In spite of my own participation last week, I am sticking with the Weekend Word Contest. A little sentimental, I guess.
Click on the word below, save the whales, throw off your Depends, and use it in a sentence. Post your witty and engaging original words into the Comments section below. Winner will be chosen by a panel of imparital judges (me) and his/her/its name will be posted on Sunday night at 10 p.m. est. Good luck.
At the end of each month I will take a quick look back, update you on any outstanding situations, and most likely apologize for the crazy stuff I wrote.
“Our job is not to figure out the how. The how will show up out of a commitment and belief in the what.”
–Jack Canfield
Did you read the story about the church that is offering free $500 gas cards if you visit their services? Apparently, if you fill out a card at the beginning, and you can sit through the rest, one lucky name will be drawn out of the offering plate at the end of the hour and a winner will be declared. The article does not mention if participation in the altar call is a condition, too.
I’d be interested in hearing how it all turns out. If it doesn’t work, never fear, the church can always hire these guys. Watch the DREAM ushers below.
thanks Brad and Eric for the posts.
he park has several pavilions and we were fortunate to find one with open tables and a small charcoal grill. We cooked, played baseball, did some fishing and waded through the creek. The kids even saw an enormous North American Water Snake.
We had the best time. At one point, J.J. was staring at a delicate, beautiful purple and white flower that he had chosen to buy. He looked at me smiling and said, “Mom, imagine what it was like for Adam, seeing everything for the first time. His brain must have been so happy.” Mia sang as she planted and used the garden hose. It was an original composition, something about how God makes things grow. Noah planted sunflower seeds and kept looking at the area every few minutes to see if one had sprouted.
Did you know that the noun worldview, having two primary definitions, in both senses is also called Weltanschauung? It’s true.
Let’s talk about your weltanschauung, and – No! - I do not want you to show it to me. Your weltanschauung is the overall perspective from which you see and interpret the world. Notice I am talking to you and not us, because I have my very own weltanschauung and – no - you cannot see it either. Mine is probably better anyway, because I’m actually married to a German guy. Okay, he’s never actually been to Germany, but he has a second cousin named Louisa that lives there.
Now before I am corrected all day by “commenters” (don’t I wish. Look, even if you just want to mention how your cat barfed up a hairball this morning, could you put it in my comments section??) groups can have weltanschauung, the second definition being a collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group. The Manson Family had a weltanschauung. So do Disney princesses.
Our collective and individual weltanschauungs are HUGE (please, please put yours away) because when they clash, the trouble begins. For some crazy reason, I think that you should share my weltanschauung, and you think I should embrace yours. Either that, or I initially assume we have the same one, but upon closer examination, I realize that yours has a mole on the starboard side.
Here’s the deal about Jesus. Besides healing people and growing His beard, His time on earth was really about weltanschauung. He was offering us a way to see the world that was radically different than any weltanschauung we could invent on our own. I mean, how nuts was it to say, “Love your enemies?” Jesus probably hasn’t heard of Al-Qaeda. Why didn’t He just say, “You’ll have no enemies and small animals from the forest will sing and dress you in the morning”? Once again, the god we want is confronted by the God who is.
When I set aside my weltanschauung and think for a second, it’s not such a bad idea. How would the world look different if you and I loved our enemies? If we refused to curse them and blessed them instead (even that neighbor who lets his dog poop in your yard)? What if you did that and Al-Qaeda did that and those two kids from Columbine and the people on Big Brother and Quebec and Terrell Owens and me, too?
Weltanschauung, sweet weltanschauung. Singing skunks aside.
WOW. Tell the truth. Did you play the audio version on Dictionary.com?? ahn-bawn-pwan. Very cool word, mon amis.
S'il vous plait. I appreciate all of you who entered. But, without further adieu, the winner is:
Isn't this weekly contest going swimmingly? Four entries for week one, six for week two - I have a lot of cash on at least EIGHT big ones this week. Just call me a cock-eyed optimist.
Don't know the rules? Go fishing, prevent senility and click on the word below. Put the word into a sentence, type it into the Comments section, and pray, pray, pray that your superior writing skills are chosen as the best. Winner is posted at 10pm est on Sunday and gets the title of Miss/Mr. Weekend Word Winner (no, there is no crown) until I post another crazy hard word next week.
