Ordinary Visionary

Excuses come too easy for me on this side of the tracks.

Art by Nick Dewar.

We've been back in the real world now for a week. Portland ended quietly after days of walking through gardens and parks and campuses, eating well, drinking well and sharing a bit of our vacation with friends. The place feels a bit like The Grey Goose must have to Sheldon and Davy in A Severe Mercy: a thing that we hope for and dream about, a place we might one day live, a symbol, perhaps, of our commitment to life together.

There are more than twice as many Portlanders as Orlandoans, yet the city feels smaller somehow. We were able to take public transit everywhere, from Imago Dei to the Rose Gardens to the campus of Portland State University, 23Hoyt, Hawthorne, and the airport. The practicality of it was stunning; most trips through Orlando on Lynx take at least twice the normal driving time, while trips on the MAX or buses seemed to be hardly longer than what it would take to drive. There's a Zipcar network, three forms of public transit that can get you to your destination with less than a quarter mile of walking, and people know how to drive with bikes, buses, and trains in the road. The green movement there isn't something that's underground or visible only through the presence of reusable grocery bags. It's inescapable. Toilets in the PDX airport give flushers the option of whether to use just enough water for "#1" or "#2." Restaurants list the farms where their meat comes from. Rush hour looks like 2pm in Orlando. Community gardens are everywhere.

Portland provides a constant challenge to question my own excess. To think about things as small as reusing the cardboard sleeve on my latte to something as big as giving up my gas guzzling SUV (yes, I still drive one) and not owning a vehicle at all.

It's also a challenge to my role as a witness. In our week there, Vance and I interfaced with hundreds of broken people, on buses mostly, but also in parks and on sidewalks. People desperate for a friend, if only for the twenty minute ride from downtown to Hawthorne. People who love their city and desire to share it with strangers. People who live every day in the unhappiest city in the United States (according to Business Week).

In my LIFE community last night, we got into a discussion about how, as Christians, to deal with the fallout of a violent world. Some said that you do your best to avoid it, choosing places to live that are relatively safe and private schools that advertise values-based education. Others remained quiet or remarked that it's a sad world. Knowing my propensity for rhetorical flourishes and having spoken quite enough already, I remained eyes down and ran my knife over the crease in my napkin over and over.

What I wanted to say was that the most beautiful moments in my life have been the experience of redemption: the entrance into a place of darkness and brokenness with Christ, allowing his light to either shine on me or through me. I wanted to say that as Christians we are called to enter into darkness. Scandalously, Jesus calls us to love the very people we hate or fear:

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
— Matthew 5:43-48, emphasis mine

This would be one of the many portions of The Message where Peterson would stop and write, "Are you listening? Are you really listening?" And I don't, really, if I'm being honest. I live in a city where I'm as closed off from the world as I want to be; I live in my house with my husband, getting calls from true friends once a month or less. I drive my big car to my big office, say good morning to the sweet lady waiting at the bus stop, and commence another eight hours with team members I love and see five days a week. When I'm done I get back in my Explorer and drive home to start the cycle all over again.

In the words of Gustavo Gutierrez, "To be followers of Jesus requires that [we] walk with and be committed to the poor; when [we] do, [we] experience an encounter with the Lord who is simultaneously revealed and hidden in the faces of the poor."

When my brothers and sisters in the LIFE community described their Christian response to violence in the city of Orlando, they immediately referenced the poorest area, a place where I've spent weeks of my life in the living room of a dear friend's home. She is living a Christian response to violence. She doesn't run from it; she enters into it. Excuses come too easy for me on this side of the tracks.

Which brings me back to Portland. One of the scariest things about the city is also one of the most hopeful. Not that I feel presently equipped to bring much light to that place, but that I will see Jesus in the faces of my neighbors every day. That he might have opportunities every day to sculpt me more and more into his image. That I will interface with immense darkness and inescapable community on my commute, and teach my children the value of love, of life, of hope, and of creation.

Until the day we're called to move, which may be years into the future, we must seek the beauty, the quirky places, and the lonely, broken people here in Orlando. There are so many ways we can be used by Him, just on the other side of our protected spaces.

Exciting and mundane things

I'm sitting in Stumptown (Ace) after making a break for it across the Rose Parade route thinking over the last two days. What memories might be worth committing to pen a blog?

