passionately pensive

closeted

2011-12-13T11:19:00.002-05:00

There are days when I crawl into a dark closet, close the door, and doubt the realities of my experience.

When I am there I ask myself if this recently-endowed nickname, Funlaina, is an ironic jab at my pain-in-the-assness. I don't find myself to be a very fun person very often. I am mostly mourning and lamenting underneath my pink fleshy walls, I think that surely everyone can see that.

When I am in that dark place, I wonder if everyone sees me as jerk: willing to confront every issue, arrogant in my abilities to do something about it, and fully incapable of actually seeing the real people who live in this thing I've made an issue. Or I wonder if everyone has found me out: that I am a immature, goofy youth minister posing as a serious graduate student, that I will laugh at fart jokes and I will pretend to know something about Karl Barth if you ask me.

I wonder if my activist-friends have figured out that the only thing I know how to do is print nametags and order food and that I don't know anything about community organizing except that I read a biography about Ella Baker and think she was amazing. I wonder if my roommates will know how deeply insecure I am that I have imposed my student-hood on them, eating the food they make for dinner without cleaning up and asking for rides to school on a weekly basis. I wonder if my friends in other places are sick of never hearing from me and have decided that I don't love them anymore. I wonder if my friends in town feel like I've abandoned them when they need me for an inconsequential paper. I wonder if my family thinks that I am the black sheep that has wandered away from them in pursuit of a ridiculous dream.

I don't go to this place often. It isn't pleasant, but it exists. I can't assume that it is the sort of place that exists underneath everyone's fleshy walls, but I have a sense that it is within some of us. We don't talk about it because it makes us seem weak and fragile and exposes us to the wolves. Nevertheless, when I go there, I have to talk myself out of it: slowly, gingerly, carefully, with tea, long runs, repetitive readings of Psalm 147, and tears. There are always tears.

When I talk to my friends and my colleagues and my family about this place, the initial reaction is something like, "Hush now, little baby, don't say a word." Then on occasion, there is admission of mutuality, that this place is a shared space, a community center where everyone is hoveled into tiny closests, hiding behind the old smelly and abandoned coats.

When someone tells me that they've been there, that they know exactly the smell and the coats and the thoughts that I am talking about, when they nod and breathe deeply and give me a hug, the door of the closet cracks open. Ever so slightly.

__

This post was crafted alongside my synchroblogging friends on the topic of "Community." Their words pushed me to share my own. May they do likewise for you.

more than our brains

2011-12-02T11:38:00.001-05:00

In a flurry of last minute Greek Exam studying procrastination, my eyes landed on this little post on the Fuller Youth Institute Blog. I want to give Kara Powell, the executive director of FYI, the full benefit of the doubt, but I'm still struck that this article reduces teenagers to their IQ scores and parenting is reducted to the task of raising scores. She says,

As a parent and youth leader, I’m so encouraged by what this study suggests. Previous brain research has made it seem that most all of brain development ends at about age 6. If you weren’t reading and/or stretching your kids’ thinking between birth and Kindergarten, it was too late.

If there was a club for “Parents Who Read As Much As They Could Do Their Young Kids But Wish They Could Have Done More,” my husband and I would easily become members. So this theme in recent neurological research means we all still have time.

Time. While this study doesn’t cite the causes of IQ development, I’m guessing that children and teenagers often become more critical thinkers when adults take the time to talk with them, listen to them, ask them questions. And then repeat the cycle: talk with them, listen to them, ask them questions.

What can you do in the next few days to try to go deeper in conversation with a child or teenager?

I cannot believe that she would agree with the implication that we engage young people in conversation with the sole purpose of raising IQ scores, yet the implication is there. Unhindered and seemingly unseen. We put so much pressure on children to perform and on parents to raise performing children, true selves are lost underneath all of the assessments, scores, and participation ribbons.

Even while the church is attentive to research and to educational theory and to sociological trends, we must never lose sight of the deepest truth that defines our ministry to all people, young and old. This truth is that we have each been created in the image of God and however we may have mucked that image up, it is restored through the person of Christ. This communal identity shapes, forms, and informs all that we do. Scores, assessments, and studies have little bearing on us because in Christ we are made complete. Garnering a higher IQ score won't make a teenager a better student, a better human, or a better image bearer.

Brains and bodies matter because they bear God's image and form Christ's body, but the minute we begin to prioritize brains over bodies or bodies over brains, we lose sight of the fullness of our humanity. In ministry to young people, we must resist the temptation to reduce them to their accomplishments, their promise, their future vocation, their athletic prowess, or their failures. Each person in our churches, in our families, in our classrooms is an image-bearer worthy of our time, patience, consideration, and love. Regardless of whether or not our efforts will produce measurable fruit.

As I return to my last minute exam cram session, I go freely knowing that the few points I might earn from these moments of review will not define my person in God's eyes, in my church's eyes, in my family's eyes, or in my friends' eyes. I will do my best to the glory of God and will set aside my ambition and anxieties to be the best. For those ambitions and anxieties dishonor the image of God created and restored in me. May we all continue struggling towards this freedom.

these lovely moments

2011-11-03T10:35:00.000-04:00

These lovey moments:

they slip so quickly

like water pouring over the falls,

pooling at bottom,

in the depths of who we are.

Majesty

2011-11-01T09:00:00.000-04:00

I have been very busy studying, writing, working for Duke Youth Ministry Initiatives, and planning After the Yellow Ribbon, a student-led Veteran's day event aiming to cultivate a conversation between the church and the military on the moral, emotional, mental health care service members and veterans. You can learn all about that effort here.

In the midst of my chaos, majesty abounds. These are a few reminders.

This post was written with the Creative Collective. Enjoy the writing and art of others on the theme, "Water," by clicking here.

climbing

2011-09-20T09:00:00.000-04:00

I put on the gloves,
grabbed onto the wire,
and put my head down.
I pulled myself up the mountainside,
ignoring the deep desire to vomit
to cry in exhaustion,
to give up.

Falling seemed so easy, so simple, so free
even if just to the ground below
to sit quietly without effort or struggle.

I suppose it all seems easy
falling in and out of love,
floating in and out of consciousness,
moments whirring past
without aim or strain.

But these gloves have knit themselves into my hands.
And they grip onto the wire,
curved in habit and pain.
There is no falling option,
only climbing
climbing,
climbing.

This mountain promises
something more to come.
I climb in despair
in disbelief
in hope.

--

This post is written as a contribution to The Creative Collective on the topic of "Falling." Check out my fellow synchrobloggers' work here.

Wash it all away

2011-09-06T09:00:00.002-04:00

Wash it all away.
Leave it all behind.
It will never be same.

--

This post is created as a part of The Creative Collective on the topic of "Giving up for the long haul." Check out the posts here.

More Dress Up!

2011-08-30T20:54:00.000-04:00

Genevieve and I partnered up to take some more photos. Joy was a great model.

Playing Dress-up

2011-08-23T09:00:00.000-04:00

We had a little fun this weekend with our friend, Genevieve, from Traveling Scissors.

Katie and Megan provide the hair, faces, and smiles.

Genevieve, the expert styling.

I took the photos.

Fun Thing Thirty: Life is Beautiful

2011-08-17T09:00:00.003-04:00

Fun Thing Twenty-Nine: Meals al Fresco

2011-08-16T09:00:00.001-04:00

Cooler weather has made for many delightful moments on the porch.

There aren't very many better ways that I can imagine spending my weekend evenings and days.

Fun Thing Twenty-Eight: Pool Party

2011-08-15T09:00:00.002-04:00

Sitting beside the pool, eating good food, watching the sun fall...

...Signs that life is good, maybe too good.

Fun Thing Twenty-Seven: Island Wandering

2011-08-13T09:00:00.002-04:00

Sometimes baking on the beach is overrated. Wandering through beach towns and exploring their quirks can be just as relaxing.

All lazy island explorations should be concluded with a drum fish and scallop linner. (You know what linner is, don't you? Lunch and dinner? Like brunch but in the late afternoon? It's one of my favorite meals.)

Photos 1 and 4 were captured by my sis, featured in photo 2.

Fun Thing Twenty-Six: Sun, Sand and Sisters

2011-08-12T09:00:00.002-04:00

Fun Thing Twenty-Five: Seafood

2011-08-11T09:00:00.001-04:00

Yum-o.

Fun Thing Twenty-Four: Bull City Bests

2011-08-10T09:00:00.004-04:00

Showing off the Bull City to some of my favorite people is fun.

Good food and good baseball win this crowd over easily.

Again and Again

2011-08-09T09:00:00.076-04:00

Again! Again!
I'm sure I yelled these words one thousand and twenty times when I was younger, smaller, ready for the thrill of the spin for the world.
But this time it wasn't me.
This time it was Jacob, age four, former peg-legged pirate and a part-time cowboy.
This time it was Jacob yelling, begging, pleading for the thrill of another spin.

Spin me again, Awayna!
He threw his arms around my waist, tightly tugging my body, my mind, my heart strings into his tiny orbit.

Okay, Jacob. This is the last time.
The truth dripped out of my smiling mouth. I was lying. We both knew it.
We spun.
We spun again.
And then some more.
These are the happiest sort of lies a person can tell.

--

This post is part of The Creative Collective, a synchroblog among friends. Check out others' writing and art on today's topic "The Earth around the Sun, or the Sun around the Earth: Centers of Gravity."

Fun Thing Twenty-Three: My Family

2011-08-05T09:00:00.000-04:00

These guys just flew in for the weekend (minus the beloved pooch). I got so excited that I forgot to take a picture so I pulled up an oldie goldie in which they are sporting the StL pride. I think they'll be sporting some Durhammie pride by the end of this trip.

Fun Thing Twenty-Two: (Not My) Family

2011-08-04T08:35:00.000-04:00

When I decided to move to Durham, I didn't know anyone in the town, maybe one person in the entire state. It was thrilling and scary all at once. I had no idea what to expect of the new life I would create.

Through dumb luck or (more likely) the great providence of God, I am living in a house that feeds my soul as much as it provides me shelter. My roommates make me laugh and help me to balance the stress of school and work and staying in touch with a whole ecology of friendships in Missouri. I am forever amazed at their willingness to share with me, especially their family. Last night, as their family gathered in our house to celebrate the return of a traveling brother, delicious Italian food, spontaneous singalongs, and tickle-fests with tiny people filled the house. It's not my family, but their willingness to share makes this home mine.

Fun Thing Twenty-One: Creative Escapism

2011-08-03T09:00:00.040-04:00

When I was in high school, I participated in a summer program's writing group for three weeks. We wandered around a college campus and sometimes into the surrounding town and practiced our craft. We wrote villanelles and one-act scripts and read each other our favorite pieces of writing. I think I read something from Albert Camus' The Stranger. I was so weird.

One day, we visited to a used bookstore. Determined to carry home a properly used book, I bought Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. Previous to this moment, I'd only read Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. Since I'd exhausted all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's bibliography and I hadn't hated The Old Man and the Sea, A Moveable Feast seemed like the right kind of book for me. Again, I was weird. Still am, actually.

I vaguely remember reading the book, but just as the stories it houses have left my memory, it has since disappeared from my shelves. Perhaps I lent it to someone or it vanished in one of the many post-college relocation projects. It might be hiding in a rubber box, tucked between certificates of participation (why did I think volleyball was a good idea?) and albums of adolescent smiles. For how little I remember of its actual content, the physical book carries a significant weight in my authorial (and personal) identity. The book reminds me of a time when others pushed me to a creative edge and challenged me out of my tiny secluded world.

The film, Midnight in Paris, with its romantic kitsch and neurotic dialogue, attempts to capture the moment Hemingway's moveable feast. The film indulges the particular American escapist dream of expatriate Parisian life and asks how far one should go to escape reality and discover creative inspiration. It wasn't my favorite Woody Allen film, but it's a cheerful reminder to push myself into a new creative territory. That is the kind of fun I can get behind.

PS: I recommend brushing up on your 1920s authors and painters before going to see this film. The name dropping in this movie was tremendous.

Fun Thing Twenty: Crunchy!

2011-08-02T09:00:00.001-04:00

I decided to embrace my inherent crunchiness and I made my own granola. I tried to make granola once before, using a banana instead of oil and adding the cranberries way too soon. It was icky.

This time I decided to follow a recipe and things turned out a-okay. Fancy that.

Local honey makes all the difference.

Don't judge me because I chose my recipe by googling "best homemade granola." I didn't follow it to the "t," but it was good nonetheless. Thanks Kiss My Spatula.

Fun Thing Nineteen: Hard Work

2011-08-01T09:00:00.009-04:00

When you put in a long day of reading, ice cream is the only thing that can properly soothe the nerves.

Fun Thing Eighteen: Sand in Between My Toes

2011-07-31T21:33:00.000-04:00

The roommate and I sneaked away from Durham to get some good seafood, catch up with a great friend, and get sand in between our toes and in every crevice, fold and pocket of all of our belongings.

Success!

Fun Thing Seventeen: How to Become a Brazillian Housewife

2011-07-30T08:24:00.002-04:00

Step One: Hold an adorable baby. It's better if it is someone else's so that you can keep your beach body.

Step Two: Crush ice. Display your fierce resourcefulness by using whatever means is available to you.

Step Three: Muddle limes and sugar. Add ice. Add cachaça with pride and dignity for your national drink.

Step Four: Sip your caipirinha with a smile. Everyone loves a smile.

Step Five: Abandon the mess in the kitchen for a better time elsewhere. Surely that is someone else's job.

Thanks to Megan for photos 3-5.

Fun Thing Sixteen: Dinner and a Movie

2011-07-29T09:00:00.008-04:00

This was my second burger of the day. That's right. Yesterday was a two-burger kind of day. The polenta burger from Bull City Burger and Brewery was delicious. Nom nom nom.

Movies should always be accompanied by a chocolate bar, especially the kind where everyone dies. Not pointing any fingers (Haaaarreeee Potteh).

Fun Thing Fifteen: Beginnings and Ends

2011-07-28T09:00:00.004-04:00

I bike wearing heels and a skirt all of the time, but it isn't everyday that I bike wearing a skirt that I made with my mom. Sewing with my mom is so much better as an adult than as an eight year-old. It was a maiden voyage with this skirt and I think it is going to be a great biking skirt.

