Ordinary Visionary

Character over Performance

Vance and I have been attending First Presbyterian Church of Orlando for going on two years now, and today left me feeling broken. I'm still figuring out why. It's good, though.

I must confess, we've both attended First Pres' with some reservation, and at times even anger, over some aspect of the teaching, the community, or the bureaucracy that comes with a mainline denominational church with a lot of money and a lot of history. For whatever reason we keep coming back, keep pushing to be a part of the sea change that's happening there.

David Swanson preached a good word on confession today, a discipline that seems conveniently forgotten in our American way of life. Somehow we've gotten to a place where it's too uncomfortable to admit that there's anything wrong with us, or too unthinkable to imagine worshipping at the sort of church that would imply the same.

Those perfect people who walk through the doors to the sanctuary each week -- the ones with the feathered hats and the thousand dollar pearls and the broaches that match the shoes -- they don't need Jesus if they don't need rescuing from something. And I know I'm the farthest thing from perfection. But I'm still prone to the same kind of pride that wants to portray the best side of myself to everyone I meet. But what if, as Dr. Swanson put it, if we start each conversation with anyone by thinking, "Hi, I'm Jamie, and I'm a sinner too," maybe we'd feel less inclined to portray that false image of perfection and more inclined toward mercy and grace (for ourselves and for others).

Powerful as the sermon was, I appreciated most the Biblical perspectives on parenting offered by Leigh Swanson during the Sunday School hour. I was worried, if I'm being honest, about what she would teach. I look at the kids running around the childcare center with barcodes stuck to their backsides, each in expensive, matching brand name outfits that will last all of a few months, and I think about how I wouldn't want to raise children up in this church. (That thought sounds rancid when I write it out, but with the subject of the week's sermon, I decided not to delete it.)

The big take-away from Leigh's teaching today was that, when we have kids, we ought to encourage, celebrate, and reward the development of their character, rather than some measure of performance. I'm paraphrasing here since I didn't have a notebook with me, but I loved when she said, "Instead of rewarding each 'A' on a report card, what if you said, 'I loved how your teacher commented here on how hard you worked.' Or what if instead of telling your kid how proud you are of all the home runs he scored in a little league game, what if instead you told him how incredible he is at encouraging his teammates?" Character over performance.

I like that.

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.

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.

Some Thoughts on Diplomacy

Here is a passage of scripture that has gotten me thinking again about the value of talking (relating?) to our enemies. This passage recounts an act of diplomacy that would likely be considered foolish and 'inexperienced' today, yet is preserved in scripture as a timeless reminder of how an educated, cool-headed leader can do more with words than bombs in certain military situations.

In the spirit of disclosure, I should state that I am decidedly anti-war, anti-death-penalty, and pro-choosing-life (as is consistent with a culture of life). So when I read this passage today in second Samuel wherein an unnamed woman lead men and women alike to the wall to confront Joab and persuade him to withdraw his troops, I was comforted by the outcome of her diplomatic efforts. Here is a leader with little experience, exercising both oratory prowess and strength (dare I say a spine of steel?) in a show of civility and diplomacy toward her city's enemy…

2 Samuel 20:16-22 (New Living Translation)

¹⁶But a wise woman in the town called out to Joab, “Listen to me, Joab. Come over here so I can talk to you.” ¹⁷ As he approached, the woman asked, "Are you Joab?"

"I am," he replied.

So she said, "Listen carefully to your servant."

"I'm listening," he said.

¹⁸ Then she continued, "There used to be a saying, 'If you want to settle an argument, ask advice at the town of Abel.' ¹⁹ I am one who is peace loving and faithful in Israel. But you are destroying an important town in Israel. Why do you want to devour what belongs to the Lord?"

²⁰ And Joab replied, "Believe me, I don't want to devour or destroy your town! ²¹ That's not my purpose. All I want is a man named Sheba son of Bicri from the hill country of Ephraim, who has revolted against King David. If you hand over this one man to me, I will leave the town in peace."