The man at the 10th and Jefferson streetcar stop telling us about the two $450 snowboarding jackets he'd won for wearing a tie-dyed shirt, how he was bringing his own chocolate soy milk to the streetcar with the best coffee in Portland across from the chic storefront coffeehouse with the worst coffee in Portland; two brown preteens in the back of an east side bus rapping freestyle to the beat pulsing from the boom box resting on their knees, jumping as their feet arched up with each would-be bass hit; the child holding an entire bag of Honey Nut Cheerios, peering quietly into the display case full of pastries he could not pronounce at Grand Central Bakery; the barista at Stumptown who poured perfect Rosettas without looking down; the three Navy sailors asking where the club scene was; the twenty-something responding that there really wasn't one.

These events are so everyday in this place, but are still somehow extraordinary from where we sit. We've descended upon Portland with our flipflops and preconceptions, expecting the thousands of cyclists, anticipating the fog, looking forward to the many unique and local shops and eateries and yet somehow are still surprised by how close our experience here lives up to Donald Miller's description.

Like New York, there are churches everywhere yet the culture remains hyper-secular. From this single vantage point I've watched people of all walks, people with brightly colored hair, grey hair, new blonde curls five months old, white people, black people, sweet dogs pulling at their leashes, a toddler with pearl earrings, women with worried glances, a girl in a green shirt dancing in the street. All of these people with one thing in common: the city they exist in every day. I wonder if we might be one of them one day, or if Anne Lamott is right when she says, "the fog lets you see what it wants you to see."

We went up into the west hills yesterday, where the houses are big and expensive and beautiful, with the Rose Test Gardens and Japanese gardens right up the road. Our bus driver echoed the sentiment of several locals, commenting on how rough the storm was yesterday, worried maybe we'd resent the city for the clouds. We assured him that where we come from the storm was minor; we rather enjoyed the sounds of the rain smacking against the window pane and the fact that water droplets make for the best rose pictures anyway.

It's only Satuday but we've already tasted the best coffee in Portland, the best dessert, the best views. This trip is a different type of adventure -- an adventure that is the everyday experience of the locals. Our exciting is their mundane. Or maybe life is always this colorful under the misty sky.

journey to the rose city

We left our home in the City Beautiful yesterday morning a little after 8. Vance gave Chester his we're-going-away-for-a-while-but-I-hope-this-will-help treat just before the doorbell rang and Dana walked in. He was visibly conflicted - the only time I've ever seen sheer panic in the eyes of a dog over so silly a choice.

Do I bark at this intruder? Do I jump up and say hi to Miss Dana, who has fed me and walked me countless times? Do I chew the delicious treat in my mouth? Do I run upstairs? Yes, I'll run upstairs to ponder this further… And chewing is overrated, swallowing whole is much more efficient. I'll do that. But first I'll snarl at mom as she attempts to steal my tasty treasure… (I was really just trying to say goodbye; oh the joys of parenthood.)

It was heartbreaking leaving the 28 pound "monk" but we were late as it was and the lovely Dana was ready to go. I finally hugged her, said "good morning," and let myself relax a little after running back in the house to say goodbye to Chester once more, sans angst.

We stopped at the curbside baggage checkin to avoid the long lines inside and I regretted it about two minutes into the man's five minute rendition of How To Construct The Dexter's Chicken Salad spiel. I should have known when he started the "where have I seen you before" act that it would end with the four word plea that he repeated over and over: I'm providing a service. Although I hate mandatory gratuity I forked over $5 so that we could get to our gate and officially be on our way to the Rose City.

Southwest Air has perfected their boarding process now so that instead of a veritable human cattle call that looks something like the line outside Best Buy the night before a video game console hits the shelves, you stand with a group of five determined by what time the previous day you remembered to check in online. Add that to the singing stewardesses and you have something really special.

On the last leg of our flight, from Kansas City to PDX, I sat down next to a soft, pale woman with stark white hair. The second I sat down, she kindly winked at me and said, "You know, we play our cards right nobody will sit next to us." Vance followed shortly behind and broke her sweet heart, and I moved to the seat she'd hoped would stay empty, trying my best to be completely invisible so she would be comfortable for the hours that followed. She mostly alternated between a new age paperback book and dreams, nodding off every ten minutes or so for a quick nap. Must have been a good book.

Ten hours and five delicious chapters of Anne Lamott's Blue Shoe later, we arrived at our gate in Portland. From there we still had at least an hour of public transit to ride before we could unlock the door to the vacation rental we hoped wouldn't be in the back alley of a strip club somewhere. (Spoiler alert: it isn't.)

As the red line took us quietly over the highway filled with rush hour traffic, we could see the majestic Mount Hood and a bit of Portland's lush landscape through the windows. Vance commented on how green it all was, as the window before us was engulfed in huge trees that have been there since long before the highways or trains were constructed.