Here we go, click below:
Don’t you hate hindsight?
ector of the league, behind the man’s back, and let him take care of it? Do I just hope and pray that someone else stands up for what’s right? For that matter, what is right?I am reading that the earthquake death toll in China has passed 51,000 people. After my post about Myanmar, someone sent me a link to this Washington Post video. It is a MUST SEE.
Click here.
The best thing about starting this blog is that I have reconnected with some old friends, listened to my current ones and even made some new. I realize that I know a lot of cool people, and some are now writing, some are teaching, some are directing, some are acting, some are studying, some are parenting, some are moving, and some are pastoring. When I see their individual names in my Inbox, I am prompted to recall moments and spaces that I haven’t thought about in a very long time. I still have the slip that Debbie West let me “borrow” in 1983. My favorite Tevye (I’ve had two) made me smile remembering our foibles on stage and he enriched me with his appreciation for beautiful works of literature. My college radio show co-host donned a dreadlock wig to work last week in an attempt to ascertain more about the Jason Castro mystique. Misti is in Manhattan just doing her thing – good on you! And I’m hoping to see Amy when I head to D.C. for the inauguration this January.
Two weeks ago, on House, M.D., everybody’s favorite doctor was treating a soap opera actor with an unknown, rare, and deadly illness (go figure). The sick soap star was spending hours in the hospital bed reflecting on his life and choices thus far and vowing to be different if he survives, whatever it is, that is ravaging his weak body. As the dying man looked at the physician, eagerly waiting to hear his prognosis after the latest round of tests, our lovable Dr. House stared him in the face and said, “Hope is for sissies.”
I have a close friend who is suffering right now. His wife just left him, and the world looks very different than it did six months ago. Every time we talk, we cry, and I so deeply feel his pain. So, why do I ask him every couple of days, “How are you?” Do I want him to feel more pain? Am I rubbing salt in his wounds? No, I simply know that stories change, that my friend may have new insights and feelings since yesterday, that people reverse decisions, that God uses time to heal, and that the facts aren’t always the facts. I have hope.
Hope is not for the jaded, self-sufficient, reality bound, just-suck-it-up types - although it is still available to them. No, hope is more for dying soap opera actors with no way out, but who plan for a better future anyway. It is for men who are eating dinner alone because their families are gone, but persist in loving their absent wives anyway.
Hope is for people who helplessly look at the enormous problems in the world, but go cut their elderly neighbor’s lawn anyway. Hope is for people who fret about the end of the planet, but plant the sapling anyway. Hope is for people who watch the evening news in disbelief, but yield in traffic to let someone else get ahead anyway. Hope is for sissies.
Consider Jesus’ first followers after the crucifixion. Huddled together, afraid and desperate, paranoid and disheartened, yet they went to the tomb to care for His body anyway. They found unexpected, world-changing, resurrecting hope.
Hey, Rick. Hope is for sissies, my friend. Keep doing the right thing, anyway. Easter is on its way.
So, will Dr. House ever learn a thing or two about compassion and vulnerability and respect and openness? Will his terrible bedside manner ever improve?
Oh, I hope not.
I have a friend named Meredith Munro. Besides being stunning, she has the heart of a quilt – all warm, safe, covering and colorful. Whenever I have the rare chance to be with her, I like it.
Meredith introduced me to a website called, TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS, and I highly recommend that you click and read too. It is the true story of a young, self-mutilating woman, who was denied rehab, and the group of people that took her in and lived and rescued and looked like the real Church. When they found her, she had used a razor to carve “F**K UP” across her left forearm.
I have another friend who has spent most of his adult life in and out of jail and when he was younger, he was confined in the Graterford Penitentiary, Pennsylvania’s largest maximum security prison. While there, he had “F**K OFF” tattooed onto his knuckles, and from the stories I’ve heard about Graterford, I can see why.
I remember the day that Noah got off the bus and asked me what, “f**k” meant. He was in first grade. Now, before all the home schoolers start thinking I’ve proved their point, in some ways I have welcomed these moments with my children. I say, “The world is what it is right now, but what will we be in the midst of it and how will our lives instigate change?”
I told Noah that the word itself, just a combination of four letters, is not inherently bad. There really is no such thing as a bad word. From my perspective, it is the intent behind a word, the heart behind it, that is most disturbing. I guess, then, it should surprise no one that the word ended up on one of Noah’s school papers that year, on a list of words that rhymed with duck. Yeah, suck was there, too.