Never mind I managed to jab myself in the front-ankle (that's a real body part) with my greasy gears right after this photo. Have we discussed how über-talented I am? You're right. We haven't. Because that wouldn't be fun.

Ending the day with huevos rancheros, a glass of wine, and a few lovely friends calms every nerve. Tell me that stack of egg-y, cheese-y, bean-y, tortilla-y goodness isn't fun.

Fun Thing Fourteen: A Hot Date with These Guys

2011-07-27T09:00:00.006-04:00

Fun Thing Thirteen: Christmas in July

2011-07-26T13:00:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Tyler for these great photos, Megan for the party inspiration and fuel, and Katie for the never-ending desire to throw a themed party.

These Dreams, They Haunt Me

2011-07-26T09:00:00.041-04:00

My dreams startle me awake almost nightly. Not since the Discovery Channel sharks swam around my seven year-old mind has my subconscious haunted me in such vivid and inexplicable ways. The dreams, they come filled with death, with fear, with anger. I’m never the aggressor, not even always the victim, sometimes a passerby of crime, sometimes an investigator, sometimes the falsely accused. They wake me and I lie there, I toss there. My heightened sense of devastation pours out of my subconscious, filling my body and the room, keeping me suspended in disturbed wonderment.

I dream that my eyebrows have become rivals to the Sherwood Forest and I panic. I cannot have Robin Hood’s stomping grounds stamped on my face. I wake up and paw my face in the dark. The forest has disappeared but the memory of irrational fear remains.

I dream that my brother has gone missing, disappeared on a family seaside vacation, not dead for fourteen years. I dream that my family spends years, decades scouring the planet, searching for him, for what happened to him, for relief from the pain. I dream that my dad sits at the kitchen table in the house where I grew up, sobbing. I know it is a dream even as it passes, but when I wake up I wonder which parts are true.

I dream things that I swear I will remember, things that bring me to running sweats and tossing through the night, afraid of my own inner eyelids. Yet when the day finally comes, the only thing that remains is the fear of myself.

In an interview in the August 2011 issue of The Sun Magazine, Marc Ian Barasch says that healing dreams are those with heightened sensory details—jewel tones, vast spaces, complex plots, proverbial voices. He says,

“A healing dream often requires some kind of action[…] We don’t want to sequester these dreams in an ivory tower and look at them as objects of interest. We need to reenact them somehow: draw them, dance them, tell them. When we do this, we make our outer lives more consonant with the inner life of the soul. If you believe that dreams are in service to growth, then you will want to do something—even something small—in response.”

I can’t help but think there is something dying in me. Something in need of cutting off, investigating and excising, plucking out, killing off. I have a shortlist of what these things might be, things that reach deep into my identity. Things whose potential end challenges my self-definition more than I’ve ever been willing to deliberate.

What will I become if I listen to these dreams?

Who will live in my body and tell my story?

What dreams will wake me if I listen?

--

This post is part of The Creative Collective, a blogging project with writers and artists of many sorts. Today's theme is "What we might become if..." To read their work, go here. If you are interested in joining The Creative Collective, let me know.

Fun Thing Twelve: Notorious

2011-07-25T09:00:00.000-04:00

When I was in college, my roommate and I would exploit the local video rental shop's 3 movies for 3 nights for some ridiculous price. I can't remember if it was $3 or $5, but it was cheap and the only movies you could get were made years ago. On more than one occasion, we rented all Hitchcock films. Lest you begin to think we were highbrow, we also had all Doris Day weekends.

Notorious was one of my favorites from these exploits. Yesterday I watched it with a group of friends while chomping on these cookies. Any time I get to spend two hours with Cary Grant, I am having fun.

Pillow Talk is my favorite Doris Day movie, in case you were wondering.

Fun Thing Eleven: Red Hot!

2011-07-24T12:00:00.008-04:00

It was so hot yesterday, I didn't leave the house except to collect the mail and water the plants. Instead, I ate the leftovers from the tapas dinner and gave myself a pedicure.

I don't know about you, but of the four or five times I've paid for a pedicure, half of the time I've walked away thinking, "I could do a better job at home." Pedicures, Broadway musicals, and anything related to country music top my "only-if-you're-paying" list.

Fun Thing Ten: Tapas con Amigos!

2011-07-23T14:16:00.000-04:00

It's not very hard to get a group of friends to agree to come to your house with the promise of homemade traditional Spanish tapas.

They were an obliging bunch, actually.

They even helped in the kitchen.

Of course, there were messes.

And there was a lot of garlic aioli.

And after nearly four hours of eating and drinking, slowly, as the Spanish would have it, there was dessert. None of us had space for it in our stomachs, but we ate it anyway.

For the gastronomically curious:

The menu:
Homemade bread with Manchego and Iberico cheeses
Gazpacho (cold tomato soup, prepared as was taught to me by my Spanish host mother)
Champiñones al ajillo (mushrooms and garlic)
Ensaladilla rusa (Russian salad--a typical potato salad)
Berenjenas con miel (eggplant with honey)
Patatas bravas (potatoes with a spicy red sauce and garlic aioli)
Tortilla española (potato omelette)
Mousse de limón (lemon mousse)

My favorite wine of the night: Red Guitar's Old Vine Tempranillo Garnacha

Fun Thing Nine: Preparing for Fun Thing Ten

2011-07-22T09:00:00.002-04:00

Cooking by myself in the kitchen is one of my favorite things to do in the world. Second only to cooking with my sister. I don't want to say too much about content of Fun Thing Nine because it will give away the fun of Fun Thing Ten.

So here's a few hints:

Also fun: taking a cooking break to drink a delicious mint julep with a friend.

Fun Thing Eight: Being with Lovely People

2011-07-21T09:00:00.003-04:00

Words are unnecessary.

Fun Thing Seven: Making Music

2011-07-20T09:00:00.006-04:00

I got up yesterday morning before the sun did. This sort of behavior should be criminal in any state with any sense, at least during the summer months when the sun needs so little sleep it could be a single parent working three jobs. I barely had time to wipe the crusties out of my eyes before I had to be at the airport to head back to North Carolina.

I went home apprehensively. I needed to be at work by mid-day and I didn't have a fun thing planned. All I wanted to do was crawl into my bed and fall asleep. Having fun is easy on vacation... it is not so easy on the day you get back from vacation. While this project is, in some ways, about doing ridiculous things I wouldn't normally create the space to do, it is more about finding pleasure in what already exists around me and noticing the joy that happens to pass my way.

In the end, a friend came over to make dinner (and BROWNIES) with Katie and me. We made a "Clean Out the Fridge" egg bake. It was a highly scientific recipe that we totally made up as we went along.

We sauteed the veggies we had in the fridge:

Then added some tomatoes and basil from the garden and poured eggs and queso fresco on top:

After an undetermined amount of time in the oven, it was delicious.

The highlight of the night was our musical clean-up interlude during which I learned how to play the glass filled with water. I've never heard someone say, "I don't like music," but I'm afraid if my water-glass music was the only music a person had ever heard that might change. We'll leave that to speculation and confirm that fun can be had even after a long hot day of cross-country travel and saying goodbye to vacation.

Fun Thing Six: Eating Ice Cream for Lunch

2011-07-19T10:00:00.013-04:00

One might be tempted to believe that a single adult woman is commit-phobic. One would be wrong. Fun Thing 6 was a celebration of lifelong commitment that I made with a dear friend in 2008:

We will eat ice cream (preferably Ted Drewes Frozen Custard) for dinner together at least once a year.

That might seem silly, but in the four years since we made the commitment, we've lived in the same state for approximately 3 months. It takes some work to pull this feat (or she now conveniently lives in St. Louis, land of Ted Drewes and place where I frequently visit my friends and family). We got together yesterday to enjoy our frozen treats at lunchtime, a time we decided was acceptable to meet the requirements because it was not a "socially recognized ice cream eating time" like 3pm and 11pm. What? Don't you normally eat your ice cream at 11pm? Because I do.

We got our All Shook Up concretes (banana and Reese's peanut butter cups) and blissfully sweltered in the sun. It didn't matter that technically it was my breakfast because I'd yet to consume anything other than coffee yet that day. Ice cream (er, frozen custard) was made for moments like these.

Fun Thing Five: Even Better than the Real Thing

2011-07-18T11:29:00.001-04:00

Last night, U2 rocked Busch Stadium. As I sat in a crowd of more than 50,000 hot and sweaty people, my life flashed before my eyes. Each song reminded me another moment that the music and lyrics brought meaning and definition to the indescribable parts and pieces of life. Bono seemed keen on taking a walk down memory lane, reading the set list from their show at Washington University 30 years ago, showing old videos from Berlin (?) in the 1980s, and even bidding The Edge to tell the story of "Stay." I don't think I've heard The Edge speak at a concert before.

When my strange obsession with U2 and going to U2 concerts comes up in conversation, people often ask "Why?" Quite often, the questioners love The Cure or Aerosmith, or maybe some obscure indie band from Montreal. These are bands that are worthy of fandom and obsession, but my sister wasn't a huge Cure or Aerosmith fan and it was her car that took me to school, volleyball practice, and home again when I was in junior high. I'm not entirely sure where she developed her obsession, but it is probably a better story than "my sister made me do it." During my teenage years, U2 albums sprinkled my wish lists until my collection was compete. U2 songs filled my mixed tapes (as in, actual cassette tapes) for running and for relaxing around my room. For two years after I discovered "Acrobat" on Achtung Baby, I couldn't go for a run without hearing it. It was my fuel and my faith. Similarly, The Joshua Tree drove me through the rural Midwest between home and college, All that You Can't Leave Behind helped me to cope with being a college freshman while my high school classmates started going off to war, and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb accompanied me around my teensy college town. I can't hear certain songs from those albums without seeing my dorm room, the town square, and open fields of waving grain and farmhouses perched on the side of river bluffs.

Boston 2005, Vertigo Tour

Bono sang demurely last night. His voice has shown the effects of a lifetime of challenging and defining the way millions of people narrate their lives. He was laid back, the least composed I've ever seen him. Which is to say, he was still more composed than any other performer I've ever seen. The Edge backed up his struggling voice with harmonies that I've previously overlooked, never mind the guitar-playing genius living in his fingertips. Larry and Adam played patiently and reliably, as they have for decades.

This concert was likely the least prepared I've ever been for a U2 concert. I didn't scope out preceding concerts' set lists. I didn't listen obsessively to U2 music for weeks in preparation. I didn't have my heart set on hearing a particular group of songs. I went with an open mind and ready to be on my feet for several hours. Sitting, standing, and dancing next to my sister, the person who introduced me to so much of life including U2, I sang every word to every song and remembered where life has taken us. Singing along with the music and fans is more than the sum of the sensory experience, it is the sum of thousands of lifetimes singing and hoping for something more.

Bono and the band are by no means perfect. They are likely arrogant and greedy showboats. They are likely contributors to some of the systemic problems Bono rails against in his public service portions of the concerts. But last night when Bono called out a member of his crew who has yet to meet his newly-born child and poked fun at himself for hauling 200 semi-trucks full of equipment across the country, I was reminded that we are all a little Bono: arrogant, stupid, humble, thankful, and hopeful. He's just a person, just like me, just like my sister. His honesty helps me to be honest, to be more faithful, and maybe just a little more silly.

Thing Four: Food with Family

2011-07-17T11:11:00.000-04:00

When I was a little girl, going to see my family meant eating piles of my grandmother's delicious food, singing, dancing and being generally silly with my cousins, and maybe a ticklefest with my uncles. Now that I'm older, things haven't changed that much.

We still eat piles of delicious food.

We are still pretty silly.

As we enjoyed the outdoor concert and mass picnic, we were all smiles.

Friends came, too!

Outdoor neighborhood concerts make St. Louis one of my favorite places in the world.

Thing Three: Zoological Adventures with My Favorite Four-Year Old

2011-07-16T09:00:00.004-04:00

Snakes!

Trains!

Tunnels!

Pleas for more snakes!

More trains!

This is the stuff fun is made of.

Thing Two: Bossypants

2011-07-14T23:48:00.002-04:00

On Day 2 of 30 fun things in 30 fun days, I did some catch-up reading, not to catch-up with the over eager kid in the back of the lecture hall, but with the average American reader.

This was a totally unplanned Thing Two. I was planning to eat piles of Vietnamese food as my Thing Two because pho in the Triangle is ridiculously scarce. But then a friend surprised me with a better Thing Two for my flight to St. Louis: Tina Fey's book, Bossypants. Reading Tina Fey on an airplane totally trumps Vietnamese food for the following reasons:

There's nothing more fun than laughing out loud...
because a book made you do it...
in a public place...
that is enclosed (as in an airplane) so that when you go to leave, you will have to awkwardly look into the faces of the people who heard your book-induced laughter.

Whatever. I don't care. I'm having fun.

The arms totally gross me out.

30 fun things in 30 fun days

2011-07-14T09:00:00.026-04:00

When I read Maggie's post about needing some joy in her life, I felt my whole body nod in agreement. I've decided to join in her mission to do 30 fun things in 30 days. I'm not normally a joiner of blog meme, but this summer calls for it. I need some good old fashioned superficial laughter, moments shared with the people I love, and reminders of the deep and abiding joys of life.

It's going to be a good fun time.

--

For Day One of 30 fun things in 30 fun days, we trekked to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens to see Lost in the Trees. The weather threatened to ruin our fun, but in the end, it was a great evening of friends, delicious sangria, and amazing music. If you aren't familiar with Lost in the Trees, check out their video below.

Without further ado, behold the fun:

Now some fun for you:

bodily interruptions

2011-07-12T09:00:00.101-04:00

Living with 80 people for two weeks is a special kind of hell for introverts: loud voices singing Rebecca Black's "Friday" every morning in the echoing dorm hallways, buffet food lines that beg for you to over eat, cranky mid-afternoon coffee runs, and late night attempts to save the world through conversation and milkshakes. I served as a mentor at the Duke Youth Academy, a companion along the path of the students. We lived together, ate together, learned together, worshiped together. During our meals and small group time, students asked difficult questions and my fellow mentors and I attempted to answer often with more questions and sometimes with piercing silence.