There were four women sitting to our right, each coming from a different city and converging on Portland like a church bus unloading on Sunday morning. The voice of the only one not wearing a wedding ring provided an hour of background noise for our journey. She described her former husband, who suffered from anger management problems in the past, as "a humble man," to which her friends turned to her aghast as if she had commended Mussolini on his good manners. He was in therapy now, she said, physical therapy for a form of MS that was rapidly taking over his body.

The other women commented on the weather, and the public transit, and the adventure the "four old ladies" (their words) would have in this city.

The train slowly filled to the brim with cyclists and wandering homeless men, two dogs and two men with identical wedding rings discussing philosophy in the corner. Everyone who didn't have a suitcase seemed to be reading a book. Public transit seems to create the time and space for reading like no other daily event. I considered whether I might start taking the Lynx back home, and decided against it when the image of the man waiting at the stop on 436 every morning, punching the sky, flashed in my mind.

Our condo was more than what we had expected. Rather than being adjacent to a brothel or crack house, it's two blocks from a grocery store and a block from the streetcar line, close to art galleries, restaurants, and coffee shops. It's a studio with a modest living room, modern kitchen, and clawfoot tub in the bathroom. As soon as I stepped in I had this urge to unpack everything all at once, to move in. Once the clothes were hung and the laptop connected to the protected WiFi network, I felt my shoulders relax and my heart rate slow.

We're here.

In this place.

But we were also hungry in this place. The night begged for celebration, so I suggested a place that was described as a neighborhood gem with some of the best food in Portland, a place that would have had lines out the door if more people knew about it: 23Hoyt.

We arrived to find a restaurant in the middle of a neighborhood shopping district. From our table we watched dozens of people on bikes, people dressed more for comfort than for fashion forwardness, people carrying boxes of pizza or ice cream wrapped in housemade cones, people sipping local beer at the pub across the street, people calmly taking in the cool Wednesday evening air as they walked with their dogs and their lovers toward the homes nearby.

The menu at 23Hoyt offered some creative takes on ordinary dishes -- butter lettuce salad with ruby red grapefruit, avocado and chili oil, chilled asparagus salad with hard cooked egg and arugula, penne with sausage, arugula and chilies, scallops with mushrooms and brown butter sauce… Our waiter poked his head out several times to update us on the chef's progress, his worried posture letting on that the seared scallops were proving to be a challenge. But when the food finally landed on our table, the scallops cut like butter left out for ten minutes, and tasted better than any I've ever enjoyed at a fine restaurant. The food was beautifully but simply presented, and the restaurant comped dessert for us because of the wait, which I would hardly have noticed if not for the waiter's genuine concern. After seven layers of chocolate and Vance's roasted pound cake with sorbet, our bodies gravitated toward our downtown condo.

It's here in this place that we unwind, here that we take pictures and smell roses and drink way too many lattes. Keep an eye on this blog for updates on the mundane and exciting details of our first "braincation."

Our Portland Vacation: An idea(log) v2

Vance and I are just four days from our Portland "Braincation" (a term I'm hoping will catch on) so there isn't much time left to finish out our wish list of things we want to do while we're there. I caved and got the Fodor's InFocus Portland guide (Moleskine, when will you come out with a Portland travel journal? Hmm). Here's what we've added since the last installment of Our Portland Vacation: An idea(log):

11. Enjoy music, wine and art at the First Thursday Gallery Walk. We are lucky enough to be traveling to Portland during the first week of June, so we'll have the chance to view the work of local artists during the First Thursday event. The only thing left to decide is whether we want to visit the downtown or Pearl District galleries.

12. Walk or bike along the waterfront. According to the Fodor's guide, the Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade is "one of the best ways to experience the Willamette River and Portland's bridges close-up." We'll spend time walking the three mile loop, or if we're feeling ambitious we may even rent bikes for the adventure. We'd like to visit more than one of Portland's parks; Forest Park in the Northwest district is another option.

13. Eat a meal at Pok Pok & Whiskey Soda Lounge. A magazine article about this place caught Vance's eye recently and it popped up in the Fodor's guide as well. The chef is known for creating authentic Thai dishes that work with locally available ingredients.

14. Have lunch at Vita Cafe. From the sound of it, this place is full of vegetarian, vegan, and organic comfort food. I could order a meat dish if I wanted to here, but vegan macaroni and cheese and vegetarian biscuits and gravy might be too good to pass up.