"All right," the woman replied, "we will throw his head over the wall to you." ²² Then the woman went to all the people with her wise advice, and they cut off Sheba's head and threw it out to Joab. So he blew the ram's horn and called his troops back from the attack. They all returned to their homes, and Joab returned to the king at Jerusalem.

And some commentary on this passage from Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary:

Justly is that place attacked, which dares to harbour a traitor; nor will the heart fare better which indulges rebellious lusts, that will not have Christ to reign over them. A discreet woman, by her prudent management, satisfied Joab, and yet saved the city. Wisdom is not confined to rank or sex; it consists not in deep knowledge; but in understanding how to act as matters arise, that troubles may be turned away and benefits secured. A great deal of mischief would be prevented, if contending parties would understand one another. Let both sides be undeceived. The single condition of peace is, the surrender of the traitor. It is so in God's dealing with the soul, when besieged by conviction and distress; sin is the traitor; the beloved lust is the rebel: part with that, cast away the transgression, and all shall be well. There is no peace on any other terms.

Le Update

It has been weeks since I've written anything here and it hasn't been for lack of thought or imagination but for lack of time. Ever since Vance and I got engaged life has been going non-stop, and so tonight I'm taking advantage of my unusual alertness in order to catch my blog up to my life…

The past couple of months have been extremely cleansing for both Vance and me. I described it to Jenn earlier as a "stirring up of dust" in our lives, and while it has been exceedingly difficult at times I truly feel that it is leading us both in a positive direction and that we are becoming stronger for having been through it. We are learning to talk openly about real issues, to fight for one another, and to love one another through things. How blessed are we to begin learning these lessons before we are even married.

In the midst of all of the dust-stirring was a flurry of wedding planning activity — everything from tasting what our guests will be served at the reception (it's going to be so good) to asking close friends and relatives to join our wedding party to choosing the most incredible dress I will ever wear… Luckily, I think we're through the worst of it and we can just have fun planning the little details from this point forward.

Speaking of the wedding, our photographer, Joriann, spent the better part of last saturday with us in West Palm Beach shooting our engagement photos. She gave us a sneek peak of some of the frames and I am absolutely thrilled. Until I found her, I feared that we'd end up spending hundreds of dollars on a photographer who would give us pictures that would sit in a lonely album collecting dust until a major anniversary or family reunion. But this woman shoots art, and is a ton of fun to work with.

All of my closest friends here are out of the country, from China to Europe. I'm praying unceasingly that they are being used as a light to the people they encounter, and that they will return home safely soon.

I've left my job as the marketing administrator for STATUS, which stings for the moment but will ultimately be the best thing. Development has started for the next release of PayPerPost.com, which promises to be the largest scale, most challenging project I have ever worked on. It's cool — really cool. But it's daunting at the same time to think of how much work needs to be done in the coming weeks.

As busy as I've been, I have still been blessed with solitude and a heightened awareness of downtime. It hits me every so often when my mind shakes off the day that this is a moment I have to myself. It's amazing how much more reading and writing and praying I get done when I realize that I have a moment to rest, un-accounted-for time I can fill with whatever fills me.

And I think that about brings you to tonight, having worked out and changed into pajamas, fed the dog and eaten trail mix for dinner, poured myself a glass of milk and sat down at the table with one foot up in the chair… This is a moment I have to myself.

The scent of Babylon

Every morning on my walk to work I pass by the entrance doors to a popular nightclub. It's become impossible for me to walk past the large red building without it affecting me — the cold, damp air that leaks around the edges of the towering gold doors fills my lungs with the smells of the club. Sweat, alcohol, stale cigarette, and a mix of a hundred different colognes fight to tell the stories of the night before. It is, in the best way I can describe it, the scent of Babylon.

