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Tuesday, 27 April 2010

Here's our status

We're waiting.

In three weeks today, strangers will come to our house and load all our belongings onto a truck. Three weeks tomorrow we'll put our children in the car and begin a two-week drive to Maryland. We don't have a house there, and we don't have a buyer for our house here. By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. If we weren't absolutely certain that God was the one sending us to Maryland, I'd be even more tempted to worry.

The house here is the major thing. I could happily move into an apartment, or an extended stay motel. But living in this house while having it on the market is tortuous. Showings are awful, and not having any showings is awful. Pretty much anything is awful right now. If I could responsibly gift this house to some sweet and deserving couple, I'd be strongly tempted. And as if keeping it clean weren't bad enough, every day I live here I see other things that I could fix. Where do I stop? When do I say, It's good enough, and the rest is someone else's problem?

It could potentially make thousands of dollars of difference. I keep telling myself, "It's only money--" but the thing is, I don't want the last five years of ridiculously hard work on the house to have been in vain. And successful spiritual impact is really hard to measure.

I'm writing a résumé for the first time in seven years; the school where we'd like our children to attend is looking for a teacher, and I'm hoping to get the position. It means a huge lifestyle change (the first time I've worked away from home during the day) and it's going to take a lot of work to certify (3 solid weeks this summer, plus reading assignments, plus internship) but Elisha wants me to pursue it. I am ridiculously nervous and excited at the same time. What to do with all this nervous energy I can't control? Write a novel in a month, of course.

Wednesday, 18 November 2009

Consumption (not just a pioneer's disease!)

On Monday, my adolescent comm class talked about corporate advertising in the schools. In some ways the phenomenon is fairly new -- schools had previously been off-limits for Domino's pizza signs and Coca-cola machines. But as school budgets have stretched tighter, more and more administrators are turning to corporate sponsors to solve their problems. Yes! we will absolutely emblazon our backsides with PowerAde, if you'll pay for the uniforms!

The comm class had mixed feelings about this turn of events. On the one hand, school probably "should" be a safe haven from advertising; but on the other hand, teens are consumers (just like the rest of America) and the advertisements probably aren't that distracting to them. They get these messages everywhere else, after all. Why not at school too?

Let me fully admit before I go any further that I largely insulate myself from advertising, when possible. I don't watch television, I rarely read popular magazines, and I've stopped listening to Capitalistic Spirit 105-3 (the supposedly Christian radio station with only 17 minutes of commercials every hour!). I steer clear of most advertisement-packed websites, and gmail filters all but the bravest of the South African scam messages. So it was striking to me to hear these adults saying, "We're all consumers, and teens are consumers, and teens will be consumers when they grow up, and they might as well get used to it."

I stopped to think about that one: By nature, we are all consumers. Even teens.

It's the guts and bones of capitalism. It's the assumption that keeps the United States running. But is it true?

Now, I won't argue that we do have to consume things in order to stay alive. We have to eat. But I question the assumption that we are born to shop, to buy, to define ourselves by what we select for purchase. Personally, I find that a bit insulting, to think that someone out there labels me by what I will consume and wants me to consume more simply for their profit.

God defines himself as Creator in the beginning of his letter to us, and he goes on to tell us that we are to be builders as well: cultivators of the earth, and bearers and raisers of children. The role God defines for us is one of creation -- not consumption.

I am a creator, not a consumer.

That gives me an entirely different value. It also makes me prone to evaluate each thing I consume in light of its productivity: Is this apple I'm eating helping me to create? What about this car? What about that house? (Not, by the way, that I eat cars or houses. just so we're clear on that.)

So I object to advertising in the schools on the basis of principal. I don't think teens -- or anyone -- should be defined by their buying power. Surrounding teens with such messages is degrading and demoralizing to them, and it doesn't reflect their value as beings created in the image of God. I want to send them the message, particularly in school, that they are creators by nature; and advertising in schools works counter to that message.

Now on to my diatribe against billboards.

Wednesday, 07 October 2009

I miss blogging. I really do. I miss taking life and condensing it into neat, manageable word-packets that have a moral at the end. I miss the rehash, the sorting, the wrangling and reprocessing my thoughts into a pretty system where I comes before E (except after C, or when sounding like A, as in Neighbor and Weigh).

Unfortunately life is moving too fast to take the time. This is an ugly conundrum: In the moments where you most need to stop and process what you've learned, you just can't; and by the time you have a moment, the changes are so internalized that you can't remember why they were blogworthy. Ah, the irony.

In the last three weeks I joined a local writer's group, I started taking classes at the UW (for the first time in seven years), and I'm learning to work within a new concept frame at youth group. Elisha bought a motorcycle. Our car developed a nasty and sometimes heartstopping hiccup that promises to turn into something even more substantial. Lily had a birthday party, Elaina turned 2, I played chauffeur to my teenaged sister for a week, I sang for the first time on worship team at church, and Elisha took his first business trip.

When you look at it that way, maybe I do have cause to be a little overwhelmed.

Thus, I haven't blogged. This of course leaves my internet friends hanging out to dry, which is unfortunate and I hate it... but if you'd really like to hear from me, please send me an email. I'll try to pop back on here soon.

