Friday Chews

Who besides an imbecile would live a life that bears all things, that believes all things, that hopes all things, endures all things? It is completely unreasonable. It is completely stupid in its excessive irresponsibility. Only dysfunctional idiots endure all things.

Inhabitatio Dei

National politics is like the Roman circus in first century Rome. It is entertainment to keep us distracted from the real issues.

Stanley Hauerwas

A quick calculation yields this result: African pirates will have to kidnap one Westerner per hour for the next 1,431 years to equal the number of Africans kidnapped by Westerners between 1501-1866.

William Jelani Cobb

If you drink, don't drive. Don't even putt.

Dean Martin

Glory, glory days

SO, a funny thing happened last night. My son’s baseball team had a fundraiser at a local ice creamery raising money towards their upcoming trip to Cooperstown. The kids had a blast scooping the ice cream and serving their friends. We were fortunate enough to have a great turnout.

As we were preparing to leave, I noticed a woman talking to my husband across the courtyard. Something about her body language caught my attention, and I watched her with interest as she spoke to him and a group of team parents.

Turns out, she had gone to college with Steve, who was apparently quite a stud back in the day. The woman was regaling the group with stories about my husband and his basketball team – about how they used to steal food from her sorority refrigerator (quickly forgiven, of course), about how TALL they all were in comparison to everyone else and numerous other BMOC antics that she remembered fondly and in detail.

I watched as my husband feigned blushing and pretended to not remember how great he used to be, and I found this to be even more amusing than her gushing. Tempted to contribute to the conversation by revealing his humanness (you know - snoring, smelly sneakers - the basics), I stopped myself short.

Steve is great, I thought to myself, he was and he is.

Sometimes I am reminded of all the things I used to be or wanted to be or dreamt of being and these thought/memories can leave me momentarily unsatisfied with what IS. Oh, when my thighs were thin or what if I’d not given up acting or how cool would it be to live in a center city loft apartment… Ever have these moments?

I think dreams are great things. Scripture is full of times when God gave His people a vision for something bigger than they were able to see on their own.

I know that God’s dreams for me are so much bigger than what I call a dream. Peace on earth, free flowing forgiveness, restored relationships, minds and bodies healed. Opening my life up to His kind of dreaming, instead of being distracted by the temporary things that catch my eye, may help me stop myself short when tempted to be dissatisfied with what is.

God is great. He was and He is and He always will be. Glory days.

Comfort food

I have found myself eating a lot of comfort food lately. There is definitely something about the familiar that can ease the mind, isn’t there? But it’s about far more, I think.

The sense of being FULL, or should I say THE ABSENCE OF EMPTY is a big deal too. For me, it’s been the loss of a friend, but there are other things that have left spaces as well – and the artificial filling up with green bean casserole brings a temporary plugging up of the vacancies.

In a realer, more permanent sense, this is the same journey we are on with God. He is filling us up – helping us know safety and wholeness despite our nagging hunger – past and present. Thing is, real fullness takes time, it’s a process even if we want it NOW.

Put down the fork. He’s working.

I'm a hypocrite in print

Unfortunately, my home town has joined the growing list of towns to have a teacher accused of an inappropriate relationship with a student. You can read about it HERE if you’d like, but the cliff notes version (if that’s even possible in these terrible scenarios) is that a female math teacher in our public high school has been charged with having sex with a 17 year old student.

Honestly, the whole thing (true or untrue) breaks my heart on so many levels – the teacher is married with three children of her own, the 17 year old boy will never be the same, and the community now has enough gossip and scandal that we will be able to stand in judgment and appear pious in comparison for many, many months. But I digress…

When the story broke, it was on the front page of our local newspaper. Now, if I were extra ambitious I would scan it in to show you, but you’re just going to have to believe me when I tell you that the second paragraph read like this:

Heather Zeo, a Mennonite, has been charged with one felony count of endangering the welfare of a child and four misdemeanor counts of corruption of minors…

As hypocritical as this is, after I blogged about religious garb last week, it really upset me that the first descriptor used was Mennonite. If she had been Baptist or Catholic or Jewish – do you think it would have been included? Highly doubtful.