I'm not sure what part of the stories carried in the smell has such an effect on me. There is nothing inherent to dancing or meeting new people or having a cocktail that strikes a negative chord within me. I, in fact, do all these things. And so it must be something greater, or deeper, or more important than all of these acts that we as "good Christian women" are supposed to run from.

Why should we run from "dressing like sluts"¹ when behind our modest clothes there is a heart that believes it has to give something away before it's worth protecting?

What good is choosing water over wine if we have minds that believe we aren't funny or interesting enough to hold a conversation without it?

Why stop dancing if our bodies (or our minds) give into their fleshy desires anyway?

And so my lungs choke at the scent of Babylon — that place where satisfaction of physical desires and devaluation of things that have been declared holy² supersedes that which truly matters in this life.

I recently attended a two-day event held for the women of STATUS called I Am Her³. It was the first Christian women's event I've ever left without feeling like all of my problems might be solved if I would just fasten an extra button and bake cookies for Africa. It was nice to hear that I could (and really, was supposed to) be both strong-willed computer programmer and wife. That I could get married without closing the book of my dreams and following his. That modesty was not just about giving our brothers in Christ a break from all that stumbling.

The issues that come up again and again in circles of Christian women (and don't get me wrong — they should continue to be discussed) are not solvable by band-aid remedies like covered midriffs and appropriate behavior. It is, if I may put it so simply, an issue of value. Not of some standard of family values and etiquette set by June Cleaver, but of worth.

How much value do we give our bodies?

Our hearts? Our minds?

-----------------

¹ I'm crediting Jenna for that phraseology
² Read Daniel 5:1-4, 13-28. And check out Beth Moore's Daniel study.
³ I begged the amazing women who put the event on to change the name to "I Am She" but had no luck. Ah, well… You can't win 'em all.

struggles

It's past my bedtime but the discomfort of a hot thai dinner eaten too quickly four hours ago is keeping me up, along with the nagging feeling that whatever gift I have for writing has been quietly benched for too long. The trip I took to Portland in December to escape the burden of a schedule was so prophetic — this has been a year of near suffocation for me. Time has become a commodity more precious than A Girl's Best Friend.

struggle :: prayer

Two days ago I worked from early morning until the bell at the Catholic church across the street rang in 6 o'clock. I rushed home to walk Chester and make tiny cucumber tea sandwiches, which I ate in the car as I rushed back through downtown to a meeting at the church, where I also work. The meeting lasted nearly four hours, after which I felt like all of the people present in the room had been kicked in the knees at least once, occasionally agreeing but only to disagree. By that point I had worked more hours than not in the day, without any real dinner or rest to speak of.

To close the meeting, I was asked to pray for the mission to Sierra Leone, a group of people whom I confess I don't know by name, or even whether they have yet left the country. And so after beginning the Generic Mission Trip Prayer we as Christian leadership seem commanded to pray — for traveling mercies and the preparation of hearts and minds — I stopped. I waited several moments and then tapped the shoulder of the woman on our team who has been most intimately connected with the group to finish the prayer.

Because the busier I am, the harder it becomes for me to drop to my knees in prayer. I quickly ran out of words worthy of the men and women leaving for Sierra Leone. And rather than continuing to carry out a mindless prayer, I held my flailing tongue and encouraged my Sister to do the work for me.

The less time I have for prayer, the more time I need for the voices of the world to fall from my ears, the more time I need for my knees to fall into a posture where I am ready to speak to the Creator and Savior of the world. And the more essential it becomes for me to make that happen.

struggle :: words

I was at a women's conference last weekend, and listening to the voices around me during the Career break-out session I realized just how blessed I am that God has confirmed in me what my vocation in the Kingdom is. He has named me a writer, a counselor, and an open book to be read by those who don't know Him. Yet even as a writer, my most prevalent struggle lately has been with words.

The Gospel of John begins with the familiar verse, "In the beginning the Word already existed. He was with God , and he was God… Life itself was in him, and this life gives light to everyone. The light shines through the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it."

