It’s been a minute

I was never part of the newspaper or yearbook in school. The idea of putting words out in public that you couldn’t take back terrified me. So the fact that now I’m in seminary, preparing to enter a role where my job will regularly entail getting up into a pulpit and putting words out there for public scrutiny (in the form of sermons, no less!) is ironic.

In the 8 years since I started this site, so much has changed – a cross country move, two career changes, a marriage, answering a call to ministry, the death of a parent, a baby. Lots of new questions and wrestling with persistent ones. In the midst of it all, one thing has remained constant: this idea that I am being led, called, prepared to live in a particular way, as a testament to a particular hope, a particular story, a particular way of Life.

For now, I’ll be keeping my old posts up, but that may change in the future. The content on this site will shift, because I plan to start saving sermons, writing, and other things that may be useful for my ministry, little scraps of words and ideas that help me make sense of how I’m moving through the world. I don’t claim to have everything figured out. Lord knows. But I’m muddling through, still growing toward the light.

This quotation has meant a lot to me over the past few years:

If we have both an adequate level of companionship in our sorrow and periods of solitude that aren’t about distraction or avoidance, then grief will transform itself into tender melancholy. This life we have is incredibly short, but we’ve been blessed with it. When we shut off our grief, we forget that. To let grief work its alchemy on you yields gravitas, by which I mean the ability to be present with the bittersweet reality of life, which always includes loss. There’s no way to be spared sorrow. I wouldn’t even wish that upon someone. But we shouldn’t get stuck in our grief; it’s not a permanent address but a companion that walks beside us. Everything I love, I will lose. That’s the harsh truth. You either have to shut down your heart — and miss the love that is around you — or wrestle with that truth and come out the other end. There is indeed such a thing as joyful sorrow.

The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give. If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair. If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering. Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible.

-Francis Weller, The Geography of Sorrow (Interview with the Sun magazine, October 2015)

Thoughts on Stewardship

In my church, we spend October and November hearing each other’s stories. During this time, the church is collecting pledges to set the budget for the following year. 

The storytelling is what gives life to the whole process of “we need to ask people for money.” Because we’re hardwired for stories, after all.

It’s always been a dream of mine to give one of these talks. Here’s what I said. 

According to family lore, I ended up in church because I ask questions. LOTS of questions.

It started in preschool. Supposedly, these were questions about death and heaven and Other Big Topics That Are Particularly Difficult for Grownups to Discuss. My parents wisely knew they needed to call in reinforcements, so our family joined an Episcopal church.

My parents got a little break, but my Sunday School teachers were in for a test of fortitude. I think my teachers used words like “precocious” and “persistent.” I’m sure they used much stronger words when I was out of earshot.

I remember one year where I was, shall we say, especially “focused” on apparent grammatical errors in the prayer book. I was insufferable.

The exasperated teacher ended up taking my questions to the priest, who joined our class to lead a lecture on the history of the Book of Common Prayer that the entire 8^th grade Sunday School class found excruciating.

When I was in college, I landed on a more substantial line of questioning, one that has endured these last several years.

The question was, “What would it look like to live as if I really believed the Gospel – how would that impact my choices? And a related question, “How do I live a deeply Christian life, where church isn’t just a place I go on Sundays but a way of moving through the world?”

Here at Christ Church, I have found a community willing to ask those questions with me. Or at least you refrain from rolling your eyes when I ask them, which is very polite of you. And in this stewardship season, I want to share two powerful symbols that are related to these questions.

The first symbol is the prayer book. If you’re lucky enough to be in a pew with an older prayer book, you’ll notice that the pages about a third of the way through the book are worn and yellowed. These are the pages for the Eucharist. Even though we often use printed leaflets, I try to thumb through the book each week and leave my grubby fingerprints somewhere. You know, for posterity.

These smudges remind me of our similarities and our differences. Every week, we sit in these pews to hear stories, sing, pray, daydream, and just breathe. Sometimes, the hands that leave these fingerprints are trembling with fear. Sometimes they’re sweaty or distracted or joyful. The worn pages remind me that we’re all here, showing up each week, doing the best we can. And that’s comforting.

The second symbol is a sound. It’s a holy sound, one that pretty much sums up God’s Kingdom, I think. It’s the sound of squealing brakes. Specifically, the squealing brakes of the city buses that circle this block.