Naturally, the article when on to include information about her faith, including a testimony on her website and the fact that she recorded a CD of Christian music. You see what I’m getting at, right?

We love a hypocrite, don’t we? Oh, the joy of exposing the fallen zealot! From Spitzer to Edwards to the classic Jim Bakker, we get real pleasure in uncovering sin. And we always seem to forget our own sin in the midst of our holy vigilante behaviors.

In moments like these, I am reminded of two things:

1. Christians, there is a lot at stake, not only in how we respond, but in how we live. We wear more than our own reputations. FLEE if you must, but don’t fail to understand what a big deal your behavior really is.
2. We are all hypocrites. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Showing grace when you are the victim makes forgiveness when you are the perpetrator all the more likely.

I’m sorry, Heather. I’m sorry for you and your student and the rest of us, too.

Friday Chews

I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.

Rita Rudner

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

Howard Aiken (1900 - 1973)

If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.

Jewish Proverb

Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets.

Unknown, Brigader Lethbridge-Stewart in "Dr. Who" – In remembrance of Diana

Attached for growth

Noah finally got his latest cast off yesterday. He was pretty excited because he knew it meant that his baseball season would resume.

Unfortunately, the news wasn’t so good. Noah’s growth plate in his right elbow has prematurely attached itself to the bone, which can apparently cause one of two things to happen: hyper-growth or stunted growth. We are headed to a specialist, but Noah’s still pleased that he can play in the meantime.

The whole thing has made me consider this idea: is it true that whatever we attach ourselves to affects our growth? I can remember my parents telling me when I was young to choose my close friends carefully because I would become like the people I spent most of my time with. When you’re young, I think this is true.

It is still true in some senses. There are certain environments and relationships that can cause us to hyper-grow – places and people who push us and love us into becoming all that God intended. And there are some spaces that stunt our growth.

But here’s the bigger question. Let’s assume the church is a hyper-growth place (which, I do realize, is up for debate). How do we avoid living “in the church?” I suspect that since we think it’s an environment that is safe and positive and healthy we tend to hang out there.

Not what Jesus did.

Churches that are program heavy, that try to be all things to all people (offering multiple sports leagues and full-service opportunities) are actually growth stunting environments, in my opinion. Not only are all these programs taking place inside the church, they require massive amounts of volunteers – who are now hanging out in the church.

Jesus is in the streets. He was 2,000 years ago, and I believe He still is today. Is it possible that we’re wrong about growth environments? What does "in the world but not of the world" ultimately mean?

Reevaluating my attachments.

You are what you wear

Last Friday, I had some very precious friends coming for dinner. It was a warm day, so I figured we’d eat outside – not to mention the fact that my house is still in a state of chaos from the repairs, etc. When I ventured into the back yard earlier in the day to prepare, I decided we needed some hanging baskets of flowers to improve the “not quite worked on” state of the deck area.

I buy flowers at a busy local greenhouse near where I live that is owned and operated by a Mennonite family. They are very nice and the flowers are beautiful. I turned into the familiar parking lot, and passed their business sign – a sign that is surrounded by scripture placards. One side of the placard read, “Lord, increase our faith” and the other read, “Purge yourself of all unrighteousness.”

Now, I have always been intrigued by a couple of things when shopping there. First, the owners’ home is at the front of the property, and their wash is always hanging out – bras and very large women’s underwear included. I have always found this to be a bold and amusing decision – and, frankly, it earns them a strange sort of respect from me.

Secondly, I marvel at the amount of hard work the women do – all in skirts and clothing that covers almost everything. There are no tank tops allowed – and you know how hot a greenhouse is!

Religious garb is an interesting choice, isn’t it? Traditional Mennonites, Amish, Hassidic Jews, devout Muslims (etc) all wear clothing that immediately identifies them as religious. As I looked through the geraniums, I began to ponder the reasons behind the uniforms.