15. Enjoy local craft beer and a movie at one of several Brew/Pub/Movie Theaters. Whether we visit McMenamin's Mission Theater during First Thursday or want a place to relax on another night, a visit to one of Portland's Brew Theaters is definitely in the works.

16. Pick up groceries at a local food cooperative. Food Front is a local grocer that is owned by nearly 4000 people. Since we have a vacation rental rather than a hotel, we plan on cooking some meals at the apartment during our stay.

17. Explore the Oregon Zoo, rose test garden, and Japanese garden. Now through September 20, the Oregon Zoo has a chimpanzee challenge maze that just sounds too good to miss. And although I enjoyed my walk through the Rose Gardens and the Japanese garden with Nik and Jasmine (two strangers from Shanghai who decided to follow me around the first time I visited the city), I'd love to go back during peak flowering season with Vance.

18. Walk through the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden and Reed College. It's peak season for rhododendron blossoms, and we'd love to talk a walk through the campus made famous by the confessional booth portion of Blue Like Jazz. Luckily the two are right across the street from one another.

19. Nosh on some crepes at Le Happy. Right off the streetcar line in Portland's Pearl District, there's a little creperie that doesn't take itself too seriously. I might sample something unusual, but I plan on steering clear of Le Trash Blanc (a bacon and cheese crepe with a Pabst on the side.)

20. Allow our minds to be blown at the 3D Center of Art and Photography. Vance put a star next to this one in the Fodor's guide (otherwise I might have skipped over it). The 3D Center is the first of its kind in the United States, dedicated to showing and educating the public about this unique art form.

Taste under new management: a disappointment

I discovered College Park's Taste soon after I moved to Orlando via Orlando Chow, a book that highlights the best of Central Florida dining. At the time the place was exactly the type of thing you'd expect in the art district of a big city, but without the big crowds.

Since that time the menu hasn't changed but the management and ambience have. You can still order delicious tapas dishes like shrimp bruschetta and hot tots and gorgonzola cake with house made flatbreads, but the result isn't the same. At 5:45pm the new owner was the only staff in sight, and she was managing the bar, the tables, and the kitchen by herself. (Around 6:15 two others showed up, one of whom wandered around quietly placing menus on empty tables and folding dozens of napkins with silverware at the bar.)

Gone was the former ambience that is still displayed in pictures on Taste's website. The air was warm, the ambient lighting behind the wall art turned off, and the annoying din of FM radio that alternated between equal parts car and appliance commercials and bad 90s alternative music played in the background.

My heart broke as I noshed on the familiar recipes and thought of all the times I'd recommended the place to male friends as a place to bring a date if you really wanted to make an impression. This building, with its storied history of being a former ballet studio, the Chapters bookstore and coffee house, and now Taste, has seen better days than these. Here's hoping the place can make a comeback before it loses all of its adoring fans.

Farewell, dear friend.

Tonight

I'll say goodbye to a dear friend,

Break off another piece of the group that changed my life

The group that showed me more of Jesus every Thursday night in Kate's living room

I'll miss this prayer warrior woman

this thought maker world changer dancer creator

believer woman

I'll think of how many times I watched her put words to ideas

from a distance

how much I know she'll grow while she's away

I'll try not to cry as I think about how far apart we've been

how far apart we'll be

how all the growing, changing, becoming

will be done on the other side of the world

I'll have a glass of wine and smile and laugh

and look at the faces of everyone else who came to say

I'll miss you, Jenna.

Grow your Soup! (For Free)

At the suggestion of my mother, I put forward an idea at our last Homeowner's Association meeting to create a community garden on some of the land the Association owns but doesn't use. My husband and I already maintain a small container garden on our back patio and alongside the walkway to our front door, but a townhouse doesn't afford much opportunity beyond that for growing food. (Of course, there are those who would argue otherwise but in general you need decent square footage to yield enough produce to put a dent in the grocery bill).

I read somewhere that a $50 investment in seeds and gardening supplies can yield a $1,250 return in the value of produce annually. And if you're afraid of the initial investment, Campbells is giving away tomato seeds as part of its commitment to the national FFA organization. They also provide tips for getting started. All you have to do to get the seeds is buy a can of Campbell's soup (or steal one from your mom) and enter the code on the bottom of the can into the website.

We still haven't gotten a final nod from our Association's lawyers for our right to repurpose the plot of land, but for those of you without lawyers standing in your way, this is a great way to dip your toe into the world of homegrown produce for an initial investment of a can of condensed soup. :)

Open Hearts, Open Minds

I just finished reading the full transcript of the Commencement Address given by President Obama at Notre Dame last Sunday. Now before I continue let me say that the opinions I have today regarding the interruption to the President's speech are the same opinions I would have if it was President Bush who was at the podium. It's true that I never wrote about these instances when they happened but you'll notice I didn't write about much at all during the last few years. To me, "you'd never say that if Bush was in office" implies that either you don't know me very well or you agree with my argument but wish to find some way to poke a hole in it (or both).