When those brakes are the background music for a meeting or sermon, or interrupt a moment of silence, it reminds me that our faith is not something that stays inside these walls. The brakes are like God saying, “Remember that  — all of this stuff — is fuel to serve my people. We’re out there. And we need you.” Those squealing brakes remind me that God is often breaking into our carefully compartmentalized lives. God is always giving us someone to love. God is always dropping strangers off at our stop, inviting us to welcome them.

So why do I give? I give because there may be a little girl upstairs peppering her Sunday School teacher with endless questions.

And I want her to know that it’s good and right and important to ask questions. I want her to be comforted by running her fingers along the edges of a communal prayer book. And I want her to discover where God’s kingdom may be breaking in around her, whether through the squeal of brakes or an exquisite anthem or the smile of a new friend. That’s why I give.

Losing yourself to find it

I like David Brooks.  He makes me think and articulate why and where I agree or disagree with him.  Today, I generally agree with him. “Fulfillment is a byproduct of how people engage their tasks, and can’t be pursued directly.”  This quote in particular grabbed me:

“College grads are often sent out into the world amid rapturous talk of limitless possibilities. But this talk is of no help to the central business of adulthood, finding serious things to tie yourself down to. The successful young adult is beginning to make sacred commitments — to a spouse, a community and calling — yet mostly hears about freedom and autonomy.”

That line of thinking is a big part of why I decided to move back to Arkansas.  I wanted something solid to anchor my life – something that is bigger than me.  Sometimes, on good days, when I’m not doing too much navel-gazing, I find that anchor in my faith.  Other people find it in their spouse or chosen long-term career path (i.e. medicine or law.)

Following passion isn’t necessarily the path for me.  My passion is process, and it’s weird to say to people that I’m passionate about transparent, strategic, healthy decision making and communication.  I like making people-oriented processes work better.  Not exactly as focused as ending hunger or practicing law.  Pretty much every company in the world makes decisions and communicates things.

That passion doesn’t show up in a job title, it shows up in how I do a particular job.  The folks over at Signals Vs Noise note that it’s “how, not what.”  I don’t think that passion should be missing from the picture, but I’m not sure it’s the center.  For me.  Right now.

Is David Brooks right?  Are some of us called by a problem, and our meaning comes out of that problem?

Solace in Words

Found this blessing last night in John O’Donahue’s book To Bless the Space Between Us. My brother gave it to me for Christmas, but due to some Amazon.com shipping snafus, it’s an Easter present.

When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems to believe the relief of darkness.

You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.

“The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born.”

You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here in your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.

from: “To Bless the Space Between Us” by John O’Donohue. Pub in 2008 by Doubleday.

Well I don’t see why not

Part of the whole picking up and moving across the country thing means that I’m currently unemployed, job-free, job-hunting, or whatever euphemism you’d like to use.

I now have a couple of things on the I’ll Pass, Thanks career list. That’s an improvement over the spring of my senior year of college, when I was willing to try pretty much anything. Great for life experience, hard to narrow down for a job search. As part of uncovering what it is I actually DO want to do, I thought I’d turn to What Color Is Your Parachute for some guidance.

And I love it. I figured I would, as I’m generally drawn to exercises that, as a friend lovingly (she said it was out of love) put it, “to compulsively excavate my own emotional navel lint.”

One of the pieces I did yesterday involved taking a career interest inventory. At the top of my list? HR manager, compensation and benefits manager, training and development manager, funeral director, loan officer, arbitrator/negotiator/mediator, child support or missing persons investigator, judge, insurance sales agent.

I laughed out loud when I saw this list. The common thread that I see is “careers in fields that people commonly resent or fear.”

And then I stopped being able to concentrate because I actually started looking into mortuary science school. Is it weird that I find it interesting?

Godtalk: The Jesus Story, remix

I found a new blog on Monday thanks to my friend A.  It’s called Dirty Sexy Ministry, and it’s sort of Anne Lamott meets Nadia Bolz-Webber.  If you’re into the God thing, and the embracing our lopsidedness thing, and the having a sense of humor about our self-righteousness thing, check it out.

You might be thinking, who is Nadia Bolz-Webber?  She’s one of my favorite preachers who started a Lutheran church in Denver.  Here’s how they describe themselves: “House for All Sinners and Saints’ is a group of folks figuring out how to be a liturgical, Christo-centric, social justice oriented, queer inclusive, incarnational, contemplative, irreverent, ancient – future church with a progressive but deeply rooted theological imagination.”