Between the lack of true rest, the over-stimulation, and the profound nature of the work we did as a community, I braced myself for a breakdown or at least the kind of total body exhaustion where words get lost on their way from your brain to your tongue and turn into gobbledigook. By the mid-way point, I had trouble putting my feet over the edge of the bed and convincing them to reach for the ground. Would this be the day that I would look at another person with crazy eyes and say something I didn't mean? Would this be the day that another person would do likewise to me? I forced myself to face the day and each day came with surprises. I didn't yell, I didn't hide, my body sustained a level of energy, sometimes it even increased as the day grew long.

One evening nearing the end of our time together, we sat in our evening small group, exhausted from a pilgrimage through Durham, wearied from the realities facing us. We dug into the subtleties of racism in our cultural norms and the gravity of the message that we consume every day that some people are more valuable and more beautiful than others because of their skin color, their body shape, their ability to conform to gender norms, and the fact that they were born in one geographic location rather than another. The evening preacher stood in front of us and told us point blank that we will not solve the problems of this world. We are not Creators, we are not Makers, we are not Redeemers. We are doers, the workers of the kingdom called to use our bodies to interrupt the maddening hatred and the paralyzing sadness that surrounds us. Our bodily interruption is made possible because our lives have already been interrupted by the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Christ.

As one of us cried out in wrenching lament about how the world judges viciously and solely on the color of skin, we sat in silence. Later, one student in our group took hold of the preacher's message and reminded us that we are not Redeemers, that work is done, that we are doers called to interruption. The preacher may have said it first, but it is her voice that has wandered around in my mind, coming up in conversations and riding beside me around town. I've always considered my mind the agent of interruption that I am most equipped to use, but she challenged me to an interruption that steps out of my mind and into the world around me, out of my independence and into the ecology of relationships: their hope and their pain, their messiness and their joy.

This is a very unfriendly challenge to an introvert. Yet, as sits with me, bikes with me, drinks coffee with me, I find it irresistible. Staying in my mind, I am tempted to think of the world only as I observe it and only as it touches me. Moving my body into places of pain and places of joy, seeing it with my eyes and touching it with my fingers, I am further convinced that I am not a Creator, independently making good in quantities beyond imagination. I am doer, participating in what has been created, joining with my fellow created and seeking a way to remind creation that it is beautiful. The call to go beyond what I know is still shaking my body, mind and soul.

It's a welcome and redemptive interruption.

--

This post was written as a part of friendly synchroblog on the topic "Independence." Please check out the writing and art of my fellow bloggers.

iwritetoberidofthings, fear itself
Karma's Fool, Truly Local
art, et cetera, interbeing
muddleddreamer, Co-dependence
nightsbrightdays, Hypothetically Speaking
Plow and Rain, a thing is itself
The Rebel I, Independence
Wordshepherd, Escape Velocity, Part III

I'm paying attention now

2011-06-14T09:00:00.056-04:00

I wasn't expecting to see their young faces, glaring back at me a little afraid, a little excited. Mostly just young and bewildered.

Their packs lined the hallway of the airport where I sat, waiting for another Midwestern spring storm to pass its fury. Families scurried around, chasing their toddlers. Tall men in raincoats stood in front of the sliding doors, keeping the foolish from entering in the wilds of the storm. Everyone's mood was slightly tense, pretending to be relaxed, pretending to not care about this storm's potential. But the boarded windows reminded all of us that storms past were not safe and this storm should not be unheeded.

When the all clear came, in announcement and in the exhales of a thousand held-breaths, the young men and women filed out of the USO office. A sergeant, maybe two or three years their senior, commanded them to line up in rows of a certain number, to learn how to count, to answer his commands with a resounding "Yes, sergeant!"

Their civilian clothes and not-yet-adult faces and bodies told me that they were preparing for basic training. Fresh out of high school, on their way out of town, getting their college paid for, each one with his and her own story. It would be wrong or presumptuous to imagine the journeys they have taken, the paths that brought them to this moment, the joys, prides, and pains they felt about standing in this hallway at the end of a terrific storm with a backpack to their name and a sergeant reminding them brusquely that they are no longer their own person.

Military service hasn't been much of a topic of conversation in my life. I never served in the military. My parents didn't serve in the military. A pair of my uncles did and my grandfathers. But no one spoke about it. When a recruiter for the Army called our house when I was a senior in high school, he asked me what I was planning to study in college. When I told him theology and Christian education, he stumbled a little off script and acknowledged that perhaps the Army didn't have a place for me. I don't have close friends in the active service, a few that are veterans, some that have retired from the service, some that have been discharged.

My ignorance about life in the military properly evidenced, I am willing to acknowledge that my opinions, my worries, my thoughts on the matter are wholly subject to the people and conversations that pass by my way. Nevertheless, as I stared into the faces of these young people, my heart crumbled into a prayer for their protection. Not merely for their limbs and bodies to be kept from the dangers of war, but for their hearts and their minds.

Before I came to school and began to listen to the news differently, I was unaware of the high rate of suicide among service men and women. In March 2011, the National Institute of Mental Health released data stating that the suicide rate of currently deployed soldiers at 18.3 deaths per 100,000. For a note of comparison, the overall rate of suicide in the United States is 11.3. That number should scare you. It scares me. If it doesn't, perhaps the recently reported statistic that 18 veterans commit suicide every day is enough.

We don't like to talk about mental illness. We don't like to talk about whether we see a therapist or need a pill to keep our mind from racing. We don't want to imagine that our soldiers are suffering underneath their camouflage, that they, too, might need some help. I'm told by those from within that the stigma asking for emotional and mental health care is buried deep in the conscious of our military.

As I stared into the faces of those thirty young people, frightened or maybe energized by tornadoes and their future, my prayer for protection began. Today it has morphed into a cry for more. More voices praying with me. More people in the church paying attention to the wounded soldiers. More care for their hearts and minds. More time and attention in my own life devoted to the people who have lost peace while seeking it.

There is nothing unique about my social ignorance of military life. Any attempt to cry out must be shaped by those with harder stories to tell: chaplains, veterans, pastors, students, therapists, moms, dads. It isn't that no else is crying out, it's that I haven't been paying attention. I'm paying attention now.

--

This post is written as a part of a synchroblog among friends on the topic "Where No One Else Has Gone Before." Please check out their writing.

i write to be rid of things, i know this girl
M, no one
Nightsbrightdays, Cheek to Cheek
The Rebel I, Flash FWD Metaphysics
Wordshepherd, Bones on the Mountain, Part I

i won't be your hero

2011-05-18T09:22:00.012-04:00

It is extremely difficult not to want to save someone. They are miserable. You are miserable. If you do this one thing to fix the other person's situation, you can take all of the misery away and everyone will be happy, peaceful, and as calm as clams once again. Seemingly.

I know it doesn't work, and still I try again. I try harder. I try to look as though I am trying less but am actually trying my hardest yet. Only the truly brave set aside their trying tools and just sit beside the miserable. They face misery in full awareness that it can't be fixed.

There are times when I am in church that this fix-it mentality chases me through the songs, the sermon, and out the door. I'm told that I am a person in need of fixing and this church has the tools to get it done. The twisted truth drives me from my seat to cower in the corner, afraid of the hammers and chisels and chainsaws.

I went to a new church on Sunday, a church recommended to me by a sixty year-old man. He said it was the best church to which he ever belonged. No one has ever said that about a church to me before, but it still took me two months of internal conversation to believe him enough to visit the church. As I drove there on Sunday morning, I gripped the steering wheel in hopes to vicariously control the weaving and wandering thoughts in my mind. I prayed that this church wouldn't try to fix me.

It's hard to know from a single worship service if a church is going to be home or if it is just someone else's home that you will visit from time to time. Even in my hesitation to make any sort of commitment, I heard something in the pastor's words that pulled my wandering thoughts into focus.

I am not the Good Shepherd. I am a sheep, just like you. At times, I am shepherd-like, but likeness is not the Good Shepherd. I am not the Good Shepherd.

At the end of worship, after the benediction, he stepped out of the aisle into the pews with everyone else, singing, calling for all good Christian friends to rejoice and sing with him, with us. He didn't return to the aisle until the cross and the lector had passed. He was a sheep just like the rest of us. He has set aside his trying tools and has joined the miserable.

His resignation is not without hope. His resignation is a nod to the power of the true Good Shepherd. The one who has the tools, the time, and the ability to love without end. His resignation is a shepherd-like attitude that I could get behind.

the mighty life list: under revision

2011-05-13T12:57:00.000-04:00

A long time ago, I set out to tackle some simple and some grand things in life that I’ve always wanted to accomplish. I even did some of them. It was so self-inspiring (crossing things off of a list happens to be one of my most-enjoyed mundane things) that I tackled the grand-daddy of the list: going back to school. That project is still in work and has basically debilitated me from even thinking about anything else on the list.

Today is the first day of summer hiatus that reminds me of my days off from church work: empty house, loosely structured to do list (run, write, eat), and no reason to wash my face. Apparently that was the perfect combination to remind me of all of the things that I still want to with my life. I don’t mean this melodramatically, rather that I want to find the simple things that bring me joy.

My list could use some revisions. There are a lot of things that I want to “see” on my current list. I still want to see them, but I have been rethinking the role that travel plays in my life and I haven’t quite settled on how that will change their presence on my list. Living far away from many of my nearest and dearest has been a challenging balancing act this year and I believe that some effort towards a better balance should be there. I’ve also grown a new set of theological and social commitments that need a place next to the things that bring me creative and relational joy. Lastly, I am swapping out some of the books that I thought I wanted to read for the books that I actually brought with me to Durham to read.

I’m not going to set out to make these revisions hastily, but pensively and slowly. The whole point of the list is to help me live more fully into myself and I am a slow and pensive one. I’m posting the list as it currently stands (confessedly, I made a few changes this morning). Suggestions, comments, reflections (but only the sincere and helpful kind, I’m sensitive) are welcome.

What would/do you have your list?

attend graduate school full time
bike the wineries along Katy Trail
solve mystery eye allergy problem
dance with a famous salsero, yet to be determined
be a kicka** MOH to my sister
Take pictures that friends would like on their walls
Have photo taken by noah kalina or scott schuman
Go on a backpacking/overnight hike
Make 100 soups from scratch

chicken noodle
Make Gazpacho ala Concha
minestrone
beef barley
potato leek

Go on a Silent Retreat
Write thank you letters to my favorite teachers
Grow, Can, and Eat Vegetables
Help someone realize their dreams
learn how to bike to work on a daily basis
Re-learn how to sew
Learn to Crochet or Knit
Take up Vermiculture composting
Mentor a young person
successfully manage finances Going the poor grad student route!
Read The Stranger in August and Franny and Zooey in October
find someone to share life with
learn to dance salsa on2 not great, but i can do it!
attend multi-day music festival
take a watercolor painting class
take a photography class
Write a book that more than just my mother will read
read all of the books on my shelves

Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao
I and Thou
Christ and Culture
Heart of Darkness
What we talk about when we talk about love
The Spare room

learn how to bake bread
eat ice cream for dinner at least once a year with Becky T if possible (2008, 2009, 2010)
Go paragliding
Live more sustainably
Read the Bible cover to cover
See U2 live as many times as possible

September 09 Chicago!
October 09 Las Vegas!
July 2011, St. Louis!

Get to know North Carolina
Go to an authentic bluegrass festival/concert in NC
Go camping in NC
Hike in the Appalachian Mountains
watch the bell tower bell player at Duke
cheer at a duke basketball game
Listen to all of that music in my itunes!
Throw parties to celebrate friend's accomplishments

Don't be a dip, bring a dip! Lindsay's going to MU!

See Chuck Berry in the Duck Room April 14, 2010, it was amazing and endearing!
Hike El Camino de Santiago
sail the Grecian Islands
Go on a sister trip every few years (other people can come too)

2009--Chicago U2!
2010--Cincinatti Flying Pig, Operation Bull Durham
2010--Operation Move me to Durham
2011--C&K visit NC

visit the MOMA in NYC
Check off the last 8 states on my list:

Maine
New Hampshire
Vermont
Connecticut
Rhode Island
North Dakota (?)
Hawaii
Alaska

hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back up
Snorkel the Great Barrier Reef
Visit the Holy Land
see the taj mahal
visit the pyramids
Drink a Mojito in Cuba
See the Northern Lights
hike to Machu Pichu
Make 1000 wonderful things

tshirt scarf
mojitos
painting on the wall
streusel topped banana bread cobbler http://bakingbites.com/2010/02/streusel-topped-banana-bread-cobbler/#more-4294
Godfather spaghetti sauce
stuffed artichokes for the Artichoke Party!
Red Pepper Stuffed Fougasse
Megan's present for Pavel
Lemon Curd Blueberry Ring
7-Cheese Mac-N-Cheese

ain't no shame in cryin'

2011-05-10T09:00:00.071-04:00

A girl hurried in moments before class started, claiming the seat next to mine. I knew her name, maybe she knew mine. It didn't matter because we didn't talk. The lecture was about John Calvin or the development of prophecy in ancient Israel. It didn't matter because she wasn't paying attention and neither was I.

She wrote furiously. Scribbling. Looping. Pausing dramatically. I couldn't read her words; I didn't dare peak over her protectively curled arm. The tears welling in the corner of her eyes spoke clear enough: all was not well. She tried to hide her tears, but I sat in their presence and wished I could cry, too.

--

I asked a professor after class if she had any insight on a feature of my past, present, and potential future that had come up in class. It's a challenging one, something that hits close to home, something that has built a highway to my tear ducts. As we talked, I cried. My heart burning for clarity, yearning for relief.

She offered a kleenex, a more private location, but I refused. I looked her in the eye and said, If everyone pretends like this is so easy, everyone is going to convince themselves they are the only one in pain.

--

Margery Kempe, a woman living in late medieval England, could not attend mass without wailing deeply and loudly, often to the chagrin of her fellow worshipers. Julian of Norwich said that Margery's free and passionate experience of tears was a sure sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit in her. To cry so freely must be a gift from God.

--

Someone needs to cry publicly. Someone needs to remind their lecturemates, officemates, classmates, and cubemates that there ain't no shame in cryin', in speaking the truth emotionally and vividly into the present, in being true to the joys and the sorrows. Whether you can grasp on to Julian's belief that God gifts these free tears, or simply believe it is a human giftedness, the powerful presence of raw sorrow grips each of us, ripping us away from our stolid wanderings, awakening us to the depth of human emotion.