The girl who cut herself had self-loathing and addiction behind her word. My friend in prison had fear behind his. The crazy thing for me is that so many people react strongly to the use of four letter words, forgetting they are simply a combination of letters that can tell us so much about someone’s hurting, angry, broken heart.
LOVE is a four letter word, too. It can be said and said and said (and sung and preached and studied and recited) with no heart behind it at all, but no one seems to be getting upset about it. I’m not sure which is worse.
No, that’s b******t. I’m perfectly sure which is worse.
Someone actually allows me to be his mentor. I have this great guy, a senior in high school, who comes to my house everyday (okay, he really doesn’t show up every day, but just in case his teacher reads this, I’ll pretend. Yeah, I pretend on his evaluation forms, too) for study and mentorship. We mostly rehearse monologues and read poetry and ask questions that have no answers - we THINK. His name is Kristopher (yes, with a “K”) and I am so proud of him - as if he were my own son.
Kristopher is an actor and I watched him perform a couple of times this year. Here is a picture of him (and J.J.) after his latest triumph as Cain in Children of Eden. Last fall, he portrayed Reverend Hale in The Crucible, which had a very cool set design.
During The Crucible I sat in my seat and watched playwright Arthur Miller’s tale of false accusations and was reminded of just how ugly group think can be. He wrote this play just as McCarthyism had reached a fever pitch in America, and his story of religious fervor gone awry should be required reading.
The second witch hunt I witnessed this year took place within a Christian small group. It wasn’t my small group, but it caused me pain nonetheless. Oh, how afraid we get when people disagree with us! Questions are good. Fear is excusable. The ugliness that they produce is harder to digest: using harsh and accusing words, vying for support, and defending the faith whilst crucifying someone’s reputation should frighten us far more than a particular perspective that challenges our own. Small group think.
Jesus attempted to address the problem of our bias over and over and over again. Our individual biases are one of the main reasons I think Jesus called His way of life “the narrow way.” Being able to take a step back, and to entertain the possibility that we may be wrong, is a narrow, precarious and brave road for us to travel.
Alan Jacobs is a blogger who wrote two insightful sentences recently. I quote: “How do we, whatever we believe, find ways to identify our biases and recognize them when they’re getting in the way of real knowledge? I’m inclined to say that Step One should be to acquaint ourselves with the smartest people who disagree with us.”
I can just hear dissidents claiming, “all we need is God’s Word,” and I would agree that Scripture is critical. Yet I love a theologian, named John Wesley, who found that there were four things that helped him discern truth: Scripture, reason, experience and tradition. He didn’t know it, but later someone would name his idea the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.
One of the ways I choose
to challenge my bias is to know and love and hear smart people who disagree with me. These people are not my evangelism projects, they are my friends, strangers, writers, coworkers and family members, and they ask good questions that warrant good answers. I have never burned one at the stake or dragged them before Congress.
Some people have rid their lives of alternate opinions to either protect themselves or maintain control. I can see why. It’s a nice, wiiiiide road.
Despite its elitist overtones, I chose Liam's entry "Futility of thinking is a process; its influence creeping in slowly, insidiously causing the pathways of the unrenewed mind to become more and more subfusc."
Two reasons: 1) it's amusingly true AND 2) Liam designed my new website www.wendymelchior.com and spent many sleepless nights last week using his gifts to help his friend. No, I don't play fair and, yes, you can hire Liam for all your creative endeavors too. Send me an email and I'll put you in touch with him.
Thank you, friend. Design yourself a lapel pin that says, "By golly, I am a winner."
Okay, all you mental giants, time to exercise those brains. If you're new to the Weekend Word contest, here's the paraphrased deal. Take some fish oil supplements and click on the word below. Use the word in a sentence and post your sentence in the comments section. Most creative, funny, intelligent sentence wins. Prize is bragging rights. This week's word:
subfusc
Have at it, wordsmiths! I'll announce a winner Sunday evening at 10 p.m. est. See if you can dethrone John Bell.
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
William Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet
My paternal grandfather’s name was Ted. His oldest son was Ed. His second son was Fred. Then he bore Roy. Ted, Ed, Fred and Roy. I have often considered the endless other possibilities. There is Ned or Zed or what about, Jed? My grandmother even had a brother named Geddes, and I can easily see a shortened version – Ged – working here as well. Basically, anything with a short e vowel sound would have been easier to understand.