Following from those verses, my writing is not to be of this world, but for this world, with words authored by me (perhaps) but inspired by the Word and pointing back to the Word, giving life and light to the world. And this is both my highest calling and my greatest struggle. I wrestle with the idea that, made in the image of God, the words I write or say have the ability to speak either light or darkness into existence. And rather than take the risky move of picking up a pen or typing up a blog, I often say nothing.

And sometimes that is okay.

The struggle comes with discerning whether my silence is wisdom, as in Proverbs 10:19, or whether it is vice (laziness, cowardice, doubt, self-hatred, or any number of other happy bullet points on the resume).

…

There is so much more I have been learning and processing through lately, particularly the ways the men and women of STATUS have been challenging me through I Am Her and Muse, as well as some of the phenomenal reading I have been doing. I pray that I will eat another uncomfortably hot thai dinner soon so that I will have the time to capture those thoughts in writing as I have tonight. (Heh.)

I thank those of you who have been patient with me and my lack of presence here and in your lives. Please continue to pray with me through this.

Your Sister

The Message of The Fall

I've been thinking hard about the human aspect (specifically the Fall) of the Creation account lately, struggling with a friend to better understand the truths about it and the implications it has on our lives and on the world.

In order to think about Genesis, one must consider whether the book is prose or poetry, hard line fact or illustration. I am content to understand it as some combination of the two, not entirely prose yet not entirely poetry. I think God wants to give us a hint of what happened during His acts of creation, but in terms that we will understand. Prose and poetry. And I don't know where the lines fall — which verses fall into which category — but I am content with that, and content to learn what He is trying to teach us with the account of the Fall regardless. I would argue that whether he is illustrating what really happened with a simple story (K.I.S.S.) or giving us both historical fact and moral, the lesson is the same.

Because I struggle with creation — many strong Christians do. Rob Bell tells us (in the endnotes of Sex God) that the fruit of the tree was a watermelon. And I get this picture of Eve heaving a watermelon on a rock to break it open and sticking her face into the mess to get a bite… And when I picture Eve covered in the sticky pink mess of a watermelon I lose the significance of what is actually happening in that moment.

As long as we glean the message of the account — the effect it had on humankind — the details can fall away.

The tree was there in the middle of the Garden to give humans the choice to live lives in line with God. I look at how good they had it there, in such close relationship and communication with their Creator, and I can't imagine how they could want more. But the temptation to find out if God was holding out on them was just too much.

In accepting the lie that the fruit of the tree would not surely bring death, Eve made the mistake we make every day in our sin — stepping out of line with God's will to follow in line with our own desires, do things our own way, believing all the while that the act will not bring about death.

A bite of fruit,

a hateful word,

a "sinful romp" (thank you Richard Foster for that phrase)

a one night stand

one more nifty toy

never deliver the satisfaction they promise. They will never be enough to fill us with the life we had hoped for. But if we try just one more time… Maybe… We will find freedom. Or at least enough to hold us for a while…

It won't.

And that is the message of the watermelon, or the apple, or the pomegranate. Or whatever.

There is the life God promises us, and then there is the life the things of this world promise us.

One last thought… The Hebrew word for "Good" in the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is the same word used when God declares His creation to be Good, over and over again. We have tasted the fruit of the tree and have experienced what God declares to be good, and also evil (the Hebrew for that word describes everything evil of this world). Freedom comes with choosing what we know is good, and hating evil.

Retreat Meditation

An excerpt from my journal writings at last weekend's retreat…

I'm with my lovely ladies at the beach house and Data is jumping on the trampoline — the same one from which most of the girls were hurdling themselves into the air yesterday… without pants. The swings are rocking gently under a huge tree with moss hanging down and the dock is like something out of a beautiful photograph framed to make the observer think about things like the importance of nature and solitude and the short distance we can (but choose not to) travel to get to places we can hardly imagine exist outside the lights and sounds and smells of the city. My mind could never compose (and my mouth could never describe, barring the run-on sentences I write here) so beautiful a scene as this — the leggy moss reaching out like a ballerina's leg performing développés, the occasional flurry of leaves when the wind picks up, and that dock at the end of a bridge of unstable planks waiting quietly for a visitor. The view from this porch is poetry.