--

After a particularly emotional morning prayer, I put my arm around a friend and said, You may want to hit the bathroom before you go to class.

She looked at me a little startled and a little horrified, asking after her running mascara and subsequent cat eyes.

They are beautiful and truthful, I told her, but maybe not your desired aesthetic.

--

Tears are beautiful and truthful. Crystal clear. Summoned without warning, always with cause. In each tear, there is hope for a cleansing of all things: that water will flow from rocks and and joy will come from sorrow.

--

This post was written as a part of a friendly synchroblog. Hop on over to these other blogs to enjoy the writing and art others.

i write to be rid of things, pince caspeen
m, shame shame
nightsbrightdays, Waiting for Twelve
Wordshepherd, The Wax and the Wings

debt of lament

2011-04-12T09:00:00.010-04:00

Senseless tragedy strikes us regardless of our careful avoidance tactics. We might bubble wrap hotel rooms to protect our toddling child. We might practice a compulsive prayer ritual before boarding an airplane. We might wear our seat belts and look twice before crossing the road.

Tragedy strikes anyway. The earth shakes. The kings hold their thrones with weapons and war. Cars drive by.

Tragedy strikes anyway. And when it strikes, we are left wallowing in the senselessness of it all, wondering what to say or how to act or who might have the words that will put the pieces back together.

A week after my brother died, I got out of bed, put my clothes on, got into a car with my sister and marched onto a dewy practice field, tooting my borrowed and banged-up mellophone. I felt dented and holey like the instrument, but I looked like every other kid. Smiling, marching, counting my steps.

As time progressed, the world began to insist more fervently that I behave and feel like any other 15 year-old: only slightly emotionally frenetic, like sparkles on a floppy 70s flower. The demand to be as any other harrowed at my already withered, exhausted soul. In my small world, I was alone in a club of survivors of senseless tragedy. For many years in my teenaged life, I didn't know anyone else who knew the loss of the person who was more irritating than fingernails on a chalkboard and funnier than any TGIF sitcom. Perhaps my sister was in the club, but I think she found our brother more endearing and less irksome. Her love for my brother seemed purer, less muddled-up than mine. The fact is I felt alone enough that I was alone, left to make sense of the pain, left to make my outsides resemble my insides without taking to physical self-violence.

Enough time has passed that I know I am not alone anymore. I stare into the world today, into the eyes of my classmates, my friends, my neighbors, and strangers. I see a people trying to make their outsides match their insides. Our hearts burn at the senselessness of the world, but we don't talk about it. We don't rend our garments and throw dust on our heads. We get up and march on dewy fields, smiling, blinking back the waves of emotion in the corner of our eyes.

All our words are written down in chalk

Out in the rain on the sidewalk

If all our heartaches were in a stack

They'd go all the way up to heaven and back

We don't know all the trouble we're in

We don't know how to get home again

Jesus come and save us from our sin

--Buddy and Julie Miller, Chalk

This post is written as a contribution to a friendly synchroblog. Please check out the writing and art of my fellow bloggers.

iwritetoberidofthings, my baby, the earth

m, debt we debtors

muddleddreamer, Indebted
Nightsbrightdays, Debt, n
Wordshepherd, What do I Owe You?

sing on, michael bolton

2011-04-01T09:00:00.021-04:00

I went to a small liberal arts college in that sat between a quaint white-washed town and a corn field. It was tiny by most standards. To this day, I can probably look at a picture of most of my classmates and tell you something about them. Even if I don't know their names, I know what department they were in or the types of people that they hung out with or where they sat in the cafeteria. Everyone knew everyone and everyone was in people's business. It was suffocating and exhausting, endearing and welcoming, depending on your personality, disposition, and ability to withstand silent Midwestern criticism.

As the beast of our human nature would have it, there was a group of people that was deeply alienated from the caste system of our school. They were the gays, the jocks who failed to participate in jock-stereotypes, the physically disabled, and the socially awkward. Some were able to hide their alienation while they pretended to fit into the system. Others were not so crafty--either out of indifference or inability to hide. Those who could not hide earned nicknames, ridicule, and scorn from their supposed Christian brothers and sisters.

One such soul was a man I remember only by his nickname. He was quirky, unshaven and unkempt. His shirts managed to tuck themselves in at weird angles and un-tuck themselves in unbecoming ways. But it wasn't his appearance that brought him attention, everyone is slightly unkempt in college. Rather, it was his uncanny ability to deliver a soundtrack to every moment of life. He sang, whistled, and hummed everywhere he went regardless of what was going on around him. For this, he earned the nickname: Michael Bolton.

He loved church hymns, but his repertoire was as undiscriminating as his choice of practice room. He harmonized on the way to class, on the sidewalk, at the mailboxes, and while sitting in class. He often caroused his tablemates to join him in a dining room serenade, annoying anyone in a five table radius and earning the scorn of many. His joy for music was uncontainable and irritating.

I think of Michael Bolton often these days. I climb on my bike and often a song leaps into my head. It often insists that I sing and whistle until I arrive home. I can't keep the song inside of me, containment seems silly, futile, and perhaps even damaging to my inner-choir. As an immature wandering college student, I didn't understand Michael Bolton's need to continually sing, to recklessly abandon social norms to declare a melody to the world. Today, there is a small chance that I get it.

The world needs a song. My neighbors need my roommate to sing when she is taking the trash out. My schoolmates and fellow travelers need me to sing while I am on my bike. The song needs to be let out of its cage. We need the surprise of a voice, a whistle, and a hum to call us out of our slumber, complacency, our inattentive wanderings so that we might pay attention to the pain and the beauty of every moment in every person.

--

This post is written as a contribution to a friendly synchroblog. Please check out the writing and art of my fellow bloggers.

iwritetoberidofthings, i play music at bars sometimes
Nightsbrightdays, Music Ascending
Wordshepherd, Hail, Music

feed me, seymour!

2011-03-18T10:33:00.001-04:00

When I was in college, I read a little book called Fast Food Nation. I read it in bed at night while my roommate finished her musicology homework. This was a mistake of massive proportions. Consequences included food-related nightmares, bedtime nausea, and a roommate that thought I was insane.

No one likes to have nightmares about food.

The long-term effects of reading Fast Food Nation at nighttime is that I have no desire whatsoever to read/watch/consider any contemporary iteration of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Food, Inc.? No, thanks. Omnivore's Dilemma? I'm sure it's thoroughly informative, but I have nightmares enough without information. Informing my food nightmares would be like Seymour feeding his man-eating plant.

Even still, reading Fast Food Nation is likely the most life-changing non-fiction book I've read that had nothing to do with Jesus. It didn't just give me nightmares, it changed the way I go to the grocery store. It taught me to think critically about what I put into my mouth. It challenged me to eat with higher standards, to see food beyond its utilitarian nourishment of my body.

If you haven't read such a book, get on it. Or I might give into Audrey II's demands.

Okay, maybe not.

--

This post is written as a contribution to a friendly synchroblog. Please check out the writing and art of my fellow bloggers.

adventuresofalisha, Eat, Bake, Love
iwritetoberidofthings, the bad bag of cuties
M, Food
muddleddreamer, They don't call it the big white dress for nothing
Nightsbrightdays, Fish Food
Wordshepherd, The Meat of the Hunt

cleaning house

2011-03-06T09:00:00.002-05:00

Sometimes, I get annoyed with other people when I am tired. More often than not, I get annoyed with myself.

Why can't I pick up after myself?
Why can't I just get my work done and stop procrastinating?
Why can't I stop eating chocolate?
Why can't I get out of bed?
Why can't I put together better sentences?
Why can't I just get it together?

Yes, I am hard on myself. My inner dialogue contains 900% more curse words than my verbal speech. Sometimes I forget that people can't hear all of my cursing and I'm convinced they all think I have a dirty mouth. Sometimes, I believe that other people are asking those questions about me to themselves and snicker at the inevitable conclusion: big, fat failure.

On my better days, I convince myself out of the negativity and go on about my cursing and working and get a few things done on my list. On my best days, I convince myself into actually addressing the real problem at hand: I am not perfect and despite all of my negative self-talk, I will not be perfect. There's no use trying to convince myself through negativity than perfection is possible.

I've been living in some of my less-than better days and need to clean house and mouth and mind. I want to spend more time breathing in the joy of the Lord and less time breathing in the muck of my own creation. I've got some ideas of Lenten purges in my future, but I am curious about your methods of cleaning house, heart, and mind.

What do you do to make space for joy? How have you de-cluttered your emotional and spiritual landscape?

into the darkness

2011-03-05T09:07:00.002-05:00

If we’ve passed ways recently, you’ve likely noticed a hint of exasperation in my gait and whine in my voice. Life has filled itself with heavy reading, thick theological concepts, and inches and inches of writing. On top of it all, several weeks ago, I came to a dreadful realization. It was time to ask myself the question of all questions: why am I here?

It’s funny, in preparing to move to North Carolina and begin school that question was a frequent flier, passing the lips of friends and family, co-workers and strangers. I had seventeen different pat answers, catered to the audience and truthful to my intentions: to grow, to learn, to become more myself. Those answers are still true, but the specificity surrounding them has begged to be examined in greater detail.

The complex relationship of my faith to my life and to my career often confuses me. Sometimes it feels like they are so tightly bound to one another that only the most skilled of knitters could untangle the web. Crawling into that grisly web has been a dark and scary process.

Am I ready to see the idols I’ve made of career and job security? Am I ready to depend on my faith in discerning my future? Am I ready to open myself to the possibility that others might not like my career choices? Am I ready to risk relying on the care of God rather than my own capabilities?

In the simple act of speaking those questions aloud, I realized that while this task may be dark and painful, it serves to bring glory and light to God’s grace in my life. What could be better?

This post is part of a synchroblog with friends. Please read their posts!

Adventures with Alisha, From Darkness, Light
I Write to be Rid of Things, The Senior Scramble
M, Further
Muddled Dreamer, Synchroblogging in the Dark

Nightsbrightdays, Dark City

Wordshepherd, How Are You? I Am Fine.

get in shape, girl!*

2011-02-14T07:51:00.006-05:00

A friend recently pointed me towards a new column on a respected youth ministry site called "Muscular Christianity."

The author is a youth worker and fitness instructor. While these two things are not mutually exclusive from one another, they are not necessarily cohesive and candidates for conflation. Nevertheless, this author set about the task of creating a Christian ethic for physical fitness. According to the author, personal fitness is a matter of Christian obedience.

What are the grounds for such a claim? Jesus was fit. He writes, "There's absolutely no way a physically deficient man could've withstood the beating and the flogging He endured without passing out or dying prior to being hung on the cross." Christian fitness isn't about the person, it is a "kingdom enterprise." Exercising self-control over our bodies advertises the goodness of our faith and the Holy Spirit will give us power to do so.

While it is inarguable that there is an international crisis of overnutrition and obesity, I struggle to see how creating an ethic of working out and eating right will win hearts for the kingdom, even my own. Nevermind, we have no idea what Jesus looked like or that Jesus' divinity might have played a role in his ability to withstand torture.

This fusion of physical strength and prowess with spiritual fitness ignores the weakness metaphors throughout scripture and perpetuates the myth of the invincible Christian person. If one is only truly Christian if they are internally and externally perfect, muscular and invulnerable, a great number of us are in trouble.

I love to workout. I love to ride my bike. I love to run. They can be spiritual activities for me. They can even function as expressions of obedience to God. But it is not because Jesus was fit and it is not because I will proselytize with my body. It is because I am practicing stewardship and enjoyment of the body, metabolism, and capabilities that God has given me. Declaring the unfit (I cringe at the label!) to be disobedient places the societal paradigm of external perfection over top of the Christian paradigm for surrendering our lives to Christ.

Obedience is not a matter of working out and eating right. It is not a matter of reading the Bible every morning or doing the right thing every day. True obedience is setting aside my need to do the right thing in order to follow Christ. Guilt over cookies eaten and miles un-run is shed for joy in the Lord. All earthly standards of goodness are useless in the eyes of the Lord. This is my peace. It is forever changing and teaching me.

--

*The title for this post is swiped from one of my favorite obscure 1980s toy and exercise atrocities.

--

This post is part of a synchroblog with writing friends. As they post, I will link to their writing. Please take some time to read their work: Wordshepherd, i write to be rid of things, nightsbrightdays, alishasharayah.

tall people won't understand

2011-02-09T20:59:00.000-05:00

Every short person knows this scene:

The coffee mugs are on the top shelf in the cabinet. The supply is depleted and the few remaining are just out of arm's reach. You can just barely touch one cup with your fingertip. Ever so slightly you turn the mug, one fingertip's push at a time, until the handle turns to you. Then the cup is yours. Tea awaits.

I'm in that fingertip pushing moment. Frustrated. Stretched. Maybe even slightly in pain. I know (at least I think I know) that the cup will turn and the handle will appear, but in this moment, the handle is out of reach, out of grasp, beyond my comprehension. Relief is a thing for the foolish.

But I am foolish. And determined.

May you be foolish and determined, too.

the seduction of a lie

2011-02-07T13:18:00.000-05:00

After class, a friend looked at me earnestly and said, "I'm scared I would have joined them. I'm not just scared, I'm almost convinced that I would have."

The "them" to which he referred is the Nazis.

Certainly, my first reaction is to assure him that there is no way that he would have joined them. He is a smart guy, thoughtful and compassionate. Surely, if found in the throes of genocidal regime, he would have resisted their propaganda. Surely, I would resist such a thing.

Yet, I'm not entirely convinced of this surety in myself or in him. Not because I don't think that we aren't smart, thoughtful, and compassionate. Our positive traits are not in question here. Rather, it is our inabilities, our failings, our crimes against our conscience that concern me. Can we resist the seduction of half-truths? Can we discern the truth in world of lies?

Eve and Adam fell prey to their inability to discern between truth and lie. They relied on what seemed to be most immediately true, but was in fact, the eternal lie. Their failure to discern and trust truth narrates my own failure. This failure expels me from the garden, expels me from right relationship with God, expels me from right relationship with others. Avoiding my failure, seeking to placate it with a bandage emblazoned with religious symbols, is a profane declaration of the impotency of my will.