And yet, although Uncle Roy is unique, the similarities to his family cannot be denied and I included a picture of him and my Dad to prove it.
As I have explored Facebook, I have been intrigued by people’s answer to the question of religious affiliation. Lots of people chose not to select “Christian” but typed in something like “Follower of Jesus” instead. Why?
What’s in a name? Maybe “Christian” is not smelling too sweet these days? Maybe our names are all starting to sound the same to the culture. We can’t hear it, but Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Catholic, and Assemblies of God just may all rhyme. We sense massive differences, but outsiders hear Ted, Ed and Fred.
WWSD? (What would Shakespeare do?) Well, Juliet says about Romeo:
Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. “Doff thy name”
“Doff thy name,” is what many have done. Your thoughts?
L.A. Times staff writer, Evan Halper, wrote an article last week that he entitled, California tax proposals target beer-loving, pornography-watching yacht owners. Aside from the sheer genius of the headline, the article opts for just the facts, ma’am. I can appreciate Halper’s journalistic integrity, given that his piece does not appear on the Opinion page, but I’m throwing my integrity to the wind because the moment is just too rich to pass up.
Basically, Democratic lawmakers in California are proposing new ways to generate revenue, including new taxes on six-packs, pornography downloads, strip club patrons and luxury, polluting, gas-guzzling modes of transportation. Interestingly, the family value lovin’ Republican lawmakers sit in fierce opposition to these ideas. The Republicans are not suggesting that any of these activities promote peace and goodwill, they are just insisting that taxes are baaaaad, no matter what. Seems there is an absolute truth that supersedes other lesser truths and we call it “the greater good.”
I am not interested in a party debate (we can do that later, let’s just survive the primaries), and I am not crediting the Democrats with being champions of morality, they are just trying to raise more cash for kids and city schools (or at least that’s their story). I have no interest in legislating morality either. Doing right comes from being right, not the other way around. Be holy, not Do holy. (1 Peter 1:16)
I’m far more interested in the seeming hierarchy of truth, about how we choose every day. White lies to spare feelings, disposable plastic water bottles and interrogation by torture, all bring peace, convenience and safety to our lives. It’s all for the greater good. Any thoughts about this?
Frankly, I was outraged by the Republicans’ hypocrisy, until I read further in the article and learned that the Democrats wanted to tax iTunes downloads, too. Screw educating underprivileged city kids, I need my music.
I recently created my own Facebook page and I was intrigued by the amount of information that I was asked to provide to create my Profile. Basically, I was pumped for info about everything from my political views, to places where I grow unwanted hair, to whether or not I actually showered today or just sprayed a little perfume on and hoped for the best.
Considering it is still early, and I have not yet decided about the shower, I guess I’d better come clean. I started this blog to establish what my agent likes to call “platform” or “brand equity” before the book comes out. For all of you who are not up to your neck in the literary sub-culture (look for people with pale complexions, u
ncombed hair, muttering to imaginary characters while standing in line at the post office with their dreams in a 10x13 manila envelope) publishers look at a couple of things before purchasing a manuscript, and an author who has an already established audience is exciting to them. It also helps if you can write, but if you’ve read anything by Joel Osteen, you know that good writing is not a necessity.
But that’s not really the confession part. Yesterday marked the one week anniversary of my little blog and, statistically, things are going well. New people are visiting my small corner of the cyber block party each day.
That’s not what I need to admit, though. This blog has become an obsession, but not for the reasons you may suspect. So, here are the James Frey facts:
Confession #1: First, there is an enormous amount of pressure to post a new entry every morning. Sometimes, my brain is working so hard staring at the empty pages of my book, that I’m sapped for the blog. In other words, my blog is my mental leftovers, the half-way ideas I can’t get to gel.
Confession #2: Blogging leftovers makes me neurotic because I am trying to establish an audience with the blog and who wants to read junk? I often reread my posts and say to myself, “You’re trying too hard. You know better than that. Who will want to buy your book after reading this?”
Confession #3: The thought of no one buying my book is sort of okay. I’ve always been afraid of success. Maybe I’m too honest on those pages anyway. Some people may not like what I have to say.
Confession #4: Being honest is a good feeling though, and I honestly love to write, even if no one ever reads it.