I'm also aware that the President was prepared for the outburst that occurred, which was documented even in the transcript recorded on the White House website and which became the subject of hours of news commentary and a portion of this post. The issue I have with the young man, who interrupted Notre Dame's graduation ceremony shortly after President Obama took the stage and began congratulating the graduates on their achievement, is the motivation and true consequence of his display of free speech. While it served to get his face on national television and his six short words committed to the White House blog, it accomplished little more for the Pro-Life cause than a display of disrespect for the highest office in the country and a sense of self-importance that outweighed any regard for the graduates in the room. It was not the beginning of a dialog or a well-reasoned approach to Pro-Life principles; nor was it an appropriate time or place to get an undiluted message across. That moment, that graduation, was not about the protester or his beliefs or the unborn children he clearly wishes to fight for; it was about the culmination of four years of grueling hard work shared among all of the robed students in that room. Making the moment (ever so briefly) about him showed contempt not only for the office of president but for the years of hard work each student had to put in to get there. It exposed his intellectual walls rather than a willingness to initiate a discourse on the subject; it reduced his (presumably) complex views on the subject to the span of two brief sentences: "Abortion is murder! Stop killing children!"

Ironically, the domestic policy differences on abortion between the former and current administrations are minimal. Yet Pro Life activists never accused President Bush of "killing children" or "having blood on his hands" (the words of another Notre Dame protester). In fact, the Obama administration appears to be doing more to understand and reduce the number of abortions happening in the US, working with thought leaders on both sides more intentionally than any administration in recent memory. He's called for the development of a task force within his Domestic Policy Council that is working with Pro Life and Pro Choice advocates to seek a consensus on how best to approach the issue, and has addressed those who disagree with his perspective with deference.

Abortion is a complicated and deeply personal issue that permeates the individual histories of thousands of Americans each year. Each of us have deeply felt opinions on the issue that may conflict with our own philosophies on other issues. (How can one person reconcile being Pro-Life and Pro-Death-Penalty, Pro-War or even Pro-Gun, for instance?) The issue isn't whether we should be allowed to share or express our beliefs. The issue is whether we can do it out of respect for the common Image that is in each of us, or at least our common humanity, with open hearts and open minds. Put another way...

The question then is how do we work through these conflicts? Is it possible for us to join hands in common effort? As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without, as Father John said, demonetizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?

And of course, nowhere do these questions come up more powerfully than on the issue of abortion.

As I considered the controversy surrounding my visit here, I was reminded of an encounter I had during my Senate campaign, one that I describe in a book I wrote called "The Audacity of Hope." A few days after I won the Democratic nomination, I received an e-mail from a doctor who told me that while he voted for me in the Illinois primary, he had a serious concern that might prevent him from voting for me in the general election. He described himself as a Christian who was strongly pro-life -- but that was not what was preventing him potentially from voting for me.

What bothered the doctor was an entry that my campaign staff had posted on my website -- an entry that said I would fight "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman’s right to choose." The doctor said he had assumed I was a reasonable person, he supported my policy initiatives to help the poor and to lift up our educational system, but that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable. He wrote, "I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words." Fair-minded words.

After I read the doctor’s letter, I wrote back to him and I thanked him. And I didn’t change my underlying position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my website. And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that -- when we open up our hearts and our minds to those who may not think precisely like we do or believe precisely what we believe -- that’s when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.

That’s when we begin to say, "Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this heart-wrenching decision for any woman is not made casually, it has both moral and spiritual dimensions.

So let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions, let’s reduce unintended pregnancies. Let’s make adoption more available. Let’s provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term. Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded not only in sound science, but also in clear ethics, as well as respect for the equality of women." Those are things we can do.

Now, understand -- understand, Class of 2009, I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. Because no matter how much we may want to fudge it -- indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory -- the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.

Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words.

In the world of instant news and instant messages, it often feels unnatural to encourage open responses to our own expressions of ideas, or at least not those responses which require more than 140 characters to complete. Listening to opposition keeps my mind from falling asleep on important issues and humbles me when I am reminded that in my limited experience of the world I have much to learn.

Congratulations to Notre Dame's Class of 2009 and to all of the graduates who will shape the future of the world as we know it.