Truth declares my impotency against the seduction of the world. Truth acknowledges my failure to live according to my ethic. Truth regularly, daily, momentarily reminds me that I am in continual need of something beyond myself to empower the discernment of the truth so desperately needed in so many places.

And yet, truth's primary work is not to expose my failures, but to supersede them. This truth goes beyond adherence to the facts and rests in all-encompassing love, wrenching discipline, and arresting faithfulness. Truth overcomes my infatuation with immediacy and perfection and changes me. Truth, when trusted, reveals itself to be worthy of deeper and more faithful devotion. To seek truth is uproot lies from their bases and set forth a new pattern of living.

Perhaps my friend and I cannot be certain of what we would have done in a different era of tragic violence, but we are living in our own era of violence and lies in need of truthful, faithful action. Am I seeking truth with my mind, my heart, my hands, my debit card? Am I seeking truth with my time, my plans, my hopes?

Thy goodness is better than life

2011-01-21T12:06:00.000-05:00

"Thy goodness is better than life" does not just mean better than your house, than your food, than your work, than your reputation, than your honor, than your physical, artistic, and spiritual pleasures, than your wife or husband and children, but it means more than all that; it means that it is better than the one thing you still have when you have lost everything, better than your life. (...) Only the person who, in the darkness of guilt, of unfaithlessness, of enmity toward God, has felt himself or herself touched by the love which never ceases, which forgives everything and which points beyond all misery to the world of God, only such a person really knows what God's goodness means."

--Deitrich Bonhoeffer, "God's Loving Care and Human Suffering"
A sermon on Psalm 63:3

tiny people don't need scarves

2010-12-28T11:57:00.001-05:00

My three year-old cousin informed me this weekend that "Tiny people don't need scarves." When he told me, he used his "Matter of Fact" face where he rolls his eyes over to the right corners of the lids and and slightly cocked his jaw to the left.

Duh, people. Tiny people don't need scarves.

They don't have much of a neck to keep warm and fashion is not the concern of tiny people. Cowboy boots and train sets occupy the minds of tiny people. At least tiny people of the male variety. I think the female kind focus on princess power or something. Scarves are clearly a sign of lost perspective.

Being around a tiny person gives this not-so-tiny person some perspective on more than just scarves.

First of all, sentimentality is for suckers. After Christmas dinner, we watched a family video from Christmas 1984 in which The Cabbage Patch Dolls came to town. Watching my toddlerself argue with my family about my doll's name was hilarious to everyone over the age of three. The three year-old can't stand to watch it because it hits far too close to home. He has to argue with adult every day just to get a little extra playtime with the train set.

Second of all, words have lost their meaning. The tiny person in my family has a nasty habit of saying, "I don't like you" when he's not getting his way. Except that it rarely garners the reaction he desires. We laughed at him and said, "Too bad." And then he went to his room for time out. I wonder what would happen if I adopted his tactics with the not-so-tiny people in my life. Especially if I pronounced it like a tiny person, "I don wike you." Maybe if I furrowed my brow, they'd know I meant business.

Lastly, despite the tendency of in some Christian Christmas conversation, I think family is the focus of the holidays. In the incarnation of God in the Christchild, humanity was given a new meaning, a new hope, a realization of forgiveness and mercy. Tiny people bring new meaning, hope, and mercy into many families. When my cousin was born, our family was freshly grieving the loss of my grandmother--the most recent of many significant losses. Our losses weren't punctuated with hopeful happenings, but took on the character of a firing range, one after another after another. His arrival was the signpost of change (albeit, surprising and challenging to his parents). Family is a place where we experience grief, hope, anger, and joy in its most carnal forms. It's only natural that we celebrate the Incarnation of our Savior with our family.

Even those horrid pagan celebrations that drum up all the enthusiasm for the presents, pie, and jolly elving remind the observers that there is more to being human than food and stuff. We are beckoned home for the holidays, to be with faithful friends, to put aside our failures to be perfect (namely, in the form of a nose so bright) to stick a hand out to someone in need. The underlying current, despite its commercial wrappings, is the hope for new meaning and forgiveness. Sometimes the wrapping is distracting, but the tiny person in my life reminds me that mostly it's a vehicle to get me home.

Home for the holidays is so much more than a place, a theological idea, or a group of people. It is a scarf-less place where everyone is warm and free of fashionable concerns. When we are home, our tiny hearts are filled with hope, convinced that we are loved by someone much greater than us.

known sickness

2010-11-22T12:29:00.000-05:00

When I was a younger sort of girl, I frequented the camp circuit throughout the summer. If I was home for more than five consecutive days, my sanity became questionable. I loved adventure. I loved meeting the new. I scoffed at those who were homesick. I didn't need my mom or my safety blanket or the chirping of a certain kind of cricket in my windowsill. Homesickness is for the weak and wobbly.

October was difficult for my older sort of girl self. I spent a good part of every weekend praying for people somewhere else, dreaming about the memories they were making, the laughs that they were sharing, the joy they were creating. I distracted myself as best I could. I surrounded myself with laughter and food and beautiful sights and even some hefty homework assignments. But as much as I tried, I was plagued with the longing to laugh with someone who has also shared my tears, borne my exasperation, and held my hand when words failed. Laughter is magnified with it knows pain.

This longing feeling gnawed at me through every weekend and into the weeks in an unsettling way. I was happy in my new home. I was thankful for the blessings of house, and school, and work, and friends. I didn't want to return home--home is full of its own challenges and its own problems. I wasn't sick for home. But I was sick.

I was sick to be known.

Known-sickness is the heartbreak I feel when I long to be with someone who just knows. It isn't the need to be in a certain place, but is the need to say four words (like, "remember loud laugh boy...") and receive a perceptive nod in return. The void can happen anywhere--your hometown, your college dorm, your new home. Its struck me in places I've lived for ages in moments of acute loneliness.

Feeling unknown tears at my inner self. I question if I am knowable, if I am worthy to be known, if I am inaccessible to my friends. I believe that it is known-sickness that drives us to unhealthy relationships and excessive hours in darkened rooms. If I can't be fully known, I want to maintain a façade of known-ness or give up trying.

I don't have a cure or remedy for known-sickness. It comes and goes in my life. This time, it eased with an acknowledgment of its existence, explaining it to those who know me and those who don't, and in creating new definition of known. Knowing me is not understanding the abyss of my emotional landscape. Knowing me, knowing you, is acknowledging that we probably won't journey through all things together, but we can love one another anyway: acknowledging the limitations of knowing, embracing what we do know, and creating a new known together.

don't make me leave my tacos

2010-11-11T12:34:00.001-05:00

A disclaimer: this post is not about one of my catastrophically hilarious adventures on a bike. I haven't climbed on yet today, so the day still has potential.

I find it terribly easy to get focused in life. I want the perfect handouts for a presentation. I want to finish writing this essay and I want to edit it six times. I want to research all of the best Mexican restaurants in Durham and eat at all of them. If I want it, I give you my half-hearted blessings to attempt to convince me that I don't. I'm not changing my mind and I will convince you that it is in your best interest to want it for me, too. And then I am going to do it.

There are million and ten unhealthy points to this focused behavior. Potentially, there are an equal share of healthy ones. The point isn't really the health or unhealth of focused behavior, but that it exists in me and I can't get rid of it. Deep within the way I am wired is the potential to make people feel like they are interrupting my life's important work. This is a problem.

It has become especially problematic in my life because I recently moved away from a horde of solid and amazing friendships. They are friendships that are meaningful and important and that I hope to nurture, except that there are papers, Mexican restaurant scavenger hunts, and new friendships in need of attention. I don't function well with divided focus.

With this in mind, I have been pondering what it means to have a goal with the capacity to be interrupted. That is, the goal is designed to be flexible and malleable enough that it can be interrupted by a friend's goal or need, a Vietnamese food excursion, or bicycle catastrophe.

What does it mean to anticipate others' needs and life without anticipating the actual content of their needs or the change that life brings? How can I build within me a capacity to be interrupted, an ability to stop, listen, and respond even if my tacos are getting cold?

Am I patient enough? Am I generous enough? Am I loving enough?

I can try. I can try.

some pretzels aren't very tasty

2010-11-10T18:26:00.002-05:00

This blog is quickly devolving into a "Things that Happen on Bike when Alaina is on it" Blog. Let's face it, most of my life is spent in lecture halls and libraries. The most interesting things happen when I am getting between my home and school. Until the clamoring for posts on the Christian exercise of power becomes too loud to ignore, I'll stick with the humorous end of things.

Today was going to be just another day on the bike. Except that somewhere between home and school, I hit a bump. This bump caused my newly purchased bike headlight to bounce out of the pocket of my backpack (how does this happen?!) and onto the street. I quickly slowed, turned around, and reached to grab the light from the ground. Then, my bike collapsed on me. In the absence of an image (Praise GOD!), let's settle for a word picture: I became body-bike pretzel.

In case you are worried for my safety, I have half a brain and waited until the cars passed to do anything about any of it. I also turned my face towards the houses so that in the off chance that one of the 50 people I know in this town happened to pass me on the road in that moment, there would be no possibility of recognizing me. Priorities, people.

If all that wasn't enough, a bolt/screw/fastening device loosened and, when I hit that bump, my handlebars rotated about 75º. While not humiliating, this poses a few safety concerns, such as, I can't reach my brakes. Don't worry, a little Allen Wrench action saved the day.

True confessions: I learned, just today, that those little L-shaped metal pieces that you use to put together IKEA furniture are called Allen Wrenches. Who knew?

it makes me want to line dance

2010-11-09T09:41:00.001-05:00

Fall has finally come.

It is gorgeous...

...and beautiful

And it makes me want to line dance?

puttering toward beauty

2010-11-07T21:38:00.001-05:00

I puttered behind two dear old friends on our hike. There were moments and images to capture with the camera. The peace of the forest reeled me into its silence. As I puttered, I saw this:

Words from the past haunted me. They made me smile.

Life is no longer a collection of all-too-short walks shared with others, but an opportunity to marvel at the beauty created in and around each person who travels beside me for a moment.

bike riding isn't always glamourous

2010-11-03T18:31:00.000-04:00

I started taking a new route home from school on my bike. It's less trafficky, the hills are easier, and the view is especially beautiful.

As I peddle up the residential streets on this route, I bike towards the middle of the lane. I'm rather petrified that a car driver turning onto the street won't see me if I bike too far to the right. The street is wide, so I'm not preventing cars from passing me.

Today, my theory proved correct. A driver saw me coming towards the intersection, waited for me to pass, and then began to take her turn. It was all fine and good, except that there was a car behind me that she failed to notice. The second car driver honked but the turning car continued to turn. The honking continued and I peddled faster thinking that I had done something terribly wrong. The two cars drove parallel to one another as I peddled in front of them praying they would resolve their dispute before reaching me.

I nearly fell off my bike in fear.

Not only would that have been painful, but incredibly awkward. You see, as I climbed onto my bike minutes before, I suffered the embarrassment of a hem-to-zipper seam split in my skirt. I determined that if I didn't get up off of my bike seat, no one would know. No standing to peddle up hills or to move faster.

The drivers figured it out and they zoomed past me. I didn't have to reveal my seam split. Embarrassment averted.

Of course, when I reached the only four-way stop of the route, I fumbled on my peddles and held up traffic for a good ten-seconds.

Bike riding keeps me humble.

to be human

2010-10-26T17:34:00.001-04:00

A lot of my days are spent contemplating God and what it means to be human. I could bore you at length about both topics and muck it up a lot, but I won't. I get bored with all of the introspection myself from time to time. Sometimes we just need to revel in what it means to be human, created by God.

I mean, check out all of the crazy stuff our bodies can do: (via dooce)

itchy and flaky

2010-10-24T10:41:00.001-04:00

I have a confession to make. It's really about nothing I've done, but it's certainly not dinner conversation, so confession it is.

I have an itchy and flaky scalp.

I know, gross.

I've had it since I was in junior high and mostly it's managed. Except for when the seasons change and when I am totally stressed out. I get self-conscious about it when I wear black. I constantly check my shoulders for signs of distress. I've totally convinced myself that everyone already knows this about me. They have seen the remnants of my scalp all over my shoulders and have shuddered silently to themselves. They spare me the embarrassment of telling me that a snowstorm hit my scapula to keep social norms in tact.

Several weeks ago, my Old Testament survey course dug into the Levitical purity laws. At first glance, the laws seem to cover the gamut of sensible to bizarre to unnecessarily restrictive. Perhaps they seemed that way to the Israelites, too. Some of the laws deal specifically with skin disorders or leprosy. The sight of them was surely disturbing, more disturbing than a few scalp flakes.

It was proposed that perhaps these purity laws were a means of establishing that humanity is different from God. Humans die and God does not. Skin disorders were a powerful visible reminder that humanity is subject to death. Death and its signs (both physical and spiritual) should not enter the holy presence of God.

I don't know if dandruff would have been considered a form of leprosy. If it were, without the glories of modern medicine, I would have been impure all of the time. I suppose there is a painful truth to that. It is a truth that when explored opens the deep cavities of impurity in my heart and my mind, those that are unseen on my scapula.

I can manage the impurity of my scalp with a bottle of expensive shampoo, but the purity of my heart and my mind presents a formidable challenge. I can't scrub my heart, let the suds rest there for five minutes, rinse and go about my day anger-free, pain-free, pride-free, shame-free. My heart flakes up. It is flaked up. Purity, holiness, must come from beyond me.

Praise God that it does.

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. Colossians 1:21-22

spider bite dreams

2010-10-18T09:42:00.000-04:00

Over the weekend, I had an extremely vivid dream in which I woke up to discover that a small spider bite on my leg (that I had in real life, not only in subconscious dreams) had festered and grown severely problematic. The dream was so vivid that when I actually woke up, I had to check my leg about twenty times to ensure that the bite hadn't actually grown stiff red and blue veins and that I wasn't in need of an emergency room visit. It was so vivid that when the image of the festered bite comes into my mind's eye, and it does so often, it makes me shudder and squirm.

I've had my fair share of survival dreams and epic dreams featuring strange people of the past, but few of these dreams have haunted me as this spider bite has haunted me. I can't get it out of my head. It is always there, at the tip of my thoughts, waiting to excised from my leg. I even googled (and stared at) disgusting images of real spider bites to convince myself that it was just a dream, that my dream bite was nothing like an actual infected and festered bite. No matter what I've done, I can't get it out of my mind.