Confessions #5: If no one ever reads it, how will I make a living? Remind me to pick up the paper today. Maybe some employer is looking for an actor/waitress/pastor/writer type person. I’ll look under telemarketing.
Confession #6: Telemarketing may not work for me – I hate it when people don’t like me and people reject telemarketers all day - some even hang up on them. I could grow (even more) insecure. Besides, I just don’t think I would be able to handle the pressure! Trying to combat people’s objections all day would feel like living inside a lion’s cage.
Confession #7: Lions are beautiful and interesting animals. I remember I read a story with a lion in it once… Oh, don’t you just love stories??? Me, too. Actually, I think I feel one brewing within me about a neurotic telemarketer who longs to be a waitress at the circus and she falls for a lion tamer who tries too hard to impress his pastor. Hmmmm, maybe I’ll blog about it tomorrow, right after I spray on a little Obsession and go on with my showerless day.
Confession #8: I need you to spread my blog address around to everyone you know. Then, maybe, you and I can both stop eating leftovers.
Thanks.
My son, Noah, has pneumonia and has been quite sick for over a week now. Yesterday was no different. The fever of 102º, the deep and continuous cough, and his lack of energy are making me question whether the antibiotic is working at all. Noah is eleven, but still likes to be near, and so I spent Mother’s Day entering the quarantine and being his mom.
Noah and I have been sleeping downstairs where it’s a little cooler and, at night, his fevers have been causing him to hallucinate. He has been afraid of unseen things in our family room and has had full conversations about science grades and Chase Utley with absent friends. In the midst of these moments, Noah no longer knows that his mom is with him, but I haven’t gone anywhere. On the contrary, I have sat up in the dark and listened to his chatter while quietly assuring him that his mind is playing tricks and there is nothing to fear.
I suspect that being a mom is the closest I will ever get to grasping how God feels about the world. Mind you, there are differences. I really don’t think that God ever contemplates giving me back (I could be wrong about that, however) and I am pretty sure that He can find the energy to brush His teeth, too. Yet I would also bet that He cheers when we hit homeruns, tries to keep us from wearing makeup too soon, worries when we miss curfew, and sits up all night when we’re sick.
And our minds play tricks on us a lot, don’t they? Sometimes I do battle with unseen foes and often hallucinate about people and their motives. I have even quarantined myself. It’s in the midst of this self-imposed sickness that I trip over God, because even when I’m so delusional that I forget He’s there, He hasn’t gone anywhere. “Shhh, Wendy,” He says. “There is nothing to fear.”
Going out to dinner would have been nice, having a shower would have felt good, but being there with my son in his sickness was the best. Nearness is part of Noah’s healing, and loving him is part of mine, because it helps me understand how Jesus loves me. He would do anything to make me whole and well. So, as crazy as it sounds, and I wish now that I’d gotten a card (preferably one that plays The Commodore’s “Brick House” when you open it), but “Happy belated Mother’s Day anyway, God.”
Well, all five entrants were great - some made me laugh and some impressed me by their efforts. But since I am the sole judge and this is a totally subjective decision, I choose:
A month or so ago, my Dad (who is a psychologist) went to a conference in Washington D.C. about brain functioning into old age. He came home and told his family that we should all be doing a couple of things to keep our minds sharp. Besides taking fish oil supplements, the neurologist stressed the importance of continuing to challenge our brains. SOOO, that combined with my love for words gave me the idea to introduce a new word every Saturday.
Here's the deal. I will post a word every Saturday. Click on it to discover its meaning. Then try one of two things: use it in the course of your conversations this weekend - try it just one time! - OR use it in a sentence and post your new sentence in the comments section.
On Sunday nights at 10pm est, I will choose what I think is the best, funniest, most creative sentence and declare a winner. Don't feel bad if no one participates, I am more than happy to declare myself the winner each week. We can all use a little encouragement before Monday morning comes, can't we?
Our first word is...
miasma
Alright, click on it, and stretch those brains. You'll thank me when you're 96.
May is National Poetry Month and I continue to be fascinated by the power of words. The past year has been chock full of words for me; words like “goodbye” and “write” are ones that I have uttered thousands of times before, but this year they took on all new meaning. When you combine all my words this year, spoken, heard and written, they mix together to create a pot of alphabet soup where “heartache,” “healing” and “liberation” rise to float on top of the bowl. I wonder what next year’s broth will say.