I considered modesty and tradition and all the other reasonable conclusions, but I could not get away from the fact that I suspect that sometimes religious garb is simply to make a statement – not unlike the placard.

I selected more flowers than I intended to buy and made my way to the line. It was long, so I stood there for a few minutes and observed the woman working the counter, dressed in a long sleeved gray dress and head covering. You know, she never smiled, she never greeted a customer warmly, and she scolded a woman on her cell phone for holding up the line.

I stood there in my shorts and asked the Lord to increase my faith.

After

Last night, I actually took something to help me sleep, something I never even did when I suffered from ongoing insomnia. I was in bed, I have a viscous cold, I had buried my friend, and I had eaten Peruvian-Asian fusion food for dinner. After these things in combination, I was somehow disturbed.

There is such an interesting AFTER moment, isn’t there? Sometimes after is full of disappointment when the experience was exciting and long-anticipated. Often after is exhausting, or after can even be a relief. I am in my own after moment.

I recognize Diana is in her own after moment too – the after-life. At the graveside I read a passage from the late Cardinal Bernardin’s book, The Gift of Peace, where he writes, “Many people have asked me to tell them about heaven and the afterlife. I sometimes smile at the request because I do not know any more than they do. Yet, when one young man asked if I looked forward to being united with God and all those who have gone before me, I made a connection to something I said earlier in this book. The first time I traveled with my mother and sister to my parents’ homeland in northern Italy, I felt as if I had been there before. After years of looking through my mother’s photo albums, I knew the mountains, the land, the houses, the people. As soon as we entered the valley, I said, ‘My God, I know this place, I am home.’ Somehow I think crossing from this life into life eternal will be similar. I will be home.

What I would like to leave is a simple prayer that each one of you may find what I have found – God’s special gift to us all: the gift of peace. When we are at peace, we find the freedom to be most fully who we are, even in the worst of times. We let go of what is nonessential and embrace what is essential. We empty ourselves so that God may more fully work within us. And we become instruments in the Lord’s hands.”

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
St. Francis of Assisi

The whole prayer is an after prayer. After sadness, joy; after pain, pardon; after darkness, light.
I want to be an after person.

Funeral today

This day we commit Diana's body to the ground looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body. Titus 2:13, Phil. 3:21

Shiny well soul

Last night, I attended Noah’s Spring concert at the public middle school he attends. I usually enjoy these concerts immensely.

But before the concert began, I sat in my seat very tired, both physically and emotionally. The loss of Diana is a heavy reality, one that is making it hard to move my arms and legs. I haven’t been able to hear either, and I have missed most of what people are saying to me. Falling asleep seemed like my best bet.

Then came the moment when the curtain opened and the instruments reflected the light in a hundred different eye-catching flashes. The brass is always so shiny and exciting looking – and my attention was suddenly brought into sharp focus for the first time in over 24 hours. I even felt a moment of anticipation. What will I hear, now that I am listening?

And then, at his public school, Noah’s band began to play what was listed as “Hymnsong with Philip Bliss” in the program, but if you know your church music, you know it as, “It Is Well With My Soul.”

I was completely present for a moment, and that single flash of clarity reassured me that I will regain my hearing as the days pass. Smiling in the dark, I gave God props for His blessed tactics – tubas and truth.

It is well, it is well with my soul.

An ear to heaven

Every single night, for almost two years, my daughter has asked God to heal my friend Diana of her leukemia. He finally answered Mia's faithful prayer, because Diana died yesterday.

I have no doubt that Diana already has heaven on its ear. I hope God likes to play Scrabble and watch reruns of Dr. Who.

Thank you, God, for the extraordinary privilege of knowing and loving her. And Lord? I could use a little healing today too. Something feels broken.

Homemade cards and other reproach producing paper

I hope you had a great Mother’s Day. I recognize that it can be a tough day for some people. I had a friend who once told me that one of the hardest moments of the entire year for her is when she stands in the Hallmark store and tries to find a Mother’s Day card that is true.