I can't help but wonder at what it means. I can't help but wonder if there is something festering in my life. Something that is primed for excision. Something that began inconsequentially and without my awareness and has quickly become dangerous and threatening to my very being.

I have to admit, I'm a little scared.

Also, grossed out. Spider bite images are nasty.

the things that are

2010-09-15T18:04:00.000-04:00

Moments that surprise us, that take us off guard, are almost impossible to remember.

Maybe it is that we don't really try to remember less surprising moments. Maybe it's that our brain can't move quickly enough to create a reference point for all of the disarmingly new information that comes with surprise.

Sometimes we want to remember and we forget. Other times we don't want to forget and can't remember. And in yet another separate category are the things we cannot wish to remember or forget. They mar our thinking with in a way that is unsettling or painful but that is changing and significant. They are the things that are. Let me explain.

--

Yesterday, I went for a run with a friend in the early hours of the morning. We ran on a public trail, a nice flat rails-to-trails project that winds through Durham neighborhoods. No traffic, few people, lots of quiet.

On our return route, there was some distinct rustling in the brush. My running partner was being very observant, looking back multiple times to check out the noise. His attention gave me permission not to worry about it. In retrospect, this was not a very wise decision.

Suddenly, my running partner shoved me. Hard. I don't really like to be startled, so I screamed. By the time I realized there was an enraged pit bull charging us from behind, my running partner was facing off with the dog.

I don't remember how long it took for the dog to go away. I don't remember where the dog went. I don't remember. I do remember how fast my heart was beating and that the last mile of our run was much quicker than the previous. I remember feeling thankful that I wasn't alone and that my running partner had the somewhat random knowledge of how to get a dog to back down.

I don't necessarily want to remember the dog charging us or snarling at us, but I don't want to forget it either. There is value in knowing the fear of gnashing teeth. There is value in knowing my life and limbs are not my own. There is value in feeling reliant on the knowledge, strength, or protection of another.

To forget the snarling scary dog is to forget the lessons he taught me. I don't want to remember him, but I don't want to forget him either. He is a memory that is.

a prayer for the day

2010-09-13T11:45:00.001-04:00

God be in my head and in my understanding.
God be in mine eyes and in my looking.
God be in my mouth and in my speaking.
God be in my heart and in my thinking.
God be at my end and in my departing.

--John Rutter, 'God Be in My Head'

the temptation to cry

2010-09-08T21:50:00.000-04:00

I sat at my dining room table for several hours this evening. I should still be there, but my fingers are asking me for some exercise, as if five hours of lecture note pecking wasn't actually exercise.

As I sat there, reading page after page on cultural change, my life began to change with a series of minor interruptions. A phone call from my sister reminded me how this newly created distance disables me from helping her with the many things on her plate. A series of text messages from a beloved former coworker that reminded me that my church home is no longer my weekly resting place (or my daily work mill). Unanswered phone calls to friends leading to trailing voice messages about nothing in particular made me wonder why I'd called in the first place.

I sat at my table and the temptation to cry set in on my lower lids.

My heart is filled with the joy of new friendship and beginnings and even a new view of bike riding. But somehow it is simultaneously heartbroken that I won't get a hug from my dearest friends tomorrow night and I won't cook a meal with my sister this weekend. It seems the vastness of this opportunity to learn and grow (and read my brains out) is juxtaposed with an deeply ambiguous loss. It is a loss not rooted in death, but in the uprooting of life and the withering of many once-vitalizing roots.

The temptation to cry, to mourn, to acknowledge my sorrow was quickly set aside. Not only did I remind myself that I still had many pages to go, but I remembered the root that really matters has refused upheaval more times than I can count. Though I've lost many roots, the one of greatest strength remains.

are you in or are you out?

2010-08-31T14:49:00.000-04:00

Today, I sat in Duke Chapel (it's a grand sight) and listened to Dean Richard Hays share a homily on a gospel lesson I can't remember. I can't remember it because I was lost in an intense and nearly impenetrable daydream. It wasn't that I wasn't paying attention, I was merely lost in applying his words to an image that I'd left for the dust on the shelves of my mind.

Hays asked the listening crowd, "Are you in or are you out?" And with his question, I was gone. The image of a fork in the road appeared, the same fork that I had seen over ten years ago on a late night in Spain.

Just prior to leaving for Spain, I had a crisis of faith during which I decided that I didn't have any use for a god that would let my brother die and leave me to sweep up the pieces of my family. I was out of the church and off to Spain.

My time in Spain was rudderless. When I arrived, I had no language to express myself, no mother to force me to church, and no friends with whom to vent about my mother. This changed over the course of my time there, but my early months were deeply introspective and lonely. I survived on sheer stubbornness and some of the best food I'd ever tasted. All that time in my head stirred a series of existential questions that most people wait to ask until they are in college or later or never.

I was lying in my darkened room one night waiting to fall asleep when those questions began shoved their way into my thoughts. I wondered, like many 17 year-old girls, what I was going to be when I was older and what I was going to do for fun. And then the fork in the road appeared. My mind traveled through the two options before me. To follow Christ down the path of righteousness or to follow my own seemingly brilliant thoughts and ways down the other road. Neither path was very appealing. Neither screamed "Walk this way" like Steven Tyler is so apt to do. I was smart enough to know that following Christ meant suffering and following myself meant falling on my face.

I didn't choose a path or answer Hays' question that night. I somehow flipped onto my side and fell asleep. But the image haunted me for days and months and ultimately (in combination with several other sleepless nights and weighty conversations) led to my reaffirmation of faith in Christ. Today the image is no longer frightening and dismal, but an encouragement that I am not finished here. I am in, on Christ's path, struggling and surviving on his sheer stubbornness and the best food I've ever tasted.

Though, somehow, his stubbornness is considered a virtue.

new priorities

2010-08-26T20:53:00.000-04:00

In a conversation with a dear friend prior to leaving St. Louis, we talked about how in setting a new life in Durham I would have a chance to set new priorities. I thought about it idyllically and romantically as I was only equipped to do at that point. I couldn't really imagine the ways that my life would change prior to setting up camp.

Now I am here, making the decisions about what to do and what not to do. Sometimes it is clear. Sometimes it isn't.

I parred down my google reader subscriptions by more than half.

I have committed to no computer/television in bed.

I am eating more vegetarian, though not completely.

I am forcing myself to drive less (or Duke is through it's limited parking... let's call this a conscious personal decision for our purposes here.) and learn how to bike. Thanks to a very neighborly neighbor's biking tips, I might actually make it up a hill next time.

And there we have it. New priorities. I am trying to make order of all the swirls and curly cues that are flying around my brain.

It is shaping up to be a pretty scary semester of core classes according to the curriculum determined by the school and core classes according to things that make my core being all excited.

everyone's a sweetheart

2010-08-24T13:17:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite things about living in the south is that everyone is a sweetheart.

Checking out at Walmart? You're a sweetheart.
At a business office filling out piles of boring paperwork? You're a sweetheart.
Signing insurance papers? Thanks, honey.

This makes me dread the DMV slightly less.

perhaps I will be walking

2010-08-23T16:57:00.002-04:00

Due to the cost of parking, the lack of parking, and the close proximity of school to home, I made the idealistic decision to bike to school.

Today, I biked the route to school and nearly died.

Hills.

Oops, got lost.

Tires not actually filled, despite several attempts.

Huuuuuuumidity.

Feeling more out of breath than when I run up hills, much bigger hills.

Sweat so profuse I was too embarrassed to walk into the employment office to fill out some paperwork. (It was paperwork enough to line my entire way back home, I believe.)

It took me an hour to work up the courage to bike home.

And then, as if the whole incident were a story about a bad day, it rained.

oh, why hello there

2010-08-22T16:07:00.001-04:00

There are a million things about transitioning to a new part of the country, a new style of making ends meet, a new home, a new grocery store routine, a new commute (and way of commuting) that I could tell you about for paragraphs on end.

Truthfully, the story can be told in two words: I've moved.

It's new and different and sometimes the roads in Durham make my head ache.

Mostly, it's great. The hipstery graduate students dress nicer than I do. My neighborhood is sometimes home to loud thumpy music. My roommates are sisters and that are funny and kind.

I got a very part-time job working in an office that plans conferences and provides resources to the congregation and denomination. One of these conferences will feature N.T. Wright as the keynote speaker. This means absolutely nothing to most of you, but to others it means geeky fangirl squeals. Okay, maybe no squealing.

Just widened-eye glimmering.

Which describes most of my time here thus far.

cooking with my sister

2010-07-08T12:07:00.000-04:00

Cooking with my sister is one of my favorite things to do in the whole wide world.

That statement is particularly funny if you ever sat in the same room with us during the awkward angsty 13-23 years. It's amazing neither of us went bald with all of that hair pulling.

Over the past few years, our mutual affection for all things food has grown and has given us a powerful shared catharsis. We've been dreading my upcoming move particularly for the loss of family dinners complete with drawn-out planning sessions, extensive email threads, and post-dinner comas. In an effort to curb our sister-food-fun withdrawal, we've taken up a sisterly food blog.

You can follow our kitchen antics at A Recipe for Sisterhood.

variations on a list

2010-06-21T19:32:00.002-04:00

Things I WANT to do before I move

Eat ice cream for dinner at Ted Drewes
Eat at Crown Candy Kitchen
Eat sushi with my favorite sushi buddies (notice a theme?)
Finish well in my congregational ministry. I actually feel really good about it most days. Surprising and welcome.
Master the art of homemade bread in 5 minutes a day.
Make grilled pizza with said homemade bread dough.
... There are more, but I can't think of them right now...

Things I HAVE to do before I move:

Pack (Is that obvious? Oh, well. Still gotta do it.)
Get a tetanus shot. No, I'm not excited.
Get my teeth cleaned. Still not excited.
Review new insurance options.
Figure out tax issues because being a church worker for eight months and poor graduate student for the other four has to spell COMPLICATED in tax code. Or at least in my brain.
Say goodbye

Things that got scratched of the to-dos before I move list:

Read The Infinite Jest. I gave up. I just did.
Maintaining a clean closet and car

Clearly, it's a summer of mixed emotions and activities.

where life is leading

2010-05-25T11:34:00.003-04:00

Last week, I met my new life. For a first date, it was pretty stellar. New life and I had emailed and even briefly talked on the phone, and I felt fairly confident about our future successes. Yet nothing matches the intensity of getting on an airplane and staring at a a baggage carousel knowing that new life is standing outside of the door, waiting to meet you, loudly and inescapably.

We only spent a few short days together. We wandered around together a lot, in and out of buildings, eating meals, listening to each other, sharing truths about any life, and getting excited about the impending time when "new life" is just plain life. I stared off into space more than normal and wondered if new life will like me as much as I am liking it.

I was overwhelmed by the clear blessing new life has set out for me. New life has roommates full of zest and passion. New life has libraries galore. New life has short distances between home and school and work and play. New life is exciting, different, and humid (then again, so is current life. Sigh.).

New life has some serious challenges and does not set out to be a cake walk. I'm not entirely convinced that I deserve new life, but I've never been convinced that I deserve current life either. (Deserving is tricky word from the roots. I suppose I should I avoid it.) I bought a t-shirt declaring my entrance into new life, but when I put it on, it scared me. I never actually imagined new life actually happening. I imagined multiple others, but not this one. This one was a pipe dream, but now it isn't. It's real, happening in a few short weeks.

Deep breaths and prayer are my friends.

how to throw an artichoke party

2010-05-24T11:04:00.005-04:00

I am certain, beyond a doubt, that you have been dying to throw an artichoke party. So anxious to do so, in fact, you have been lying awake in bed pondering the potential awesomeness of such a themed party.

Have no fear. I have all the party-planning details RIGHT HERE.

Step 1 Have awesome friends. Their awesomeness can been enhanced if you prime them with several years of inane themed parties (think: Caribbean Christmas! Godfather Movie Marathons! Port Party!).

Step 2 Develop a reputation as a reliably good cook. Where there is food, friends will come.

Step 3 Don't over plan. Truly insane ideas should come out of left-field and at the last minute so no one will have a chance to question the insanity.

Step 4 Send out crazy instructions. FriendAmie was responsible for ours:

Please bring the following:

your favorite fact about artichokes - it will be required for entrance
a dish that somehow involves artichokes and is delicious
at least one play on word joke involving artichokes. please wait for the appropriate time to share.
an artichoke inspired outfit (optional)

Please do not bring the following:

disdain for themed parties. you should know by now that if you are friends with Alaina, you have to embrace themed events.

Step 5 Have truly great friends that will decorate cakes with artichoke effigies:

Yes, that is an artichoke cake. Actually it was a delicious white cake filled with KUMQUAT icing!

Step 6 Have hilarious friends that will drive around town to find rare Italian artichoke liquor.

For the record, it was disgusting. But the stuffed artichokes in the background were pretty tasty.

Step 7 Enjoy all of the stupidity and fun with those great friends. (Our hosts rigged up a backyard screen and projector where we watched The Wedding Singer. There weren't any artichoke references, but you can't beat root beer floats on a late spring night accompanied by the 80s best attempts at music and Adam Sandler.)

We had such a good time laughing about artichokes that we are dreaming up our next odd food tribute party. Ideas? Best suggestion wins an opened bottle of Cynar!

body politics on conflict

2010-05-12T10:49:00.001-04:00

To be human is to have differences; to be human wholesomely is to process those differences, not by building up conflicting power claims but by reconciling dialogue.

--John Howard Yoder, Body Politics

connecting to-dos with my favorite people

2010-05-11T10:30:00.003-04:00

As a kid, I wasn't a social butterfly, I was a library slug complete with large wire-rimmed glasses and an overbite. Today, my family often chides me, lovingly, because I am always off to do something ELSE with someone ELSE. Also, thanks to several years of painful orthodontic work and the glory of contacts, the wire rims and overbite have disappeared.

It isn't that my friendships and social commitments are shallow. They are diverse. I have friends that have so many unique talents and interests and who have helped me in very strange ways. As in they have friends who have friends who know someone who can connect me to the person who has that rare thing that I need--TODAY. Or they like random cello players who sing about coal mines, TOO!

