pm, I completed my last one--six exams in all! And it feels great to be done!

I have been gradually returning to life over the past few days. After an initial 'high' on Friday evening, boy, did I crash this weekend. I'm glad I hadn't ended up planning a grand celebration. (We considered possibly going away for the weekend, since I had Sunday off from church.) But I don't think I could have possibly done it!

Friday night, about 2:30 in the morning, I woke up in awful pain. I had a pain in my back, just between my shoulder blades, that was just shooting through me, especially down my left arm, but also just all over. I've never felt anything like it before. And I have to admit, I was a little worried it had something to do with my heart--especially since women's symptoms are so different than men's when it comes to heart stuff.

But I decided it couldn't be that, took a couple ibuprofin, got out the heating pad, and managed after a while to get back to sleep. Next morning when I woke up, everything still hurt, though not quite as terribly as it had been. Even so I couldn't turn my head very far in either direction and felt stiff and achey all over. Miserable!

Little by little, in the daylight hours, it dawned on me--the pain was from sitting and typing furiously for four hours straight without even the slightest pause. This was my body in an uproar at all the anxiety as well as no small amount of physical punishment I'd put it through. I crashed on the couch and barely ventured far from it for the next two days. I had truly pushed myself to the edge of exhaustion!

D was not the least bit surprised. And he was wonderful about letting me catch up on sleep. I was surprised, though. I mean, I knew it had been hard work and that I had a lot of stress built up around this stuff, but I was completely unprepared for the physical crash after the experience. I just marvel at that.

Yesterday afternoon, D had a hockey game and cookout with his team. He took Monk with him and left me home to laze about happily and drowsily. I flicked through the channels and came across one of my all-time favorite movies: Same Time Next Year. I can't count the number of times I've watched that movie over the past twenty years or so. But it makes me cry at all the same places, without fail, every time. It was the perfect movie to watch yesterday.

Except I was amazed to realize that the last video montage (there are numerous ones placed between the scenes to mark the passage of time) was from 1977. And everything in it seemed so vividly memorable to me. And that was thirty years ago. In fact, when I first started to watch Same Time Next Year, the video montages from the 1950s which open the film were just about equidistant from me then (in, say, 1986) as the 1970s ones are from me today. That just makes my head spin.

Then I happened on the channel SoapNet (!) and completely indulged in watching a week's worth of General Hospital episodes. (It think it's been about seven years since I've watched GH--the last time was probably when Monk would take his afternoon naps as an infant.) But it was so cool to catch this particular week, for those of you may have loved GH once upon a time, because Laura came out of her four-year coma by the end of that week. In time for Luke and Laura's thirty year anniversary which comes up next month, apparently. :D

They've got a few of the real old timer characters from the late 70s early 80s--including Robert Scorpio, Robin Scorpio, and Luke and Laura. And of course the Quartermaine gang still going strong. A baby named after Lila Quartermaine was also born in the episodes I was watching yesterday. (None of this will make any sense to someone who's never been a fan of the show.)

Well, as you can see, it was a great day. A good, if hazy weekend. And I am trying to take things slowly as I recover from this giant push.

Next steps? Scheduling my oral exam (likely not 'til the end of November/beginning of December, unfortunately.) And working on my dissertation proposal.

South Beach Diet...(for Cats)

2006-10-24T11:21:00.000-07:00

Still slogging away at my exams. Finished one more last Friday. One written, timed exam to go. My heart is on taking it this Friday, too. Though waiting 'til Monday may be the more realistic option. I just soooo want to have my weekend finally free. Keeping my head in the books, but in the meantime, life delights in unexpected ways. Here's one.

My cat Felix. There's never been another one like him. This summer I discovered, for instance, that he goes bonkers for corn husks. There was a husk hanging out of the bottom crisper drawer one day and Felix started gnawing on it with obvious delight. After that I tried to keep fresh corn around, and each day would peel off a leaf of the husk and let him go at it. He would rapturously consume it every time.

A couple days ago I decided to pick up the South Beach diet again--wanting to shed a few pounds that seem to have wandered back over the past year or so. Well, turns out Felix loves just about everything I'm eating these days. Now whenever I sit down to eat my snack (usually string cheese or Laughing Cow cheese on celery) he's right beside me, meowing, yowling, and nudging my plate and hands until I give something up. I've also felt compelled to share some salmon and tuna with him, too. He gobbled the tuna down with such obvious joy. (Certainly more than I could muster as I dragged myself through that particular salad!)

What a dear companion he is. :) I dunno, maybe he's trying to lose a few pounds, too. Here's an especially undignified photo of him squashed up beside me on the sofa.

After School Conversation

2006-10-16T15:11:00.000-07:00

Those who are close to me know that I am in the midst of major academic work right now as I try and complete my comprehensive exams by the end of this month. For that reason, I have mostly had to neglect my blog until my time opens a bit more generously in November. However, today I just had to get down the conversation I just shared with Monk, my wonderful eight-year-old son.