Cathy shared so many words of truth with us in this place, words that command us to use what we have been given through a year with this group to produce fruit more beautiful than all of this. Jesus proclaimed that we would do "even greater things than these" (John 14:12)… I feel like Cathy's command is as beyond comprehension as His, yet it is obedience to seek after fulfillment of that command — to not just sit and reflect and be grateful for the beautiful things he has shown us (and the countless things He has healed us from through our time together), but to go out and reflect that beauty and to live as a constant testament to what He has done in us.

I am realizing that there is no miracle too small for God to see, no whisper too soft for Him to hear. He smiles upon the small things we do when those things are for His glory and His kingdom. And what better to overcome the fear of failure than the knowledge that if we are willing to listen He will teach us exactly where and how He wishes to use us.

Praise him for these revelations in my mind and for the revolution in my heart, and for all the words he gave to Cathy to speak into our lives. Amen.

fear of grass

I don't walk barefoot in the grass. There are crawling things that will bite my toes off and frog poop and snakes and spit and all manner of other things I've seen in the grass over the years, all waiting there — I'm sure of it — to greet me in between the toes at first step.

My parents' driveway forms a giant backwards "h" and surrounding the part where the curve meets the line is a section of grass. I won't walk through it; I'd sooner walk all the way down the curve of the "h" and turn once I hit the straight section.

All this might seem very odd, given that after years of pounding my feet in dance (in what I'm sure were terribly unsanitary shoes) I've lost a lot of feeling in my feet. Add that to the fact that I was fine walking barefoot through the streets of downtown Orlando several weeks ago, and I start to make even less sense.

You can't stub your toes on the grass, or get calluses from the constant friction, or a cramp in your knees or back because of the hard surface.

So what is it about the grass that makes me prefer concrete?

I remember things about the grass, about all the things I've seen go into it in my lifetime. Bugs and snakes and the spit of a thirteen year old boy. Frogs and lizards and earthworms that have dried up on the pavement and gotten blown back into the grass by the men who take care of the lawn. Not to mention when I found out what fertilizer actually was… And though I can't see these things in the grass with my eyes, my mind envisions all the terrible things that are hiding between the bright green blades and my feet walk around them.

This entry started as a way to introduce the definition of sexuality Rob Bell introduces in the second chapter of Sex God. But here I am at the end, having just described something completely different.

Things happen in our lives and collect in dark places, between blades of grass, and in our fear of being bitten or touched by them again we simply make a pattern of walking around them. We're afraid to delve into whatever it is that might be there now, after all these years. We have a hard time imagining that what's waiting for us is something beautiful — the crisp smell of fresh cut grass, the sound of nature moving underfoot, and the freedom that comes with no longer living in a posture of fear. We walk along the cold and hard concrete preferring the comfort of predictability and the calluses that come with it to the surprises waiting for us on the lawn.

Step Into :: Genesis 41-47

A while ago STATUS was slated to have a guest speaker talk about being the 'hands of Christ.' But when the day arrived for her to speak she came down with a cold or a stomach virus or the bird flu (my memory is a little fuzzy on that detail) and the leadership had to throw together an emergency service in a matter of a few hours. What resulted was one of the most amazing, memorable nights I have ever had at STATUS (and that's saying a lot — there have been many).

Everyone was handed a Post-It® note at the door and asked to write their most pressing need on it and stick it to the wall. After we all finished plastering our gear on the walls of the auditorium, we returned to the perimeter to pull down a need we felt we could meet.