Sometimes, I feel stretched thin. I can't be with every person that I care about. I can't invest the time and energy that I want or I just fall exhausted into bed because I'm sleep deprived and fun-drunk. Other times, I fall into bed because there is a loneliness, a vacancy of steadiness and commitment to regularity in my life. Avoiding the dangerous pendulum swing is harder than I'd like to admit.

Preparing for a major life change has stirred reflection on the important people and priorities in my life. I am still investing in the people who have blessed me and that I can bless, but differently. I am connecting names to the things that I want to do in life. That fun mighty life list business is not just about me--it is about sharing life fully with those that I love.

high speed car chases

2010-05-07T13:20:00.003-04:00

On Wednesday, I happened to catch a high speed car chase LIVE ON TEEVEE. It was all kinds of simultaneous scariness and, let's face it, HILARITY. As we watched, enthralled at the maneuvering, laughing at the school bus that blocked the guy on the street for a good long while (also concerned because AHHHH!! Kids on bus? Psychopath behind the wheel? I'm pretty sure meth labs are safer.), and the news announcer narrating every lane change and car passed.

The whole scene conjured up all of my white bronco memories (did you know that if you google "white bronco," the OJ Simpson murder case is the first hit?) from the mid-nineties.

And, yes, that is where I am going.

I was in Junior High throughout the saga. I watched the Dateline-esque specials and have vague memories of cursing the trial coverage for getting in the way of my after school syndicated television addiction. Yet my most vivid memories are attached to the day of the verdict.

Do you know where you were? Because I do.

I was in eighth grade and we ran the mile on the track early in the day. Coach Warren quizzed us as we passed. "What do you think? Guilty? Not guilty?" I think we were even divided up into heats according to our opinions on the jury's impending decision. Later, we watched the jury pass down its decision in English class. I know we weren't the only class to watch the decision because I remember the groans coming from the hallway. I had to ask what acquitted meant. The word is forever linked with white broncos and black gloves in my mind.

The adults were more intrigued, more interested in the drama than we were, I believe. I was only interested because everyone made it seem like I should be. I didn't know the first thing about OJ Simpson before he ran from the police (I am a girl who happened to not care one ounce about anything athletic unless the consumption overly-processed food-like items was involved.). I look back on those memories, the hysteria, the intrigue and the intense interest and I have to cringe. It's absurd. We took a tragedy and made it into a soap opera. Meanwhile, the Rwandan people were still mopping up the mess of the 800,000 murders that happened the same year that Nicole Brown died. I don't remember anyone talking about it. We certainly didn't stop class and turn on the news to stay updated.

Reflecting on my OJ Simpson murder trial experience makes me ponder what messages I convey to my youth when our conversation wanders into celebrity gossip. Will they remember me as the person who divided them into groups of Team Angelina and Team Jennifer (do I have to tell you that I've never done this, or is that clear?)? Am I adequately communicating the gravity of the situation in Sudan or with human-trafficking or with the lack of clean water in so many places in the world?

It is a question worth consideration.

hey mister deejay

2010-05-05T14:02:00.003-04:00

My sister and I work with middle school students from entirely different populations. She works with urban, mostly minority, at-risk youth. I work with suburban, mostly caucasian, advantaged youth. I volunteer with her program once a week and I have a lot of deep respect for the work she does. Especially on the day that I cried after volunteering. She's got a hard job.

The funny thing is that despite the differences in our students, they have a lot in common. They often like the same movies, celebrities, and music. Our students are deeply sensitive about how they are treated, about their home lives, and are still working out how to express their frustrations appropriately.

This weekend, our cousin asked us if our kids liked Justin Bieber. We were on a long roadtrip and a copy of Rolling Stone with a short note about Mr. Pop Star of the Moment was floating around the car. My sister groaned knowingly. They adore him, can't stop talking about, dancing to his music, gushing about how adorable he is.

I laughed. The last time someone brought up Justin Bieber in a conversation with my youth, I think they got pelted with bibles. Those youth would have nothing to do with him, even the ones that you would guess would be totally into the teenybopper trend of the moment. I thought about it for a moment and realized why they were so averse to all things Bieber.

We have a youth who has virtually no social power. He is mostly tolerated by his fellow classmates because they know it is what's expected. In most conversations, he is ignored and even belittled at times, except when the conversation is about music. He loves music, knows everything about music, can talk to me about the different eras of U2 music as easily as he can rattle off Chuck Berry's top hits and recount to you every hard rock concert he's attended with his dad. He even reads interviews and articles to discern the spiritual nature of each member of the bands in his play list. The kids know that music is his thing and they respect his opinion more than anything.

He says Justin Bieber sucks. So Justin Bieber sucks. Case closed.

It was a fascinating social observation. More than that it affirmed that the work we do as teachers, parents, and youth workers is profoundly important. His dad took him on a Blues and Jazz tour of Memphis and Mississippi over spring break. His teachers let him create his very own music review section for the school newspaper. I make sure he's DJing any youth event. His peers have noticed and respect his musical preferences. So much that they are willing to take his opinions on as their own.

different kids

2010-05-03T15:09:00.002-04:00

I see completely different people in youth ministry than the teachers, pastors, and parents see.

I'm not with the youth every day, I see them for a few honest hours a week. I ask them hard personal questions, but I don't see the daily run of the mill life. Some kids don't have a natural affinity towards sharing their faith through bible study and youth ministry but have a strong presence with their classmates. I never see that.

Sometimes, youth will be brutally open with me about how a classmate speaks of others in a way they would never tell a teacher. Sometimes, in our conversations, they will admit to failings at home or in school that they can't in those places.

We see different people in each youth. I can't help but consider this to be a good thing. As young people take on the difficult task of discovering their identity, they need parents, teachers, youth workers, and others affirming the good and pruning the bad of every dimension. Teamwork is good.

gonna do it anyway

2010-04-30T11:57:00.003-04:00

I am slotted to run in the Cincinnati Flying Pig Half-Marathon this weekend. By "slotted," I mean that I paid big bucks (err, big for me) for the registration cost and reserved a hotel and made plans with equally insane family members and.....

The forecast is screaming thunderstorm all weekend. I have weather.com trained to tell me if my workouts are going to be comfortable outside and it is clearly screaming "NOT" for Sunday morning.

Am I scared? UBETCHA.

Am I gonna do it anyway? I'm telling myself that I am. I'm telling myself that I am. I'm telling myself that I am. I'm telling myself that I am. I'm telling myself that I am. I'm telling myself that I am. I'm telling myself that I am. I'm telling myself that I am. I'm telling myself that I am. I'm telling myself that I am. I'm telling myself that I am. I'm telling myself that I am.

process orientation

2010-04-28T10:55:00.005-04:00

In a conversation about systematizing discipleship in the church, a boomer-aged conversation partner dismissed container gardening as pointless trend. (Don't ask how it came up, I don't remember.) It is true that one must be a truly prolific container gardener to fill the dinner table throughout the seasons, but filling one's table isn't always the point.

The point is being connected to the cycle of life--the planting and watering and fertilizing and harvesting. The point is watching food grow and know that every fruit and vegetable we put in our mouths has gone through the same process. The point is much bigger that eating. The point is being a part of the process.

I can't help but wonder if maybe young adults are more process oriented than their elders. Is there research on generational preferences on process and task orientations? It is questions like these that make me wish I enjoyed math (so I could enjoy statistics, so I could enjoy sociology...).

fighting the not-good-enoughs

2010-04-24T01:05:00.004-04:00

I don't care who you are or what you've accomplished in life, the not-good-enough demons have struck you.

At least, I know that they have struck my closest friends, my dearest family, and me one-thousand time over. I can sometimes sense their impending arrival like the darkening, dampening, and still pre-storm sky. Then always suddenly and surprisingly they are there, shouting at the top of their lungs in my very voice, that I have yet to do anything good enough. (Question: How did they perfect that voice imitation? And can I go to that acting school??)

Theologically, it's true. It was the not-good-enough demons that locked Martin Luther in his personal despair, confessing for hours upon hours in his young monastic life. The reality of being human is that some of our noses are big and crooked, some of us can't sit to read a book if it killed us, and others have the coordination of Steve Urkel. We aren't good enough.

I'm not good enough. I'm just... not.

But that's only telling half of the story. The other half is the supernatural part, the part that exceeds all expectations of good-enough.

I have to remind myself that it is because of the not-good-enoughs that Good Friday ever came to pass. Peter had a serious bout of the not-good-enoughs on Good Friday. He walked away from his friend, the guy he was pretty sure was the Messiah. Not only was he guilty of denying the faith, he was a bad, not-good-enough friend.

Sometime after the resurrection, Jesus made breakfast on the beach with the disciples. Jesus sat with Peter and he didn't rehash the denial details. He didn't get in on the salacious gossip of who else hid in fear. Jesus looked forward. Jesus looked at Peter in love, in his eyes he saw good-aplenty. Jesus saw in Peter a man ready to share that good-aplenty. Jesus refused to hear the not-good-enough voices and trusted Peter to feed his lambs.

Thank goodness, John told us that story, told ME that story. I will likely never be good enough by my carefully constructed self-standards, but I trust that God's view of my worth has little to do with me and everything to do with The Good-Aplenty.

don't whore out my human rights

2010-04-22T10:19:00.003-04:00

Yes. I said that. And I meant it. Because I am A-N-G-R-Y. Because I read this. Did you know that vacation is a human right? It is in Brussels.

Maybe I sat through one too many U2 concerts in which the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights was read.

Maybe I know too well that actual human rights are violated on a daily basis right underneath our self-righteously entitled noses.

Maybe I think that the concept of human right, though a secular conception, has a sacred value, a value bestowed upon us when we were created in the image of the living and eternal God.

When we declare the right to vacation a human right and deem it equal to the right to freedom of thought, right to life, liberty and security of person, and the right to be free from slavery or servitude, we demean the value of human rights. We demean the plight of those whose rights are violated. We demean what it means to be human.

deafening silence

2010-04-21T21:33:00.003-04:00

I can't breathe due to the overwhelming amount of pollen in the air. Things aren't actually silent in these parts, more wheezy and hacktastic. During this silent but wheezy time, I checked two things off of my mighty life list.

#49: Seeing Chuck Berry: Live the Duck Room

The experience was the most endearing musical treat. An elderly man, well past his prime, donning his sparkles and his sailor cap, singing his famous music with old friends, family, and a room full of adoring strangers. Saint Louisans, buy your tickets. You won't regret it. Legends don't live forever.

#5: Bike the Missouri Wineries along the Katy Trail

I cajoled a large group of friends to undertake this 28 mile adventure with me. We worked our hineys off to get to each place, but the memories we made will be precious to me forever. It was an amazing day of beautiful weather and a testimony to the friendships I have in St. Louis. The picture doesn't speak to its glory.

I don't have the funds to plan any of my travel items, so I am brainstorming things I can make to get closer (albeit only slightly) to my goal of making 1000 wonderful things. Suggestions are welcome. I am reading The Infinite Jest which has 1000 pages each of which require the energy to make one wonderful thing. Perhaps if I finish, we shall call it even?

am i a barney?

2010-04-15T14:39:00.002-04:00

When [Barnabas] came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. Acts 11:23-24

Barnabas' measure of a faithful community was the presence of God's grace not the adherence to prescribed customs and laws. He was visiting the church in Antioch, a church of Hellenists, not Jews.

It makes me wonder what's on my measuring stick? Am I concerned with faithfulness to grace or behavioral mandates? Am I trusting in mercy or in what I can see and observe?

Barnabas was a good man full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. I can only hope to be counted in his company because his company is that of Christ's.

grieving the impossibilties

2010-04-09T12:50:00.002-04:00

There is a strange side-effect to making a dramatic life decision:

Grief over the choices not taken.

A buyer's remorse, so to speak.

Within excitement, there is doubt and fear and a general "just shut-up about it" feeling.

I need to grieve in peace.

While much is gained, much is lost.

looking like a loser

2010-04-02T11:44:00.003-04:00

On the cross, he looked like the world's biggest loser: someone who claimed divinity, being shown up by a bunch of haughty religious leaders and a swarm of soldier punks.

On the cross, he was weak, mocked, dying.

And still somehow, his heart burned with compassion for the people. He asked that they be forgiven. He offered freedom to his fellow crucified. He knew what no one else knew: power doesn't win.

Love doesn't exert power over others. It serves those whose need is great. Love is sacrificial and difficult.

Ultimately, love brings a new kind of victory. A victory that has defeated the need to be powerful. A victory that celebrates the beauty of sacrifice.

a bunch of gentile girls get together for a seder...

2010-04-01T13:24:00.002-04:00

For several years, my bible study group has gotten together to observe Maundy Thursday through a Seder meal of sorts. None of us are Jewish, unless you count my Spanish teacher in college telling me that I should never apply for a job in Mexico because I look like a Jew. Whatever that means. For our lack of Jewishness, we don't purport to be historically or culturally accurate but we attempt to understand the connection between Passover and Christ.

Sometimes our attempts are comedic failures at best.

Take this year: I scoured the grocery store add to find the best deal on leg of lamb. When I got to the store, I realized that I could buy a similar amount of actual meat at a higher per pound price but for less actual cost if I purchased the boneless cut.

"Genius!" I thought, "No hacking around the bone, no huge roasting pan required, less cost." Boneless I bought. (The Seder-informed might know where this is going.)

Cut to yesterday, I am responding to a series of emails about our upcoming Seder meal and through a stream of consciousness I remember that the bone has a presence on the Seder plate--a reminder of the lamb of Passover. The bone that is in some butcher's garbage dumpster somewhere.

So I apologize to my friends profusely and ask for consolation.

Cue my dear friend who says, "No bones needed! We don't DO anything with them - their symbolic presence is evident in the lamb meat. I mean, we've been using tortillas instead of matzah for years and it's worked out."

That's right. I forgot that we've been doing a hack job on this thing for years. This year, real matzah will be on the table. Only one total obliteration of cultural traditions is allowed per year.

At least we try?

a lenten hymn

2010-03-31T15:02:00.002-04:00

I love the song Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.) by Monsters of Folk.

It struck me while listening to it this week, it sounds a bit like something like the prayers of the church in Lent. You can play the video for the sound and read along.