BEAUTIFUL Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup! (Lewis Carroll)
Of all the words I heard yesterday, the best by far was, “Shampoo!” uttered by Diana D’Iorio. My dear friend, Diana, was rear-ended in her car late last summer. Taken to the hospital as a precaution, she waited to hear “whiplash,” but she heard another terribly powerful word instead. She heard, “cancer.”
Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss. (Sylvia Plath)
Diana is so dear to me. She has a brilliant wit, a generous heart and a Doberman Pincher named, “the lovely Miss Jasmine.” She has also been hanging out on the oncology ward of the University of Pennsylvania Hospital for the past eight months. Sometimes, I’m lucky enough to hang with her, and in November, as her hair began to fall out into her food, I went to shave the rest of it off for her.
There have been lots of words written about the long hard winter, but they cannot describe Diana’s season of survival. She watched a roommate named Mildred fade away and die, she endured regular bone marrow biopsies, and she contracted shingles to add to her discomfort. Through it all, Diana kept smiling and sleeping in her blue monkey sheets.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep. (Robert Frost)
But then, as the crocuses appeared here in the east, we were visiting Diana’s doctor and we heard yet another word. We heard, “remission.” What a beautifully powerful word.
Diana has good days and bad ones. The massive amounts of chemotherapy will linger inside her system for awhile and her energy levels still disappoint her. But yesterday, when my cell phone rang, I put it to my ear to hear Diana’s voice say these words, “Guess what? Guess what? I need to buy shampoo! I look a little like Dame Judi Dench, but I still need to buy shampoo! Woo hoo!”
So, in honor of poetry month, I have composed a bit of verse myself (ahem):
Cleansing, shining, liquid goo
The wonderful stuff we call shampoo
Woo hoo! Woo hoo!
Look what God can do
cyclone – noun 1. a large-scale, atmospheric wind-and-pressure system characterized by low pressure at its center and by circular wind motion, counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.
them in the creek (pronounced “crick” if you live here) behind our house. Grandpa called the other day to announce that the tadpoles were full grown bullfrogs now, that they were eating his smaller fish and croaking all night long. Could J.J. please come get them and return them to the creek? My son needs no excuse to get wet, so yesterday he headed with his big bucket, his friend Corey, and his sister, down to release the bullfrogs into the wild.C.S. Lewis is the man. Even though his mind operated differently than mine does, no matter how many times I read his work, I find myself thinking something I never thought before. I love that.
Whether or not you’re inclined to agree with its author, Mere Christianity is required reading. Mr. Lewis’ response to God forces readers to mentally articulate why they are responding to Him in whatever way they are. Or whatever way they aren’t.
The first time I saw those car magnets, the Christian fish that have sprouted legs with DARWIN written on their bellies, it was 1997 and I was traveling behind a Nissan that was wearing one on its back bumper. I was gripped with the strangest urgent feeling. My friend in the passenger seat and I abandoned our original route and followed the car for about 10 miles until it pulled into a parking lot. I parked behind the evolved foreign car and jumped out to speak with whoever climbed out. When he emerged, the driver looked at me quizzically, saw his car parked in by mine, and finally realized that a crazy person had been stalking him through the streets.
I pointed at the bumper magnet. “Did you grow up in the church?” was exactly how I started our temporary relationship. Not, “Hi, do you have time for a question?” or something far more respectful of his life and automobile. No, I just wanted the facts. We were both in our 20s at the time, and he calmly smiled at my question.
“Yeah,” he said, “my Dad is a pastor.”
“I knew it!” I declared as I lifted my arms in triumph in the grocery store parking lot as if I’d won the Olympic gold. Thrilled with my keen sense of discernment about all things rebellious, I gave a satisfied look to my friend through the windshield as she slouched in the seat trying to avoid being recognized by anyone who happened by.
“So did you,” he interrupted my self-celebration. “You grew up in the church.”
I looked at him stiffly with my chin in the air. “How do you know?” I boldly baited back, trying to act as if I’d been raised in a violent street gang to throw him off my trail.
“You wouldn’t care about my bumper if you didn’t. You wouldn’t have parked me in or feel the need to defend God.” He smiled.
Defend God? I wasn’t defending God. I was proving I was right. I stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to say next. It was a conversation after all, and it was my turn. The more I tried to figure out why I was there, why I had followed him and why I was acting like I was, the sense of strange urgency I had felt before was being replaced with the beginnings of embarrassment – still more pink than red.