Yeah.  I want one of those in my hometown.

I’m realizing there’s a common thread in the incarnation of the Christian story that I’m drawn into.  It’s marked by humor, authenticity, actually believing that the Gospel will turn my expectations upside down and impact my tidy little world, concern for the marginalized, practicing humility and forgiveness, recognizing Mystery and holiness in this life, valuing the rich (and checkered) history of the Church, and doggedly pointing toward hope. It’s not marked by a denomination, or a liturgical style, or a dogma.

That leaves me in a funny spot.  I deeply care about all this God stuff – sometimes to my own embarrassment and/or the confusion of my intellectual, interesting, burned-or-bored-by-the-church friends.  The way that I care about it, though, goes beyond, or outside of, or underneath, the images and ideas of “church.”  As I’ve said before, I don’t believe that church is the only way live out a life of hope, love, compassion, and resurrection.  In fact, sometimes it’s hard for me to find that embodied expression of faith within the church.

No grand conclusions here.  I’ll think I’ll just keep tinkering along, knowing that whatever confusion or faithful homelessness I’m feeling is part of this journey.

What got me started on all this was Nadia’s version of the Christian story:

Once upon a time, the God of the Universe was basically fed up with being on the receiving end of all our human projections, tired of being nothing more to us than what we thought God should be: angry, show-offy, defensive, insecure, in short, the vengeance-seeking tyrant we would be if we were God. So, at that time, over 2,000 years ago, God’s Loving Desire to really be Known overflowed the heavens and was made manifest in the rapidly dividing cells within the womb of an insignificant peasant girl named Mary.  And when the time came for her to give birth to God, there was no room in our expectations – no room in any impressive or spiffy or safe place. So this God was born in straw and dirt. He grew up, this Jesus of Nazareth, left his home, and found some, let’s be honest,  rather unimpressive characters to follow him.  Fishermen, Tax collectors, prostitutes, homeless women with no teeth, people from Commerce City, Ann Coulter and Charlie Sheen.  If you think I’m kidding…read it for yourselves.  These people were questionable. So, with his little band of misfits Jesus went about the countryside turning water to wine, eating with all the wrong people, angering the religious establishment and insisting that in him the kingdom of God had come near, that through him the world according to God was coming right to us.  He touched the unclean and used spit and dirt to heal the blind and said crazy destabilizing things like the first shall be last and the last shall be first, and sell all you have and give it to the poor.

And the thing that really cooked people’s noodles wasn’t the question “is Jesus like God” it was “what if God is like Jesus”.  What if God is not who we thought?  What if the most reliable way to know God is not through religion, not through a sin and punishment program, but through a person. What if the most reliable way to know God is to look at how God chose to reveal God’s self in Jesus?

Because that changes everything.  If what we see in Jesus is God’s own self, revealed, then what we are dealing with here is a God who is ridiculously indiscriminate about choosing friends.  A God who would rather die than be in the sin accounting business anymore.  A God who would not lift a finger to condemn those who crucified him, but went to the depths of Hell rather than be apart even from his betrayers. A God unafraid to get his hands dirty for the ones he loves. This, this is the God who rises to new life with dirt still under his nails.

SWF ISO Cheap wine. Food, friends nice bonus

I used to live around the corner from a Trader Joe’s.  Since I lived so close, I generally knew when they had the sea salted caramels in stock, and then contributed to their rapid sell-out.   Of all the products they carry – their instant miso soup is amazing! – I’m going to miss the wine selection the most. (I’m now 5 hours from the nearest TJ’s.)

When I was visiting my former roommate M earlier this month, she read some bits from her journal of when we lived together.  It’s one of those 2 lines-per-day journals.  The most common entries went something like this:  Drank wine and watched a movie.  Came home and hung out in the kitchen while A– made dinner.  Enjoyed a delicious dinner, followed by Glee, ice cream and wine with the roommates.

Good food + internet tv + mediocre wine + 7 random people thrown into a house together + a few secret ingredients (even to me) = lovely memories.  I’m not saying that things were always perfect, or that it was even always fun.  There were days when all I wanted was to go to Trader Joe’s by myself, shirk my house shopping list and get whatever I wanted.  And not share.  But I think when people eat and drink together in regular rhythm, something beautiful can occur.