Tuesday, 15 September 2009

I've opened Xanga's blog editor about six times in the last two weeks, fully intending to write something down. But the blank page just sits there, an empty tab in my Firefox profile; and after a few days I get irritated with the space it's taking up, and I close it untouched. It's bad enough to have hundreds of unfinished projects laying around -- you don't have to let them poke you in the eyeball every time you open the computer to distract yourself.

Why am I writing a blog entry at 4AM instead of sleeping? Yeah, that's a really good question. I wish I knew. One reason is that we made the cat into an outdoor animal about a week ago, and now she doesn't sleep - she sits outside the door and cries all night. ALLLLLLL night. I told Elisha to think of it like waves on the ocean ... as in, I was laying there in bed listening to the cat wash up onto the back door ... but tonight it's not working for me. I absolutely refuse to give in to her, though. Utter bliss is when your clean laundry doesn't smell like cat urine when you wake up in the morning.

Mostly I'm awake with a series of half-formed thoughts on any number of topics. These thoughts are really too raw to let loose in a blog that's anonymously read by like 5000 of my closest friends, but being that I'm awake at 4AM, against all conventional wisdom I'm going to give it a whirl anyway.

(This next sentence has been started and deleted about eight times now. just so you get a feeling for how this writing is developing.)

First an easy part of the think. I had the privilege of attending a youth group meeting last Saturday night, and the director started us out by reading Rom 12 aloud as a pre-meeting devotional. It was amazing. I've been reading the Bible since I could read, and I started reading at 3 years old, and with as much weight as was placed on scripture through my childhood and at our church ... I don't want to say that the Bible bores me, but a lot of times when I read it's just words. Words that I've heard a million times. Words that consequently don't stick.

There, I admitted it, and those of you reading who feel the same way can now know that you're not alone.

On Saturday, the experience was different. How many times have I read Romans 12? And yet, when it's coming through someone else's mouth -- when someone else, in a small group, looks right at me and says, "I have this word from God to you, and I think it's something you need to hear," it packs a different punch. This isn't the (kind of impersonal) word of God, and me with my blind spots choosing what I need to hear. This is another human who's speaking to me as the body of Christ.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom.

Christianity is meant to be lived out in community, not just with me and God and my little Bible tucked away in a hobbit-hole. When I hear the word of God from you, it's real in a way that Gutenberg's printing press really can't contain -- in the same way that seeing Twelfth Night as live theater is very different from reading the play.

Please, hang out with me and tell me Truth, as long as it is still called Today.

Monday, 20 July 2009

Yesterday one of the elders taught about the calling of Levi. Here's my true confession: I've always pictured the calling of the disciples exactly as it's described in scripture. Jesus is walking down the street by Levi's tax-collecting table, and without slowing his pace he throws over his shoulder, "Follow me," and Levi scrambles to catch up, probably dumping his table in the process. I thought it was remarkable that Levi, or any of the disciples, followed Jesus, because with that kind of intro I sure wouldn't. Jesus had to have an awful lot of charisma.

Now I'm picturing it differently. I'm not sure how much of this thought is mine and how much came from the teaching yesterday, since I was only half paying attention (sorry, Jeff). But Levi had a life -- a wealthy, busy life -- and if he was half of a reasonable human being, he wouldn't toss it aside to fall in line behind some unknown teacher like a spare duckling. Following Jesus wasn't a random fling of curiosity, like "Hey, why not, I've got nothing better going on this afternoon."

A tax collector who would leave everything to be with Jesus was a tax collector who wanted more out of life than his substantial wealth. Jesus could have supernaturally known Levi's discontent, but Levi wouldn't know what Jesus was offering without some serious conversation. (Levi weighed the value of things for a living. Surely that would extend to his own life choices.)

So the two men probably sat in the shade of a stone wall, behind a money table, kicking dusty sandals and discussing politics and religion and the pursuit of happiness for the better part of the day. Finally, Levi says something like, "Well, sure, your whole 'love your neighbor' thing sounds great in theory but I've gotta tell you, that's not how it plays out in real life."

"You don't think so?" Jesus might have said.

"Frankly, if I don't watch out for me, nobody does. People are all looking out for themselves, you know? And definitely nobody looks out for the tax collector."

"Is that what you want?"

"Well..." He hesitates. "I do good work. I've got a nice house."

"Seemed like there was a 'but' in that sentence."

Levi sighs. "I've got a nice house," he repeats, squirming.

"Is that what you want?" Levi stays quiet, picks at a stray thread on his robe.

Jesus turns to look Levi in the face, with brown eyes full of mystery and sparkle and love. He leans forward a little. "Come with me," he says, his voice reaching out with a depth of friendship that Levi didn't have. "Come with me! Come learn more and watch it play out in real life. Follow me."

There's something in that man. Something in that voice. He has contentment, and happiness, and excitement. He's thrilled about living and, above all, he's interested in Levi as a person, not just a social object.

This was a man who wanted to make Levi's life have meaning beyond his nice house and his job -- who had valued Levi's thoughts and opinions in the conversation -- who offered him a chance to see more of life than the unfulfilling corner behind that dusty money table. This wasn't a 'reform Levi' project. This was a love Levi project. This was a teacher who had so much compassion and understanding pouring out of him that you could touch it.

That's the kind of teacher that would make you get up from a pile of money and walk away without a backward glance.

Thanks for the reminder, Jeff -- that's the kind of teacher I follow.