Reading over the hundreds of notes, I was made aware for the first time just how badly twentysomethings are consumed with debt. Student loans, car payments, credit card balances that are out of control… There didn't seem to be a single form of debt that wasn't scattered across the sea of yellow stick-ums that night.

When I studied these chapters of Genesis, I was taken back to that night at STATUS, when I stood in front of the wall and, scanning in all directions, my eyes could not escape the pleas for help getting out of debt.

It's no wonder I couldn't even get through the first book of the Bible without the entire nation of Egypt being indebted to the Pharaoh. Their culture was saturated with financial obligation, yet somehow the people were happy to become slaves to Pharaoh as long as they were continually given more (Gen 47:25). And after the provisions were enough to sustain their lives, one-fifth of everything they reaped at harvest time was immediately owed back to the creditors (Gen 47:24). Is this sounding familiar?

This is so much a picture of how debt happens. You go to work with the mindset that your yearly salary is how much you have to spend during a year's time and you begin to base your lifestyle off of that figure. This is exactly what the Egyptians did. And it works out quite well until you have a famine of your own, a period of time when money has to be diverted to an unexpected expense (a homemade milkshake gone bad, for example) or a period of time when you can't seem to find a job no matter which rug you look under.

Joseph knew better, but only because God sent a message through the Pharaoh's dream warning of the impending famine. Rarely do we get such advance notice (and even when we do, who is willing to listen)?

Avoidance of debt starts with living our lives as if we know a famine is upon us. But we quickly realize (or at least I have) that such a mindset is unnatural to us; we are programmed to be extremely short-sighted, moving from one quick fix to the next, and long-term vision hardly has an affect on our everyday habits. We don't have the attention span for it!

Imagine how crazy Joseph's servants must have thought him when they got to the point where the stockpiles could not be counted (Gen 41:49). They must have been itching to sell it off for the immediate return.

The Egyptians obviously lived paycheck to paycheck (erm… harvest to harvest). As soon as the famine began they were at Joseph's doorstep begging for provisions.

I am just now entering the period of my life where I can choose to live within a modest budget and put a bit into the 'storehouses' each pay period, or I can live at maximum capacity and cross my fingers in hopes that a famine won't strike. (Words cannot express how thankful I am that I have that choice to make.) But as God allows my 'storehouses' to increase, I must not forget the other message that this passage of scripture has for us: Joseph's careful preparation resulted in provision for not only himself but for those who were in need.

discomfort > change

Women's ministries make me terribly uncomfortable. They seem to me to be the popular way of making up for the androcentric nature of the church. But I'll leave that for an offline conversation.

Let me backtrack to the beginning. Discomfort. I may be alone in this, but the places I am most uncomfortable are the places where I am most driven to movement. Meditate on that just a minute.

discomfort → desire for change → change

If I am comfortable and happy with the way things are in some aspect of the church (or really in general) I am least apt to invoke change. So given that women's conferences and women's small groups and other such women-only gatherings give me hives, they also spark a desire for change and movement within me.

This isn't something new. Homeless ministries and mission trips and AIDS research initiatives are birthed from a place of discomfort — someone somewhere gets so bothered by a particular issue that it sparks in them a desire to move and change the lives of those affected by it. My most recent discomfort happens to hit really close to home, in the midst of the community of twentysomethings I am a part of.

Tonight I sat in a room with about 20 other women who are uncomfortable in some way with the current ways we are (or aren't) ministering to the women of STATUS. I realized that I am not the only woman who desires conferences about more than clothes, and speakers who do more to connect with their audience than make jokes about shopping or the latest Danielle Steel novel.

We desire teaching deeply rooted in scripture, about real issues that affect not only our lives but all members of our community. We desire women's conferences that don't look like women's conferences, small groups that wreck lives instead of making us feel better about them. We desire integrity and authenticity and accountability for holding close to the teachings of Jesus.

Today's verse from Galatians 3:28 encapsulates these desires: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Rather than being better women, we simply want to be better living examples of Christ.