One question I’ve always wondered is how they keep their prices so low.  The internet knows everything.

I knew I liked this guy for a reason

Some of you may know about my obsession with OKCupid – more specifically, with their pop science/statistic blog, OKTrends.  As I understand it, this group of math majors from Harvard thought it would be fun to use math to match people up in the online dating world.  And then crunch the numbers and write about it, of course.

I think I’ve forwarded every single one of their blogposts to at least one person.  Although one of my favorite posts, “Why You Should Never Pay for Online Dating,” has been removed from the blog since Match.com bought OKCupid in February.

Turns out Christian Rudder, one of the founders of the site, is from Little Rock.  And he’s the one who writes the blog.  Here’s more about the man behind those oh-so-entertaining journeys of pseudo-sociocultural commentary through dating website analysis.

Why I gave up facebook (and why I’m going back)

Since I’m a few days away from rejoining the facebook community, I thought I’d write a little bit about why I gave it up.

I love social media.  Some of the most interesting articles and hilarious videos I encounter come from my friends’ facebook posts or blogs.  And, I am (was? don’t want to be?) addicted. I went on this social media fast because I realized I was spending way too much time browsing wedding photos of people I barely knew instead of connecting in meaningful ways with people I deeply care about.

Some neuroscientists got together off the grid and wrote about their experiences this summer, which probably is the backdrop for my experiment.  I’d been reading earlier in the year about how facebook increases feelings of sadness.  Last week, Seth Godin talked about how the internet can be an envy amplifier.  I’ve experienced both of those – sometimes at the same time, browsing facebook albums of what seems to be the most amazingly fun party ever where everyone is so stylish! so fresh! so entertained! while I sit in my sweatpants, no longer satisfied with the novel and glass of wine I had been relishing moments before my facebook break.

I thought this hiatus would be a way for me to realize how some of my technology habits get in the way of the other habits I’d like to cultivate.  Like creating community in the form that I enjoy most – deep, meaningful interactions with people over a sustained period of time.  Like having the first and last hours of my day be screen-free.

One of the most unsettling things I noticed during this hiatus was my internet browsing habits when working on the computer.  Every 5-6 minutes I would unconsciously, almost as a reflex, start a new tab and begin typing in “www.fa…”

Does visiting facebook every 5 minutes increase my quality of life?  No.  Though as a result, I was the first person in my office to know about Michael Jackson’s death.  Does checking my email every 5 minutes help me accomplish my goals?  Usually not.  And I’m not a Luddite.  I refuse to believe that social media is ruining our society or that my generation will be unable to focus on anything longer than 140 characters.  It’s a new channel, and we’ll adjust accordingly, just like we did with other new channels (like telephones!).

I think that technology is a beautiful thing.  I’ve watched community efforts through social media raise tens of thousands of dollars for worthy causes.  I get immense satisfaction from watching TED talks and other innovative ideas that I learn about through my friends’ posts.  And I think I can use technology in moderation, in ways that are in service to the other goals in my life.

I appreciate the folks over at Sabbath Manifesto, reminding me that it’s okay – and healthy – to unplug every once in a while.  On the rare days that I actually shut down my computer, I can relax in a way that is different when I just shut it and put it beside me on the couch.

Here’s another perspective – what it might mean to use social media mindfully.  I really like this list because it doesn’t scream about how social media is ruining our brains.  Social media is one way, a relatively new way, of engaging in the human story.

What have you noticed about the way you use social media?  Does facebook make you feel more lonely?  Less lonely?  More connected with others?  Have you ever done a social media fast?  What did you learn?

Little by little

After wonderful and safe road trip through Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma, I’m back in Arkansas.  I’m still in disbelief that I actually live here.  Part of that feeling is situational – I don’t have a job, I haven’t unpacked yet, I’m struggling eating 3 meals a day instead of vacation grazing.

It’s been hard to remember that I don’t have to cram in 20 coffee dates with people in the next 8 days, because I’m not heading back to California next week.  I’m lucky to have friends here, and I’m used to them setting my social agenda when I come in town.  As my friend S reminded me yesterday, I can do whatever I want.  If I want to cook brown rice and kale at home, I can do that.  If I want to leave the bar at 9:30 to go home to go to bed, I can do that.

Annie Dillard says it well:  “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”  That’s a helpful reminder to me as I try to find a semblance of a routine and some agency in the choices I’m making as my life unfolds here.