Dear God, I'm trying hard to reach you
Dear God, I see your face in all I do
Sometimes it's so hard to believe in
Good God I know you have your reasons

Dear God I see you move the mountains
Dear God I see you moving trees
Sometimes it's nothing to believe in
Sometimes it's everything I see

Well I've been thinking about,
And I've been breaking it down without an answer
I know I'm thinking aloud but if your loves
Still around why do we suffer?
Why do we suffer?

Dear God, I wish that I could touch you
How strange sometimes I feel I almost do
And then I'm back behind the glass again
Oh God what keeps you out it keeps me in

Well I've been thinking about,
And I've been breaking down without an answer
I know I'm thinking aloud but if your loves
Still around why do we suffer?
Why do we suffer?

crud and the Christ

2010-03-25T14:58:00.003-04:00

Following Christ is easier said than done especially in our day to day lives. We have meetings and games and concerts and homework and more meetings and more games and practices and more homework and then it is bed time.

I feel this pressure to be busy, to live a life filled with all kinds of things that promise to make me a better person, a better runner, a better Christian, a better version of me.

Those things we do aren’t bad by themselves, but they will never fulfill their promises 100% and they often distract us from following Christ and serving his kingdom. The things filling our lives are no more than a snickers bar—filling us up, but getting us nowhere nutritionally. No wonder I need a caffeine run at 2pm just to stay awake with life. I'm filled with unsustaining crud.

Jesus lived a life full of service. Sure, he jumped from place to place (have you read Mark lately??) but not with the intention to make himself better (he didn’t much need that) but to point to his Father.

Are you pointing to the Father? Have you let go of the need to be a better version of yourself and focused in on pointing to Christ?

We have been forgiven of our failings, we are free of ourselves.

Now, let’s truly live—embracing the freedom, filling life with free things, sustaining things and things that bring freedom to others.

our battle is not

2010-03-24T11:13:00.003-04:00

Our battle is "not against flesh and blood," whether they are are right wing or left wing, gay or straight, pro-choice or pro-life, liberal or conservative, democratic or communist, American or Iraqi. Our battle is against the "cosmic powers" that hold these people, and all people, in bondage. Whatever our own opinions about how the kingdom of the world should run, whatever political or ethical views we may happen to embrace, our one task as kingdom-of-God disciples is to fight for people, and the way we do it is by doing exactly what Jesus did. He defeated the cosmic powers of darkness by living a counter-cultural life characterized by outrageous love and by laying down his life for his enemies. So too, we contribute to the demise of the "power over" principalities that hold people in bondage when we refrain from judgment of others and rather extend grace to them, when we let go of anger toward others and instead "come under" them in loving service.

-Gregory A. Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation, pages 48-49

in recovery

2010-03-23T11:25:00.002-04:00

This weekend was emotionally and physically exhausting. The Spring Retreat is always a massive undertaking, a massive collaboration, a massive task for me and my retreat team.

And now it is over.

Surprisingly to some, I'm not much one for sentimentality. In the midst of the retreat chaos, I didn't think much on the reality that this was my last retreat with this group of students and adults. I finally sat in that truth as I was driving away from church heading home for a much-deserved nap. Sadness was thoroughly felt, but also an overwhelming peace that God has done and continues to do great things for these young people and their families.

Several high school students came along on the retreat as members of the retreat band. They attended my first retreat five years ago (!!) and talked about it as if it were yesterday. They shared favorite silly memories and how it encouraged them to continue in the faith. What a treat to see the fruit of youth ministry labors in front of my eyes.

As I nap today and recover from the few hours of sleep I slept, I am thankful for the strength of God's church, young and old. More than anything, spending time on this retreat reminded me that I am just one piece of the puzzle and that the ministry of the church marches on. For that I am thankful.

dear companion

2010-03-17T09:52:00.002-04:00

Last night Ben Sollee, Daniel Martin Moore, Dan Dorff, and Cheyenne Mize played that the Old Rock House in St. Louis. The Old Rock House is a new(er) venue for concerts in an historic place and it is a beautiful place to see a show. If you're local to the StL, I recommend it.

This particular show was amazing for the musical ability of the performers and the fun that they had playing. I went to see Ben Sollee, but frankly the percussionist, Dan Dorff, stole the show.

I think they call this Body Bongos. If they don't, they should.

big things on the horizon

2010-03-15T16:26:00.002-04:00

Vocational identity isn't so much a struggle for me as it is a process and a journey. As I stepped out of college and into parish ministry, I was excited to be in the midst of God's people. I tip-toed into serving junior high students frightened of their energy and scathing honesty. I found myself immersed in a ministry environment that was meaningful, important, and challenging. In my four and half years at Immanuel, I have been blessed beyond my own comprehension with mentors, supporters, cheerleaders, and joy in ministry.

Even still, God has placed in me a desire to grow academically, ministerially, and theologically. While I have grown in these ways in my time here, I've known for some time that a desire for challenge was brewing in my heart. With this in mind, I applied to several graduate school programs to explore the possibility of challenges in that setting. As I submitted those applications, I knew that the programs were small and competitive and that submitting an application didn't guarantee placement.

Recently I was informed that I've been offered a place in the Master of Theological Studies program at Duke Divinity School. I will enroll in classes in the fall of this year, relocating my self, my library (according to my dad this is the heaviest thing I own), and my wanderings to North Carolina.

While I am ecstatic and energized by the joy of this opportunity, I am realistic about the road ahead. Saying goodbye to a life in St. Louis that has blessed me will not be easy. These years have been filled with family, friends and a wonderful congregation. I know that I am about to embark on an academic journey that won't always be friendly to my sleep schedule and the wallet pangs are duly anticipated.

Nevertheless, today I feel joy. The processing, the transitioning, the re-framing relationships will come in due time.

mighty life list

2010-03-12T16:10:00.003-05:00

I like to read Mighty Girl (Maggie Mason)'s wanderings through completing her mighty life list. It's fun and it inspires me to take joy in random adventures in life. I made a life list this summer and have crossed a few things off the list. Here's the list as it stands today. (I'm all for additions and deletions over time; goals change!)

Alaina's Mighty Life List

Have photo taken by noah kalina or scott schuman or someone just plain amazing
sail the Grecian Islands
attend graduate school full time
successfully manage finances
bike the wineries along Katy Trail
read a book by a Russian novelist in Russia
~~solve mystery eye allergy problem~~
dance with a famous salsero, yet to be determined
~~be a kicka** MOH to my sister~~
visit the MOMA in NYC
Check off the last 8 states on my list:

Maine
New Hampshire
Vermont
Connecticut
Rhode Island
North Dakota (?)
Hawaii
Alaska

~~Take pictures that friends would like on their walls~~
Make 100 soups from scratch

chicken noodle
Gazpacho ala Concha
minestrone
beef barley

Call my elected representative's office informed and concerned
Hike El Camino de Santiago
Go on a Silent Retreat
Visit Montreal
Go on a sister trip every few years (other people can come too)

Chicago 2009--U2!

Write thank you letters to my favorite teachers
Visit the Holy Land
~~Grow~~, Can, and Eat Vegetables
Help someone realize their dreams
Re-learn how to sew
Take up Vermiculture composting
Mentor a young person
Read The Stranger in August and Franny and Zooey in October
see the taj mahal
visit the pyramids
share life
~~learn to dance salsa on2~~ not great, but i can do it!
attend SXSW or other cool hipster music festival
take a watercolor painting class
Write a memior that more than just my mother will read
listen to all of the music in storage
read all of the books on my shelves

7 storey mountain
dante's trilogy
ayn rand anthem
a tree grows in brooklyn

learn how to bake bread
eat ice cream for dinner at least once a year (~~2008~~, ~~2009~~, 2010)
Go paragliding
visit Prague
See the Northern Lights
Drink a Mojito in Cuba
Live more sustainably
hike to Machu Pichu
Read the Bible cover to cover
See U2 live as many times as possible

~~September 09 Chicago!~~
~~October 09 Las Vegas!~~

hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back up
Snorkel the Great Barrier Reef
Throw parties to celebrate friend's accomplishments
See Chuck Berry in the Duck Room
Make 1000 wonderful things

tshirt scarf
painting on the wall
streusel topped banana bread cobbler http://bakingbites.com/2010/02/streusel-topped-banana-bread-cobbler/#more-4294

sex, love, and marriage: the FAQ numero uno

2010-03-11T12:57:00.000-05:00

I want to start with a personal disclaimer of sorts: I am not an expert, but a concerned citizen of the Church. Also, I write humorously to keep things light because ughhhhhhhhh, this could be seriously heavy stuff.

From here, we proceed.

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After posting about sex, love and marriage for the last weekish, people wrote me a few personal emails and posted questions that I think justify more than my reasoning and consideration.

In the comments, Sue asked:

Alaina- how would you respond to a young person who is living with her boyfriend, but committed to not having sex until marriage? Do you think that's OK? Do you think it's OK if they volunteer in youth or children's ministry?

So first, I think it is important to separate the issues. One is the moral question (Can someone live with their sig-oth without having sex?) and the other is the leadership question (Can someone with suspect moral habits be a leader in ministry?).

I don't know about you, but I have a hard time believing anyone who says that they are just "spending the night at the boyfriend's house" is sleeping on the couch. Likewise, if a couple is communicating that they co-habit sans sex my eyebrow is going to raise to suspiciously-off-the-face heights.

I'm not placing judgments, and I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm saying it's suspicious and worthy of your suspicions. This is not because you are suddenly the purity police, but because you care about the spiritual and emotional and physical health of the couple in question.

In this case, the person at hand is likely engaging in activity that they aren't proud of, are worried violates God's commands for their life, or are concerned will cause them to lose face in their community. They are presenting a half-truth to their spiritual community, isolating themselves from the flock, and putting themselves in a spiritually compromising situation. This is my primary concern.

When someone is spiritually compromised, whether it be through suspicious lifestyle choices, a serious bout of depression or bitterness, or pain inflicted on them by another, their ability to lead well is called into question. It is true that every leader in the course of their ministry becomes spiritually compromised at one point or another. As a leader of leaders, I have to discern with the spiritual compromise is of degree that keeps them being vulnerable, giving servants to the church and her people.

Magic formula? I have none. Maybe a reader out there does? Chime in, amigos.

There are certainly concerns that we Law/Gospel this girl so that she (ala CFW Walther) is made aware of her sin (even if just that her sin is not staying above suspicion and protecting marriage) and feels the relief of Christ's redemption. Gah. I wish implementing that were easy.

Suggestions for Sue? Anyone?

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I'm not particularly good at talking to my friends and ministry leaders about sexual things. I think most people in my congregation (hi friends!) just started seeing me as an adult and not a teenager three weeks ago despite my ability to use multi-syllabic words and wear high heels at the same time. I'm not even kidding. I think they noticed I have gray hair and realized that they could talk about adult things without making me blush. My only single volunteers have been close friends or roommates that didn't compromise themselves. I just don't have experience with this.

In Real Sex (the book that started the mayhem), Lauren Winner says (this is my paraphrase because I don't have the book in front of me) that in order to speak with someone about intimate life issues, we have to share life with them intimately. If I want to talk to someone about their sexual behavior and I've never shared a cup of coffee (tea, or bubble tea) with them, how can I expect to be understood?

In other words, if you don't have a relationship with the person, who are you to dig into their relationships with God and significant others?

Agree? Disagree? Tell me because I KNOW you have an opinion.

sex, love, and marriage: the single edition

2010-03-10T16:17:00.000-05:00

Psych.

You thought I was going to write "the marriage edition" and I didn't. Joke's on you, fools.

The reality is that I've talked marriage enough and wholly buckets if my brain isn't overloaded with sex, love, and marriage (and some gender, too). Google Buzz and Reader have been the hot spot for the action. I'm not saying that you SHOULD go there and check it out, I'm saying that if you are interested in reading an argument between people who know each other well and argue with each other on a regular basis, you can do that here. Don't say I didn't warn you.

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But there is something else to be said on sex, love, and marriage. It's to do with the sort that are not married, the sort to which I belong and understand more fully than the other, married sort.

Winner describes chastity as a single person as "an active protection of a created good" (page 118), that "created good" being marital sex. A single Christian is just as much a protector of marriage than a married Christian.

A single person reminds the married sort that life is lived well in many different shapes and forms so long as it depends on God. The single person humbly reminds the church that Jesus never married and that Jesus didn't promise happy married with children life to all followers (check out Mark 3).

A single person reminds the church that the primary source of life and grace is the Father--not the family. (page 145) Perhaps I am sensitive to this calling. I find the family-focus of some Christian conversation to border idolatry. The concentrated effort to preserve the family as society's victor forgets that salvation is in Christ alone. The single person humbly reminds the church that family values will never have the evangelistic and healing power of the Gospel.

In practicing chastity, the single person in the church protects marriage, witnesses God's grace, and exemplifies dependence on Christ. It is an important calling, a calling that speaks over bodily desires and the pursuit of individual concerns.

spring soon please soundtrack 2010

2010-03-07T19:29:00.003-05:00

The following song list is recommended for the following activities: driving around town with the windows down, a spring evening run, making dinner with the windows open, and other general spring-y acitivity.

Move Up Patty Griffin Featuring Ann McCrary, Regina McCrary, Jim Lauderdale, And Buddy Miller Downtown Church
Holiday Vampire Weekend Contra
Put It In A Love Song Alicia Keys Featuring Beyoncé Knowles The Element Of Freedom
Beat the Horse Pomplamoose Pomplamoose Videosongs
Daylight Matt & Kim Grand
Fuerte Nelly Furtado Mi Plan
Santo Domingo Rodrigo Y Gabriela 11:11
Pressure Company Of Thieves Ordinary Riches
Talkin' Bout A Revolution Playing for Change: Afro Fiesta Songs Around The World
Blue Eyes Mika The Boy Who Knew Too Much
What Matters More Derek Webb Stockholm Syndrome
Relator Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson Break Up
Electric Twist A Fine Frenzy Bomb In A Birdcage
First Light Matt Pond PA Auri Sacra Fames
While You Wait For The Others Grizzly Bear Veckatimest
Come Around Jimmy Needham Not Without Love
Dile al amor Aventura The Last
Swing Tree Discovery LP
Wavin' Flag K'naan Troubadour