If we focus too much on the fact that we are women, then we are flirting with narcissism. It is only when we start to view ourselves as people who desperately want to look more like Christ that we can be sure He is our central focus.¹

The women of STATUS better prepare to have their worlds rocked.

¹ I should clarify that I don't mean to discount altogether the fact that we are trying to minister to women. Our identity in Christ is not separate from our identity as women. He has assigned us our gender for a purpose. But our filter for how we minister to women shouldn't be based on a gender role that is easily swayed by what society tells us about who we are. Rather, we should minister to women through God's lens, growing them first in Christ.

On Graduating

This is the longest blog entry I have ever written. It gets its own page.

Sin Entropy

Status was so good for my mind last night. It got me thinking on this tangent about identity crisis and whether I can look anywhere in the Bible and find a mirror image of myself. Who is this person I have been and who am I becoming? Am I moving from disorder and chaos to order and simplicity or is it the other way around? Why would I choose the bondage of living outside the Way and the Truth when it's spelled out so clearly right there in front of me?

God created man to be essentially simple. No clothes, no women, no real room for gluttony or covetousness or any of that baggage. Just man and his habitat, a beautiful garden with only one sin he could possibly commit. And it was good.

Then God sees that Adam is getting bored of doing life by himself every day and decides to fashion a homegirl from one of his ribs. They're naked and hanging out in a garden — the perfect honeymoon — and life is good.

Enter sneaky snake. Eve thinks the idea of having knowledge sounds like a good deal and Adam gets on board with it and there we have it: The fall of man. (Gee, that was quick.) Life was so simple and the choice to disobey God, fearing that He was holding out on them, ushered in immeasurable chaos.

By the second generation already there was murder, and multiplied complexity on down through the generations. We are perpetually moving from order to disorder, living lives that look nothing like the life mapped out for us in Scripture for the sake of being unique, free, or whatever other new age word you want to slap on it.

But that's paradox, as AJ so accurately put it last night. If you look at the commands God has laid down in Scripture, you don't find bondage. You find freedom. It's paradoxical but no less true. God designed all things — love, sex, community, our bodies, everything — with a purpose. He's the ultimate architect of creation, and the way he teaches us to live in that creation and use the gifts he has given the world is the simple truth. Simple, unadulterated truth.

But we can't live with that, can we? We want to classify sin according to weights that make our sin look small and Susie's look off the charts in comparison. We want to bend scripture to fit the context of our lives, instead of letting it define the context of our lives.

We have this thing inside of us — some call it the sinful nature, but I think it's bigger than that — that makes us want to do things on our own. Rewrite the way of doing things. Because we somehow know more than the Father, who designed all things for a purpose.

I guarantee you there is no way more simple than His Way. But I don't mean to imply the way of simplicity is anywhere close to easy. If it was so easy, I'd be living it out perfectly myself. And I'm not.

In fact, it is so against my nature to choose His way that the struggle is often too great to bear. Jesus knew this, saying, "men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed." (See John 3:19-21). The way of the light is the 'simple' way, but it's far from the easy way.

Look at the timeline of sin… Entering the world through something as simple as a bite of fruit, sin now takes much more wretched forms, always increasing in complexity as we continue insisting on living in ways that are incongruent with the plan given to us by our Creator.

Order ⇒ disorder. Sin entropy.

My mission is to live my life pushing against the tide of the entropy of sin. The second law of thermodynamics has no authority in my life. Unlike the version of this law we see played out in nature, we have the capacity through the grace of God to push against the tide and disallow sin entropy in our lives.

A commitment to live life within the commands set forth in scripture is a commitment to simplicity, slowly giving more and more of my life over to God to be used in accordance with His will instead of my own. Far from legalism, it's acceptance of the gifts God has planned for me in this life. And that is freedom.

There's a new janitor in town.