I woke up yesterday and shortly after my daughter was leading me into a room to present me with a homemade card. It is gigantic, made on large size art paper, and here is what it says:

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY
I LOVE YOU
Let me name all the nice things about you…
Marvelous
Outstanding
Magnificent
You’re kind, sweet, you help us when we need it. You think of us first, you forgive us! But most of all you always have time for me and more.
Love, Mia xoxoxoxoxo

It was beautiful, but somehow it gave me the strangest feeling inside. I truly long to be all the things my daughter believes that I am, all the things she needs me to be. Did you ever read a card that way?

Fowl Quiz

Anybody know what kind of bird this is?

Be still

My friend Diana has been worthy of many a blog post here. Her antics are somewhat unmatched in my life for she is all craziness and fun and love and emotion. We have battled her cancer together, and it has been a long and strenuous road – yet not without laughter and really great moments.

Diana is loud and funny and over-reactive. Never shy about making a scene, I have heard her say outrageously kind and loving things to perfect strangers in elevators and watched her do extravagantly generous things for the people in her life. She is a force of nature, for sure, and God made her that way.

She is also one of my very dearest friends in the world.

On Tuesday, Diana had a heart attack after her bone marrow transplant last week. She is alive, on a ventilator, but remains unconscious. When her brother called to tell me, the world seemed very quiet all of a sudden.

God keeps reminding my heart to “Be still and know that He is God.” Not SIT still or FEEL still – but BE still – make stillness a part of the essence of me through His abiding presence in my very person. Stillness and sadness are familiar friends in the Kingdom - kind of like death and new life.

Diana has a signed DNR. I do not know what that means for the days ahead, but as my friend lies in her bed very, very still, I will join her in my spirit.

Fifty words or less

My friend mentioned to me at work today that there were a lot of obituaries in the local paper today. Obituaries are fascinating things aren’t they? I always read them – sometimes before the headlines.

Summing up one’s life in a few paragraphs is a great exercise for the living, but is usually only done for the dead. Information about clubs, education, family members, hobbies and religious affiliations are all crammed into 50 words or less, but often what is not said is even more telling.

My husband has this theory that as the generations pass, your life gets summed up in one sentence by your great-grandchildren. For instance, since he is 6’7”, Steve predicts that his great-grandchildren will say, “He was tall.”

I was fortunate enough to have my great-grandmother with me until I was 40. Her name was Hannah and I wouldn’t know where to start to tell you about how great she was. It would require far more than one sentence. The verse that she used to pray was III John 2 & 4, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as they soul prospereth….I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.”

Let me sum her up: Hannah walked in truth.

I wonder what my great-grandchildren will say?

Same old, same new

If you’re visiting the blog for the first time today, you have not been privy to my gruesome house stories. You’re blessed, believe me. Suffice it to say, I have had oil and water problems downstairs that have caused quite an adventure.

The problems have also forced me to clean up. Part of the problem took place in the furnace room that held a lot more junk than furnace. Now that I can finally move things back into place, it has proved to be the perfect occasion to sort through all the stuff I have been moving from place to place for 25 years but haven’t looked at.

I have found some pretty interesting stuff – some funny, some sad, some too embarrassing to discuss (even for me). One thing I uncovered were the journals I kept while in London.

Smiling as I opened them up, I recalled how faithfully I wrote it all down, not wanting to forget a single moment of my time there. There were pages and pages of musings and memories and QUESTIONS. So, right in the middle of the clutter I was supposed to be organizing, I sat down for a read.

I am sort of please to tell you that the questions I had in the late 80s are different than the questions I have today – well, most of them anyway. And yet, I discovered that I am still the same in many ways. Some excerpts as examples:

“Starting tomorrow I begin living on rolls, old crackers, flat Coke and anything I can get Cindy to pay for.” Cindy was my roommate. I have never had money in my pocket, thus my husband’s insistence on keeping the checkbook.