Monk: Mom, I had to go see the principal with Tough Guy today.
Me: What happened?
Monk: Well, there's a real problem with cooties at school right now. See, I don't believe in cooties. I actually think they were just invented to keep boys and girls separate. But someone passed them on to me, and even though I don't believe in them, I had to get rid of them.
Me: (marveling) So what did you do?
Monk: I passed them on to Tough Guy. And then he hit me in the stomach. And we had to go see the principal. But it turns out, after we talked, that I had gotten him harder than I meant to when I passed the cooties on to him. And he thought I hit him. So he hit me back.
Me: So everything's alright now?
Monk: Yeah, but cooties are a real problem at school. So me, Tough Guy, and Principal have decided to ban them.
Me: Sounds like a good idea. But what if someone passes them on to you anyway?
Monk: I don't know. We didn't get that far.
Me: (reaching behind me to my belt) Here, I have some anti-cootie spray that I always keep with me. (I hand him the invisible spray bottle) If someone passes cooties on to you, just take out your spray and tssshhhht (pretending to spray all around me) tell 'em it doesn't matter 'cause you have anti-cootie spray.
Monk smiles and puts the invisible bottle of spray behind his back as he makes the sound of a 'click'--clearly securing to his own belt the antidote for the thing he doesn't believe in which he's banned from school grounds.

Life is great.

New Worlds to Learn

2006-10-09T21:31:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday evening we signed up Monk for aiki-jujutsu classes. This is the first time he's ever taken any martial arts classes--in fact, D and I have never had them ourselves. (Although, interestingly enough, both my brother and my Mom have taken martial arts classes in the past. Mom started them when she was in her fifties, I guess. Cool mom.)

After checking out the website for the particular dojo where we would take Monk, having a phone conversation with the sensei (yet another vocabulary to learn!!!), and visiting on Thursday evening--I was especially excited to have Monk begin.

But I was also surprised by the amount of misgiving I had about it. First of all, and I don't know how I'd managed to miss this as long as I did, I'd managed to forget that the word martial connotes military. I guess that's where we get the concept of martial law, for instance.

The sensei sent us home with a book about aiki-jujutsu and as I read through it, I was surprised and a bit concerned to see the military principles incorporated in the practice of akai-jujutsu. (The section that lauded the people who had committed suicide--warriors, women, and children, alike--was more than I could stomach.) Suddenly I became aware that basically we'd signed Monk up for Japanese military school. And I didn't know quite how I felt about that.

At the same time, I was delighted to see that this place takes its Japanese heritage very seriously. Inasmuch as it's possible to contextualize the discipline of aiki-jujutsu in Japanese culture, this dojo is interested in pursuing that. Given that the class we're teaching tomorrow has to do with liturgical inculturation, I'm especially interested in how this is possible!

Quite related to this, the other thing that I was surprised to be concerned about is the extent to which aiki-jujustu is part of another faith. As a family raising our son in a Christian family, I was surprised to find myself a bit concerned about introducing our eight-year-old to another way of conceiving of the world. And I am more than a little chagrined that Christianity has failed for the most part to teach children the contemplative aspects of our faith. The dojo where Monk will be going teaches Japanese yoga to the kids as well as martial arts.

At the end of our appointment with the sensei last week, he asked Monk: "So, do you want to practice?"

Monk nodded and immediately began to take off his shoes to climb onto the mat. But I could tell, after a moment, that the teacher wasn't asking him to step out immediately. Then it dawned on me--he was asking Monk if he wanted to engage in the practice of learning aiki-jujutsu.

This is how I've come to love to think of Christianity, although I don't think it's a widely held perspective anymore. Recently I read a liturgical theologian who pointed out that in the first century, Christianity was not a "worldview"--that is, a way of perceiving the world; rather it was a practice, which is to say, a way of being in the world.

This is precisely the thing that I feel like Christianity has failed to teach kids so far (and I implicate myself in this as well). And yet, at least at this particular dojo, they seem to teach it unapologetically.

I dropped Monk off at the dojo this evening. The class meets four times a week, although we'll only be taking him three of those time. The other evening he'll be at church. I could tell I was feeling nervous, because I simply wasn't sure what he would be taught.

But when I picked him up, he was aglow. Most of the first session was "lecture." And I could tell he'd listened closely. When I arrived, as I waited outside, I saw the kids lying on their backs, clearly learning some of the yoga positions. I was surprised to find it moving. And was grateful that the teacher seems to trust the kids -- and respect them enough -- to teach them these things.

These are some initial thoughts. Though I have others. Better keep it here for now.

Peace.

Four Down, Two to Go!!!!

2006-10-07T16:38:00.000-07:00

I just finished another comprehensive exam! This one was one of the most difficult subjects I've ever written on. I'd proposed the question because it was on a subject (liturgical aesthetics) I did not yet understand but desperately wanted to. And now I truly have a decent handle on it.

Beautiful.

I'm taking the night off.

(And the parrots are flying over as I write this...)

-sigh of contentment-