I know I'm not alone in saying that I can be a very 'messy' person. My house (for the most part) is clean, my desk at work is always immaculate, and I try to take the trash out before the flies arrive. But that's not the kind of mess I'm talking about.

You know what I'm talking about. Hatred. Insensitivity. Harsh words. Homelessness. Preventable disease. Debt. Divorce. Messes.

I think messes — the ones that matter anyway — are primarily made when we are out of touch with God's will. And let's face it, most of us (myself very much included) are. It's part of what defines our (post-Fall) humanity — the fact that we are not God and therefore don't have the capacity to be omniscient and think His thoughts with Him. But by that same token I think we have the ability to live a life in alignment with His will, and in tune to his specific desires for our lives. I liken it to radio waves, countless numbers of them flying by our heads that we can't tune into without some degree of effort. We have to actually get to a radio, turn it on, tune it to the right station, and finally listen.

The messes of my life have always been at times when I didn't know how, and later refused, to listen to God. I had the radio, but I didn't know enough about how it worked to power it up. And I always hated tuning knobs (I can never quite get them to the right spot) and the markings to distinguish one frequency from another seemed to be written in a language I didn't understand and then when I finally got to the right station it was something I never wanted to hear in the first place. So I chose to put the radio away, get out my old guitar¹ with the broken string and play a song of my own, terribly out of tune.

And it was far worse than what that radio frequency had to offer.

The word of God is seldom easy to listen to. This is one of the most frustrating misconceptions people have about the Christian faith: that God will fix everything and you'll live happily ever after as long as you pray a prayer and get dunked in a tub of ice cold water². But that's far from the truth (at least for most of us). God will more likely wreck your world if you should decide to tune into His frequency.

He will convict you of things that are out of line with who you have been all this time; He will ask you to do things that require you to step out of your comfort zone; He will give you words you don't always want to hear; He will love you, but even in loving you will not prevent you from ever knowing hardship.

Relatively speaking, I've known very little hardship in my life. For starters, my personal heartaches have nothing on the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Yet God takes the time to carry a mop and clean up after my messes when I need Him most. My needs are so small next to the needs of the world, yet God still does the work of a janitor³ when I can't do it myself.

I got back from Birmingham in the Spring of this year with a great deal of pain I had to work through. Three exams were postponed, along with a project. Two of what would have been the most hectic weeks of the semester, cleared in a matter of hours. He took care of the logistics and gave me time to heal.

I needed to stop believing some lies about myself just this past weekend and people who I talk to all the time as well as a couple I haven't spoken with in months came full force into my life, immediately showering affirmation on me. While I still struggle to believe even half of it, it was so good for my soul.

Drip drip. Swish, swish.⁴

What the perfect God, the creator of the universe, is doing with a mop and bucket for my sake I don't know. But that seems to be (at least in part) the message of the cross. We've created a mighty mess for ourselves, and He mops it up with his blood. We don't deserve a bit of it, but He does it anyway.

There is a passage in 2 Corinthians (4:16-18 NLT) that I take comfort in when I'm going through a rough patch, and I think I'll close with that for the sake of much needed sleep.

For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

---

¹Actually my dad's guitar is the one with the broken string. My next door neighbor broke it when he was hanging out with me after school one day eight years ago or so. I don't own a guitar. I bought one for a guy I was dating in high school so technically I owned one for the brief time between getting it from Mars Music and dropping it off with a giant red bow at his parents' house. But no, I don't have a guitar. I do have a dulcimer though.

²Okay, so baptism isn't usually done in a tub of ice cold water. I'm just speaking from experience. I was baptized on Christmas day when the heater was broken in the baptistry so all 80 pounds of me were shivering like a leaf in a tornado. It was greatness.

³It occurred to me that many people wouldn't appreciate God being likened to a blue collar worker with a dirty mop. But I'm confident that He has a sense of humor and is willing to entertain the analogy.

⁴It's the best mop impression I could come up with. Cut me some slack. ;-)