Then there’s this one:

“Deserving comment is Andy’s first sexual experience. Apparently, the couple in the flat next to ours just got married. Andy keeps waking everyone up, telling us to listen. How he will function as a normal adult someday is beyond me.” Last I heard, Andy is married with 3 kids. Guess I was wrong about the normal adult thing.

One of my favorites was:

“Sometimes I’m afraid I’m not bright. I’m afraid I sound as ridiculous as some people sound to me, and I just don’t know it.” A classic, huh?

Yet I did discover some moments when God was growing me up. Moments like:

“It is truly wonderful when you become so comfortable with someone that you can scratch your butt in front of her. That’s how I feel with Cindy. Heavens knows we’re different! She’s the planful [sic] bossy sophisticate. I’m the disorganized dreaming bum. It pisses her off when I get an A without studying. It pisses me off when she tries to mother me. But she NEEDS to organize, to KNOW and to instruct. She feels important and needed by me if she’s showing me the way. So, because I love her, I let her tell me, even if I am already quite aware of the proper direction I should be taking. On the other hand, she sits through all my performances and gives me honest critique. She will stay up all night and help me memorize lines that I procrastinated learning. And even though she says, ‘I told you so’ and I say, ‘Get off my case’ – we stick with each other. It’s friendship for real.”

Twenty years later, I have found better words than “pisses” to express my feelings of relational frustration, but I am still trying to choose the harder, more narrow path of real love and community. Even when it ticks me off.

Achoo Swine Flu

Talk about the swine flu is everywhere, huh? I’ll admit, wherever I go, people are chatting about it - especially if someone sneezes. We are on the alert, in the height of allergy season. I am not making light of what is happening in Mexico City, though, because I have no doubt it is frightening and anxiety-producing.

What I am most amazed about it is how fast bad news travels. We live in a world of global mass media and high speed everything, don’t we? I sit absolutely dumbfounded about the many communication tools we use to disseminate a message almost instantaneously – and nearly everybody gets the message.

Good news doesn’t travel as fast. The word Gospel, the name we use to describe the life and ministry and MESSAGE of Jesus, (as in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the gospels) literally means Good News. Even though the message began with one man and spread to the whole world, it wasn’t exactly quick and I would suggest it still isn’t – and shouldn’t be.

Another profound way that the movement of Christ is counter-cultural is that it requires real time and investment. If you are a follower of Christ, I think it is critical that you understand this for many reasons. Sometimes Christians make sweeping statements about the current culture, criticizing relativism and secularism (you know the drill) but there are other, more subtle ways that we can be tripped up. When everything around us happens quickly, we become quick.

Last Friday night, I heard a young pastor speak. I wanted to jump up and cheer as I heard him talk about his ministry and his people. Years ago, he was watching Oprah (yeah, that scary new age influential brainwashing superhero) and God spoke to Him. Oprah was talking about her work in Africa – AIDS relief and education – which she and Bono pioneered and the world (including the church) followed. The young pastor was so impressed by the individual stories of suffering, that he decided to talk to his congregation about it.

They began travelling to Africa. He said it this way, “We did not go to ‘take Jesus to them.’ We knew Jesus was already there, so we went in a posture of learning and humility, wondering if there was any way we could help.” I usually say it this way – God is already present, ask Him how you can cooperate with what He is already doing. Helps Christians rethink the troubling crusader mentality, huh?

Anyway, the pastor and his people have been going back and forth ever since, partnering with Africans to form a non-profit organization, Zimele, that has now assisted thousands of people with AIDS and their children. The pastor said, “I feel like it’s my second home,” and he is of Asian descent!

Their work is not quick and no one in the global mass media has noticed. It must be really, really good news.

Friday Chews

Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.

Robert Orben

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.

Bob Thaves, "Frank and Ernest", 1982

Anything too stupid to be said is sung.

Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

You talk to God, you're religious. God talks to you, you're psychotic.

Doris Egan, House M.D., House vs. God, 2006