“Wanna shop?” he took my turn, relieved my discomfort and continued to stand before me.
“Sure.” I left my car illegally parked, made sure the car windows were cracked so my still hiding friend could breathe, and walked into the store with him. Up and down the aisles, he told me of a stifling childhood in a fundamentalist home. He had a father who preached the wrath of God, a mother who followed all the rules, and questions were simply not allowed. He was gentle and sad and bought oranges.
The facts aren’t always the facts. I have no doubt that when I read Romans 2:4, “do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance?” I glean a completely different meaning than my friend in the market because God’s kindness is so foreign to him. Does that make the Scripture less true? For him it does. For me, it creates a new urgency.
I realize that my disgruntled parking lot acquaintance was a lot like C.S. Lewis. His response to Jesus forced me to think about my response to Jesus. I smiled to myself and labeled his bumper rebellion, Smear Christianity, finding it equally helpful for my own fledgling faith. I have since grown to learn that it is far more important to be righteous than right and that God doesn’t need defending. Instead, I will urgently be like Him, showing kindness, tolerance and patience, in and out of the grocery store.
"Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable." C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Deborah Palfrey, unfortunately better known as the D.C. Madam, was found dead on Thursday, May 1. Her mother, Blanche, found her hanging from a metal support beam of a shed, an apparent suicide. Palfrey was facing jail time for sex crimes against humanity (or something of that nature) so even though authorities found a suicide note, I have no doubt that the conspiracy theories will go on for years. Who was on her client list that did not want to be discovered? Ex-FBI agents will be on 60 Minutes detailing how it could have been a contracted hit and Sen. David Vitter’s whereabouts on May 1 are about to become an urban myth.
The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story about Palfrey a year ago that is fascinating and worth a look. The article is a study in contradictions, and if we are to believe everything we read, so was Madam Palfrey.
It is hard not to feel the aloneness of this woman. Most people could easily conclude that her isolation was her own fault, the result of unfriendly and aggressive choices, but after staring at her high school yearbook picture, there’s a question that still begs for an answer: how does a beautiful and intelligent young woman end up hanging in her mother’s aluminum garden shed? How do we end up so desperate for relief?
When I was a teenager, my father started praying a prayer that he continued to recite into my twenties. He asked God to insure that I would always get caught. When my father told me about this prayer, he said it this way, “I promise, God, that I will walk any road with her, through any consequence she faces, but please, Lord, let her get caught.”
There is no doubt that Palfrey made some choices that led to trouble, and her choices are now being cataloged all over the news. Palfrey was angry with old classmates, she shunned neighbors, and she threatened to expose clients. I’ve seen all of that in Adult Sunday School classes. Maybe that’s how she ended up in a shed, but we’re still singing hymns. It’s not so much about the bad choices we all make, but more about how we get despondent when everyone else finds out. We only get desperate for relief when we get caught.
I wonder how the world would look if we truly believed that God offers us more than a behavior modification program and we embraced the idea of process instead. Would there be a new found camaraderie in our mutual caughtness? Would Palfrey have been able to see her own choices as equal to those persons’ she perceived had wronged her? Our communal publicity would not be simply a deterrent, but I can imagine a renewed commitment to grace, less individual isolation, and free-flowing forgiveness, all the result of our processes being exposed.
God often challenges me about how I view the Bible. I have been known to reduce it to “The Book of How to Be Finished.” God asks me why I feel so entitled, living as if my yearnings and incomplete parts simply exist to be satisfied. What if being empty and unfinished is sometimes the whole point and some victories were intended to be short-lived?
Philippians 2:5-8 reminds us that Jesus became empty. He was caught, even though He never did anything wrong. Empty and caught needn’t take us to the shed. Perhaps they’re designed to show us the way to something entirely different. Conceivably, they may even lead us to celebrate. And you know what? Pretending we’re finished is a moot point anyway, because our processes are exposed. War, hungry children, and Deborah Palfrey are already telling on us, so let’s stop walking towards the shed and offer each other a taste of relief before we are any more caught.
Mrs. Blanche Palfrey,
I’m sorry you found your daughter in such a desperate place. I can clearly see how she got there, and I’m sure she was a beautiful girl who lost her way. I celebrate your Deborah today and assure you that you are not alone.
